Rural - Publications - Faculty & Research

10 Apr 2025
Blog Post

IFC India 2025: SELCO - Decentralized Renewable Energy to Develop While Decarbonizing

Professor Vikram Gandhi’s Immersive Field Course (IFC) “Development while Decarbonizing: India’s Path to Net-Zero" delved into the critical aspect of decarbonization and sustainability goals amid India's rapid development. The course presented an opportunity for... View Details

William C. Norris

An electrical engineer by trade, Norris pioneered Control Data Corporation (CDC) into a leading mainframe computer maker, giving IBM heavy competition during the 1970s and 1980s. Norris was also a great philanthropist, building CDC factories in depressed neighborhoods... View Details

Keywords: Computers & Electronics

14 Oct 2014
News

Making smart investments in companies that solve critical social needs

Lisa Hall (MBA 1993), managing director of impact investing for Anthos Asset Management, talks about her work overseeing a financial portfolio of social enterprises that guarantee a financial return along with addressing critical social needs, such as a company that... View Details

01 Sep 2009
News

Bold Idea Takes Off

Falik Photo Courtesy Abby Falik As a teenager, Abby Falik (MBA ’08) spent a summer living in a rural Nicaraguan village, an experience that inspired her to dream of ways she could help other young people have meaningful experiences in... View Details

Keywords: Social Assistance; Health, Social Assistance

Paul Henson

Henson took a small, regional telephone company in Nebraska and transformed it into the number three telecommunications company in the United States. When Henson joined United Utilities, it had 500,000 customers, served 500 rural... View Details

Keywords: Communications

2004
Chapter

The City and the Countryside: Economy, State and Socialist Legacies in the Vietnamese Labor Market

Keywords: History; Economic Systems; Human Capital; Urban Scope; Rural Scope

Citation

23 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

China’s 60-Year Road from Revolution to World Power

simplistic class analysis, that the countryside was the proper place for peasants, the cities for workers, would lead to the system of nationwide household registration and internal passports known as "hukou," which would consign View Details

Keywords: by William C. Kirby

12 Jul 2018
News

In the Market for Environmental Change

provide maple syrup to local school breakfast programs. Lots of kids in rural places, and certainly in rural Vermont, are coming to school without having had an adequate start to the day. It's been a... View Details

21 Dec 2017
News

A Decent Place to Live

housing in the public realm, as well as just running as efficiently as we can. “I spent the last 10 years before Habitat working on rural poverty and rural hunger, which largely centers on agricultural... View Details

Web

Exploring value-based care: My summer internship with Main Street Health - Recruiting

Nashville-based startup focused on facilitating value-based care for rural Medicare populations. Main Street Health works to bridge the gap in health care access for rural communities by establishing... View Details

21 Sep 2015
News

A Sustainable Success Story

Robb Turner (MBA 1990) and his wife, Lydia, were looking for a place to build a family vacation retreat in 2009 when they found 800 acres of pristine hardwood forest in rural Dover Plains, New York. “The land was stunning—completely... View Details

01 Mar 2017
News

Air Time

the world. (photo courtesy of Rich Wilson) Good morning, from the Pacific Ocean! #VG2016 #sitesALIVE Cited “Transmitting energy from rural wind farms across long distances to large cities is a big obstacle. I figured the world didn’t need... View Details

24 Apr 2014
News

A taste of home leads to jobs creation and community improvements

In a small, undercapitalized cheese manufacturing operation in rural Wisconsin, Paul Scharfman (AB 1976, MBA 1979) saw the opportunity to develop a variety of specialty cheeses that would appeal to the palates of the growing population of... View Details

Profile

Gary Shi

focusing on microfinance that helps farmers improve their farms, improve their lives.” Gary has been back to China in both his winter and spring breaks to “learn more about what’s happening in rural areas.” For his summer internship, he... View Details

02 Mar 2020
News

Cheese Whiz

through a range of initiatives, including a complimentary employee shuttle service, free and subsidized child care, and classes in emotional intelligence. “Rural America is the Detroit of 2008,” Scharfman said. “As a model for revitalizing View Details

Keywords: manufacturing; labor; innovation; cheese; Food Manufacturing; Manufacturing

15 Nov 2016
News

Enabling the Dream of Building A Healthy Future for India

inadequacy of facilities in rural areas. “Basic health care is not accessible to a majority of Indian people,” she observes, noting that conditions in remote villages “drain life and productivity” from the entire country. In contrast, in... View Details

01 Jun 2017
News

Starting Lineup: Values Proposition

designed to be inexpensive and widely available. Saathi, the winner of the 2014 HBS New Venture Competition in the social enterprise track, began distribution in 2016 and launched its #OneMillionPads program to donate pads to the women of View Details

01 May 2013
News

Experience of a Lifetime

Growing up in rural North Carolina between two towns with fewer than 300 people combined, Duke Buchan dreamed big. After living in Spain during high school and college, and earning a BA in economics and Spanish at the University of North... View Details

12 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

The Untold Story of ‘Green’ Entrepreneurs

In the 1920s, on pitch black nights in rural eastern Montana, the farmhouse owned by the parents of brothers Marcellus and Joe Jacobs stood out for one reason: it had light, although located far from power lines and gasoline supplies. It was a beacon in the dark that... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

24 Apr 2014
News

Creating a path out of poverty through entrepreneurship

Annie Bertrand (MBA 2007) tallks about helping create the India School Fund to integrate entrepreneurship skills with other educational goals to give poor rural Indian children a path out of poverty. (Published April 2014) View Details

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