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A collective of featured works, most recent HBS publications, and the School's approach
to research on the topic of business history.
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- February 2021
- Case
Barbarians at the Gate or Turnaround Gurus? Private Equity and the Rise of the LBO
By: Tom Nicholas and John Masko
During the 1980s, leveraged buyouts (LBOs) and the private equity (PE) firms responsible for carrying them out revolutionized both investment and management in the U.S. Between 1980 and 1989, buyout activity in the U.S. surged from $1 billion per year to $60 billion....
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Keywords:
Leveraged Buyouts;
Mergers And Acquisitions;
business Conglomerates;
Restructuring;
Borrowing And Debt;
Private Equity;
Bonds;
Investment Return;
Institutional Investing;
Profit Sharing;
business history;
Management Style;
Private Ownership;
Performance Effectiveness;
Value Creation;
Financial Services Industry;
United States
- 2021
- Chapter
International Business History and the Strategy of Multinational Enterprises: How History Matters
By: Geoffrey Jones and Teresa da Silva Lopes
This chapter provides an overview of the evolution of international business over the long-run as well as the strategies of MNEs. It highlights how strategies became more complex over time with MNEs moving from being coordinators of resources and managers of...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Bollywood, Skin Color and Sexism: The Role of the Film Industry in Emboldening and Contesting Stereotypes in India after Independence
By: Sudev Sheth, Geoffrey Jones and Morgan Spencer
This working paper examines the social impact of the film industry in India during the first four decades after Indian Independence in 1947. It shows that Bollywood, the mainstream cinema in India and the counterpart in scale to Hollywood in the United States, shared...
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- 2020
- Book
American Business History: A Very Short Introduction
By: Walter Friedman
By the early twentieth century, it became common to describe the United States as a "business civilization." President Coolidge in 1925 said, "The chief business of the American people is business." More recently, historian Sven Beckert characterized Henry Ford's...
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- 2020
- Chapter
Luxury Tourism and Environmentalism
By: G. Jones
This chapter examines the evolution of luxury tourism and its environmental impact. Whilst mass tourism is widely seen as environmentally damaging, the impact of luxury tourism is nuanced. During the first stage of the growth in the nineteenth century, the numbers of...
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- October 2020
- Case
When Institutions Fail: HIV/AIDS in the 1980s
By: Tom Nicholas and Christian Godwin
During the early 1980s, young gay men in urban centers such as San Francisco and New York City began contracting a mysterious illness that would come to be known as HIV/AIDS. A diagnosis meant almost certain death, with a less than 1% survival rate. Conflicting...
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Keywords:
Ethics;
Policy;
Government And Politics;
Health;
history;
Rights;
Media;
Organizations;
business And Community Relations;
Religion;
Social Psychology;
Identity;
Prejudice And Bias;
Social Issues;
Public Opinion;
Pharmaceutical Industry;
Biotechnology Industry;
Health Industry;
Journalism And News Industry;
Media And Broadcasting Industry;
Public Administration Industry;
United States
- Fall 2020
- Article
Christo and Jeanne‐Claude: The Negotiation of Art and Vice Versa
Over the past two decades the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (PON) has named thirteen people as Great Negotiators. The project, directed by my colleague Jim Sebenius, has given us the opportunity to commend our honorees’ outstanding work and to learn from...
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- September 2020 (Revised January 2021)
- Case
Comviva: Exploring New Frontiers (A)
By: Dante Roscini and Mahima Rao-Kachroo
Comviva, a mobile solutions provider active in India and 94 other countries, has had a rich history and been successful across many emerging and complex markets: Latin America, South-East Asia, Africa. What are the lessons learnt from expansion, cultural fits, and...
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- September 2020
- Case
Hitachi Rail Limited (A)
By: David J. Collis, Akiko Kanno and Nobuo Sato
Hitachi must decide whether to make a British executive, who has successfully built its European rail business from scratch, head of its global rail division even though the bulk of revenues for the unit still come from Japan. The case describes, the history of Hitachi...
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- September 2020
- Case
Uber at a Crossroads (2017)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes the history of Uber, its business model—including the ways it differed from that of the traditional taxi industry—and its competition with Lyft. The case is set in 2017, a year in which Uber was plagued by even more scandals than usual, though its...
