Accounting & Management

- May 2025
- Case
Humana Commits to Value-Based Care

By: V.G. Narayanan, Henry Eyring and David Lane

In late 2023, CEO Bruce Broussard reviewed health insurer Humana’s transformation into a value-based care ecosystem. Under its CenterWell brand, the several millions of members in Humana Medicare Advantage plans now had access to Humana-provided primary care, home care, behavioral health, and mail order pharmacy services. Innovative partnerships with private equity firms had helped finance the acquisition and operations of key CenterWell assets. Broussard and his top team now convened to review the merits of a potential acquisition of a large group of primary care clinics. The discussion centered on how best to build further on and integrate Humana’s successes to date in value-based care delivery.
- May 2025
- Case
Humana Commits to Value-Based Care

By: V.G. Narayanan, Henry Eyring and David Lane

In late 2023, CEO Bruce Broussard reviewed health insurer Humana’s transformation into a value-based care ecosystem. Under its CenterWell brand, the several millions of members in Humana Medicare Advantage plans now had access to Humana-provided primary care, home care, behavioral health, and mail order pharmacy services. Innovative partnerships...
- April 2025
- Case
Setting a CEO Agenda: Ole Rosgaard at Greif

By: Krishna Palepu and Kerry Herman

Since taking over as CEO of industrial packaging giant Greif, Ole Rosgaard has focused on growing the company and improving the perception of its value by the capital markets. He and his senior leadership team have made inroads to this end, including adjusting the company’s portfolio mix to higher-margin businesses and affirming and strengthening Greif’s strong culture. In partnership with the company’s board chair, Rosgaard worked to make changes to the board composition and board routines to create more board engagement with the company’s strategy and transformation. Have these efforts been enough?
- April 2025
- Case
Setting a CEO Agenda: Ole Rosgaard at Greif

By: Krishna Palepu and Kerry Herman

Since taking over as CEO of industrial packaging giant Greif, Ole Rosgaard has focused on growing the company and improving the perception of its value by the capital markets. He and his senior leadership team have made inroads to this end, including adjusting the company’s portfolio mix to higher-margin businesses and affirming and strengthening...
- April 2025
- Case
Salesforce Agentforce: The Limitless Workforce

By: Suraj Srinivasan, George Gonzalez and Allison Ciechanover

As Cloud CRM leader Salesforce introduces GenAI agents, they grapple with new pricing strategies and organizational shifts.
- April 2025
- Case
Salesforce Agentforce: The Limitless Workforce

By: Suraj Srinivasan, George Gonzalez and Allison Ciechanover

As Cloud CRM leader Salesforce introduces GenAI agents, they grapple with new pricing strategies and organizational shifts.

About the Unit

The Accounting & Management unit at Harvard Business School strives to be the worldwide leader in research, course development, and teaching on top managements' use of performance measurement systems to:

Communicate with external investors to ensure that their firms' securities are fairly priced and that they are able to access capital,
Measure and evaluate their firms' economic performance,
Improve resource allocation and strategy implementation within their firms, and
Build accountability for performance through effective external and internal governance.

Unit research, course development, and teaching fall into two broad areas: Financial Reporting and Analysis and Management Accounting. Our research helps scholars and educators understand current best practices for the design and use of performance measurement systems that help managers to build more effective, value-creating organizations. Our teaching materials enable us to bring the results of this research into the classroom, and to practice.

Recent Publications

Humana Commits to Value-Based Care

By: V.G. Narayanan, Henry Eyring and David Lane

May 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

In late 2023, CEO Bruce Broussard reviewed health insurer Humana’s transformation into a value-based care ecosystem. Under its CenterWell brand, the several millions of members in Humana Medicare Advantage plans now had access to Humana-provided primary care, home care, behavioral health, and mail order pharmacy services. Innovative partnerships with private equity firms had helped finance the acquisition and operations of key CenterWell assets. Broussard and his top team now convened to review the merits of a potential acquisition of a large group of primary care clinics. The discussion centered on how best to build further on and integrate Humana’s successes to date in value-based care delivery.

Keywords: Business Model; Business Units; Financing and Loans; Innovation Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Operations; Health Industry; United States

Citation

Educators

Setting a CEO Agenda: Ole Rosgaard at Greif

By: Krishna Palepu and Kerry Herman

April 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

Since taking over as CEO of industrial packaging giant Greif, Ole Rosgaard has focused on growing the company and improving the perception of its value by the capital markets. He and his senior leadership team have made inroads to this end, including adjusting the company’s portfolio mix to higher-margin businesses and affirming and strengthening Greif’s strong culture. In partnership with the company’s board chair, Rosgaard worked to make changes to the board composition and board routines to create more board engagement with the company’s strategy and transformation. Have these efforts been enough?

Keywords: Leadership; Valuation; Governing and Advisory Boards; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; North America; Europe

Citation

Educators

Salesforce Agentforce: The Limitless Workforce

By: Suraj Srinivasan, George Gonzalez and Allison Ciechanover

April 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

As Cloud CRM leader Salesforce introduces GenAI agents, they grapple with new pricing strategies and organizational shifts.

