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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2020

  How Do CEOs Make Strategy?

  Mu-Jeung Yang, Michael Christensen, Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and Jan Rivkin

  We explore the critical question of how executives make strategic decisions. Utilizing a new survey of 262 CEO alumni of Harvard Business School, we gather evidence on four aspects of each executive’s business strategy: its overall structure, its formalization, its development, and its implementation. We report three key results. First, different CEOs use markedly different processes to make strategic decisions; some follow highly formalized, rigorous, and deliberate processes, while others rely heavily on instinct and intuition. Second, more structured strategy processes are associated with larger firm size and faster employment growth. Third, using a regression discontinuity centered around a change in the curriculum of Harvard Business School’s required strategy course, we trace differences in strategic decision making back to differences in managerial education.

  Keywords: strategy; management; productivity; CEO;

  Citation:

  Yang, Mu-Jeung, Michael Christensen, Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, and Jan Rivkin. "How Do CEOs Make Strategy?" Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-063, October 2020.  View Details

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• Article | Research Policy | October 2020

  The Supply Chain Economy: A New Industry Categorization for Understanding Innovation in Services

  Mercedes Delgado and Karen G. Mills

  An active debate has centered on the importance of manufacturing for driving innovation in the U.S. economy. This paper offers an alternative framework that focuses on the role of suppliers of goods and services (the “supply chain economy”) in national performance. We identify three conceptual attributes of suppliers that make them important for innovation: they produce specialized inputs; have more downstream linkages with other industries; and benefit especially from co-locating with their customers, creating externalities. Using the 2002 Benchmark Input-Output Accounts, we estimate a new industry categorization that separates supply chain (SC) industries (i.e., those that sell primarily to businesses or government) from business-to-consumer (B2C) industries (i.e., those that sell primarily to consumers). We find that the supply chain economy is a distinct and large segment of the economy that includes primarily service providers. The SC industries, especially traded services, have higher average wages than B2C industries. The supply chain economy also has higher innovative activity as captured by the concentration of the vast majority of STEM jobs (primarily in traded services) and patents (in manufacturing). Finally, we find that employment in the economy has evolved from manufacturing into two distinct types of services (1998–2015): SC Traded Services (with the highest STEM intensity and wages) versus B2C Main Street (with the lowest STEM intensity and wages).

  Keywords: supply chain industries; business-to-consumer industries; services; innovation; Economy; Framework; Supply Chain; Service Operations; Innovation and Invention; Economic Growth; United States;

  Citation:

  Delgado, Mercedes, and Karen G. Mills. "The Supply Chain Economy: A New Industry Categorization for Understanding Innovation in Services." Research Policy 49, no. 8 (October 2020).  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2020

  The Black New Venture Competition

  Karen Mills, Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Martin Sinozich and Gabriella Elanbeck

  Black entrepreneurs encounter many unique obstacles when raising capital to start and grow a business. During their second year at Harvard Business School (HBS), MBA students Kimberly Foster and Tyler Simpson decided to do something to make a difference for early-stage Black technology entrepreneurs seeking funding. In just four months, they created the inaugural Black New Venture Competition (BNVC), which attracted 300 applicants and became the largest student-led business plan competition for Black entrepreneurs in the U.S. Over the course of the competition, Foster and Simpson were able to begin to identify some of the biases and frictions in the evaluation and funding of early-stage Black ventures. Was there bias in the selection rubric? What would happen when these Black founders faced traditional white VC investors in their next funding round? Now Foster and Simpson needed to decide what to keep and what to change for future iterations of the BNVC. Were they, and their successors, even thinking big enough for BNVC 2.0?

  Keywords: Startup; start-up; Startup financing; Startups; start-ups; African-American Protagonist; african-american entrepreneurs; african-american investors; African-Americans; African-American women; black leadership; Black inventors; Black entrepreneurs; Harvard Business School; Harvard; business and society; early stage funding; Early Stage Finance; technology entrepreneurship; discrimination; Technology ventures; entrepreneurial finance; entrepreneurial financing; Business Plan; Business Startups; Business Ventures; Business Growth and Maturation; Diversity; Gender; Race; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Small Business; Leadership; Technology; Competition; Technology Industry;

  Citation:

  Mills, Karen, Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Martin Sinozich, and Gabriella Elanbeck. "The Black New Venture Competition." Harvard Business School Case 821-029, September 2020.  View Details

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