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Keywords:
business Startups;
business Model;
Customer Satisfaction;
Fairness;
Values And Beliefs;
Price;
Profit;
Revenue;
Investment;
Government Legislation;
business history;
Compensation And Benefits;
Resignation And Termination;
Employment;
Wages;
Lawfulness;
Leadership Style;
Leading Change;
Management Style;
Market Entry And Exit;
Two-sided Platforms;
Product Design;
Organizational Culture;
Problems And Challenges;
Attitudes;
Strategy;
Competitive Strategy;
Expansion;
Transportation Networks;
Mobile Technology;
Technology Platform;
Valuation;
Transportation Industry;
Technology Industry;
United States
- September 2020
- Case
Keeping It in the Family at the Hayden Saw Company
By: V.G. Narayanan and John Masko
In 2019, Board Chair and third-generation shareholder Helen Fullerton was preparing for a meeting to discuss Ohio-based Hayden Saw Company’s (Hayden) future as a family business. As the company entered its fifth decade, the Hayden family was dealing with three distinct...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-Cell Therapy: Case Histories of Significant Medical Advances
By: Amar Bhidé and Srikant M. Datar
In 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved an immunotherapeutic treatment, called CAR-T therapy, for two kinds of blood cancers—acute leukemia (ALL) and a lymphoma. We describe 1) how CAR-T works; 2) the foundational advances and discoveries; 3)...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
How History Shaped the Innovator's Dilemma
By: Tom Nicholas
In 1993, four years prior to the publication of Clayton Christensen’s highly influential book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, the Business History Review (BHR) published an article by Christensen titled “The Rigid Disk Drive Industry: A History of...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Building the Professional Firm: McKinsey & Co.: 1939-1968
By: Amar Bhidé
This case history analyzes how the founders of McKinsey & Co. built one of the world's leading management consulting firms by developing a “system” of professional norms, approach to serving clients, personnel policies, organization, governance, and ownership. The...
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- July 15, 2020
- Article
The Implications of Working Without an Office
By: Ethan Bernstein, Hayley Blunden, Andrew Brodsky, Wonbin Sohn and Ben Waber
In early 2020, the world began what is undoubtedly the largest work-from-home experiment in history. Now, as countries reopen but COVID-19 remains a major threat, organizations are wrestling with whether and how to have workers return to their offices. Business leaders...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
SSRIs and Non-SSRIs: Case Histories of Significant Medical Advances
By: Amar Bhidé, Srikant M. Datar and Katherine Stebbins
Prozac is widely hailed as “a breakthrough drug for depression.” In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that over 264 million people worldwide suffer from depression, and 800,000 die by suicide each year. In 2014, researchers calculated the economic...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Tamoxifen: Case Histories of Significant Medical Advances
By: Amar Bhidé, Srikant Datar and Katherine Stebbins
Our case history describes the development of tamoxifen, considered a “gold standard” treatment for millions of breast cancer patients. Specifically, we describe breast cancer treatments prior to tamoxifen’s development; the initial development of tamoxifen from 1960...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Cephalosporins: Case Histories of Significant Medical Advances
By: Amar Bhidé, Srikant Datar and Katherine Stebbins
Our case history describes the development of three generations of cephalosporins – antibiotics that have significantly reduced hospital infections. Specifically, we chronicle how: 1) Early (pre-cephalosporin) antibiotics were developed in the first half of the 20th...
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- June 2020
- Case
TransDigm: The Acquisition of Aerosonic Corp.
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel W. Fisher
In April 2013, TransDigm, a company that manufactured a wide range of highly engineered aerospace parts for both military and commercial aircraft, announced an agreement to acquire Aerosonic Corporation for $39 million in cash (1.2 times Aerosonic’s sales of $31...
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- May 2020 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
TransDigm's Acquisition and Integration of Arkwin Industries
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel W. Fisher
In May 2013, TransDigm, a company that manufactured a wide range of highly engineered aerospace parts for both military and civilian aircraft, announced it was buying Arkwin Industries for $286 million in cash (3 times Arkwin’s sales of $91 million). Having acquired...
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