Faculty & Research - Business & Environment

21 Results

February 2020 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Prime Coalition: Catalytic Capital for Climate Innovation

By: Ramana Nanda, Benjamin N. Roth and Olivia Hull

With long development timelines and high risk, new energy technologies were often left to languish in the “valley of death,” unable to raise enough funds to bring a product to market. In 2014, Sarah Kearney founded the nonprofit Prime Coalition to solve this problem....

November 2016 (Revised May 2017)
Case

Hyperloop One

By: William A. Sahlman, Ramana Nanda, Robert White, Allison Ciechanover and Jeff Huizinga

This case explores the attempt of Shervin Pishevar, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, to shepherd hyperloop, a futuristic pod-in-tube transportation technology, from concept to transformative reality via Hyperloop One and Sherpa Capital, both companies he...

April 2016
Cases with Notes

TerraPower

By: Ramana Nanda

April 2016
Teaching Material

Fast Ion Battery

By: Ramana Nanda

2015
Book Chapter

Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Renewable Energy

By: Ramana Nanda, Ken Younge and Lee Fleming

We document three facts related to innovation and entrepreneurship in renewable energy. Using data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, we first show that patenting in renewable energy remains highly concentrated in a few large energy firms. In 2009, the top 20...

March 2015
Teaching Material

inge watertechnologies, GmbH

By: Ramana Nanda

2017
Working Paper

Cost of Experimentation and the Evolution of Venture Capital

By: Michael Ewens, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

We study how technological shocks to the cost of starting new businesses have led the venture capital model to adapt in fundamental ways over the prior decade. We both document and provide a framework to understand the changes in the investment strategy of VCs in...

November 2014
Case

Oasys Water: Balancing Strategic Partnerships & Financing Decisions

By: Ramana Nanda, William A. Sahlman and Sid Misra

Oasys Water had developed a proprietary water treatment technology based on an innovative forward osmosis process that could remove dissolved solids from water more effectively and efficiently than existing technologies. As Oasys looked to scale, it was exploring...

September 2014 (Revised March 2015)
Cases with Notes

Fast Ion Battery

By: Ramana Nanda, Robert F. White and Stephanie Puzio

John Davidson, a partner at Ware Street Capital (WSC) and a board member at Fast Ion Battery, had just received a phone call from Don Lerner at Bluelock Ventures telling him that Bluelock would not participate in the $5M bridge financing for Fast Ion Battery. Lerner's...

March 2014
Teaching Material

Venture Capital Investment in the Clean Energy Sector

By: Ramana Nanda and Shikhar Ghosh

In this note, we examine the extent to which venture capital is adequately positioned for the rapid commercialization of clean energy technologies in the United States. The need for a revolution in clean energy is driven not just by environmental consequences of energy...

November 2012 (Revised December 2017)
Cases with Notes

TerraPower

By: William A. Sahlman, Ramana Nanda, Joseph B. Lassiter III and James McQuade

John Gilleland, CEO of TerraPower, returned to his office after a lengthy meeting with potential investors. It was October 2012, and TerraPower was in the process of raising a $200M Series C round to finance the ongoing development of its next-generation nuclear...