Small business - Publications - Faculty & Research

21 May 2020
Research & Ideas

Fighting the COVID Blues: Advice from Business Research

We asked Harvard Business School experts who study well-being to share strategies for coping with this unsettling period to prevent the coronavirus blues from taking a huge toll, both personally and professionally. “You're not going to be... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman and Danielle Kost

Fast Answer

Black Business Leaders and Entrepreneurship

and by survey/frequency. United States Census: County Business Patterns - Annual economic data by industry in small areas of the country. Tables and maps that include industry-wide or regional... View Details

22 Jul 2002
Research & Ideas

How Business Strategy Tamed the “Invisible Hand”

Until the nineteenth century, the scope for applying (imperfectly) competitive thinking to business situations appeared to be limited: Intense competition had emerged in many lines of business, but individual firms apparently often lacked... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat

14 May 2008
Research & Ideas

Getting Down to the Business of Creativity

business world. Yet any entrepreneur can attest to the creative power required to build an organization where none existed before. "Look, I made a hat /Where there never was a hat," sings Georges Seurat in the musical Sunday in... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail; Apparel & Accessories; Fashion; Entertainment & Recreation

10 Mar 2017
News

The Business of Lego Batman

weekends in a row. He spoke with associate editor Julia Hanna about everything from his approach to a film’s business plan, to the challenges of managing internal growth on his teams—and how the Lego Movie is like The Avengers. READ MORE... View Details

Keywords: LEGO; Lego

16 Nov 2017
News

The Business of Social Justice

A born adventurer with a passion for social justice, Heidi Brooks (MBA 2003) uses her business savvy to effect social change. Since 2014 Brooks has served as chief operating officer of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, a... View Details

Keywords: Jennifer Myers

06 Feb 2013
News

Want to Use Business to Make a Difference? Get Experience (But Not Too Much)

11 Aug 2014
HBS Case

The Business of Behavioral Economics

choices, those efforts should be enough to change your behavior. If you know the consequences but still get fat, you must want to be overweight. “Losing $100 is more painful than gaining $100 is pleasurable” Of course not, say Leslie John and Michael Norton, professors... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage; Health

June 2016
Teaching Note

N12 Technologies: Building an Organization and Building a Business

By: David A. Garvin

N12 Technologies was a startup founded in 2010 that employed nanotechnology to manufacture a patented material to improve the performance of carbon fiber composites, which were used in a wide variety of products, ranging from bicycles to automobiles to aircraft parts.... View Details

Keywords: Startup; Organizational Structure; Nanotechnology; Business Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Management Systems; Commercialization; Industrial Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; Bicycle Industry; Transportation Industry; United States

Citation

Purchase

12 Aug 2002
Op-Ed

Using Big Business to Fight Poverty

mistrust of global corporations and the threat they pose to sovereignty, having such a UN imprimatur would be crucial. Once the charter was adopted, a select group of global corporations, called WDC Partners, would establish the WDC itself, which they would then own.... View Details

Keywords: by George C. Lodge

Blog

The Harvard Business School Faculty Summer Reader 2023

research goals. To further deepen my understanding of habit formation, I'm excited to revisit Atomic Habits by James Clear. This impactful book explores the power of small habits and their profound influence on personal and professional... View Details

Web

HBS Archives Collections - Business Education For Women At Harvard University | Harvard Business School

Bibliography Baker Library Archives Schlesinger Library Archives HBS Archives, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration Records,... View Details

Web

Sustainable Business Strategy Course | HBS Online

about systemic change when it's easy to be satisfied with small wins. Though the course is focused on the private sector, in my public sector job, I often reference the learnings when considering how best to work with View Details

Web

Community | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

Volunteer Corps The mission of the Volunteer Corps is to inspire, organize, and facilitate community volunteer programs for members of the Harvard Business School community. Our main programs include small... View Details

14 Nov 2019
Book

Lifting the Lid on Turkey's Hidden Business History

Turkey’s economic development story has always been something of a black box for scholars to understand, perhaps in part because many of the most successful business enterprises there have been in family hands and largely closed to public scrutiny. The authors of a new... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

01 Dec 2014
News

Case Study: Growing the Family Business

center the company remodeled, is expected to cost about $200,000 to break even.) The sector is not of interest to venture capital or many angels. The company is too small for private equity. There is not enough of a track record of cash... View Details

Keywords: childcare; Finance

01 Sep 2016
News

The Big Business of Little Loans

Illustration by Alvaro Dominguez Illustration by Alvaro Dominguez Before launching Funding Societies, a crowdfunding platform for small businesses in Singapore and Indonesia, Kelvin Teo and Reynold Wijaya... View Details

Keywords: Nancy Miller

Web

Managing the Business | Working Knowledge

Managing the Business Explore essential insights for managing business challenges, from boosting small business credit access to operational... View Details

07 Sep 2007
What Do You Think?

Are Elite Business Schools Fostering the Deprofessionalization of Management?

in September, From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, by one of my colleagues, Rakesh Khurana, may help explain it. Khurana traces the development of business schools from their early days in a small number of... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

June 2012 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Home Nursing of North Carolina

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

Ari Medoff's (HBS '11) goal was to control his own professional destiny by owning his own company. His search identified a suitable acquisition in Home Nursing of North Carolina, and he had negotiated a purchase price of $3.5 million, or 4.2x trailing EBITDA. Medoff... View Details