Investment management

How companies can build a long-term strategy that will keep them secure.

In this article, Bob Zider, president of the Beta Group, a California-based firm that invests in commercializing new technologies, presents an analysis...

The huge sums that private equity firms make on their investments evoke admiration and envy. Typically, these returns are attributed to the firms' aggressive...

It might not actually work.

For decades now, venture capitalists have played a crucial role in the economy by financing high-growth start-ups. While the companies they've backed--Amazon,...

Most entrepreneurs understand that if the fundamentals of a business idea—the management team, the market opportunities, the operating systems and controls—are sound, chances are there’s money out there. The challenge of landing that capital to grow a company can be exhilarating. But as exciting as the money search may be, it is equally threatening. Built […]

Three lessons, based on a study of more than 200 senior-level executives.

A few months back I wrote about micro-decisions and how they can add up to macro money. But as a student of decision-making I would be remiss if I didn't...

The deck is stacked against entrepreneurs who aren't in San Francisco Bay, New York, or Boston.

To gain insight into solving your organization's issues, stop and look at the numbers.

It's been only four years since First Rangeway Consulting went public, but to CEO Kenneth Charles, it seems like a lifetime. In the grand old days of...

There are billions of potential customers, but can you reach them?

A new study of private equity buyouts shows that, on average, U.S. acquisitions made in "red" (Republican) states deliver significantly higher returns...

In Silicon Valley, exciting new business ideas rapidly attract capital and talent away from less worthy ventures. But in big companies, ideas, capital, and talent are stagnant—prisoners of traditional bureaucratic ways of allocating resources. To capture the Valley’s entrepreneurial magic, your company needs to move from resource allocation to resource attraction.

Four years ago, Diane Ashton and Sundeep Lal were working together at MIT on a titanium extraction project. Durable and highly heat resistant, titanium...

Reports of the “eclipse of the public corporation” underestimate its institutional staying power and unique capacity for renewal. In his recent HBR article, Michael C. Jensen, a distinguished scholar of corporate finance and governance, argues for a revolution in the structure of ownership and control in the U.S. economy.1 I share many of his criticisms […]

Recent research suggests that how new business ideas are presented may matter more than the quality of the ideas themselves.

It's more global, more urban, and more winner-take-all.

With emerging markets like China and politically unstable countries like Saudi Arabia figuring more than ever into companies' investment calculations,...

There are two views on entrepreneurship in America: the first (largely feigned), that it is a pure virtue like freedom of speech or religion, and the second (real) attitude that it is largely a game for the naïve. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Michael Dell make fine fodder for commencement speeches, but when parents and […]