Publications

Educators

January 2007 (Revised May 2008)
Case

Henry Luce and the American Century

By: Nitin Nohria, Anthony Mayo and Logan Wilcox

Henry Luce, founder of the publishing company which produced Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, created the largest media company in the world by the mid-20th century. Luce's flagship magazine, Time, was able to gross over $20 million in sales during its... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Business History; Leadership Style; Emerging Markets; Publishing Industry; United States

01 Jun 2010
News

A Remarkable Life Story

Lillian Lincoln Lambert (MBA ’69) credits much of her business confidence and acumen to her years at Harvard Business School, where she was the first black woman to receive an MBA. But those two years, exhilarating and educational as they may have been, were not... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne; Professional Services

Steven Spielberg

highest grossing films in history including Jaws, the Indiana Jones trilogy, Jurassic Park, and Schindler’s List. In 1994, Spielberg joined forces with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen to form a new studio, DreamWorks which has... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment & Broadcast Media

Web

Israel Business Club | MBA

Israel Business Club Dedicated to elevating the Israeli business scene by fostering connections and understanding. We promote Israel's vibrant culture and host enriching learning sessions focused on its history and contemporary topics.... View Details

Web

A Rewarding Work Life - Edwin H. Land & Polaroid | Harvard Business School

Clubs Faculty & Research Business & Environment Business History Christensen Center for Teaching & Learning Entrepreneurship Faculty & Research Global Healthcare HBS Working Knowledge Institute for Strategy & Competitiveness Leadership... View Details

2009
Working Paper

The CHAT Dataset

By: Diego A. Comin and Bart Hobijn

This note accompanies the Cross‐country Historical Adoption of Technology (CHAT) dataset. CHAT is an unbalanced panel dataset with information on the adoption of over 100 technologies in more than 150 countries since 1800. The data is available for download at:... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; History; Technology Adoption

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April–May 2005
Article

History, Social Divisions and Public Goods in Rural India

By: Abhijit Banerjee, Lakshmi Iyer and Rohini Somanathan

Keywords: History; Goods and Commodities; Public Ownership; Society; India

05 Dec 2016
News

What Trump Didn't Learn From the Financial Crisis

2024
Chapter

The U.S. Secession Crisis as a Breakdown of Democracy

By: Dean Grodzins and David Moss

This chapter examines the U.S. secession crisis of 1860–1861 as a case of democratic breakdown. From December 1860 to early June 1861, eleven of the fifteen slaveholding states in the U.S. South declared secession from the Union. The trigger for the crisis was Abraham... View Details

Keywords: War; History; Political Elections; United States

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2018
Book

The Academy of Fisticuffs: Political Economy and Commercial Society in Enlightenment Italy

By: Sophus A. Reinert

The terms “capitalism” and “socialism” continue to haunt our political and economic imaginations, but we rarely consider their interconnected early history. Even the 18th century had its “socialists,” but unlike those of the 19th, they paradoxically sought to make the... View Details

Keywords: Enlightenment; Political Economy; Italy; Commercial Society; Economic Systems; Trade; History; Markets; Society; Italy

December 2010 (Revised March 2015)
Case

The Wright Brothers and Their Flying Machines

By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen

Wilbur (1867-1912) and Orville (1871-1948) Wright were fascinated by the mystery of flight and they built on the ideas of prominent earlier figures such as Octave Chanute (1832-1910) the French-born American who was influential in fostering the free exchange of ideas... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business History; Technological Innovation; Patents; Knowledge Sharing; Air Transportation; Air Transportation Industry; Europe; United States

Educators

2007
Working Paper

The Seer of Wellesley Hills: Roger Babson and the Babson Statistical Organization

By: Walter A. Friedman

Roger Babson was a pioneer of the business-forecasting industry in the United States in the early twentieth century. He built the largest private economic forecasting agency in the period and published a great range of economic statistics in his weekly newsletters. As... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Economics; Business History; Newsletters; Personal Development and Career; United States

14 Dec 2009
Research & Ideas

Can Entrepreneurs Drive People Movers to Success?

Imagine you've arrived for a meeting at a corporate campus. But now you discover that the conference room is in another building a quarter mile away. Sure, you could walk there but in the rain? Up purrs an automated people mover, a vehicle shaped like a segment of a... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Transportation

2017
Chapter

Globalization in Historical Perspective

By: Pankaj Ghemawat and Geoffrey Jones

This chapter explores the role that firms have played over time in promoting international trade and investment. It takes a chronological perspective and is organized around a first wave of globalization from the mid-nineteenth century until the 1920s and a second wave... View Details

Keywords: International Business; International Marketing; History; Marketing; Investment; Trade; Globalization

Portrait Project

Amy McGowan

My history is built on the American Dream. My maternal great-great-grandparents emigrated from Germany determined to build a thriving farm in the Midwest. Hard work enabled them to live the American Dream. My Dad emerged from a life of... View Details

Fast Answer

Corporate Strategy Course - Project Resources

style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(51, 122, 183); text-decoration-line: none;">International Directory of Company Histories Histories include company development and background; merger and acquisition... View Details

2010
Working Paper

The Empire Struck Back: The Mexican Oil Expropriation of 1938 Reconsidered

By: Noel Maurer

The Mexican expropriation of 1938 was the first large-scale non-Communist expropriation of foreign-owned natural resource assets. The literature generally makes three assertions: the U.S. government did not fully back the companies, Mexico did not fully compensate them... View Details

Keywords: Non-Renewable Energy; Governance Controls; Business History; Ownership; Business and Government Relations; Natural Environment; Energy Industry; Mexico; United States

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January 2022
Background Note

Native American Incarceration

By: Reshmaan Hussam, Sophus A. Reinert and Jordan Naylor

In the early twenty-first century the Native American populations of the United States continued to live with the legacy of colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and cultural destruction. Although other minority groups had increasingly been able to make their voices heard,... View Details

Keywords: Colonialism; Incarceration; Social Issues; Race; Equality and Inequality; History

Educators