Publications

March 2019 (Revised April 2021)
Case

The DivaCup: Navigating Distribution and Growth

By: Ayelet Israeli

When the mother-daughter founders of DivaCup set out with a mission to disrupt the menstrual care industry with an innovative product form, they initially struggled to gain legitimacy and convince retailers to carry their unique product. Fifteen years later, the... View Details

March–April 2019
Article

The Future of Leadership Development

By: Das Narayandas and Mihnea Moldoveanu

The need for leadership development has never been more urgent. Companies of all sorts realize that to survive in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, they need different leadership skills and organizational capabilities from those that... View Details

Keywords: Talent Management; Executive Education; Leadership Development; Business Education; Management Skills; Learning; Online Technology

February 2019 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Hot Chicken Takeover

By: William R. Kerr, Manjari Raman and Olivia Hull

By December 2018, entrepreneur Joe DeLoss’s fried chicken company, Hot Chicken Takeover, has opened three restaurants in Columbus, Ohio, using an unconventional employment model that helps people with criminal records get back on their feet. DeLoss is proud of the... View Details

February 9, 2016
Article

How a 10-Year-Old Boy Gave 13,000 Young Adults the Chance to Get Ahead

By: Gerald Chertavian

Keywords: Opportunities; Nonprofit Organizations; Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Competency and Skills; Income

2019
Article

Reflections on 25 Years of Building Social Enterprise Education

By: James E. Austin and V. Kasturi Rangan

Purpose—This paper aims to reflect on 25 years of the Social Enterprise Initiative at the Harvard Business School, examining the processes and thinking involved at key stages of this pioneering Initiative’s implementation and... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise Initiative; Harvard Business School; Social Enterprise; Education; Programs

Article

Corporate Culture and Analyst Catering

By: Joseph Pacelli

This study examines the relation between financial institutions’ corporate culture and the quality of analysts’ research services. Using data collected from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, I measure the weakness of financial institutions’ corporate culture... View Details

Keywords: Analysts; Corporate Culture; Global Settlement; Financial Institutions; Organizational Culture; Conflict of Interests; Performance; Quality

January 2019
Background Note

Blockchain and the Movement of Value in Africa

By: John D. Macomber, Liang Wu and Ina Folea

This technical note discusses the potential of Blockchain technologies in Africa, particularly to overcome institutional voids in trust and transactions. View Details

Keywords: Blockchain; Technological Innovation; Value; Trust; Africa

January 2019
Supplement

JPMorgan Chase: Invested in Detroit (C)

By: Joseph L. Bower and Michael Norris

Video Supplement to HBS Case Nos. 918-406 and 918-410.
Beginning in 2014, JPMorgan Chase launched “Invested in Detroit,” a $100 million philanthropic investment in the city over five years. The bank worked with local economic development organizations,... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropic Investment; Banking; Economic Development; Local Economic Development; Workforce Development; Financial Institutions; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Urban Development; Business and Community Relations; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Expansion; Banking Industry; United States; Michigan; Detroit

2019
Book

Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation

By: Gary P. Pisano

Creative Construction tackles the myth that larger enterprises are inherently incapable of transformative innovation and are doomed to be disrupted by nimble start-ups. If larger enterprises seem incapable of transformative innovation, it is due to how we design... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Business Growth and Maturation; Innovation Strategy; Organizational Culture; Management Systems; Creativity; Leading Change

2019
Article

Structural Balance Emerges and Explains Performance in Risky Decision-Making

By: Omid Askarisichani, Jacqueline N. Lane, Francesco Bullo, Noah E. Friedkin, Ambuj K. Singh and Brian Uzzi

Polarization affects many forms of social organization. A key issue focuses on which affective relationships are prone to change and how their change relates to performance. In this study, we analyze a financial institutional over a two-year period that employed 66... View Details

Keywords: Polarization; Structural Balance; Performance; Groups and Teams; Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Making

December 2018 (Revised July 2023)
Case

Instituto Dara: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty and Illness at Scale

By: Julie Battilana, Marissa Kimsey, Priscilla Zogbi and Johanna Mair

Dr. Vera Cordeiro founded the NGO Instituto Dara in 1991 to help poor families break the cycle of poverty and illness in Brazil. She and her team of employees and volunteers developed a holistic methodology to address the multidimensional sources of poverty based on... View Details

Keywords: Social Innovation; NGO; Scaling; Health; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Non-Governmental Organizations; Health Care and Treatment; Poverty; Health Industry; South America; Brazil

2018
Article

Cracking the Organizational Challenge of Pursuing Joint Social and Financial Goals: Social Enterprise as a Laboratory to Understand Hybrid Organizing

By: Julie Battilana

While in recent decades the social and business sectors have evolved on fairly separate tracks, today companies are increasingly expected to generate social value in addition to profit. As a result, they also increasingly face the distinct challenge of pursuing social... View Details

Keywords: Hybrid Organizations; Hybrid Organizing; Multiple Goals; Social Enterprise; Goals and Objectives; Organizational Design; Organizational Culture

October 2018 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Khan Academy 2018

By: William Sahlman and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded in 2008, Khan Academy was a global educational nonprofit with a mission to provide a free, world-class education for anyone anywhere in the world. By 2018, the organization had expanded into numerous content areas, product areas, and geographic markets.... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneur; Sustainability; Scaling; Social Entrepreneurship; Nonprofit Organizations; Strategy; Education; Entrepreneurship; Teaching; Education Industry; California

October 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Background Note

Note on Managing Workforce Reductions

By: Ethan Bernstein and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Each individual who enters an organization will, at some point, leave. And yet most future leaders spend significantly more effort learning about recruiting than departures, despite the sensitivity and challenges associated with the latter. This note is intended to... View Details

Keywords: Layoffs; Downsizing; Workforce; Workforce Reductions; Delayering; Human Resources; Employees; Resignation and Termination; Management; Organizations; Reputation

October 2018 (Revised January 2019)
Case

Social Finance, Inc.

By: Shawn Cole and Fanele Mashwama

This case begins in February 2019 as Tracy Palandjian, co-founder and CEO of Social Finance Inc., prepares for a board meeting that will determine the future strategy of the social enterprise. Social Finance is a non-profit in the impact investment space founded in... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investment; Social Enterprise; Growth and Development Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions

September 2018
Teaching Note

City Year at 30: Toward Long-Term Impact

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen

This teaching note assists in the classroom instruction of the HBS No. 318-089, “City Year at 30: Toward Long-Term Impact.” It offers to instructors a case summary and analysis, along with student preparation questions and a guide for classroom discussion of the case.... View Details

September 2018
Case

The Financial Management of Harvard Business School

By: C. Fritz Foley and F. Katelynn Boland

In the spring of 2018, the Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Financial Planning at Harvard Business School considers potential refinements to the School's financial management practices. He faced questions about whether the metrics that had been used to evaluate... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit; Financial Management; Nonprofit Organizations; Education Industry; United States

August 2018
Teaching Note

Wilderness Safaris: Ecotourism Entrepreneurship

By: James E. Austin, Megan Epler Wood and Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard

Teaching Note for HBS No. 318-040. View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Conservation Planning; Corporate Social Responsibility; Ecotourism; Strategy; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Tourism Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Travel Industry; Africa; Botswana

2018
Book

Trust: Creating the Foundation for Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries

By: Tarun Khanna

Entrepreneurs in developing countries who assume they will have the same legal, governmental, and institutional protections as their counterparts in the West will fail. To succeed, they need to build trust within the existing structures—and this book shows how it's... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Developing Countries and Economies; Trust