Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 14, 2018

Youngme Moon, Mihir Desai, and Felix Oberholzer-Gee discuss how much Uber is worth as it prepares to go public, before debating China’s controversial Social Credit system. They also share their After Hours picks for the week. Download this podcast.

System 9

System Download Policies Review 9

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 21, 2016

When financial services company Square priced its IPO at $9 a share last November, well under the $15+ price that private investors paid the year before, it was a cold shower of reality for the 6-year-old company. Until the IPO, Square had been one of more than 130 unicorns: privately owned tech companies valued at $1 billion or more.

IPO 8

IPO Innovation Price Operations 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 16, 2018

It turned out the check had initially picked up on something important: a bug that caused the system to ignore orders for more than 20 minutes, an eternity on Wall Street. This has played a role in many failures, from the Facebook IPO to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. There is a better way.

Crisis 10

Crisis IPO Film How To 10

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 26, 2011

A star example is Google, which raised a mere $40 million in private funding before its IPO at a $23 billion valuation. While there has not been a defining exit in clean energy akin to the "Netscape moment" for the internet, there have been numerous recent IPOs in the biofuels sector.

Energy 11

Energy Finance IPO Biotechnology 11

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 23, 2013

To a person, they look astonished when I ask whether their dedication comes from anticipation of the money they could make in the event of an IPO. One person says that he can’t let himself think about an IPO. For these professionals, a future IPO is outweighed by today’s OPI — the opportunity for positive impact.

Motivation 11

Motivation IPO Norton Open-book 11

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 20, 2015

As the CFO of a well-funded IPO-bound company, Dan had many years of experience and he had the results to show that he had outworked and out-delivered many of his internal and external counterparts. But now, with the impending IPO, the stakes were much higher. It does and executives shouldn’t be silent about it.

Execution 8

Execution IPO CFO Diversity 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 20, 2015

As the CFO of a well-funded IPO-bound company, Dan had many years of experience and he had the results to show that he had outworked and out-delivered many of his internal and external counterparts. But now, with the impending IPO, the stakes were much higher. It does and executives shouldn’t be silent about it.

Execution 8

Execution IPO CFO Diversity 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 28, 2016

Both associations managed their brands and ran the clearing and settlement systems for banks that issued cards or helped merchants accept cards. Then the banks decided to turn the associations into for-profit companies, IPO them, and cash out. MasterCard IPO’d in 2006, and Visa followed two years later.

IPO 8

IPO Succession Technology Software 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 1, 2011

Microfinance has come under fire in the past 18 months, triggered in part by SKS Microfinance's IPO. At its core, microlending is about poverty alleviation, about giving people at the bottom of the economic pyramid access to the financial system. India recently introduced new regulations for microfinance operations.

Microfinance 13

Microfinance IPO Bottom-up Finance 13

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 30, 2014

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. Slowly, the company built out proprietary software systems to allow its customers to get more out of its product.

Long-term 10

Long-term Innovation Company IPO 10

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

As a college student in Nigeria, I had wanted to master developing microcontroller-based systems, but had never had the opportunity in practice, because no company there offered it. also has a vibrant IPO system to take companies public. As the first year of my Ph.D. It's something that U.S.

Entrepreneur 14

Entrepreneur Exit Strategy Development Real Estate 14

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 2, 2013

s 21 million ) in its four-year tertiary education system. 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. Even at three times the U.S.

Education 8

Education Technology IPO GDP 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 21, 2014

That could mean illustrating the effects of a proposed customer management system with testimonials from actual customers, or describing how the data-sharing project you want to expand helped keep employees connected during a major outage. Does the firm need a new IT system? ” says Sheen. The price tag?

IPO 9

IPO Audience Chief Information Officer Case Study 9

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

The interesting part of this shift is that VCs are taking a more holistic or "systems" approach to investing than they typically do in developed markets. Why do VCs in emerging markets take a systems approach? China and India, in particular, offer attractive liquidity and investment opportunities VCs haven't seen for a while.

