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- 2025
- Working Paper
Heterogeneous Beliefs and Stock Market Fluctuations
By: Odhrain McCarthy and Sebastian Hillenbrand
This paper examines the role of heterogeneous investor beliefs in explaining stock market puzzles. Using survey data, we show that individual investors and investment professionals, such as equity analysts and strategists, form distinct beliefs. These groups rely on... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Street Earnings: Implications for Asset Pricing
By: Sebastian Hillenbrand and Odhrain McCarthy
To address the excess volatility puzzle – the excessive movements in stock prices – researchers often study movements in valuation ratios. However, we demonstrate that movements in valuation ratios based on fundamental measures with high transitory volatility, such as... View Details
- June 2025
- Case
Vail Resorts: Responding to Activist Pressure (A)
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Edward A. Meyer
On January 27, 2025, the head of a relatively small hedge fund named Late Apex Partners sent a highly critical letter to the board of directors of Vail Resorts, the world’s largest ski resort operator. In his letter, and the 88-slide presentation that accompanied his... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Finance; Capital Budgeting; Corporate Governance; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Leading Change; Valuation; Investment Activism; Climate Change; Management Succession; Financial Management; Risk Management; Business and Shareholder Relations; Sports Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Travel Industry; United States; Australia; Canada
- May–June 2025
- Article
Sustainability as a Business-Model Transformation
By: Ivanka Visnjic, Felipe Monteiro and Michael L. Tushman
Many global companies have made public commitments to sustainability targets. Fulfilling these commitments will require firms to transform their business models and organizational architectures. A few pioneers are leading the way, demonstrating that companies can make... View Details
- April 2025
- Case
#FutureFresenius: Implementing a New Strategy to Transform the Company and Advance Patient Care
By: David J. Collis, Benjamin C. Esty and Haisley Wert
In February 2024, Fresenius CEO Michael Sen reflected on the company’s transformation journey from his office in Bad Homburg, Germany. With revenues of €22 billion and a mission to advance patient care, Fresenius had built a strong reputation through decades of... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
The Invention of Corporate Governance
By: Yueran Ma and Andrei Shleifer
The analysis of corporate governance begins with a central feature of modern capitalism—the separation of ownership and control in large corporations—first empirically documented by Berle and Means (1932). Such separation entails several agency problems reflecting... View Details
- March 2025
- Case
Metaphysic AI: Rethinking the Value of Human Expertise
By: Zoë B. Cullen, Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
In early 2025, Thomas Graham, CEO of Metaphysic, a leading AI generative video company confronted fundamental questions about who should control digital identity in a world where AI could perfectly recreate human likeness. Founded in 2021, Metaphysic first rose to fame... View Details
- March 10, 2025
- Article
How Gen AI Could Change the Value of Expertise
By: Joseph Fuller, Matt Sigelman and Michael Fenlon
In the near future, gen AI is likely to affect some 50 million jobs, automating away elements of some jobs and augmenting workers’ abilities in others. The extent of those changes will compel companies to reshape their organizational structures and rethink their talent... View Details
- March 2025
- Article
Boomerasking: Answering Your Own Questions
By: Alison Wood Brooks and Michael Yeomans
Humans spend much of their lives in conversation, where they tend to hold many simultaneous motives. We examine two fundamental desires: to be responsive to a partner and to disclose about oneself. We introduce one pervasive way people attempt to reconcile these... View Details
- February 2025
- Case
Blue Owl Financing of Ping Identity
By: Victoria Ivashina and Srimayi Mylavarapu
In the fall of 2022, Blue Owl Capital's investment committee evaluated a potential investment in the technology sector. The proposed transaction centered on Ping Identity Corporation (“Ping”), a fast-growing identity access management (IAM) software company that was... View Details
- 2025
- Book
Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier
By: Matthew Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau
Your guide--using the compelling stories of changemakers and the tools of economics--to the transformation and future possibilities of the business and economics of space.
