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• Module Note | February 2017 (Revised December 2018)

  The Entrepreneurial Manager, Module I: Defining and Developing the Business Model

  William R. Kerr, Mark Roberge and Paul A. Gompers

  The first module of The Entrepreneurial Manager (TEM) focuses on business model analysis and lean testing. Your business model defines your company and sets its strategic direction, including customer value proposition, operations, scaling, the context in which the company operates, and so on. Designing and evaluating a business model is a complicated task, given all the considerations that must influence your decisions—external opportunities and threats, internal resources, your goals as a founder, as well as your investors’ desires, plus laws or obligation to your community or society at large. While not simple, a well-designed and properly tested business model serves as a strong guiding compass for the company and aligns priorities and critical actions.

  Keywords: entrepreneurial management; business models; lean startup; Business Model; Analysis; Entrepreneurship; Management;

  Citation:

  Kerr, William R., Mark Roberge, and Paul A. Gompers. "The Entrepreneurial Manager, Module I: Defining and Developing the Business Model." Harvard Business School Module Note 817-108, February 2017. (Revised December 2018.)  View Details

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• Course Overview Note | December 2017 (Revised December 2018)

  The Entrepreneurial Manager: Course Overview, 2019 Spring Term

  Paul Gompers

  This note serves as an overview of the Entrepreneurial Management Unit’s required curriculum course, "The Entrepreneurial Manager (TEM)." General management has been a core educational organizing framework at the Harvard Business School since its inception. Today TEM provides a powerful context in which to learn about general management. TEM seeks to build the knowledge, skills, tools, frameworks, and attitudes required to succeed as a manager. These tools and frameworks are built upon the foundation of other RC courses at HBS, including TOM, LEAD, LCA, FRC, MKTG, STRAT, and FIN. With an aim to “educate leaders who make a difference in the world,” TEM integrates the lessons of your RC year into an overall framework to help general managers at all types of organizations (e.g., small companies, large companies, non-profits, and public servants) become more effective at enhancing the value of those organizations.

  Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Management; Business Education;

  Citation:

  Gompers, Paul. "The Entrepreneurial Manager: Course Overview, 2019 Spring Term." Harvard Business School Course Overview Note 818-080, December 2017. (Revised December 2018.)  View Details

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• Article | Harvard Business Review | July–August 2018

  The Other Diversity Dividend

  Paul Gompers and Silpa Kovvali

  Researchers have struggled to establish a causal relationship between diversity and financial performance—especially at large companies, where decision rights and incentives can be murky, and the effects of any given choice can be tough to pin down. So the authors chose a “lab rat” with fewer barriers to understanding—the venture capital industry. VC firms are fairly flat: Every investor is a decision maker, and choices have clear business consequences. Using publicly available information, researchers can see how similar or different decision makers are and compare decision quality on the basis of investments’ performance. After examining tens of thousands of VC investments, Gompers has found that diversity significantly improves financial performance on measures such as profitable investments at the individual portfolio-company level and overall fund returns. And even though associating with similar people can have social benefits for those people, it can lead investors and firms to leave a lot of money on the table. In this article Gompers and Kovvali describe the research and provide recommendations for reaping the business benefits of diversity.

  Keywords: Diversity; Decision Making; Finance; Performance Improvement; Venture Capital;

  Citation:

  Gompers, Paul, and Silpa Kovvali. "The Other Diversity Dividend." Harvard Business Review 96, no. 4 (July–August 2018): 72–77.  View Details

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