Publications

19 Dec 2014
Research & Ideas

China’s Complicated Relationship With Mother Nature

on this issue for the first time. After all, if the US and China are not part of a solution, there will be no solution." The shift for China won't be an easy one. It will require drastic changes in... View Details

Keywords: Re: William C. Kirby; Manufacturing

July 2023 (Revised January 2025)
Teaching Note

Sian Flowers: Fresher by Sea?

By: Willy Shih and Michael W. Toffel

07 Aug 2007
First Look

First Look: August 7, 2007

effect a change in asset allocation. The market for real estate derivatives is beginning to grow quite rapidly and the firm is trying to understand how to use these instruments in managing its business.... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

06 Jul 2010
Research & Ideas

Renewable Energy: Winds at Our Back?

When American energy entrepreneur Jim Gordon envisioned the first offshore wind farm lining the horizon a few miles off the coast of the eastern United States, he perhaps did not factor in blowback from almost every angle. Gordon's nearly 10-year battle to gain... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

October 2022
Case

Single.Earth

By: Rembrand Koning and Emer Moloney

Estonian greentech company Single.Earth is launching a nature-backed token that is linked to and funds the protection of a specific plot fo land. The first landowners had been onboarded to the company's Digital Twin, a virtual representation of the planet's natural... View Details

Keywords: Alternative Assets; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Natural Resources; Pollution; Analytics and Data Science; Marketing; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Markets; Market Timing; Strategy; Green Technology Industry; Estonia

12 Apr 2010
Research & Ideas

One Report: Better Strategy through Integrated Reporting

looks like an "other commitment" might turn out to be value-enhancing for shareholders, particularly since the state of the world will change in unpredictable ways. One Report gives management the opportunity to clarify the dividing line... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

08 Jun 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Twenty-first Century Skill: Trading Carbon Credits

Cap and trade has become an increasingly popular mechanism used by governments to induce green behavior among corporate polluters, with news emerging almost daily. Just recently New Jersey Governor Chris Christie withdrew his state from... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Energy; Utilities

19 Jun 2018
Research Event

Has Environmental Sustainability Lost its Relevance?

iPhoto For businesses and other organizations seeking to overcome roadblocks to sustainability over the last few decades, much can be learned from the debates I heard at the recent Harvard Business School conference, Understanding View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey G. Jones; Energy

17 Dec 2020
Research & Ideas

The 10 Most Popular Stories of 2020

the large team of researchers looking at COVID-19’s impact on issues of work and organizational psychology, prompting changes for practitioners and human resources... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

18 Feb 2014
First Look

First Look: February 18

and that they needed to commit themselves to the dual goal of producing benefits for society and their firms' bottom lines-to creating "shared value." But the specific actions they could take to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2012 (Revised February 2014)
Case

Low-Carbon, Indigenous Innovation in China

By: Richard H.K. Vietor

For the past seven years or so, the Chinese government has been powering ahead with industrial policies to promote low-carbon energy technologies—wind, solar, electric batteries and vehicles, nuclear power, and even carbon capture and sequestration. In 2009, the... View Details

Keywords: Energy; Renewables; Carbon; Environment; Industrial Policy; Competitiveness; Environmental Sustainability; Policy; Renewable Energy; Competition; Globalized Markets and Industries; Energy Industry; China

01 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

How Politics Drives Business Decisions in a Polarized Nation

so,” Kempf says. “We see it in views of the economy or views of certain risks, like the risk posed by certain political events or climate change or by the pandemic. There’s even the growing importance of... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

Forthcoming
Article

Corporate alignment with the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities: First evidence from financial accounting data

By: Alex Cheema-Fox, Megan Czasonis, Piyush Kontu and George Serafeim

What is sustainable? This question is of paramount importance given the trillions of assets invested according to different sustainability criteria. While until now we have had no standard for answering this question, the European Union's (EU) Taxonomy for sustainable... View Details

Keywords: Financial Accounting; Capital Expenditures; Revenues; Sustainability; Regulation; Accounting; Finance; Climate Change; Europe; European Union

Read Now

October 2024 (Revised November 2024)
Supplement

Vineyard Wind Starts Spinning (B): Breakdown

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jacob A. Small

07 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

How to Help Small Businesses Survive COVID's Next Phase

through a few months, when normalcy would resume. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)—government-funded forgivable loans designed to help businesses pay their employees—would help them weather the storm. Six months later, there’s still... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Food & Beverage; Service

May 2025
Case

'Net Zero in Action': Impact Investing at the McKnight Foundation

By: Lauren Cohen, Christina R. Wing and Sophia Pan

Elizabeth McGeveran, Vice President of Investments at the McKnight Foundation, reflected on how to effectively advance the organization’s net-zero strategy. The foundation had committed 10% of its endowment to building a portfolio of impact investments and was among... View Details

19 Jul 2016
First Look

July 19, 2016

probability of default causes a 6% decline in the value of Argentine equities and a 1% depreciation of a measure of the exchange rate. We examine the channels through which a sovereign default may affect the economy. Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2023
Working Paper

Can Digitalization Improve Public Services? Evidence from Innovation in Energy Management

By: Robyn C. Meeks, Jacquelyn Pless and Zhenxuan Wang

This paper examines how digitalization impacts public service provision through a study of the U.S. power sector. We exploit the staggered timing of electric utilities’ investments in “smart” meters and find that electricity losses per unit sold decrease by 3.6%. This... View Details

Keywords: Electric Utility; Energy Management; Smart Meters; Energy; Climate Change; State Ownership; Private Ownership; Technology Adoption; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; United States