Publications

1976
Chapter

More or Less Poverty? The Economic Effects of the MNE at Home and in the LDC's

By: L. T. Wells Jr.

Keywords: Poverty; Developing Countries and Economies; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Economies and Regions

June 2023 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Optimalen Capital

By: Malcolm Baker, Elisabeth Kempf and Jonathan Wallen

A new client portfolio manager at a quantitative investment management firm must explain why her firm, Optimalen Capital, has rebalanced a client portfolio with a set of trades that seem unintuitive. In particular, Optimalen has added to its position of Walmart (ticker... View Details

Keywords: Investments; CAPM; Capital Asset Pricing Model; Investment Portfolio; Asset Pricing

June 2013
Supplement

Can PACIV (Puerto Rico) Serve European Customers? (Video Supplement)

By: Jim Sharpe

This is Video Supplement for Can PACIV (Puerto Rico) Serve European Customers? HBS Case #808099. View Details

23 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 23

other sources of entrepreneurial influence: we find that peer influences are strongest for those who have less exposure to entrepreneurship in other aspects of their lives. Family Control of Firms and... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

August 1998 (Revised February 1999)
Case

Product Development at Dell Computer Corporation

By: Stefan H. Thomke, Vish V. Krishnan and Ashok Nimgade

Describes how Dell redesigned its new product development process after experiencing a major product setback and a significant decline in firm profits in 1993. Dell's new process is challenged during the development of a new line of portable computers when the incoming... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Profit; Managerial Roles; Risk Management; Product Development; Business Processes; Problems and Challenges; Risk and Uncertainty; Hardware; Computer Industry

Stefan Thomke (sthomke@hbs.edu), an authority on the management of innovation, is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He has worked with firms on product, process, and... View Details

September 2007
Case

Tetra Pak Argentina

By: Tarun Khanna, Krishna G. Palepu and Gustavo A. Herrero

Deals with the hands-on management of a difficult situation facing the subsidiary of a multinational corporation (Tetra Pak) in a developing country (Argentina). The situation arises from a major economic, social, and institutional breakdown that jeopardizes the... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Crisis; Currency Exchange Rate; Sovereign Finance; Multinational Firms and Management; Crisis Management; Business and Government Relations; Argentina

2017
Chapter

Are Founder CEOs Good Managers?

By: Victor Manuel Bennett, Megan Lawrence and Raffaella Sadun

We investigate the management practices adopted by firms where the founders are also the CEOs using data from the World Management Survey. We find that founder CEO firms have the lowest management scores of any owner-manager pair type and that this difference is... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Performance

Find at Harvard

Read Now

Ashish Nanda is Senior Lecturer and C. Roland Christensen Distinguished Management Educator at Harvard Business School. From 2018 to 2021, he was course head for the MBA Required Curriculum course in Strategy. Beginning in 2022, he is teaching an MBA Elective... View Details

November 2003 (Revised September 2016)
Case

Creating Global Oil, 1900-1935

By: Geoffrey G. Jones and Daniel Wadhwani

Taught in the elective MBA course entitled The Evolution of Global Business. Examines the development of an international cartel in the oil industry in the 1920s and 1930s. Focuses on the decisions and actions of the leading multinational oil companies—particularly... View Details

Keywords: History; Competition; Multinational Firms and Management; Alliances; Cooperation; Business and Government Relations; Energy Industry

October 2016 (Revised January 2018)
Case

BlackRock (A): Selling the Systems?

By: Ranjay Gulati, Jan W. Rivkin and Kelly McNamara

As the case opens in 1999, several key leaders at BlackRock, Inc., then a relatively small asset management firm, are trying to convince CEO Larry Fink and others that the firm should begin to offer Aladdin—its proprietary analytics and trading platform—to other asset... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Competition; Information Technology; Asset Management; Competitive Strategy; Financial Services Industry; United States

12 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

How Can Financial Advisors Thrive in Shifting Markets? Diversify, Diversify, Diversify

wealth management. The number of financial advisory firms grew 41 percent to more than 15,000 between 2015 and 2021, according to Barron’s. Every April, Dimensional Fund queries hundreds of financial... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Financial Services

16 May 2018
HBS Seminar

Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato, Duke University, Economics

January 2010 (Revised February 2010)
Case

IFP, Indonesia

By: Roy D. Shapiro

IFP, Ltd. is a Europe-based multinational mining and minerals company contemplating an investment to produce forest products in Indonesia. The primary case decisions are 1) how to assess political and operating risk, 2) how to integrate economic and political risk... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Investment; Geographic Location; Risk Management; Supply Chain Management; Business and Government Relations; Forest Products Industry; Indonesia

Working Paper

How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?

By: Paul A. Gompers, William Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan and Ilya A. Strebulaev

We survey 885 institutional venture capitalists (VCs) at 681 firms to learn how they make decisions across eight areas: deal sourcing, investment selection, valuation, deal structure, post-investment value-added, exits, internal firm organization, and relationships... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Decision Choices and Conditions

Find at Harvard

Read Now

September 2005 (Revised November 2006)
Case

AmorePacific: From Local to Global Beauty

By: Pankaj Ghemawat, Carin-Isabel Knoop and David Kiron

Suh Kyung-Bae, the President and CEO of AmorePacific, a South Korean cosmetics company, was an ardent globalizer. In its home market, AmorePacific had held off major multinational players such as L'Oreal and Estee Lauder and had engaged them in markets around the... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Local Range; Global Range; Global Strategy; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; South Korea

March 2006 (Revised April 2006)
Case

NOK (A)

By: Das Narayandas and Kate Attea

Highlights issues that a multidivision firm faces as it moves from managing products for profit to managing customers for profit. View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Transformation; Customer Focus and Relationships; Profit; Management; Product Marketing; Organizations; Commercialization

Editorial

Why ESG Funds Fail to Scale

By: Gabriel Karageorgiou and George Serafeim

You’ve seen the headlines about the growth in environmental, social, and governance funds. Many investment professionals might read these and believe that launching a new ESG investment firm or ESG offering will be an automatic success. Our analysis of the data shows... View Details