Marketing 15

Marketing Venture Capitalist Biotechnology IPO 15

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 29, 2018

While GE Healthcare’s executives spend the next two years on carve-out audits, creating services and systems to replace the GE shared services, negotiating new stock-based compensation, and doing road shows for investors, Philips and Siemens (which completed its 18-month health care spinoff/IPO exercise in March) executives will be focused on (..)

TSR 9

TSR Company IPO Hedge 9

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 18, 2014

Warehouse automation systems are big and complicated; if they don’t work, you’re worse off than before since it becomes almost impossible to ship product. Unlike a Fortune 500 company that can spend tens of millions of dollars on external consultants to help implement such a system, this company was stingy with its IT dollars.

CFO 8

CFO Venture Funding IPO Retail 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 8, 2015

The company had been forced to take its system down for 42 hours, notify all 10 million affected consumers, and issue a public apology. Tech bloggers had jumped all over the story; many speculated that SimplePay had begun to slow its hiring and scrimp on security investments in an effort to spiff up its balance sheet for a potential IPO.

Case Study 8

Case Study Crisis IPO CIO 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 30, 2016

Everyone talks about it, but our whole system is built on meritocracy. The company’s success has made it one of the best-performing IPOs in Asia in the last decade. You get lots of coaching and guidance, but if you don’t embrace challenge, that is a sign. The key element in all of this is how to apply the meritocracy.

Supply Chain 13

Supply Chain Company IPO Talent Management 13

Harvard Business Review

MAY 11, 2016

And then many other companies that have IPO’d in the last decade, like Visa, which connects cardholders and merchants, and Facebook, which connects friends, advertisers, and developers. And it’s not just these humongous companies. Then there are all the ad-supported media that troll for eyeballs so they can sell them to marketers.

Participative 8

Participative Business Model IPO B2B 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 21, 2011

Now, I'm excited by the rise of Facebook, the IPO of LinkedIn, and all the latest successes from the startup world. But from the moment Extreme Bluers report for duty, they get immersed in a system that emphasizes group cohesion over me-first individual achievement. But on the broader point, I think we're in for a major correction.

IPO 15

IPO Engineering Taylorism Taylor 15

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 10, 2013

A great idea, and the Simples Nacional taxation system has indeed turbocharged formalization of Brazil''s informal economy. Here, policy has created a distorted system, in which it is rational to want to stay small and suppress the drive for growth. have spread like wildfire. Taxes per se do not hinder entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur IPO Incentives Venture Capitalist 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 9, 2018

Take Jim, a front-runner CFO candidate for a leading medical device manufacturer on the verge of an IPO. This is easier said than done, especially as powerful corporate incentive systems often reward achievement of individual targets. Lagging on communication effectiveness showed up as a risk area for 28% of executives we analyzed.

Career 15

Career CFO Sample Execution 15

Harvard Business Review

JULY 17, 2017

What’s needed is a concerted effort to invest in design thinking systems, and support for diverse and inclusive cultures that bring together people with divergent perspectives to share ideas and new approaches. The financial services industry is still in the early stages of digital transformation.

Industry 12

Industry Short-term Planning Long-term 12

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 26, 2014

I’ve looked up every company that did an IPO in the U.S. It is hard to dominate a product category where a pair of self-taught high school kids can create a bestseller; success in this situation is more a matter of luck than of merit. since 2000. For instance, real estate site Zillow has 812 employees, and travel site Kayak has only 205.

Development 9

Development Levitt Real Estate IPO 9

Harvard Business Review

MAY 10, 2011

Consider Zipcar, whose recent IPO valued the 11-year old company at over $1 billion. Unfortunately, Microsoft tied its tablet concepts to its Windows operating system and made them merely pen-enabled personal computers, so these products remained a tiny niche of the computing industry.