Keywords: Technology Industry; United States

Citation

Educators

Silicon Valley Bank: Gone in 36 Hours

By: Jung Koo Kang, Krishna G. Palepu, Charles C.Y. Wang and David Lane

March 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

This case examines factors contributing to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March 2023, an event as unpredicted as it was quick. SVB funded nearly half of all U.S. venture-backed startups and at the end of 2022 held $173 billion in deposits, largely comprising the venture capital those startups had raised. On February 28, 2023, Moody’s warned SVB about a potential credit rating downgrade, reflecting concerns over "funding, liquidity, and profitability" which factored in substantial unrealized losses on SVB’s debt securities. To strengthen its balance sheet, SVB sold $21 billion in securities on March 8, but the move shocked its customers, as it resulted in a realized loss of $2 billion. The ensuing bank run intensified as SVB proved unable to placate investor fears or raise capital to plug that hole, and SVB was placed in receivership on the morning of March 10. Finger-pointing began immediately. Some argued that misguided pressure from Moody’s over the fair value of SVB’s debt securities prompted the bank’s death spiral. Others blamed SVB management and directors, its regulators, and the venture capitalists whom SVB otherwise benefited. What went wrong, and what lessons could be learned?

Citation

Educators

Purchase

Perplexity: Redefining Search

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Michelle Hu, Sriraghav Srinivasan and Radhika Kak

March 2025 (Revised April 2025) |
Case |
Faculty Research

By early 2025, Perplexity had rapidly evolved from a modest startup into a popular "answer engine" valued at $9 billion. The company had boldly positioned itself as the disruptor to Google aiming to redefine search for the AI age. Through novel AI orchestration—combining custom-built indexes, real-time retrieval systems, and language models—Perplexity delivered answers to complex queries, challenging Google's dominance in traditional search. The company differentiated itself by emphasizing user-centricity, speed, and quality, intentionally foregoing advertising-based monetization. Deep Research, Pro Search, and Comet (an AI-native web browser) had helped it make inroads into both consumer and enterprise segments globally. Yet, as Perplexity scaled, the company faced tough choices in preserving its ad-free, user-centric approach versus exploring monetization strategies, such as advertising. Maintaining user trust and platform simplicity was becoming increasingly complex in the fiercely competitive AI search market. Additionally, high execution velocity and expanding into enterprise markets required significant investment in security and infrastructure, intensifying the pressure to stay ahead of competitors like OpenAI and Google. The case illustrates the tension between maintaining a trusted, unbiased product experience and pursuing monetization strategies such as advertising. It emphasizes the importance of aligning revenue models with core brand promises to sustain long-term user trust and growth.

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Venture Capital; Innovation Leadership; Technological Innovation; Internet and the Web; Business Startups; Competitive Strategy; Technology Industry; United States

Citation

Educators

Purchase

Taylor Guitars: Making Employee Ownership Work The Taylor Way

By: Dennis Campbell, Petros Kusmu and Stacy Straaberg

March 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

In 2013, guitar manufacturer Taylor Guitars’ co-founders Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug were considering several exit options including selling to a competitor or to a private equity firm. The co-founders decided, instead, to embark on a seven-year process to transfer 100% of the ownership of the company from themselves and third owner partner Andy Powers to Taylor Guitars employees. The co-founders felt an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) would best preserve the company’s values and distinct culture. In 2024, the co-founders, Powers (now president and CEO), CFO Barbara Wight, and Vice President of Human Resources Shaun Paluczak took time to reflect on the ESOP. Many employees were still unclear about what the ESOP meant for them, with some likening it to a retirement plan. The challenge for the leadership team was how to activate employees’ sense of ownership in the company to enhance Taylor Guitars’ performance.

Citation

Educators

Xfund and Sam Altman: Finding Harvard’s Best Generative AI Founders

By: Suraj Srinivasan

March 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

On May 1, 2024, Xfund Managing Partners Patrick Chung and Brandon Farwell, hosted a high-stakes venture pitch session designed to select one startup for a minimum $100,000 investment. This “Xperiment Stake” competition, dedicated to startups in the Generative AI sector, was particularly significant. The founders would pitch to Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. The competition attracted 270 total submissions, from which six promising founding teams were selected for the final one-on-one pitch session. Each of the six finalists presented their vision for applying Generative AI in diverse fields, including research, software development, and even military applications. With AI evolving rapidly, the challenge for Xfund was not just to evaluate the startups’ ideas, but also to identify the most innovative and adaptable founders—those capable of navigating and thriving in the fast-changing landscape. The stage was set for a tough decision: which startup should Altman and Xfund select as the standout candidate to secure the investment?

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Venture Capital; Innovation Leadership; Technological Innovation; Technology Industry; United States

Citation

Educators

Stagwell: AI and the Future of Marketing

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Radhika Kak

March 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

In early 2025, Mark Penn, Founder, CEO and Chairman of Stagwell, a global marketing company with a network of over 70+ agencies that served over 4000 blue-chip customers across 40 countries, was looking at ways that marketers should navigate the disruption emanating from technological advances, in particular, the advent of artificial intelligence. AI technology was enabling marketers to reach consumers through new, highly targeted and personalized experiences. Marketing agencies were adding tech-enabled creative tools to their toolkit to meet changing client demands. As the kind of infrastructure and skills needed was changing fast, agencies were undertaking significant internal digital transformation and change management. The nature and role of creativity in advertising and marketing was undergoing transformation. Stagwell’s network of agencies were rapidly incorporating AI into their activities. Stagwell Marketing Cloud, new company’s SaaS platform was helping the business build a new model of service delivery to its clients. An agentic AI framework, combined with AI-driven functionalities in market research, audience insight generation, creative output generation, optimization, and brand tracking could significantly augment the capabilities of human teams. How could SMC create a more powerful agency model where AI and human expertise worked together? Could there be a fully autonomous advertising agency that could manage the end-to-end of a campaign? Stagwell needed to make the right strategic investments to ensure it kept abreast of global technological developments and ensure that the quality of creative output moved in lock-step alongside technology adoption.

Keywords: Marketing; Advertising; Retention; Innovation Strategy; Advertising Industry; Technology Industry

Citation

Educators

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