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- 2025
- Working Paper
Impact Investing and Worker Outcomes
By: Josh Lerner, Markus Lithell and Gordon M. Phillips
Impact investors claim to distinguish themselves from traditional venture capital and growth
equity investors by also pursuing ESG objectives. Whether they successfully do so in practice
is unclear. We use confidential Census Bureau microdata to assess worker... View Details
- December 2024 (Revised March 2025)
- Case
Tata Power and India's Energy Transition
By: Vikram S. Gandhi, Radhika Kak and Kairavi Dey
Tata Power stood at the forefront of India’s energy transition. The firm had a long history deeply intertwined with the country's development. As Mumbai’s power needs increased, Tata Power built out thermal assets across North, West, and East India. While thermal power... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Generative AI and the Nature of Work
By: Manuel Hoffmann, Sam Boysel, Frank Nagle, Sida Peng and Kevin Xu
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology demonstrate considerable potential to
complement human capital intensive activities. While an emerging literature documents wide-ranging productivity
effects of AI, relatively little attention has been paid... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Ponzi Funds
By: Philippe van der Beck, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud and Dario Villamaina
Many active funds hold concentrated portfolios. Flow-driven trading causes price pressure, which
pushes up the funds’ existing positions resulting in realized returns. We decompose fund returns
into a price pressure (self-inflated) and a fundamental component and... View Details
- September 24, 2024
- Article
4 Steps That Can Optimize Your Sales Process
By: Frank V. Cespedes, Scott Peterson and Daniel Weinfurter
Sales is a performance art where outcomes matter, so most advice here focuses on closing the sale. But a close is the result of actions and choices that occur earlier in the process: how much time and effort to spend on customer discovery (understanding what and to... View Details
- 20 Aug 2024
- Interview
Angel City Football Club: A New Business Model for Women’s Sports
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Brian Kenny and Nicole Tempest Keller
Angel City Football Club (ACFC) was founded in 2020 by venture capitalist Kara Nortman, entrepreneur Julie Uhrman, and actor and activist Natalie Portman. As outsiders to professional sports, the all-female founding team had rewritten the playbook for how to build a... View Details
- August 19, 2024
- Article
The Business Roundtable’s Stakeholder Pledge, Five Years Later
By: Lynn S. Paine
Five years ago, the Business Roundtable issued a statement pledging to “lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders.” In the past five years, stakeholderism has gained wider acceptance and helped many corporate leaders see the value of taking the interests... View Details
- 2024
- Article
Crucibles, Multiple Sensitive Periods, and Career Progression
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Sunasir Dutta, Hise O. Gibson and Eric Lin
We study the effects of crucible experiences along multiple sensitive periods on career progression. While prior literature has hinted that individuals can be imprinted during multiple sensitive periods, not just during the early career, there has been scant attention... View Details
- March 2024 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Angel City Football Club: Scoring a New Model
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Jennifer Fonstad and Nicole Tempest Keller
In January 2024, Kara Nortman, Julie Uhrman, and Natalie Portman, the founders of Angel City Football Club (ACFC) were developing the club’s first three-year strategic plan. Founded in 2020, ACFC had a star-studded investor group, including Portman and celebrities such... View Details
- November 2023
- Case
Chai Point
By: Rembrand Koning, Daniel W. Elfenbein and Kanika Jain
Chai Point was an Indian food and beverage company focused on chai. It started in 2010 as a retail store network but soon expanded to corporate offices by developing an IoT-enabled automatic tea and filter coffee machine. By 2023, Chai Point had 170 stores and 5000... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Ball: EVA Driving the World's Leading Can Manufacturer (A)
By: Jonas Heese and Susan Pinckney
The case describes Ball’s multi decade history of using Economic Value Added to drive decision making and workforce compensation. In 2016, the company acquired Rexam PLC and became the world’s leading metal beverage container company. Consumer demand for varied... View Details
Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Cost Accounting; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Buildings and Facilities; Green Building; Mergers and Acquisitions; Customer Satisfaction; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Machinery and Machining; Asset Pricing; Corporate Finance; Capital; Cost; Financial Management; Goods and Commodities; Compensation and Benefits; Executive Compensation; Employee Relationship Management; Goals and Objectives; Resource Allocation; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; Arizona; California; Texas
- October 2023 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
JSW Steel: Balancing Growth While Decarbonizing
By: Vikram S Gandhi and Radhika Kak
Sajjan Jindal, Chairman & Managing Director of JSW Steel, India's largest steel producer by market capitalization, was facing a dilemma. Steel demand in India was expected to grow exponentially over the next decade. However, given its traditional reliance on carbon,... View Details
- September 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
AB InBev: Brewing Up Forecasts during COVID-19
By: Mark Egan, C. Fritz Foley, Esel Cekin and Emilie Billaud
In July 2021, the CEO of AB InBev's European operations and his team strategized to position the company for success post-pandemic. As the world's largest beer company, boasting over 500 brands, revenue of $46 billion, and a workforce of 160,000 in 2020, AB InBev... View Details
Keywords: Beer; Forecasting; COVID-19; Decision; Forecasting and Prediction; Analytics and Data Science; Crisis Management; Decisions; Financing and Loans; Investment Return; Resource Allocation; Distribution; Production; Business Processes; Strategic Planning; Health Pandemics; Digital Transformation; Markets; Food and Beverage Industry; Belgium; Europe; Latin America; North and Central America
- 2023
- Working Paper
ESG: From Process to Product
By: George Serafeim
ESG measurement, analysis, management, and communication is a process that the financial industry has turned into a product, resulting in many investment funds using the ESG label. This has caused confusion, generating demand for a framework that defines... View Details
- May 2023
- Article
Political Ideology and International Capital Allocation
By: Elisabeth Kempf, Mancy Luo, Larissa Schäfer and Margarita Tsoutsoura
Does investors' political ideology shape international capital allocation? We provide evidence from two settings—syndicated corporate loans and equity mutual funds—to show ideological alignment with foreign governments affects the cross-border capital allocation by... View Details
- April 2023
- Case
Elliott Management: Capital Allocation in Biopharma
By: Amitabh Chandra, Paul Clancy and Lauren Gunasti
The case explores the intersection of capital allocation and shareholder activism in the biopharmaceutical industry. As many biopharma companies face looming patent expirations for key medicines, the case asks the question of whether investing in R&D and M&A is an... View Details
- February 2023 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
CalPERS Private Equity 2.0
By: Josh Lerner, John D. Dionne and Alys Ferragamo
Yup Kim, the Head of Investments, Private Equity at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), reflected on the pension fund’s private equity strategy. In July of 2022, the fund was in the midst of a multi-year turnaround strategy with the goal to... View Details
- January 2023
- Case
Proday: Calling the Right Play
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
Sarah Kunst knew the elements of a successful startup from her tenure at venture capital firms. In April 2018, however, her own app – Proday, a home fitness platform featuring exercises filmed by professional sports stars – was floundering. Kunst theorized that... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Scoring and Funding Breakthrough Ideas: Evidence from a Global Pharmaceutical Company
By: Joshua Krieger, Ramana Nanda, Ian Hunt, Aimee Reynolds and Peter Tarsa
We study resource allocation to early-stage ideas at an internal startup program of
one the largest pharmaceutical firms in the world. Our research design enables us to
elicit every evaluator’s scores across five different attributes, before seeing how they
would... View Details
- March 2022
- Supplement
Pakistan Rising: Bazaar's Growth Story (B)
By: Paul A. Gompers and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in January 2022 as Hamza Jawaid and Saad Jangda, co-founders of Bazaar technologies (Bazaar), the Pakistani high growth B2B e-commerce marketplace, are looking over the performance of the newly launched “buy now, play later” feature. The traction looks... View Details