Publications

September 1994
Case

Bob Fifer

By: David A. Thomas and Doug Cohen

Explores the life and concerns of Bob Fifer, HBS class of 1979 and CEO of Kaiser Associates. Explores the many influences on Bob's development and his subsequent career choices. It is written as a biography with extensive quotes from interviews with Bob. He describes... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Entrepreneurship; Identity; Leadership Style; Ethnicity; Management Teams

November 2002 (Revised May 2003)
Case

Education in Chile: A Venue for Individual, Business and Community Involvement

Describes the alliance between a private businessman in Chile and a municipality to manage the local public education system. Describes the institution of a performance-based culture, including the use of management tools to align visions and incentives among key... View Details

Keywords: Partners and Partnerships; Social Entrepreneurship; Social Issues; Education; Business and Community Relations; Education Industry; Chile

March 2016
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Doug Rauch and the Daily Table

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Peter Zimmerman and Penelope Rossano

Former Trader Joe’s President Doug Rauch developed an innovative idea to address the challenge of food insecurity, food waste, and nutrition. His concept was a new retail grocery model, offering nutritious affordable food to a food insecure population in the inner city... View Details

Keywords: Food Waste; Poverty; Food Security; Food Labeling; Nonprofit; Food; Social Entrepreneurship; Social Enterprise; Nonprofit Organizations; Nutrition; Health

October 2013
Case

FasterCures: Removing Barriers to Treatments

By: Richard G. Hamermesh and James Weber

In mid-2013, as FasterCures celebrated its 10th anniversary as a center of the Milken Institute, Executive Director Margaret Anderson thought about what the organization should do to ensure it had even more impact in its next 10 years. FasterCures was a non-profit... View Details

September 2007 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Still Leading (A): Issues in Transitioning to New Forms of Service Later in Life

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Lance Pierce

Identifies the challenges for experienced leaders who transition from their primary income-earning careers to a next phase of public service or social-purpose work, based on interviews and published sources. View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development; Personal Development and Career; Transition; Social Entrepreneurship; Social Enterprise; Society

November 2024
Supplement

Clara Wu Tsai and Brooklyn Loan Innovation (B)

By: Archie Jones, Mathieu Davis, Mourya Mamidala and Max Hancock

This (B) case provides an update on “Clara Wu Tsai and Brooklyn Loan Innovation (A)” View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Social Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Banks and Banking; United States; New York (city, NY)

29 Oct 2024
Cold Call Podcast

Can a Coffee Shop in Utah Help Solve Underemployment for People with Disabilities?

Keywords: Re: Richard S. Ruback

September 2002
Case

Seattle Public Schools, 1995-2002 (C1): Race, Class, and School Choice

Describes the abolition, starting in 1995, of Seattle's mandatory busing and desegregation program in favor of an in-district choice program. Presents the mechanics of Seattle's choice plan, including the controversial formulas that allocate space in the district's... View Details

Keywords: Management; Leadership; Income; Social Entrepreneurship; Race; Education; Education Industry; Seattle

Find at Harvard

25 Feb 2008
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Starting a Business

legitimacy, status, and reputation. Key concepts include: Small companies can grow by developing intangible social resources such as legitimacy, status, and reputation. In some cases the location of a new venture is a critical facilitator... View Details

24 Jun 2015
HBS Case

Upgrading School with a Startup Mentality

for-profit companies that have met "rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency." At present, there are only 1,281 B corps in the world, spread across 41 countries and 121... View Details

Keywords: Re: John Jong-Hyun Kim; Education

2013
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Laurent Adamowicz and Bon'App

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Juliane Calingo Schwetz and Patricia Bissett Higgins

After a successful career as Chairman and CEO of Paris-based luxury food company, Fauchon, Laurent Adamowicz, sought to reduce obesity and improve health outcomes. Adamowicz created a mobile application to provide consumers with more accessible and interpretable... View Details

Keywords: Nutritional Information; Obesity; Weight Loss; App Development; Business Startups; Nutrition; Health; Information; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Entrepreneurship; Social Enterprise; Information Technology Industry; Health Industry

June 2007 (Revised October 2009)
Case

Les is More, Times Four

By: Noam T. Wasserman and Rosy Fynn

"I've had enough! I've decided that I need to resign," read the email from the founder of Webpoint to the company's board of directors. Les Trachtman, the CEO of Webpoint, has to figure out how to react to the founder's "it's Trachtman or me" ultimatum. Webpoint was... View Details

Keywords: Conflict Management; Management Succession; Entrepreneurship

11 Jun 2019
Book

These Aren't Beach Books, but Managers Should Read Them Anyway

R. Kerr’s book explores why global talent flows matter to national economic development and security Trust: Creating the Foundation for Entrepreneurship in Developing CountriesLegal and social institutions... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

September 2009 (Revised August 2011)
Case

Root Capital

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Katharine Lee

Founded in 1999, Root Capital had loaned $150 million to nearly 250 small and growing businesses, mainly in Latin America. In 2009, as the organization launched a five-year, $55 million capital campaign, it had to determine a strategic path going forward in keeping... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Social Entrepreneurship; Capital; Financing and Loans; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Latin America

June 2020
Case

Career Karma: Growth in a Time of Global Uncertainty (A)

By: Laura Huang, Elizabeth Jiang and Brandon Yu

Career Karma is a startup focused on helping individuals looking to transition careers into computer engineering roles or similar fields by preparing them for formal technical training programs, or “coding bootcamps,” that would lead to a successful career pivot upon... View Details

03 Aug 2010
First Look

First Look: August 3

social cues from reputation stakeholders and from prominent third-party bureaucratic actors can serve as symbolic signals that can affect the decision making of regulatory agencies. Our findings suggest that while View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2018
Book

Varieties of Green Business: Industries, Nations and Time

By: Geoffrey Jones

Published at a time of ever-increasing warnings that the pace of climate change and other environmental changes risk making the Earth unsustainable within our own lifetimes, this book looks at the past of green business to identify lessons for the future. It provides... View Details

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October 2014
Case

CreditEase: Providing Credit and Financial Services for China's Underclass

By: Lena G. Goldberg, Paul Healy and Nancy Hua Dai

In 2013 Ning Tang, who in 2006 founded CreditEase as a broker of P2P loans to unbanked individuals and small businesses in China, confronts the challenges of rapid growth and expansion in a changing regulatory environment. CreditEase needs to develop technology to... View Details

Keywords: P2P Lending; HNW Products And Services; Business Growth; Business Start-ups; Government Regulation; Change Management; Credit; Microcredit; Banking; Innovation And Management; Developing Countries And Economies; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Law; Financing and Loans; Change; China