Publications

August 2022 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Fresh Food Generation

By: Brian Trelstad, Amy Klopfenstein and Mel Martin

This case highlights one of five BIPOC entrepreneurs in the Boston area as part of the HBS Impact Investment Fund. In fall 2021, a team of HBS students reviewed the financial statements of Fresh Food Generation (FFG), a Dorchester, Massachusetts-based food service... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Investment; Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurship; Race; Food and Beverage Industry; Boston

28 May 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Lost in the Clouds: The Impact of Changing Property Rights on Investment in Cloud Computing Ventures

Keywords: by Josh Lerner & Greg Rafert; Technology

June 2012
Teaching Note

Sephora Direct: Investing in Social Media, Video, and Mobile (TN)

By: Elie Ofek

August 2022 (Revised November 2024)
Case

Sweet Teez Bakery: Projecting the Dough’s Rise

By: Emily R. McComb, Mel Martin and Amy Klopfenstein

In 2021, the HBS Impact Investment Fund student team met with entrepreneur Teresa Maynard, who had applied for a $25,000 impact investment loan. The students thought the former Harvard Data Scientist’s bakery business, Sweet Teez Bakery, showed promise. Maynard had... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investment; Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Finance; Investment; Goods and Commodities; Financial Reporting; Small Business; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; Massachusetts

12 PM – 1 PM EST, 10 Nov 2016
Webinars: Trending@HBS

Impact Investing: Challenges and Opportunities

Never has there been a time when so many believed in both the ability and responsibility of the private sector to combat the world's greatest social challengesfrom poverty to climate change to accessible health care. Recent years have seen the creation of thousands of... View Details

May 2012
Course Overview Note

Managing Stakeholders with Corporate Social Responsibility

By: Christopher Marquis and Laura Velez Villa

This note articulates the ways in which strong stakeholder-company relationships developed through corporate social responsibility initiatives and other types of social strategies deliver bottom line benefits. The analysis follows stakeholder logic models connecting... View Details

Keywords: Business And Society; Social Responsibility; Stakeholder Management; Government And Business; Philanthropy; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Revenue

31 Jul 2014
News

A New Approach to Solving Society's Biggest Problems

Keywords: impact investing; social impact bonds; society

17 Jun 2021
News

Investing in a Post-COVID World; Exploring the Pandemic’s Impact on Gender Equity

women leaders in the HBS alumni community with events, initiatives and social impact scholarships. So when Club President Boris Tsimerinov (PLDA 16) and Stark were planning events for 2021, they decided to... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

Web

Alumni For Impact Newsletter | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

Join Our Alumni Mailing List Sign up for our quarterly newsletter and receive information on future events with the Social Enterprise Initiative. First Name* Last Name* Email* HBS Degree Earned* —Please choose an option— MBA AMP DBA GMP... View Details

April 1981 (Revised June 1982)
Case

Social Impact of Agribusiness: A Field Study of ALCOSA in Guatemala

By: Ray A. Goldberg

Video

HBS Alumni for Social Impact - Where Does Higher Education Go From Here?

Article

Young and No Money? Never Mind: The Material Impact of Social Resources on New Venture Growth

By: Mukti Khaire

Although growth is a desirable outcome for new ventures due to the many advantages of large size, most new firms fail to grow, largely due to their limited resources and adaptability. This paper addresses the question of how new ventures grow despite their limited... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Status and Position; Advertising Industry; Chicago; New York (city, NY)

Find at Harvard

2014
Working Paper

Speaking of Corporate Social Responsibility

By: Hao Liang, Christopher Marquis, Luc Renneboog and Sunny Li Sun

We argue that the language spoken by corporate decision makers influences their firms' social responsibility and sustainability practices. Linguists suggest that obligatory future-time-reference (FTR) in a language reduces the psychological importance of the future.... View Details

Keywords: Language; Future-Time-Reference; Categories; Culture; Corporate Social Responsibility; Sustainability; Communication; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact

SSRN

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18 Sep 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Risky Business: The Impact of Property Rights on Investment and Revenue in the Film Industry

Keywords: by Venkat Kuppuswamy & Carliss Y. Baldwin; Motion Pictures & Video

2012
Working Paper

Risky Business: The Impact of Property Rights on Investment and Revenue in the Film Industry

By: Venkat Kuppuswamy and Carliss Y. Baldwin

Our paper tests a key prediction of property rights theory, specifically, that agents will respond to marginal incentives embedded in property rights when making non-contractible, revenue-enhancing investments (Grossman and Hart, 1986; Hart and Moore, 1990). Using rich... View Details

Keywords: Property Rights; Property; Rights; Investment; Contracts; Revenue; Motivation and Incentives; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; United States

SSRN

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February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
Case

OpenInvest

By: Shawn Cole, Boris Vallée and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolios to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapons manufacturers stocks or overweighting... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Impact Investing; Investment Portfolio; Customization and Personalization; Technological Innovation; Social Issues; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Model; Financial Services Industry

January 2025
Course Overview Note

Overview Principles of Financial Modeling for Small Companies in Investing for Impact

By: Emily R. McComb