Harvard Business Review

MARCH 16, 2018

With billions of dollars poised to change hands and the spotlight on, Nasdaq managers scrambled to diagnose the problem, dialing into an emergency conference call to troubleshoot. Despite the check’s warning that something was amiss, managers decided to push forward anyway. But when 11:05 arrived, nothing happened.

Crisis 11

Crisis IPO Film How To 11

Harvard Business Review

MAY 9, 2014

Andy O''Connell Four Calculations Keep an Eye on the Wild Cards When Playing Alibaba's IPO Financial Times Unless you were hiding under a rock this week (or, in my case, deadlines), news of Alibaba''s IPO filing likely filled your reading list and Twitter feed. Managing yourself'

Power 10

Power IPO Retail Wilde 10

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 2, 2013

With Facebook’s $115 billion market cap on its IPO day, Mark Zuckerberg created wealth nearly equivalent to half of Nigeria’s GDP in 2012. The value created by Facebook and a few other tech IPOs exceeds the GDP of most African regions. Through my experience, I’ve seen how a university could improve its community.

Education 8

Education Technology IPO GDP 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 30, 2014

But sometimes, executives manage to overcome all of these structural challenges and push the right types of ideas regardless of the barriers. The typical enterprise software startup that IPOs is at least 7 years old (to say nothing of those that try and fail). In the year before Google IPO’d, it did about $962 million in revenue.

Long-term 11

Long-term Innovation Company IPO 11

Harvard Business Review

JULY 18, 2012

In the past, the magic formula was two engineers or an engineer and a businessman. They made calculators, personal computers, databases, search engines and payment processors. But Silicon Valley seems to think that all that is required for disruption are a few "rockstar engineers" and "superstar designers." What gives?

Venture Capitalist 17

Venture Capitalist Software Entrepreneur Engineering 17

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 29, 2018

Along with a surprise halving of the dividend, Flannery announced a review of the portfolio that would see the divestitures of numerous historic GE businesses, which ended up including light bulbs, appliances, and locomotive engines. That is one reason why so many acquisitions are abysmal failures: They are distracting Hail Mary attempts.

TSR 9

TSR Company IPO Hedge 9

Harvard Business Review

JULY 18, 2012

In the past, the magic formula was two engineers or an engineer and a businessman. They made calculators, personal computers, databases, search engines and payment processors. But Silicon Valley seems to think that all that is required for disruption are a few "rockstar engineers" and "superstar designers." What gives?

Venture Capitalist 17

Venture Capitalist Software Entrepreneur Engineering 17

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 25, 2014

After five years, in 2004, Tickle was profitable with more than $20 million in revenue; it received an acquisition offer for $100 million, as well as IPO entreaties. The most important way to mitigate risk is to become excellent at either engineering, product, selling, or operations and management.

Career 8

Career Company IPO Christensen 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 14, 2014

The company, founded in 1996 by an engineer from Xerox’s legendary Palo Alto Research Center , Pradeep Sindhu (who remains its chief technology officer and vice chairman), was one of the highest flyers of the fin de siècle tech stock boom. But lately it’s been looking a lot like a mature substantial, profitable company.

Hedge 8

Hedge Chief Technology Officer Maturity IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 7, 2016

” When a data breach happens, there is nothing worse than trying to figure out how to manage the crisis on the fly as it is still happening. Here’s a generalized scenario similar to cases we’ve experienced: A hot new mobile technology company lands one of the most successful IPOs of the year. A news cycle begins.

Planning 9

Planning Company Crisis Brand 9

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 23, 2013

For startups outside of those cities, that means there is a smaller pool of locally-managed dollars to chase for your startup. Tech companies see engineers move to and fro frequently, integrate their products tightly, and often find themselves acquiring or merging with counterparts. Similar numbers exist for Massachusetts and New York.

