Agents - Publications - Faculty & Research

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Hamilton Hall | About

the United States . . . was the price of liberty.” He introduced plans for the First Bank of the United States, established in 1791, which was designed to be the financial agent of the Treasury Department. The Bank served as a depository... View Details

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Events - Business & Environment

between students, policy-makers, practitioners, academics, innovators, and activists, this conference seeks to evaluate existing systems, inspire agents of change, and start conversations around the multidisciplinary solutions we urgently... View Details

09 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Organizations

all. Everyone would act as a free agent in a winner-take-all contest. Opportunism and selfish political behavior would be rampant. A great deal of frantic effort would be expended—but little of it would be the kind of coordinated effort... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Lawrence & Nitin Nohria

25 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: Beauty Entrepreneur Madam Walker

by nearly 1,000 female sales agents across the country. How did Walker journey from the cotton fields to the status of an enterprising businesswoman, perhaps even the first self-made African American millionaire in the United States? Her... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Beauty & Cosmetics

28 Jan 2020
Book

Advanced Leadership Requires More Than Outside-The-Box Thinking

person can do it all. What do your discussions with leaders teach us about putting together a coalition? Kanter: I urge leaders to live by the Change Agent Rule of Three. In every situation, leaders must deal with three groups of... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

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Commodities, Currencies, and Balancing of the Trade Deficit - A Chronicle of the China Trade

the agent for opium and tea trade for Jardine, Matheson & Co. during the First Opium War. (In comparison to large British houses, the Heard firm’s earnings from the opium trade were relatively small.) 18 When Augustine Heard questioned... View Details

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AASU50 - Alumni

links related to African Americans in business, as well as links to the AASU50 celebration at HBS in 2018. African Americans at HBS Agents of Change: The Founding and Impact of the African-American Student Union, Harvard Business School... View Details

13 Feb 2006
Research & Ideas

When Gender Changes the Negotiation

trigger that may favor women over men is playing the role of agent (advocating for others) as opposed to playing the role of principal (advocating for themselves). Our research suggests that, as evident in the story of Maureen Park, women... View Details

Keywords: by Dina W. Pradel, Hannah Riley Bowles & Kathleen L. McGinn

Portrait Project

Janie McDonough

else it might have been just a messy whiteboard. As a kid, I worked at Flexo-Graphics—my dad’s small printing business—every weekend. Over time, I realized that his whiteboard wasn’t just a lesson in operations, but also an agent of... View Details

13 Jun 2011
HBS Case

Mobile Banking for the Unbanked

fundamental theorem of marketing: understand what your customers really want," Rangan says. To create a distribution channel, M-PESA franchised thousands of mom-and-pop convenience stores to act as M-PESA agents at their existing... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Banking; Communications; Telecommunications

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Fundraising - Alumni

Investors Society Class Agent or an HBS Class Ambassador. HBS Fund Investors Society Class Agent : These volunteers focus on recruiting and renewing HBS Fund Investors Society members, who make leadership... View Details

11 Mar 2024
News

In Harmony

student at HBS and sent it to one influential literary agent. “I was convinced I’d written the next great American novel and that she would be the one to shepherd it to fruition,” he says. The agent wrote back, pointing out some of the... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; photograph by Jun Michael Park

11 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Why Budgeting Kills Your Company

bested its Scandinavian rivals on return on equity, total shareholder return, cost-to-income ratio, and customer satisfaction. The Budget As An Agent Of Strategic Alignment Other experts are not as eager for a complete overhaul. Harvard's... View Details

Keywords: by Loren Gary

26 Sep 2011
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Lady Gaga

A&M Vice Chairman Steve Berman, Live Nation's global touring CEO Arthur Fogel, William Morris Endeavor agent Marc Geiger, and producer Vincent Herbert. Go Big or Go Home? In the autumn of 2009, Lady Gaga was set to go on the road with... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Entertainment & Recreation; Music

15 Jul 2019
Book

Many Executives Are Afraid of Finance. Here's How They Can Gain Confidence

by asymmetric information—in other words, managers have a lot of information, and investors don’t know if they can trust them. We’re all engaged in a large information game where agents don’t always do what their principals want them to.... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

28 May 2019
Research & Ideas

Investor Lawsuits Against Auditors Are Falling, and That's Bad News for Capital Markets

class (group of investors) to bring a suit has been weakened. This matters because the way US investors hold corporations and agents of corporations accountable is through class-action lawsuits. Investors that sue most often as lead... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services; Accounting

20 Aug 2008
Op-Ed

The Time is Right for Creative Capitalism

examples of where global capitalism is going. (RED) integrates the power of big business, new customer priorities, and the interconnected agents of social change, in the form of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.... View Details

Keywords: by Nancy Koehn

08 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: A Sense of Urgency

The enterprise continued to make money even as it turned slowly to lose market share in a post-monopoly world. The positive net income helped greatly in supporting complacency. In frustration, his change agents waited and waited for a... View Details

Keywords: by John P. Kotter

29 Jul 2013
Research & Ideas

A Manager’s Moral Obligation to Preserve Capitalism

entitled, but also obligated to do that. Not so fast, say Henderson and Ramanna. They argue managers have another interest, not just to serve as agents for their shareholders, but also to serve as agents for... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

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Research & Development, Project Code SX-70 - Edwin H. Land & Polaroid | Harvard Business School

activate the developer, and a standard fixing agent (hypo). Another set of rollers squeezed the negative-positive sandwich out of the camera, and a dry positive print was peeled away from the negative. Traditional photographic processing... View Details

Publications