Publications

May 2016 (Revised January 2018)
Case

Airbnb, Etsy, Uber: Acquiring the First Thousand Customers

By: Thales S. Teixeira and Morgan Brown

By 2016, two-sided online platforms (or marketplaces) were pervasive among the highest growing internet startups around. These marketplaces sought to match suppliers of assets for rent, physical products or services with customers demanding them. Among the most notable... View Details

Keywords: Airbnb; Etsy; Uber; Growth Hacking; Two-sided Market; Internet and the Web; Marketing Strategy; Digital Platforms; Digital Marketing; Business Startups; Transportation Industry; Accommodations Industry

January 2001 (Revised August 2003)
Case

Student Educational Loan Fund, Inc. (Abridged)

By: Peter Tufano

Rick Melnick oversees the Student Educational Loan Fund (SELF), which provides loans to Harvard Business School students. SELF is changing the terms of student loans from variable-rate with semiannual payments to fixed-rate loans with equal monthly payments. Melnick... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Financing and Loans; Business Education; Interest Rates; Education Industry; Boston

January 2002 (Revised March 2002)
Case

Intuitive Surgical - Negotiating the Deal

By: Jay O. Light and Anthony Massaro

Two cofounders of a company enter into a negotiation to set the terms of a start-up in the field of laparoscopic surgery. View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Tactics; Negotiation Style; Negotiation Deal; Health Care and Treatment; Business Startups; Health Industry

07 Feb 2015
News

Providence Housing Authority turns 75

02 Jan 2019
News

American Man Becomes First Person To Cross Antarctica Alone And Unaided

March 2000 (Revised May 2001)
Case

Silicon Valley Bank

By: G. Felda Hardymon and Ann Leamon

Silicon Valley Bank, a $4 billion institution in California, has made its reputation by working with venture capitalists in backing start-up companies. In 1999, it is forced to compete with nonbank financial institutions that can give money on better terms and in a... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Business Startups; Competitive Strategy; Financial Institutions; Financing and Loans; Financial Markets; Venture Capital; Private Equity; Entrepreneurship; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; California

17 Sep 2024
HBS Case

The Climate Targets Leaders Need to Know as Regulations Loom

As investor pressure mounts on companies to show their environmental impacts, leaders are encountering an unwieldy tangle of terms and approaches. Climate accounting basics and a dictionary of sorts can help demystify the calculations and voluntary targets that... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

19 Oct 2020
Video

Professor Jim Cash: Hoops and Positivity

19 Oct 2020
Video

Professor Jim Cash: What white privilege really means

January 2009 (Revised February 2010)
Case

Necessity and Invention: Monetary Policy Innovation and the Subprime Crisis

By: Aldo Musacchio and Dante Roscini

This case describes the efforts of Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, to improve liquidity in money markets during the subprime crisis. The case explains the four main new tools for monetary policy (or quantitative easing) the Federal Reserve has used... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Money; Financial Liquidity; Central Banking; Policy; Business and Government Relations

24 Dec 2013
News

Nancy Koehn on the Scourge of Affluenza

October 2007 (Revised February 2008)
Background Note

Evaluating M&A Deals: Accretion vs. Dilution of Earnings-per-share

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

When discussing the pros and cons of an acquisition, practitioners often talk about the impact of the deal on the buyer's earnings-per-share (eps). An acquisition is said to be "accretive" if the buyer's eps goes up post-deal; it is "dilutive" if the buyer's eps goes... View Details

Keywords: Business Earnings; Mergers and Acquisitions; Private Equity; Negotiation Deal

Ever sent an indiscreet selfie? Disclosed private data online? Agreed to terms and conditions without reading them through? If you have, Leslie John knows the reason why. View Details

10 Sep 2021
News

The Evolution of Black Friday Shopping — And What 2021 May Bring

May 2001 (Revised March 2007)
Background Note

Balance Sheet, The

By: David F. Hawkins and Jacob Cohen

Discusses the accounting equation and defines common terms found in the statement. Also provides an example of the balance sheets of Coca-Cola Co., Ariba, Inc., and Safeway, Inc. View Details

Keywords: Accounting

2020
Chapter

El problema de la productividad [The Productivity Problem]

By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk

The weak performance of the Latin American region in terms of the growth of its GDP is largely due to its low productivity growth. In fact, the region's main problem has been its lack of efficiency in combining capital and labor to produce. In this chapter, we... View Details

Keywords: GDP Growth; Productivity Growth; Efficiency; Labor; Capital; Growth and Development; Latin America

Read Now

13 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Why Public Companies Underinvest in the Future

opportunities relative to similar private firms. A blow to the stock price induced by today's investment might be impossible to avoid, says Farre-Mensa. Ideally, public-firm managers would be able to convey to analysts and investors that lower profits near View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish

18 Sep 2006
Research & Ideas

When Words Get in the Way: The Failure of Fiscal Language

arbitrary terms with no intrinsic meaning, a lesson that even economists have not learned. "On the General Relativity of Fiscal Language," a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, provides a mathematical... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

January 2023 (Revised November 2024)
Case

ELCA's Series A

By: Anke Becker, Raymond Kluender and William R. Kerr

Vu Phong and Xavier Silva co-founded ELCA to build proprietary software for their technology-enabled language learning tool. Since winning a prestigious venture contest in 2021, their number of registered users grew rapidly, as did the demand for new features like... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Growth and Development Strategy