Research
Research
- 2019
- Book Chapter
InterOrganizational Collaboration and Start-Up Innovation
By:
Vikas A. Aggarwal and Andy Wu
| This chapter presents an overview of the literature on collaborative relationships between start-ups and incumbent firms, focusing on the implications of these relationships for start-up innovation and performance. Value creation in such relationships occurs when... |
- 2019
- Working Paper
Shaking Things Up: Unintended Consequences of Firm Acquisitions on Inequality and Diversity
By:
Letian Zhang
| Although millions of workers every year experience ownership change as their firms get acquired, it remains unclear how such an event shapes inequality in the workplace. This study addresses this question using a difference-in-differences design on a nationally... |
- 2019
- Book Chapter
Coordination Frictions in Venture Capital Syndicates
By:
Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
| An extensive literature on venture capital has studied asymmetric information and agency problems between investors and entrepreneurs, examining how separating entrepreneurs from the investor can create frictions that might inhibit the funding of good projects. It has... |
- September 2019
- Review of Accounting Studies
The Effect of Enforcement Transparency: Evidence from SEC Comment-Letter Reviews
By:
Miguel Duro, Jonas Heese and Gaizka Ormazabal
| This paper studies the effect of the public disclosure of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) comment-letter reviews (CLs) on firms’ financial reporting. We exploit a major change in the SEC’s disclosure policy: in 2004, the SEC decided to make its CLs... |
- August 2019
- Case
ClearScore, 2018
By:
John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock
| In October 2017, Experian, one of the “Big Three” consumer credit reporting agencies in the United Kingdom made an offer to acquire ClearScore for a total consideration of £293 million. Founded by Justin Basini, Dan Cobley, and Nigel Morris in 2014, ClearScore was the... |
- August 2019
- Case
Humanistic Capitalism at Brunello Cucinelli
By:
Francesca Gino and Gary Pisano
| This case explores one company’s attempt to experiment with a different underlying model for a capitalist enterprise. Brunello Cucinelli, S.p.A. is a leading manufacturer of luxury fashion apparel. Despite being a publicly traded enterprise with annual revenues... |
- August 2019
- Teaching Material
Analytical Tools in Private Equity: Return Bridge
By:
Victoria Ivashina and Abhijit Tagade
| This note explains the rationale and derivation behind “return bridge,” a key analytical tool used in the private equity industry to understand sources of value-add. The note elaborates on the advantages and the shortcomings of the return bridge. |
- 2019
- Working Paper
Experimentation and Startup Performance: Evidence from A/B testing
By:
Rembrand Koning, Sharique Hasan and Aaron Chatterji
| Recent work argues that experimentation is the appropriate framework for entrepreneurial strategy. We investigate this proposition by exploiting the time-varying adoption of A/B testing technology, which has drastically reduced the cost of experimentally testing... |
- August 2019
- Case
Rand Fishkin at Moz (B)
| In 2016, senior management at Moz, a venture capital-backed startup providing software tools for digital marketing professionals, must decide how to address a looming cash flow crisis precipitated by failed efforts to broaden its product line. Seattle-based Moz had... |
- August 2019
- Case
Rand Fishkin at Moz (C)
| In 2016, senior management at Moz, a venture capital-backed startup providing software tools for digital marketing professionals, must decide how to address a looming cash flow crisis precipitated by failed efforts to broaden its product line. Seattle-based Moz had... |
- August 2019
- Teaching Material
Note on Shared Ownership
By:
Ethan Bernstein and Nick Rekenthaler
| While several tactics can drive company performance by instilling a sense of shared ownership among employees, perhaps the most direct is to actually share ownership with employees. Many public and private companies across industries have done just that, and studies... |
- August 2019
- Case
BlueVine Capital: Growth Factors
By:
Marco Di Maggio and Nathaniel Schwalb
| The start-up BlueVine Capital Inc. (BlueVine) used data and technology to help finance small businesses via factoring and lines of credit. The case explains the small business financing market in mid-2010s, how CEO Eyal Lifshitz identified the opportunity for BlueVine,... |
- August 2019
- Case
Rand Fishkin at Moz (A)
| In 2016, senior management at Moz, a venture capital-backed startup providing software tools for digital marketing professionals, must decide how to address a looming cash flow crisis precipitated by failed efforts to broaden its product line. Seattle-based Moz had... |
- August 2019
- Case
Systems Design West
By:
Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff
| Jenn Braus (HBS 2013) was half-way through the 90-day exclusivity period for her proposed acquisition of Systems Design West (“SDW”). She had completed her business and accounting due diligence. Just as she was about to ask her lawyer to begin drafting the purchase... |
- Forthcoming
- Journal of Financial Economics
How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?
By:
Paul A. Gompers, William Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan and Ilya A. Strebulaev
| We survey 885 institutional venture capitalists (VCs) at 681 firms to learn how they make decisions across eight areas: deal sourcing, investment selection, valuation, deal structure, post-investment value-added, exits, internal firm organization, and relationships... |