Publications

December 2009 (Revised September 2014)
Case

TD Canada Trust

By: Dennis Campbell and Brent Kazan

The case illustrates the role of performance measurement and analytics in translating TD-Canada Trust's service model of "comfortable banking" into operational terms. In 2000, in a banking market where consumers and regulators were typically hostile to mergers and... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Commercial Banking; Profit; Balanced Scorecard; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Banking Industry; Canada

May 2020 (Revised March 2022)
Case

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic and the Global Economy (A)

By: Alberto Cavallo and Christian Godwin

In April 2020, the world struggled to contain the exponential escalation of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Dozens of countries had imposed restrictions on travel, work, and social gatherings. A large share of the global population was under lockdowns and... View Details

22 Jan 2021
News

An entrepreneurial approach to ‘possibility government’

Rational Habit Formation

Regular handwashing with soap is believed to have substantial impacts on child health in the developing world. Most handwashing campaigns have failed, however, to establish and maintain a regular practice of handwashing. Motivated by scholarship that suggests... View Details

April 2025
Case

Techint: Strategic Choices for Community Impact

By: Lauren Cohen, Virak Prum, Kenneth Charman, Pedro Levindo and Mariana Cal

In early 2024 Erika Bienek, Chief Community Relations Officer at Techint, had to decide whether to invest in a new company-owned and operated technical school in Veracruz, Mexico, or invest instead in strengthening the city’s public education system. Techint, a global... View Details

Keywords: Technical Institutes; Community Relations; Social Impact; Argentina; Mexico; Brazil; Conglomerate; Stakeholder Management; Government And Business; Community Impact; Philanthropy; Business Conglomerates; Business Subsidiaries; Business Headquarters; Family Business; Decision Making; Private Sector; Public Sector; Education; Curriculum and Courses; Middle School Education; Secondary Education; Teaching; Training; Learning; Energy; Engineering; Construction; Values and Beliefs; Geography; Global Range; Local Range; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Globalized Firms and Management; Government Legislation; Recruitment; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Knowledge; Resource Allocation; Industry Clusters; Infrastructure; Family Ownership; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Business and Community Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business and Government Relations; Creativity; Reputation; Social and Collaborative Networks; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Poverty; Strategy; Construction Industry; Education Industry; Energy Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Steel Industry; Europe; Italy; Latin America; North and Central America; Mexico; North America; United States; South America; Argentina; Buenos Aires; Brazil

27 Jun 2016
News

Food Stamp Entrepreneurs

17 May 2021
News

Key Inflation Gauge Overstating Prices, Harvard’s Cavallo Says

Article

The Ecosystem of Shared Value

By: Mark R. Kramer and Marc W. Pfitzer

Governments, NGOs, companies, and community members must all be involved in programs to create shared value, yet they work more often in opposition than in alignment. A movement known as collective impact has facilitated successful collaborations in the social sector,... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Cooperation

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2022
Working Paper

The Limits of Decentralized Administrative Data Collection: Experimental Evidence from Colombia

By: Natalia Garbiras-Diaz and Tara Slough

States collect vast amounts of data for use in policymaking and public administration. To do so, central governments frequently solicit data from decentralized bureaucrats. Because central governments use these data in policymaking, decentralized bureaucrats may face... View Details

Keywords: Decentralization; Policy-making; Policy/economics; Policy Evaluation; Governance; Government Administration; Government and Politics; Government Legislation; Policy; Public Opinion; Analytics and Data Science; Latin America; South America; Colombia

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Article

Defining the Value Framework for Prostate Brachytherapy Using Patient-Centered Outcome Metrics and Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing

By: N.G. Thaker, T.J. Pugh, U. Mahmood, S. Choi, T.E. Spinks, N.E. Martin, T.T. Sio, R.J. Kudchadker, R. S. Kaplan, D.A. Kuban, D.A. Swanson, P.F. Orio, M.J. Zelefsky, B.W. Cox, L. Potters, T.A. Buchholz, T.W. Feeley and S.J. Frank

PURPOSE: Value, defined as outcomes over costs, has been proposed as a measure to evaluate prostate cancer (PCa) treatments. We analyzed standardized outcomes and time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) for prostate brachytherapy (PBT) to define a value... View Details

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10 Oct 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, October 10, 2017

groups across industries. The most common KPIs are closed deals and salesperson performance against quota, which, on average, firms measure monthly. But a closed deal is an outcome and lagging indicator. This article discusses how some... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

25 Jul 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas: July 25, 2017

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52954 July 2017 Public Choice Who Will Vote Quadratically? Voter Turnout and Votes Cast Under Quadratic Voting By: Kaplow, Louis, and Scott Duke Kominers Abstract—Who will vote quadratically... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

30 Aug 2016
First Look

August 30, 2016

technology: the desire to signal to others. We present a field experiment where participants can choose to give up money if they do not follow through with an action. When commitment choices are made public rather than kept private, we... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

06 Sep 2019
Blog Post

The Business of Medicine: MD/MBA Students Having an Impact

These Harvard Medical School (HMS) students are already making a difference in the health care community. Now, they are at HBS fine-tuning their leadership skills in preparation of receiving their MD/MBA. Each year, MD/MBA applicants... View Details

2018
Book

Food Citizenship: Food System Advocates in an Era of Distrust

By: Ray A. Goldberg

The global food system is the largest segment of the world's economy. As agribusiness-studies pioneer Ray Goldberg suggests, it is also the largest health system on the planet. And it is changing fast. Its size and importance to human, environmental, and economic... View Details

Keywords: Food; System; Global Range; Health; Environmental Sustainability; Development Economics; Partners and Partnerships; Public Opinion; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

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29 Oct 2015
News

Options to Promote Competitive Generics Markets in the United States

March 2014 (Revised November 2020)
Case

The Novartis Malaria Initiative

By: Michael Chu, Vincent Marie Dessain and Emilie Billaud

The Novartis Malaria Initiative was designed, as a result of a precedent–setting agreement with the World Health Organization in 2001, to provide a breakthrough treatment for malaria—"at no profit"—for public health systems. What had begun as an exemplary act of... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Product Marketing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Enterprise; Pharmaceutical Industry; Switzerland; Africa; Nigeria

2020
Working Paper

What Can Economics Say About Alzheimer's Disease?

By: Amitabh Chandra, Courtney Coile and Corina Mommaerts

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) affects one in ten people aged 65 or older and is the most expensive disease in the United States. We describe the central economic questions raised by AD. While there is overlap with the economics of aging, the defining features of the... View Details

Keywords: Health Disorders; Health Care and Treatment; Economics