Publications

July 2001 (Revised March 2002)
Case

Progressive Insurance: Disclosure Strategy

By: Amy P. Hutton and James Weber

Progressive Insurance had refused to play Wall Street's earning game. Progressive didn't manage reported earnings nor did management give guidance to analysts. Management then considered taking their unique disclosure strategy one step further to become the first to... View Details

Keywords: Earnings Management; Stocks; Corporate Disclosure; Insurance; Volatility; Insurance Industry; United States

February 2012 (Revised June 2013)
Case

Moving to Universal Coverage: Health Care Reform in Massachusetts

By: Michael E. Porter and Jennifer F Baron

State health care reform in Massachusetts has involved a phased process, focusing first on coverage expansion and then turning to delivery system innovation and cost containment. In 2006, the state adopted an individual mandate to obtain health care coverage which,... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Business and Government Relations; Insurance; Massachusetts

September 2015 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Emdeon's Acquisition of Change Healthcare: Innovating Transparency Solutions for Health Care Consumers

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Jeet Guram and Aanchal Raj

Case describes acquisition of Change Healthcare, which provides health care cost and quality information, by Emdeon, a health information exchange, and discusses health care transparency. Emdeon is a billion-dollar company that has grown through acquisitions; at its... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Healthcare Industry; Healthcare Innovation; Health Care and Treatment; Acquisition; Integration; Analytics and Data Science; Mergers and Acquisitions; Competitive Strategy; Health Industry; United States

2008
Book

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

By: Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson traces the historical evolution of the financial system, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls "Planet Finance." In doing so, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history, from the... View Details

Keywords: Financial History; Money; Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Investment; Globalization

Research Summary

Relative Thinking and Consumer Choice

By: Joshua R. Schwartzstein

Fixed differences appear smaller when compared to large differences. Professor Schwartzstein has proposed a model of relative thinking, in which a person weighs a given change by less when he compares it to a larger range. Relative thinking implies that a person is... View Details

27 Mar 2018
HBS Seminar

Jeffrey Clemens, University of San Diego, Economics

July 2018
Article

Reimagining Health Data Exchange: An Application Programming Interface-Enabled Roadmap for India

By: Satchit Balsari, Alexander Fortenko MD, MPH, Joaquin A. Blaya PhD, Adrian Gropper MD, Malavika Jayaram LLM, Rahul Matthan LLM, Ram Sahasranam, Mark Shankar MD, Suptendra N. Sarbadhikari PhD, Barbara Bierer, Kenneth D. Mandl MD, Sanjay Mehendale MD, MPH and Tarun Khanna

In February 2018, the Government of India announced a massive public health insurance scheme extending coverage to 500 million citizens, in effect making it the world’s largest insurance program. To meet this target, the government will rely on technology to... View Details

Keywords: Health Information Exchange; India; Health APIs; Health Care and Treatment; Information; Analytics and Data Science; Information Technology; Health Industry; India

Read Now

April 2017
Case

Luminopia: Improving Treatment for Visual Disorders

By: Doug J. Chung and Sarah Mehta

Luminopia—a start-up founded in January 2016 by three Harvard College freshmen—uses virtual reality technology to treat amblyopia (more commonly called “lazy eye”), the single biggest cause of visual disorders among children. By February 2017, the three founders had... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Virtual Reality; Startup; Marketing; Marketing Channels; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Business Startups; Price; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Cambridge; Massachusetts; United States

January 2016
Case

Savannah Informatics

By: Kevin Schulman

John Muthee and Justus Paul are recent graduates of medical school and a unique program in clinical informatics. They return to Nairobi, Kenya with a passion to make a difference in their community. They have a team they know well, but need to find a project concept... View Details

Keywords: Information Systems; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Kenya; Africa

01 Jan 2020
News

2020 Vision: What to Expect in Healthcare Finance Over the Next Decade

August 2020 (Revised July 2021)
Case

From Farm Boy to Financier: Eiichi Shibusawa and the Creation of Modern Japan

By: Geoffrey Jones, Gabriel Ellsworth and Ryo Takahashi

This case describes the career of Eiichi Shibusawa (1840-1931), a serial entrepreneur who is widely known as the “father of Japanese capitalism” and as a pioneer of socially responsible investment. Born in feudal Edo Japan, following the Meiji Restoration in 1868... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Personal Development and Career; Business History; Ethics; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Economy; Society; Japan

Reza Satchu is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurship Management Unit at the Harvard Business School where he teaches The Entrepreneurial Manager, The Founder Mindset and Founder Launch. He is also the Founder, Managing Partner and majority shareholder of... View Details

How to Make Climate Risk Good Business

The risk profiles of many real estate markets are rapidly increasing globally. Insurers and mortgage brokers are taking note and adjusting their offering based on widely available climate data and predictive analytics. John Macomber suggests that consumers and... View Details

2 Dec 2021
Interview

How To Make Healthcare Innovation Happen

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

Regina Herzlinger has been called “the godmother of consumer-driven healthcare” because of her groundbreaking scholarly articles and books on the subject. As a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School for nearly 50 years, her focus has supported... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention

25 Aug 2009
News

An Ounce of Prevention

02 Feb 2021
Blog Post

Finding My Focus in Health care Amidst a Global Pandemic

decade, legislators have passed countless health care policies that impact how hospitals, insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers deliver services to patients. Even more, the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has uncovered major... View Details

February 2023
Article

Increasing the Demand for Workers with a Criminal Record

By: Zoë Cullen, Will Dobbie and Mitchell Hoffman

State and local policies increasingly restrict employers’ access to criminal records, but without addressing the underlying reasons that employers may conduct criminal background checks. Employers may thus still want to ask about a job applicant’s criminal record... View Details

Keywords: Criminal Record; Hiring; Background Checks; Recruitment; Insurance