Venture Capitalist 12

Venture Capitalist Venture Funding Entrepreneur IPO 12

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 13, 2015

Predictions like this are based on an understanding of dynamics in something business school professors call “value networks” — the system of businesses and service providers that work together to create value for customers. What’s changed? What business assumptions become irrelevant? Uber’s a perfect example.

Software 8

Software Trends Mass Marketing Marketing 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 8, 2010

That's why the traditional understanding of everything from GDP to " jobs " to " profit " to " IPO " is limited. And the systemic result of that is crisis, stagnation, and decline. And the result of an undersupply of disclosure is toxic, perverse incentives.

GDP 16

GDP Hypercompetition IPO Information 16

Harvard Business Review

MAY 16, 2016

For example, as it grew, Facebook found that its early “move fast and break things” culture had to be funneled into focused technical teams and product groups to make its product development process faster and less erratic, and for it to have a chance of meeting the demands of its new public shareholders following its IPO.

Banking 13

Banking Strategy Film Operations 13

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 6, 2014

We insisted that the local team follow Yahoo reporting, systems, and governance requirements. It also had two start-up business lines, Alipay, a new payment system designed to work like Paypal; and Taobao, an auctions site. We had seen hierarchical, top-down management systems in place in many Chinese companies.

Chief Financial Officer 9

Chief Financial Officer Operations Learning-by-Doing IPO 9

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 10, 2016

The $1 billion burn rate in China was reportedly holding up its IPO, not just its expansion in other parts of the world. And in addition to tangible assets, one has to think about investments in people, systems, brands, and intangibles. And misconceptions in this regard are not new.

Network Economy 8

Network Economy Globalization Discount Constraint 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 5, 2011

The real strength of the system we've been describing is that it constantly takes bets that more often than not don't pay off. But we also bet it isn't your usual perspective on the world of VCs and IPO lawyers. Time to remind you why we do: because most new ventures fail. You get this. We know you get this.

Entrepreneur 14

Entrepreneur Innovation Intellectual Capital Mission Statement 14

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 4, 2013

He polled his VC colleagues: "The odds of actually receiving funding from a cold email: 50,000 to 1," he writes in his book Mastering the VC Game: A Venture Capital Insider Reveals How to Get From Start-up to IPO on Your Terms. "So The best answer in an overcrowded world is to develop the right system for when and how to say no.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist IPO Career Follow-up 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 18, 2012

The only negative effect this rise of the long tail should have on venture capitalists is that they need to get better at filtering the increased noise in the system. They say, "this 'think small' attitude is driving entrepreneurs who may otherwise build the next Google or Microsoft to create something much less interesting instead."

Venture Capitalist 17

Venture Capitalist Software Entrepreneur Engineering 17

Harvard Business Review

JULY 18, 2012

The only negative effect this rise of the long tail should have on venture capitalists is that they need to get better at filtering the increased noise in the system. They say, "this 'think small' attitude is driving entrepreneurs who may otherwise build the next Google or Microsoft to create something much less interesting instead."

Venture Capitalist 16

Venture Capitalist Software Entrepreneur Engineering 16

Harvard Business Review

JULY 27, 2017

Talented founders know that corporations simply cannot replicate the deep experience private VCs have in starting companies, nor their expertise in assisting startups with complex challenges such as deal making, business modeling, resolving disputes among founders, executing a successful IPO, and so on.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Meyer Innovation Fixed Costs 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 21, 2016

Systems don’t scale. But by the 1990s it had run aground: It hadn’t properly developed systems to implement its growth strategy internally, and so that strategy broke down at dozens of points of execution on the front line—with customers, crew, staff on the shore and the company’s travel agent partners.

Company 9

Company IPO Price Loyalty 9

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 7, 2017

All of this indicates that Uber leaders prioritized immediately useful services like recruitment over, for example, legal compliance systems, audits, and leadership development. Today Uber is no startup, with 11,000 employees, not including its drivers, and a 2017 market value at IPO that is estimated as $28–$70 billion.

Compliance 11

Compliance Hedge Human Capital Finance 11