Publications

February 2015 (Revised December 2016)
Case

Poseidon Carlsbad: Desalination and the San Diego County Water Authority

By: John Macomber

Extreme drought conditions in California have significant impacts on the ability of the San Diego County Water Authority to provide adequate water for current users. Water shortfalls also could curtail the economic development of one of the fastest growing regions in... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Partners and Partnerships; Resource Allocation; Public Sector; Private Sector; Environmental Sustainability; Policy; Infrastructure; Green Technology Industry; Utilities Industry; California

Research Summary

Overview

Professor Begenau’s research agenda is directed at better understanding how financial markets work and how they affect the real economy. She uses quantitative analysis to build both prescriptive and descriptive models concerning financial risk in banking, and she also... View Details

June 2003 (Revised July 2004)
Case

WWF

By: John A. Quelch

WWF is the best known environmental organization in the world. This case explores the issues WWF currently faces and reviews the organization's partnerships with the private sector. The protagonist, Paul Steele, WWF's COO, must decide which of three potential private... View Details

Keywords: Natural Environment; Nonprofit Organizations; Partners and Partnerships; Private Sector

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04 Feb 2013
Research & Ideas

Are the Big Four Audit Firms Too Big to Fail?

audit firms affects the nature of accounting regulation, Ramanna says. Future research, the authors hope, will continue to probe the changing audit oligopoly and its consequences amid increasing globalization, improvements in information technology, and the rise of the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Accounting

20 Mar 2000
Research & Ideas

Incubators: The New Venture Capitalists?

staffing, services, physical space, strategic guidance and more — are popping up in the private sector almost as fast as the dot.com companies they hope to hatch. They're pulling in veteran entrepreneurs and established Internet players... View Details

Keywords: by Kenneth Liss

Teaching Interest

Overview

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

Course Requirements

Students are required to prepare a business plan, which employs the framework of this course, to explore an entrepreneurial opportunity in health care, and to evaluate their classmates' plans.

Career Focus

For... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Healthcare Industry; Healthcare Innovation; Healthcare Costs; Healthcare Operations; Healthcare Organizations; Healthcare Startups; Healthcare Technology; Healthcare Ventures

1985
Chapter

The Federal Civil Service Retirement System

By: Dutch Leonard

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Retirement; Government and Politics; Public Sector

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03 May 2010
Research & Ideas

What Is the Future of MBA Education?

Immediately after graduation, a significant majority of the graduates of the leading two-year, full-time MBA programs take jobs in financial services and consulting, driven in part by financial rewards that make it very difficult for companies in other View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

October 2018 (Revised July 2019)
Case

Sidewalk Labs: Privacy in a City Built from the Internet Up

By: Leslie K. John, Mitchell Weiss and Julia Kelley

Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.

By the time Dan Doctoroff, CEO of Sidewalk Labs, began hosting a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session in January 2018, he had only nine months remaining to convince the people... View Details

2011
Working Paper

How Foundations Think: The Ford Foundation as a Dominating Institution in the Field of American Business Schools

By: Rakesh Khurana, Kenneth Kimura and Marion Fourcade

The question of institutional change has become central to organizational research (Powell, 2008). Recent scholarship has demonstrated, often through carefully researched cases, that institutions can and sometimes do change. According to this research, there are two... View Details

Keywords: Change; Business Education; Business History; Organizations; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Relationships; Behavior

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October 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

NYC311

By: Constantine E. Kontokosta, Mitchell Weiss, Christine Snively and Sarah Gulick

Joe Morrisroe, executive director for NYC311, had some gut instincts but no definitive answer to the question he was just asked by one of the mayor’s deputies: “Are some communities being underserved by 311? How do we know we are hearing from the right people?” Founded... View Details

October 2016
Supplement

Airbnb in Amsterdam (B)

By: Mitchell Weiss, Emer Moloney and Vincent Dessain

In December 2014, Amsterdam and Airbnb announced an MOU to promote responsible home sharing and to simplify the payment of tourist tax for hosts in the city. It was the most comprehensive agreement that Airbnb had with any city in the world. Its final provision read,... View Details

July 2018 (Revised December 2018)
Case

SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command

By: Herman Leonard, Mitchell Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik and Kerry Herman

James “Hondo” Geurts, the Acquisition Executive for U.S. Special Operations Command, was in the middle of his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017 to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. The questions had a common theme: how... View Details

January 2002 (Revised September 2002)
Case

Corporate Renewal in America

By: Bruce R. Scott and Thomas S. Mondschean

Discusses various macroeconomic, regulatory, technological, and financial forces that led to increased corporate restructuring in the United States beginning in the mid-1980s. The U.S. financial system is often viewed as the most developed in the world and a model for... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Corporate Governance; Macroeconomics; Economic Systems; Restructuring; Markets; Private Sector; Corporate Finance; Germany; Japan; United States

Research Summary

Hybrid organizing

By: Julie Battilana

While historically the commercial and social sectors have evolved on fairly separate tracks, over the last 30 years we have witnessed a blurring of the boundaries between these two sectors. In an effort to account for this transition, Professor Battilana’s second... View Details

July 2017 (Revised July 2024)
Course Overview Note

Public Entrepreneurship

By: Mitchell Weiss

This course is rooted in the belief that there is a large opportunity for creating value and solving large public problems if there are more inventors and builders inside government and more inventors and builders outside government, building for it. The course was... View Details

Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Public Sector; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Government Administration; Business and Government Relations

August 1983 (Revised March 1995)
Case

Railroad Problem and the Solution

By: Richard S. Tedlow

A vehicle for a discussion of the causes and consequences of the Interstate Commerce Act. View Details

Keywords: Transportation; Rail Transportation; Fluctuation; Outcome or Result; Public Sector; Government and Politics; Business History; Complexity; Problems and Challenges; Rail Industry

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March 2015
Case

Pearson Affordable Learning Fund

By: Michael Chu, Vincent Dessain and Kristina Maslauskaite

An in-house venture capital fund for affordable private schools at the base of the pyramid established by Pearson, the world's largest education company, PALF sought to invest in business models providing superior educational outcomes in emerging markets on a... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investment; Low Cost Private Schools; Investment Fund; Business At The Base Of The Pyramid; Transition; Investment; Development Economics; Business Growth and Maturation; Social Entrepreneurship; Emerging Markets; Private Sector; Education; Education Industry; Asia; Africa