IPO 9

IPO Venture Capitalist Entrepreneur Competitive Advantage 9

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 29, 2015

Brian Fitzpatrick joined Google as a senior software engineer in 2005, shortly after the company’s IPO. Also, all of his work was done outside the boundaries of strategic management practices within the organization. All these leaders demonstrated the essentials of classic strategic management.

Strategy 8

Strategy Power Idea Generation Project 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 4, 2015

We’ve found that CEOs of big pharmaceutical companies, for example, are more likely to have a background as company lawyers, salespeople, or finance managers, than one in medicine or pharmaceutical R&D. For example, Qualcomm’s CDMA mobile technology was a breakthrough that led to its IPO in 1991.

CEO 8

CEO Innovation Pharmaceuticals Merchandising 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 21, 2011

But like so much of what we do in America's startup culture, I worry that we are taking this basic insight to crazy excess, making the claim that one superstar engineer is literally more valuable more than one hundred good engineers (Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg) or worth more than 200 good engineers (Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen).

IPO 15

IPO Engineering Taylorism Taylor 15

Harvard Business Review

MAY 31, 2013

But as an engineer with young kids points out, when he''s able to hang out with his friends whose wives stay at home, "I think they probably have progressed more in their careers than I have in some ways. Sure, taking care of your kids is "providing." And think about how your personality shines through in your tweets. — Andy O''Connell.

Dunning 8

Dunning Kleiner Kaplan IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

Having observed management teams for decades as a mutual fund and portfolio manager, I have watched numerous companies vanish after a disastrous launch of a product or service. While this story is not new, it represents the perfect example of a phenomenal corporate turnaround and the skills required to engineer such a recovery.

Productivity 8

Productivity Products Biotechnology IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 15, 2012

When Facebook announced its recent $5 billion IPO , many applauded the company's mission to connect friends and make the world a more open place. And in the classic model , since friends attract more friends, every single one of your existing connections is an automatic personal referral engine and a path to greater popularity.

Attrition 14

Attrition IPO Content Media 14

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 11, 2013

The design engineers kept taking incremental risks that they thought were acceptable and normalized them — until the disaster. Before the IPO in 1999, partners of Goldman Sachs owned equity in a private partnership. Ethics Finance Risk management' Leverage ratios might be the O-rings of the financial crisis.

Incentives 8

Incentives Banking Ethics IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 5, 2011

Since at least the 1980s (the era of deregulation, that is, over which Alfred Kahn presided) managers of big companies have been upbraided for their intolerance to risk. Perhaps not surprisingly, managers of mega corporations remain largely unsold on that notion. Certainly, that's a fair accusation. Let's start with the human side.

Entrepreneur 14

Entrepreneur Innovation Intellectual Capital Mission Statement 14

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 6, 2014

The solution, we decided, was to acquire a local company that had already gained traction in the market and that could provide us with proven local management as well as help us with web search, which had become a priority after we bought U.S. search engine company Inktomi in 2002. Both were offered free to consumers and merchants.

Chief Financial Officer 10

Chief Financial Officer Operations Learning-by-Doing IPO 10

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 27, 2015

The EU’s antitrust regulator charged Google for abuse of its position as the dominant search engine to promote its own businesses, while the European Parliament even voted in favor of breaking up Google. There are a staggering 250 collective management organizations overseeing digital content, according to a 2014 EC press release.

Crisis 8

Crisis McKinsey Policies Globalization 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 7, 2017

Susan Fowler, a former site reliability engineer at Uber, recently wrote about her “very, very strange year at Uber,” characterized by a pervasive culture of alleged sexual harassment. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and prominent board members, with the cooperation and support of the head of HR, have initiated an investigation.

Compliance 11

Compliance Hedge Human Capital Finance 11

Harvard Business Review

JULY 20, 2017

A123 Systems promised to be a clean tech success with a soaring IPO in 2009. and shifts its local focus to engineering and testing. It took more than two years for 23andMe to secure a green light from the FDA to screen for 10 diseases, the first such approval for a direct-to-consumer test.

Innovation 13

Innovation Productivity Products Venture Capitalist 13