Publications

10 Feb 2016
Blog Post

Combining an Interest in Music and Business

The first thing most people think of when they hear “Harvard Business School” is most certainly not “arts” or “music”. I mean, that’s what music school is for, right? To be honest, when I decided to apply to business school, continuing to View Details

September 1985
Background Note

Finding a Job with a Small Company

By: Howard H. Stevenson

Describes a process of self-evaluation for working in small companies, discusses small company issues, focuses on some basic search techniques, and ends with a little how-to section. The goal is to facilitate the process of securing a job in a small company and to show... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Higher Education; Recruitment; Work-Life Balance; Interests

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May 2022 (Revised June 2024)
Case

LOOP: Driving Change in Auto Insurance Pricing

By: Elie Ofek and Alicia Dadlani

John Henry and Carey Anne Nadeau, co-founders and co-CEOs of LOOP, an insurtech startup based in Austin, Texas, were on a mission to modernize the archaic $250 billion automobile insurance market. They sought to create equitably priced insurance by eliminating pricing... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Technological Innovation; Equality and Inequality; Prejudice and Bias; Growth and Development Strategy; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Insurance Industry; Financial Services Industry

04 Jan 2013
Working Paper Summaries

The Political Economy of Bilateral Foreign Aid

21 May 2007
Research & Ideas

Fixing the Marketing-CEO Disconnect

develop a set of metrics that measure the impact of marketing activities against the goals of the corporation. Many marketing managers will tell you that marketing performance can't be measured. It's not... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

November 2021 (Revised December 2022)
Case

Babban Gona: Great Farm

By: Kristin Fabbe, Tarun Khanna, Caroline M. Elkins, Zeke Gillman, Eleni Kyrkopoulou and Thomaz Teodorovicz

In 2020, Babban Gona was one of the world’s largest farming operations with over 140,000 acres of maize farms, an area over ten times as large as Manhattan, and over 80,000 member-farmers in Nigeria. According to the company, the average Nigerian farmer’s net income... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Value Creation; Agribusiness; Capital Budgeting; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Nigeria; Africa

September 2009 (Revised August 2011)
Case

Root Capital

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Katharine Lee

Founded in 1999, Root Capital had loaned $150 million to nearly 250 small and growing businesses, mainly in Latin America. In 2009, as the organization launched a five-year, $55 million capital campaign, it had to determine a strategic path going forward in keeping... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Social Entrepreneurship; Capital; Financing and Loans; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Latin America

July 2019 (Revised November 2022)
Case

Backstage at Boston Ballet

By: David G. Fubini, Ryan Raffaelli, Begum Agca Okutgen and Julia Kelley

This case asks students to consider how to prioritize goals when placed in a new leadership role. In August 2014, Meredith “Max” Hodges became the youngest Executive Director (ED) in the Boston Ballet’s 51-year history. In her first year, she was able to claim several... View Details

2015
Chapter

Consumer Neuroscience: Revealing Meaningful Relationships Between Brain and Consumer Behavior

By: Hilke Plassmann and Uma R. Karmarkar

The goal of this chapter is to give an overview of the nascent field of consumer neuroscience and discuss when and how it is useful to integrate the "black box" of the consumer's brain into consumer psychology. To reach this goal, we first briefly outline several... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Cognition and Thinking

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January 2003 (Revised August 2003)
Case

General Mills and the Hawthorne Huddle (A)

Examines the role of General Mills in the formation and leadership of the Hawthorne Huddle. The Huddle was in the Hawthorne neighborhood in Northern Minneapolis, which in 1997 was plagued with high crime and poverty. The Huddle served as a forum, held the first... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Management Succession; Social Issues; Consumer Products Industry; Minneapolis

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09 Jun 2008
Lessons from the Classroom

Monetizing IP: The Executive’s Challenge

firms to focus on their IP? A: In many nations, intellectual property has become increasingly important. In part, this change has reflected the changing mixture of the economy, with the development of knowledge-intensive industries such... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Video Game; Web Services

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

06 Dec 2017
Blog Post

The 23rd Annual Harvard Business School Tech Conference

The 23rd annual Tech Conference took place on September 16th, 2017 at Harvard Business School (HBS) and we had over 1,200 students, professionals, and professors. The goal of this year’s conference was to continue our tradition of... View Details

Keywords: Technology

November 2008
Case

Eden McCallum

By: Heidi K. Gardner and Robert G. Eccles

This case illustrates the leadership and management challenges of starting a new firm based on a new business model and how success creates pressures that challenge the work/life balance which was one of the original goals of its two founders. The case also raises... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Work-Life Balance

August 2019 (Revised March 2022)
Case

Family Matters: Governance at the Zamil Group

By: Christina R. Wing, Suraj Srinivasan and Esel Çekin

This case focuses on a large Saudi Arabian industrial conglomerate and family business Zamil Group’s corporate and family governance journey. The 12 sons of the founder led and grew the group successfully after taking over from their father in 1961. The secret to their... View Details

Keywords: Middle East; Family Ownership; Family-owned Business; Saudi Arabia; Family Business; Governance; Organizational Structure; Values and Beliefs; Steel Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Middle East; Saudi Arabia; Bahrain

November 2012
Case

CSIRO: The Light Metals Flagship Decision

By: Willy Shih, Margaret P. Pierson and Dawn Lau

This case explores the challenge of investing in basic research as a public good. CSIRO was Australia's leading science and research agency, and it was chartered to enhance national prosperity through R&D. Its Flagships program was designed to align research interests... View Details