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Winners & Runners-Up | New Venture Competition

tech-enabled nannies. Social Enterprise Track, 2017 Flare Quinn Fitzgerald (MBA 2017) Sara de Zarraga (MBA 2017) Social Enterprise Track Winner Flare is reinventing personal security by creating tech-enabled... View Details

Web

Developing Instructor Style - Christensen Center for Teaching & Learning

Teaching by the Case Method Developing Instructor Style Preparing to Teach Getting Started Developing Instructor Style Shaping the Learning Environment Knowing Your Students Planning a Class Session Leading in the Classroom Providing... View Details

February 2022
Supplement

Agora (B)

By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn

This is the conclusion to Agora (A), where founder Elsa Sze decides if she wants to continue investing energy in her civic technology startup.
Agora was a civic technology (civic tech) startup founded by Elsa Sze, who wanted to enhance the connection between... View Details

Keywords: Civic Technology; Government Administration; Conferences; Business Startups; Business Strategy

Web

Accounting & Management Awards & Honors - Faculty & Research

Corporate Finance Conference for “Being Surprised by the Unsurprising: Earnings Seasonality and Stock Returns” with Tom Chang, Samuel Hartzmark, and David Solomon. Eugene F. Soltes : Received the 2015... View Details

February 1984
Case

Megalith, Inc. -- Hay Associates (C)

By: D. Quinn Mills, George W. Baird and George W. Baird

Provides a glossary of executive compensation terms. Rewritten by G.W. Baird, company partner. View Details

Keywords: Executive Compensation; Compensation and Benefits; Employment Industry

December 2012
Article

Inducement Prizes and Innovation

By: Liam Brunt, Josh Lerner and Tom Nicholas

We examine the effect of prizes on innovation using data on awards for technological development offered by the Royal Agricultural Society of England at annual competitions between 1839 and 1939. We find that the effects of prizes on competitive entry are large, and we... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Patents; Innovation and Invention; Information Technology; Growth and Development; England

Find at Harvard

Read Now

February 1984
Case

Megalith, Inc. -- Hay Associates (B)

By: D. Quinn Mills and George W. Baird

Describes Hay Associates Climate Survey Questionnaire and the eight dimensions of organizational climate. Rewritten by G.W. Baird, company partner. View Details

Keywords: Surveys; Organizations; Human Resources

Web

Entrepreneurial Management Curriculum - Faculty & Research

managers at all types of organizations (e.g., small companies, large companies, non-profits, and public servants) become more effective at enhancing the value of those organizations. HBS professor Ken Andrews described three roles for the general manager: [1] Setting... View Details

13 Apr 2021
News

Why Start-ups Fail

November 2023
Case

The Commons Project in Rwanda—Building Digital Infrastructure for the Global Public Good

By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui and Tom Quinn

In September 2022, The Commons Project Foundation (TCP) CEO Zhenya Lindgardt and her team met on a Zoom call to discuss building tools to help Rwandans manage their health data. They believed that helping Africa build digital infrastructure would improve much-needed... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Capital; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Health Care and Treatment; Information Management; Adaptation; Information Infrastructure; Information Technology Industry; Rwanda; United States

Forthcoming
Article

Human Capital and the Managerial Revolution in the United States: Evidence from General Electric

By: Tom Nicholas

This paper estimates the returns to human capital accumulation during the first era of mega-firms in the United States by linking employees at General Electric—a canonical enterprise associated with the “visible hand” of managerial hierarchies—to the 1940 census. I... View Details

Keywords: Returns To Education; Management Practices; Hierarchies; Management Practices and Processes; Rank and Position; Human Capital; Talent and Talent Management; Business History; United States

22 Jun 2011
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Motivation

and Tom Nicholas look to answer that question, using a data set of prizes awarded by the Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE) between 1839 and 1939. View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty

01 Aug 1998
News

Spangler Family Gift Endows New Campus Center

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot: "Let us do something while we have the chance. It is not every day that we are needed." Together with his wife, Meredith Riggs Spangler, and two daughters, Anna Spangler Nelson (MBA '88) and Abigail Riggs Spangler, Dick Spangler... View Details

Keywords: Nancy O. Perry

July 2022
Case

David Crane’s Clean(er) Energy Strategy at NRG

By: George Serafeim, Michael W. Toffel and Tom Quinn

In 2015, David Crane was the CEO of NRG, the second-largest energy producer in the United States. NRG got most of its power from fossil fuels, but Crane – hired as CEO in 2003 as NRG emerged from bankruptcy – had invested heavily in alternative energy, loudly... View Details

Keywords: Energy; Leadership; Corporate Governance; Transformation; Alternative Energy; Energy Generation; Climate Change; Corporate Accountability; Renewable Energy; Energy Industry; United States

01 Dec 2023
News

A Continuum of Innovation

As senior associate dean and chair of the MBA Program, Matt Weinzierl has a running list of questions that he and Jana P. Kierstead, the executive director of MBA and Doctoral programs, always keep in mind. They range from the curricular (How can we ensure that the MBA... View Details

Keywords: Jennifer Gillespie

2025
Working Paper

Race, Rental Yields, and Housing Decay in Manhattan

By: Tom Nicholas and Christophe Spaenjers

We develop a new dataset on real estate transactions in Manhattan (1912–1939), linked to federal Census records (1930 and 1940) and property images used for tax assessment purposes (around 1940 and 1980). We analyze investor returns and incentives to maintain... View Details

Keywords: Housing Markets; Rental Yields; Urban Decay; Manhattan; Race; Equality and Inequality; Investment Return; Motivation and Incentives; Real Estate Industry; New York (city, NY)

SSRN

November 2014
Case

Napalm: From Soldiers Field to Trang Bang

By: Tom Nicholas and Jonas Peter Akins

Napalm is one of the most destructive weapons ever to be invented. Yet, at its original inception it was nothing more than a technical challenge, and it was never intended to be used in indiscriminate antipersonnel warfare. The pathway of its development by a Harvard... View Details

Keywords: Moral Sensibility; War; Chemicals; Research and Development; Chemical Industry; Viet Nam; Cambridge; United States