Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(4,842)
- Faculty Publications (1,160)
- January 2018
- Technical Note
Business at the Base of the Pyramid: Understanding Impact and Impact Evaluations
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Tricia Gregg
Unlike financial success, there is no clear consensus regarding how best to define and measure social impact. This HBS Technical Note written for students of the HBS MBA course Business at the Base of the Pyramid (BBOP), offers readers pragmatic perspectives on how the... View Details
- January 2018
- Technical Note
The Scope of Business at the Base of the Pyramid: Middle and Lower Income Countries
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Tricia Gregg
Using World Bank data, the note defines the Base of the Pyramid population as the 4.76 billion people living on less than $10/day. It briefly reviews the perspectives of key business articles that address this market, notably C.K. Prahalad’s work on Bottom of the... View Details
- 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
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
- January 2018
- Article
Innovation Incentives and Biomarkers
By: Ariel Dora Stern, Brian M. Alexander and Amitabh Chandra
Previously, we have discussed the importance of economic incentives in shaping markets for precision medicines. Here we consider incentives for biomarker development, including discovery and establishment. Biomarkers can reveal valuable information regarding diagnosis... View Details
- 2018
- Chapter
Will Urbanization Save the Chinese Economy or Destroy it?
By: Meg Rithmire
The Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping has announced its intentions to transition the economy from one driven by investment and exports to one driven by domestic demand. The main strategy to achieve this transformation involves massive state-led urbanization. This... View Details
- December 2017 (Revised January 2019)
- Case
In the Eye of a Geopolitical Storm: South Korea's Lotte Group, China and the U.S. THAAD Missile Defense System (A)
By: Andy Zelleke and Brian Tilley
By late 2016 and early 2017, Lotte Group, a South Korean chaebol (large family-controlled business group) had become embroiled not only in the domestic political turmoil surrounding President Park Geun-hye, but also—uncomfortably—in a four-country geopolitical storm. ... View Details
- December 2017
- Case
Piracy in Somalia (A)
By: Sophus A. Reinert and Alissa Davies
A Somali fisherman stands on a beach in early 2011, considering his options: should he embark in his tiny fishing vessel or join a nearby pirate crew? His war-ravaged country, entering its 20th year of civil war, was in the midst of a famine that had claimed hundreds... View Details
- December 2017
- Supplement
Piracy in Somalia (B)
By: Sophus A. Reinert and Alissa Davies
Supplements the (A) case. View Details
- November 2017
- Technical Note
21st Century Populism
By: George Serafeim and David Freiberg
While the first decade of the 21st century saw a massive financial crisis that led to significant economic downturn, the second decade saw the rise of political leaders, who built their support upon a political message that championed the common person against the... View Details
Keywords: Populism; Market Efficiency; Market Liberalization; Political Influence; Political Instability; Capital Controls; Partnerships; Coalition; Inequality; Role Of Business In Society; Government Intervention In The Markets; Labor Market; Equality and Inequality; Financial Markets; Social Issues; Immigration; Financial Crisis; Capital Markets; Business and Government Relations
- 2017
- Working Paper
Identifying Sources of Inefficiency in Health Care
By: Amitabh Chandra and Douglas O. Staiger
In medicine, the reasons for variation in treatment rates across hospitals serving similar patients are not well understood. Some interpret this variation as unwarranted and push standardization of care as a way of reducing allocative inefficiency. However, an... View Details
- October 2017
- Case
Shift Technologies, Inc.
By: Thomas Eisenmann and Nicole Tempest Keller
In 2017, management at Shift, an online marketplace that uses a “high touch,” concierge approach to buy and sell used cars, was formulating plans for the San Francisco–based startup’s next phase of expansion. One option was to preserve Shift’s current business model... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Intermediation in the Supply of Agricultural Products in Developing Economies
By: Kris J. Ferreira, Joel Goh and Ehsan Valavi
Problem Definition: Farmers face several challenges in agricultural supply chains in emerging economies that contribute to extreme levels of poverty. One common challenge is that farmers only have access to one channel, often an auction, for which to sell their crops.... View Details
- September 2017
- Case
Christine Lagarde
By: Julie Battilana, Carin-Isabel Knoop, Vanessa Ampelas and Noemie Assenat
The case covers the youth and career trajectory of Christine Lagarde across her time at Baker & McKenzie, as a minister in the government of France and as the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The case highlights the challenges and opportunities she faced... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Merchants and the Origins of Capitalism
By: Sophus A. Reinert and Robert Fredona
N.S.B. Gras, the father of Business History in the United States, argued that the era of mercantile capitalism was defined by the figure of the “sedentary merchant,” who managed his business from home, using correspondence and intermediaries, in contrast to the earlier... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
International Business and Emerging Markets: A Long-Run Perspective
By: Geoffrey Jones
This working paper explores long-run patterns in the strategies of international business in developing countries. There was a massive wave of Western multinational investment in the developing world during the first wave of globalization before the 1920s. The... View Details
- 2017
- Article
Agricultural Insurance and Economic Development
By: Shawn A. Cole and Wentao Xiong
This article provides a review of recent research on agricultural insurance (AI) in developing countries. Agricultural producers face a variety of significant risks; historically, only government-subsidized products have achieved widespread adoption. A recent... View Details
- Article
China Gambles on Modernizing Through Urbanization
By: Kristen Looney and Meg Rithmire
Contemporary discussions of urbanization and urban construction in China tend to focus on “ghost towns” on the one hand or urbanization as China’s silver bullet to growth and reform on the other. In this paper, we detail what China calls its “New Urbanization Policy.”... View Details
- Fall 2017
- Article
The Alternative Business History: Business in Emerging Markets
By: Gareth Austin, Carlos Davila and Geoffrey Jones
This article suggests that the business history of emerging markets should be seen as an alternative business history rather than merely adding new settings to explore established core debates. The discipline of business history evolved around the corporate strategies... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Emerging Markets and the Future of Business History
By: Gareth Austin, Carlos Dávila and Geoffrey Jones
This working paper suggests that the business history of emerging markets should be seen as an alternative business history rather than merely adding new settings to explore established core debates. The discipline of business history evolved around the corporate... View Details
- July 2017 (Revised November 2017)
- Case
Propel
By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah McAra
In 2014, Jimmy Chen, a former product manager at Facebook, founded the start-up Propel to build software for low-income Americans. After conducting in-depth behavioral research, Chen and his small team in New York City began to develop technology to address the... View Details
Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Govtech; Food Stamps; EBT; Mobile App; User Research; Financial Services Referrals; Grocery Marketing; Customer Discovery; Social Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Business Model; Research; Social Enterprise; Poverty; Welfare; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Industry; United States