Venture Capital

21 Results

 

Book Excerpt: “The Architecture of Innovation”

In his new book, The Architecture of Innovation, Josh Lerner explores flaws in how corporations fund R&D. This excerpt discusses the corporate venturing model and how incentive schemes make it successful. Open for comment; 1 Comment posted.

Funding Innovation: Is Your Firm Doing it Wrong?

Many companies are at a loss about how to fund innovation successfully. In his new book, The Architecture of Innovation, Professor Josh Lerner starts with this advice: get the incentives right. Open for comment; 4 Comments posted.

Is a VC Partnership Greater Than the Sum of Its Partners?

Michael Ewens and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

Venture capital investments are an important engine of innovation and economic growth, but extremely risky from an individual investor's point of view. Furthermore, there are large differences in fund performance between top quartile and bottom quartile venture capital funds. The ability to consistently produce top performing investments implies that there is something unique and time-invariant about venture capital firms. But to what extent are the important attributes of performance a part of the firm's organizational capital or embodied in the human capital of the people inside the firm? Michael Ewens and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf find that the partner is extremely important. Additionally, results suggest that venture capital partnerships are not much more than the sum of their partners. Partners are often significantly different from each other, but "good" firms are those with a group of better partners. Thus, firms that have maintained high performance across many funds may have simply been able to retain high quality partners rather than actually provide those partners with much in the way of fundamental help. Read More

Searching for Better Practices in Social Investing

Social change requires innovation, not just in organizational practices but in funding practices, as well. This was a key message at "Social Investing: Emerging Trends in a Changing Landscape," a recent panel discussion at Harvard Business School in which several professional philanthropists explored how best to support social change. Open for comment; 10 Comments posted.

Financing Risk and Bubbles of Innovation

Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

While start-up firms are key to any technological revolution, they also run a high risk of failure. To that end, investors often provide limited capital in several careful stages, gaining confidence in a firm before doling out another round of funding. However, these investors still face the possibility that other investors won't provide follow-on funding, even when the firm's prospects remain sound. That's a big risk for individual investors who can't afford to fund a new firm all by themselves, and whose investment will flounder if others don't invest, too. Research by HBS professors Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf explores why future investors may not fund the project at its next stage even if the fundamentals of the project have not changed. Read More

Venture Capital’s Disconnect with Clean Tech

Clean-tech start-ups depend on patience and public policy to thrive—the Internet models for VC funding don't apply. That's why Harvard Business School professor Joseph Lassiter is making an unusual recommendation to his entrepreneurship students: Spend a few years serving time in a government job. Closed for comment; 18 Comments posted.

HBS Cases: Walking Away from a $3 Billion Deal

Managers of the ABRY Fund V were so successful they had investors waiting to pour in an additional $3 billion. But to invest that much would require trade-offs that could jeopardize the chemistry that made the fund successful in the first place. Take the money or walk away? From HBS Bulletin. Read More

Venture Capital

Professor Josh Lerner provides a summary report on the recently held HBS Centennial colloquium on venture capital. Read More

The Hedge Fund as Activist

Do hedge funds improve management of the companies they invest in? A new study by Harvard Business School professor Robin Greenwood and coauthor Michael Schor argues that, in fact, hedge funds create shareholder value through anticipation of change, not necessarily delivering it. Read More

The Money Connection—Understanding VC Networks

Venture capital firms often consider investments in companies located far away or in unfamiliar industries. How do they spot these opportunities and also reduce risk? It's the power of networks, says Harvard Business School professor Toby Stuart—and understanding how they work in VC is just now starting to be understood. Read More

Rich or Royal: What Do Founders Want?

Noam T. Wasserman

It's a fundamental tension many entrepreneurs face, the conflict between wanting to become rich and wanting to keep control of their new company. Few can have both. Professor Noam Wasserman discusses his research into the motivations of entrepreneurs and the people who invest in them. Read More

The Success of Reverse Leveraged Buyouts

Josh Lerner

RLBOs have a bad rap, but Josh Lerner says the reputation is not deserved. Studying almost 500 private equity-led IPOs over a 22-year period, Lerner and co-researcher Jerry Cao conclude that reverse leveraged buyouts in general outperformed other IPOs and the market as a whole. Quick flips, however, are another story. Read More

VCs Survey Post-Bubble Opportunities

At the annual Cyberposium conference held at Harvard Business School, venture capitalists pondered what makes for winners and losers in the new VC landscape. Read More

The VC Quandary: Too Much Money

The VC money "overhang" continues as investors compete to get into a small number of deals each year. How do smart venture firms approach the challenge? A report from the 11th Annual Venture Capital & Private Equity Conference. Read More

The Big Money for Big Projects

Benjamin C. Esty

This isn't your father's venture capital. Amusement parks, satellite networks, oil fields, toll roads: HBS Professor Benjamin Esty studies financing of large projects. Q&A Read More

Surveying the VC Landscape

Josh Lerner

In an e-mail Q&A, HBS professor Josh Lerner discusses issues including transparency and private equity, buyout firms, Sarbanes-Oxley, and the role of VC on innovation. Read More

Wrap-up: Software, Telecom, and Recovery

How is the VC industry doing on its own and in partnership with software and telecoms? These were just three topics discussed in special panel sessions at the recent conference. Here, a few highlights from those conversations. Read More

Five Questions for Paul Gompers and Josh Lerner

Paul A. Gompers and Josh Lerner

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Angels Face the Innovator’s Dilemma

According to HBS professor Clayton M. Christensen, the venture capital industry—like computers, telephony, and brokerage before it—is susceptible to the same forces that have waylaid many seemingly invincible players. What that means, said the author of the influential bestseller The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, is that the time is ripe for the right people to create new, disruptive forms of financing. Read More

Something Ventured, Something Gained: A European View of Venture Capital

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The Future of the Venture Capital Cycle

Despite many success stories and a rapid rise to prominence, the venture capital industry remains a mystery to most, and questions about its sustainability persist. In this excerpt from their pathbreaking book The Venture Capital Cycle, HBS Professors Paul Gompers and Josh Lerner look toward the future of this misunderstood financial intermediary. Read More