Space is a place of unparalleled possibility for humanity, and it's undergoing a... View Details
Space is a place of unparalleled possibility for humanity, and it's undergoing a... View Details
- January 2025
- Case
Index and Active Investing: Vanguard and the New Frontier of Active ETFs
By: Marco Sammon, Luis M. Viceira and Jonathan Kanagasabai
This case explores Vanguard’s strategic decision-making process as it considers entering the growing market for actively managed exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Set in 2024, the case places students in the position of Rodney Comegys, Vanguard’s global head of the Equity... View Details
- January 2025
- Case
A Tiger in the Tank: Exxon Sues Investors
By: Clayton S. Rose, Sarah Sasso and James Weber
In June 2024, investors were trying to make sense of ExxonMobil’s (Exxon) lawsuit against two impact investors, Arjuna Capital (Arjuna) and Follow This, that had just been dismissed by the U.S. District Court of Northern Texas. Exxon’s suit challenged the rights of two... View Details
Keywords: Disruption; Talent and Talent Management; Customer Satisfaction; Decision Making; Demographics; Ethics; Corporate Accountability; Employees; Recruitment; Retention; Leadership; Crisis Management; Risk Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Adaptation; Investment Activism; Lawsuits and Litigation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Health Industry; Energy Industry; United States; Netherlands; Norway
- December 2024
- Case
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM): The AI Journey
By: Shikhar Ghosh
In early 2024, Bill Fandrich, Executive VP and CIO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM), faced a critical decision about AI adoption within the organization. Fandrich had championed AI implementation at BCBSM. After successfully developing three AI... View Details
Keywords: Blue Cross; Automation; Generative Ai; Health Insurance; Insurance Companies; Innovation; IT Strategy; Organizational Transformations; Technology; Non-profit; AI and Machine Learning; Health; Digital Strategy; Digital Transformation; Leadership; Technology Adoption; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Innovation Strategy; Health Industry; Insurance Industry; Michigan
- November–December 2024
- Article
How to Avoid the Agility Trap
By: Jianwen Liao and Feng Zhu
Agility is all the rage in strategy circles these days. According to conventional wisdom, organizations should rapidly react to technological advances, new market dynamics, and shifting consumer preferences. But in practice this is nearly impossible to pull off,... View Details
- December 2024
- Article
Managerial Pluralism: Thirty Years of Teaching Business Ethics
The author reflects on 30 years of teaching business ethics at Harvard Business School. The paper presents tactical lessons for teaching courses in professional ethics and introduces “managerial pluralism.” This concept is akin to Isaiah Berlin’s value pluralism and... View Details
- November–December 2024
- Article
Why Employees Quit
By: Ethan Bernstein, Michael B. Horn and Bob Moesta
The so-called war for talent is still raging. But in that fight, employers continue to rely on the same hiring and retention strategies they’ve been using for decades. Why? Because they’ve been so focused on challenges such as poaching by industry rivals, competing in... View Details
- 2024
- Book
The Fading Light of Democratic Capitalism: How Pervasive Cronyism and Restricted Suffrage Are Destroying Democratic Capitalism as a National Ideal ... And What to Do About It
What are we to do about declining public trust and confidence in democratic capitalism, which many citizens consider a cornerstone of our national ideology and identity? In this book, I address how we can rekindle the fading light of democratic capitalism as an... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Why Most Resist AI Companions
By: Julian De Freitas, Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp and Stefano Puntoni
AI companion applications—designed to serve as synthetic interaction partners—have recently
become capable enough to reduce loneliness, a growing public health concern. However,
behavioral research has yet to fully explain the barriers to adoption of such AI and... View Details
- October 2024
- Case
EU's Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act
By: David B. Yoffie and Sarah von Bargen
Since the early 2020s, the EU began passing regulations on digital platforms and their marketplaces. One of the first was the Digital Services Act package, consisting of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). These regulations were focused on... View Details