Publications

November 1998 (Revised July 2000)
Case

Deere & Company: Sustaining Value

By: Malcolm S. Salter and Marlowe Dayley

The question facing Deere & Co. is whether or not to adopt some of the organizational technologies of private equity investors (decentralized equity holdings, use of leverage to control the disposition of cash flows, the externalization of the capital budgeting... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Decision Choices and Conditions; Cash Flow; Private Equity; Wealth; Adoption; Manufacturing Industry

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

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Poverty; Social Issues; Human Needs; Segmentation

April 2022
Supplement

Connecting Students in Chattanooga (B)

By: Jan W. Rivkin and Manjari Raman

Keywords: K-12 Education; Pandemic; COVID-19; Accessibility; Education; Urban Development; Wealth and Poverty; Education Industry; Tennessee

June 2025
Article

Social Security and Trends in Wealth Inequality

By: Sylvain Catherine, Max Miller and Natasha Sarin

Recent influential work finds large increases in inequality in the U.S. based on measures of wealth concentration that notably exclude the value of social insurance programs. This paper shows that top wealth shares have not changed much over the last three decades when... View Details

Keywords: Wealth; Equality and Inequality; Taxation; Insurance; Welfare

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2022
Working Paper

On the Origins of Our Discontent

By: Rawi Abdelal and Thomas J. DeLong

Signs of discontent with global capitalism and national capitalisms abound. Unless we find ways to create better jobs and then improve those jobs further with empathic management and thoughtful mentoring, then we will be unable to create a more stable, purposeful... View Details

Keywords: Capitalism; Human Needs; Public Opinion; Social Issues; Wealth and Poverty; Globalization; Government and Politics

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01 Dec 2018
News

Raising the Barrio

Buenos Aires’s Villa 31 is within sight of Retiro, one of the wealthiest enclaves in Argentina’s capital. But the villa miseria—the Argentinian term for an unplanned shantytown—is a world away. The neighborhood is sandwiched between the largest railway station in... View Details

Keywords: April White

Portrait Project

Faya Peng

I want to be a servant. To show compassion. To love. I remember visiting grandparents in Taiwan as a young child. I will never forget the men, lying fully prostrate on the filthy ground in the open market, begging for money. I can still feel the weight of their shame... View Details

01 Mar 2004
News

HBS Alumni Explore Tanzania

poverty in developing countries. Timothy A. Piper (MBA ’88), Techno-Serve’s deputy country director, later invites us to dinner at his home in Dar es Salaam with a special guest: the acting U.S. ambassador to Tanzania. As the days go by,... View Details

Keywords: Susan Young; Amusement, Gambling, and Recreation Industries; Arts, Entertainment; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

October 2010 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Bessemer Trust: Guardians of Capital

By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen

Henry Phipps, Jr. made his fortune in the steel industry alongside one of America's most celebrated entrepreneurs—Andrew Carnegie. His wealth was administered in the form of trusts, which he hoped would provide a stream of income for his family and their descendants... View Details

Keywords: Wealth; Asset Management; Family Business; Business History; Income; Entrepreneurship; Capital; United States

01 Dec 2018
News

Hard Choices

Dear alumni and friends, We celebrated the opening of Klarman Hall on October 1 and used the occasion to spark discussion and spur thinking on important issues of the day. Beth and Seth (MBA 1982) Klarman, in providing the gift for this remarkable new building, had... View Details

Keywords: Seth Klarman (MBA 1982)

September 2010
Teaching Note

Acumen Fund: Measurement in Impact Investing (TN) (A) and (B)

By: Alnoor Ebrahim

Teaching Note for 310011 and 310017. View Details

Keywords: Projects; For-Profit Firms; Networks; Health Care and Treatment; Performance Evaluation; Investment Portfolio; Asset Pricing; Competition; Multinational Firms and Management; Venture Capital; Investment Return; Poverty; Financial Services Industry; Kenya

21 Nov 2019
Blog Post

The Power of Business in the Energy Transition

provide cheap, abundant energy to local communities that can simultaneously alleviate poverty while replacing biomass as a fuel source. Attendees enjoyed balanced perspectives from panelists on topics from sustainability efforts in... View Details

Keywords: Manufacturing; Energy / Cleantech

Profile

Nneka Ezeigwe

background. My current ambition is to be based in Africa, working in a managerial capacity, in a position of control to make meaningful contributions to the economy. A lot of our Africa-focused cases at HBS are sad – about corruption or pollution or View Details

Keywords: Manufacturing/Energy

November 2023
Case

Nourishing Communities: Brighter Bites Approach to Childhood Nutrition

By: David E. Bell, Forest Reinhardt and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

In September 2023, Brighter Bites, a Houston-based non-profit that distributed fresh produce and nutrition education in underserved communities across 11 cities and 5 states, grappled with identifying the best path forward for continued growth. Brighter Bites proved... View Details

Keywords: Nutrition; Growth and Development Strategy; Logistics; Nonprofit Organizations; Human Needs; Poverty; Houston