Publications

January 2018 (Revised February 2018)
Technical Note

The Scope of Business at the Base of the Pyramid: Poverty in the U.S. and Other OECD Countries

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Tricia Gregg

Using data from U.S. Census and OECD, this note defines poverty as those populations who fall below 50% of that country’s median per capita income. It then provides a brief statistical tour of six key challenges facing such populations: Income and Jobs, Healthcare,... View Details

Keywords: Poverty; Social Issues; Problems and Challenges; Global Range

2018
Working Paper

Zig-Zagging Your Way to Transformative Impact

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Tricia Gregg

Achieving transformative impact has been much discussed by social entrepreneurs, funders, and consultants. These discussions have focused on issues of increasing impact and scale, but often with no clear distinction between the two terms. In order to provide clarity,... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Performance Efficiency; Growth and Development; Outcome or Result; Strategy

January 2018
Case

Flying into the Future: HondaJet

By: Gary P. Pisano and Jesse Shulman

This cases examine Honda’s diversification into the light jet market. In 1985, Honda initiated a secret program to develop a small jet. Over the years, the program had many ups and downs (it was almost canceled several times). Then, a breakthrough in the configuration... View Details

Keywords: Diversification; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Innovation and Management; Air Transportation Industry

January 2018 (Revised August 2020)
Background Note

Continuous Software Development: Agile's Successor

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Samuel Clemens and Olivia Hull

In recent years, the twin software development methodologies of continuous delivery and continuous deployment have risen to prominence in the start-up world and beyond. These methods have enabled technology companies large and small to accelerate their product... View Details

2023
Working Paper

Efficient Discovery of Heterogeneous Quantile Treatment Effects in Randomized Experiments via Anomalous Pattern Detection

By: Edward McFowland III, Sriram Somanchi and Daniel B. Neill

In the recent literature on estimating heterogeneous treatment effects, each proposed method makes its own set of restrictive assumptions about the intervention’s effects and which subpopulations to explicitly estimate. Moreover, the majority of the literature provides... View Details

Keywords: Causal Inference; Program Evaluation; Algorithms; Distributional Average Treatment Effect; Treatment Effect Subset Scan; Heterogeneous Treatment Effects

Read Now

January–February 2018
Article

Inclusive Growth: Profitable Strategies for Tackling Poverty and Inequality

By: Robert S. Kaplan, George Serafeim and Eduardo Tugendhat

More than a billion people in the developing world remain in extreme poverty and outside the formal economy. Traditional CSR programs have done little to alleviate the situation and rarely produce transformative change.
Instead of trying to fix local problems,... View Details

Keywords: Inclusive Growth; Sustainability; Social Impact; Business Strategy; Shared Value; Impact Investing; Inequality; Corporate Governance; Balanced Scorecard; Strategy Execution; Economic Growth; Developing Countries and Economies; Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Investment

Find at Harvard

January 2018
Article

The Effect of Cost Sharing on an Employee Weight Loss Program: A Randomized Trial

By: Leslie K. John, Andrea Troxel, William Yancy, Joelle Y. Friedman, Jingsan Zhu, Lin Yang, Robert Galvin, Karen Miller-Kovach, Scott Halpern, George Loewenstein and Kevin Volpp

Purpose: We tested the effects of employer subsidies on employee enrollment, attendance, and weight loss in a nationally-available weight management program.
Design: A randomized trial tested the impact of employer subsidy: 100%; 80% 50% and a hybrid 50% subsidy... View Details

Keywords: Affordable Care Act (ACA); Subsidies; Weight Loss; Obesity; Incentives; Behavioral Economics; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Health Disorders; Health Care and Treatment; Compensation and Benefits; United States

Find at Harvard

Read Now

December 2017
Case

La Ceiba: Navigating Microfinance and Relationships in Honduras (A)

By: Christine L. Exley, John Beshears and Alison Wood Brooks

This case follows the program director of La Ceiba, a Honduras-based microfinance institution, as he navigates four challenging negotiation scenarios involving the organization's loan clients. Students are asked to adopt the perspective of the Program Director and to... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Power; Apology; Negotiation Process; Microfinance; Power and Influence; Situation or Environment

December 2017 (Revised April 2018)
Case

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: Network Strategy 2016

By: Michael E. Porter, Thomas W. Feeley and Toyin J. Okanlawon

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) began as a stand-alone hospital in the heart of downtown Philadelphia in 1855. By 2016 the CHOP Care Network stretched across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the New York metropolitan area, providing a wide range of services... View Details

Keywords: Communication; Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Organizational Structure; Networks; Integration; Strategy; Health Industry; Philadelphia

December 2017 (Revised December 2018)
Case

OCP Group

By: Kristin Fabbe, Forest Reinhardt, Natalie Kindred and Alpana Thapar

This case explores the strategy of OCP Group, the 95% state-owned Moroccan firm charged with managing the North African country’s vast reserves of phosphate. Phosphate was one of the most vital macronutrients for plant health, along with nitrogen and potassium, and... View Details

Keywords: OCP; OCP Group; Casablanca; Chemicals; Operations; Transformation; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Chemical Industry; Morocco

November 2017
Case

Outrageous Ambition: Duke University

By: William C. Kirby and Yuanzhuo Wang

Duke University had grown from a one room schoolhouse in rural North Carolina in 1859 to one of the leading research universities in the U.S. and the world. Since the late 1950s, Duke’s leaders had consciously used the process of strategic planning to guide the... View Details

November 2017 (Revised July 2019)
Case

Project Moab at Hulu

By: C. Fritz Foley and James Weber

In 2015, Elaine Paul, CFO of Hulu, and the rest of the senior leadership team, must decide if they should offer a new, advertisement-free subscription service. At the time Hulu distributed a wide variety of content including in season current programing and earned... View Details

Keywords: Video On Demand; Subscriber Models; Media; Business Model; Decision Choices and Conditions; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

October 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Lovepop

By: Robert F. White, Ramana Nanda and Olivia Hull

As they prepare to graduate from Harvard Business School, the co-founders of greeting card company startup Lovepop need capital to cover the company’s operating costs and must choose between two seed financing offers. One offer is from an angel group and the other from... View Details

Keywords: Accelerator; Incubator; Seed Financing; Convertible Debt; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Financing and Loans; Borrowing and Debt; Growth and Development Strategy; Valuation; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Boston; Massachusetts; United States