Publications

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30 Apr 2020
Book

Fighting Climate Change Requires a New Capitalism

Rebecca Henderson spent her young adult years living two lives. At work, she preached the risks of resisting change to MBA students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, drawing on lessons she learned while watching factories close as a management consultant.... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Energy

01 Jun 2022
What Do You Think?

Is Stakeholder Management Facing New Headwinds?

debate between economists such as the Chicago school’s Milton Friedman, who argued that the sole purpose of business is to generate profit for (and presumably transfer wealth to) shareholders by any legal View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

29 Nov 2017
Research & Ideas

How to Succeed in Business (According to a 15th Century Trade Merchant)

and principles of trade; the role of religion; civic duties, which includes chapters on topics such as modesty and fairness; and a number of domestic matters, from the... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

2015
Report

The Challenge of Shared Prosperity: Findings of Harvard Business School's 2015 Survey on U.S. Competitiveness

By: Jan Rivkin, Karen G. Mills and Michael E. Porter

In the 2015 survey on U.S. competitiveness, HBS alumni weigh in on the current state and future trajectory of U.S. competitiveness as well as the structural strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. business environment. In addition, alumni delve deeper into two aspects of... View Details

Keywords: Competitiveness; U.S. Competitiveness; Shared Prosperity; Wealth; Competition; United States

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28 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Six Lessons from Mobile Money Ventures in Developing Countries

Mobile money operators struggle A growing number of companies are seeking to provide a level of financial access that is considered key to lifting people out of poverty and driving economic growth. A few... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Financial Services; Telecommunications

August 2022 (Revised November 2024)
Case

Boston Impact Initiative: Investing in Local Change

By: Emily R. McComb, Amy Klopfenstein and Mel Martin

In fall 2021, Aliana Piñeiro, impact director at Boston Impact Initiative (BII) discovered that an entrepreneur the organization was considering for an investment had failed to disclose pre-existing debt with another lender. Although the business scored highly on BII’s... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Finance; Investment; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Relationships; Business and Community Relations; Society; Social Issues; Wealth and Poverty; Wealth; Poverty; Risk Management; Financial Services Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Boston

September 2012 (Revised February 2013)
Case

micro Home Solutions: A Social Housing Initiative in India

By: William R. Kerr and Alexis Brownell

mHS is a social enterprise for the provision of affordable housing in India. After India's microfinance industry collapses, mHS needs to reposition itself for continued operations and long-term growth. View Details

Keywords: India; Loans; Development; Micro Finance; Entrepreneurship; Housing; Social Enterprise; Poverty; India

January 2015 (Revised December 2015)
Case

Mauboussin

By: Anat Keinan, Sandrine Crener and Audrey Azoulay

Mauboussin is a French jewelry brand founded in 1827 in Paris. In the 1920s, the company earned a huge notoriety for capturing the aesthetic and emotional dimension of the Art Deco movement in its design and gained a worldwide reputation for innovation and expertise in... View Details

April 2022
Case

Connecting Students in Chattanooga (A)

By: Jan W. Rivkin and Manjari Raman

As COVID-19 hit and school buildings closed across America in the spring of 2020, tens of thousands of K-12 students in Chattanooga’s Hamilton County lacked the high-quality Internet service required to connect them to remote education. Bryan Johnson, superintendent... View Details

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

June 2015
Case

1996 Welfare Reform in the United States

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Katrina Flanagan and Alastair Su

On August 22, 1996, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)—a dramatic reform of the American system of economic assistance for the poor that, as its title suggested, attempted to... View Details

Keywords: Welfare State; Public Goods; Moral Hazard; Median Voter Theorem; Poverty; Welfare; Public Administration Industry; United States

03 May 2010
Research & Ideas

What Is the Future of MBA Education?

new book, Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads. Employing a wealth of interviews and quantitative data, their book takes the first comprehensive approach in decades to examine the evolving... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

15 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Businesses Beware: The World Is Not Flat

and, more broadly, social insurance. History shows that support for free trade tends to be fragile in the absence of such programs. Emphasize upgrading and productivity growth as the focus of public as well as business policy. These are... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

13 Sep 2010
Research & Ideas

The Consumer Appeal of Underdog Branding

distributions of income and wealth have grown more unequal, and rates of socioeconomic mobility have declined. Millions of households have had to work longer hours, add... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

30 Aug 2004
Research & Ideas

Real Estate: The Most Imperfect Asset

greatest source of wealth for most families. In this interview Segel discusses the importance and fascination of real estate, and three important trends remaking the industry:... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Construction; Real Estate

September 2024
Article

Investing in the Next Generation: The Long-Run Impacts of a Liquidity Shock

By: Patrick Agte, Arielle Bernhardt, Erica M. Field, Rohini Pande and Natalia Rigol

How do poor entrepreneurs trade off investments in business enterprises versus children's human capital, and how do these choices influence intergenerational socio-economic mobility? To examine this, we exploit experimental variation in household income resulting from... View Details

Keywords: Socio-economic Mobility; Entrepreneurship; Education; Income; Literacy; Poverty

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26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

small part of the larger whole. To a certain extent, this is because of the advantages of specialization that Adam Smith identified in pin manufacturing as long ago as 1776 in The Wealth of Nations. However, it goes beyond the economies... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

Article

From Blood Diamonds to Dirty Gold: How to Buy Gold Less Tainted by Mercury

By: Kristin Sippl

This is a quick and easy news article on the link between poverty, mercury pollution, and gold mining. It explains the problems in the jewelry industry as well as public and civil society attempts to address them. View Details

Keywords: Mining; Pollutants; Poverty; Social Issues