Publications

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03 May 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Big BRICs, Weak Foundations: The Beginning of Public Elementary Education in Brazil, Russia, India, and China, 1880-1930

Keywords: by Latika Chaudhary, Aldo Musacchio, Steven Nafziger & Se Yan

September 1998 (Revised September 2001)
Case

IBM's Reinventing Education (A)

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter

Describes IBM's national innovation strategy to transform K-12 public education through new solutions developed by IBM engineers and consultants using information technology. Examples are: data warehousing in Broward County, FL schools, tracking software for the... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise; Innovation Strategy; Information Technology; Education; Business and Community Relations; Education Industry; Education Industry; San Jose; Philadelphia; Ohio; Florida

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18 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

How Disruptive Innovation Changes Education

How can schools around the world educate their students better? What does the future hold? Most researchers who study these questions in the field of education peer through the lenses of sociology and View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

Web

Faculty Insights: Public Education Leadership Project | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

April 1997
Case

Private Management and Public Schools (B)

Examines the prospects for private management in U.S. public schools. Focuses on the education and business strategies of firms seeking to expand as a result of charter school legislation that allowed for-profit entities to enter and compete for students with access to... View Details

Keywords: For-Profit Firms; Public Sector; Value; Education; Business Strategy; Government and Politics; Education Industry; United States

March 1997
Case

Private Management and Public Schools (A)

Examines the prospects for private management in U.S. public schools. Introduces the U.S. system of education and the concerns driving the education reform process. Focuses on the education and business strategies of Education Alternatives, Inc. (EAI), Public... View Details

Keywords: For-Profit Firms; Value; Education; Government and Politics; Education Industry; United States

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March 2018
Case

Summit Public Schools (A)

By: John J-H Kim and Aldo Sesia

Summit Public Schools was a very successful charter management organization with schools in California and Washington State. The students came from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, many from economically disadvantaged households. While nearly all of its students... View Details

Keywords: K-12; Online Learning; Virtual Learning; Blended Learning; Secondary Education; Middle School Education; Early Childhood Education; Learning; Business Model; Performance Improvement; Technology

February 2004
Case

Aspire Public Schools

Set in the fall of 2003, covers managerial challenges facing the CEO and COO of Aspire Public Schools, a nonprofit charter school management company. In operation since 1999 and funded by prominent national foundations and venture philanthropies, Aspire operates 10... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business or Company Management; Expansion; Social Entrepreneurship; Education; Education Industry; California

Jan 2014
Case

StriveTogether: Reinventing the Local Education Ecosystem

StriveTogether is building a network of communities that use Collective Impact as a way for the business community and other stakeholders to collaborate to improve public education in a locale. The leaders... View Details

2009
Other Unpublished Work

Financing Higher Education in Australia

By: David Moss and Stephanie Lo

Even before Australian lawmakers abolished university tuition in 1973, students in Australia had long benefited from low tuition and large government subsidies. By the early 1980s, however, the nation's universities faced growing budget challenges and an apparent... View Details

Keywords: Higher Education; Financing and Loans; Government and Politics; Australia

08 Mar 2017
Blog Post

Education Sector Opportunities at HBS

there). However, there’s a lively and robust education sector community within Harvard Business School and you can learn a valuable set of skills and perspectives to take into the education field. For... View Details

11 Jul 2017
Blog Post

Summer Snapshot: Interning in the Education Sector

summer, I'm interning at KIPP, a public charter school network that aims to lower the achievement gap in K-12 education by serving underserved communities. I'm currently working on two projects: developing a... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit / Government

December 2016
Case

Public Mission, Private Funding: The University of California, Berkeley

By: William C. Kirby and Joycelyn W. Eby

UC Berkley, long known as one of the leading public universities in both the U.S. and the world, has seen turbulent times recently. While student enrollment and costs have increased steadily in recent years, the school, which has been fiercely proud of its public... View Details

01 Jun 2013
News

Education Innovation

system: "By practically any measure, the quality of public K–12 education in the United States is dismal." And the stakes are high. As Childress, deputy director of education... View Details

Keywords: Educational Services; Educational Services

January 2002
Case

IBM's Reinventing Education (B): West Virginia

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Daniel Galvin

Describes IBM's ongoing Reinventing Education initiative to improve K-12 public education via information technology developed by IBM's engineers and consultants. Focuses on one site, West Virginia, to reveal how IBM and the state created a mutually beneficial... View Details

Keywords: Programs; Partners and Partnerships; Information Technology; Education; Business and Community Relations; Education Industry; Education Industry; West Virginia

2014
Working Paper

Mobilizing Culture for Public Action: Community Participation and Child Rights in Rural Uttar Pradesh

By: Akshay Mangla

Community-based initiatives that work to empower the poor and promote their participation have gained strong support among scholars and practitioners of development. Yet the questionable assumptions about culture and development that inform these initiatives render it... View Details

Keywords: India; Culture; Child Rights; Caste Relations; Child Education; Child Health; India

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September 2019 (Revised June 2020)
Case

2U: Higher Education Rewired

By: Yael Grushka-Cockayne and Karim R. Lakhani

In its 2019 Partner Symposium, 2U, an online program management provider (OPM), showcased its new vision: “Career. Curriculum. Continuum. A construct for lifelong learning in the 21st century.” 2U, founded in 2008 and went public in 2014, was looking to expand beyond... View Details

Keywords: Digital Innovation; Architectural Innovation; Make V. Buy; Learning; Higher Education; Internet and the Web; Innovation Strategy; Transformation; Digital Transformation

2021
Working Paper

Who Closed the Schools?

By: Joshua D. Coval

This paper examines the differences in characteristics between U.S. public schools that opted for virtual instruction because of COVID-19, and schools that did not. Much of the variation can be explained by measures of the degree to which districts favored teachers... View Details

Keywords: Public Education; COVID-19; Virtual Learning; Education; Health Pandemics; Teaching; Internet and the Web; Policy; Outcome or Result; United States