Publications

March 2018
Case

Summit Public Schools (A)

By: John J-H Kim and Aldo Sesia

Summit Public Schools was a very successful charter management organization with schools in California and Washington State. The students came from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, many from economically disadvantaged households. While nearly all of its students... View Details

Keywords: K-12; Online Learning; Virtual Learning; Blended Learning; Secondary Education; Middle School Education; Early Childhood Education; Learning; Business Model; Performance Improvement; Technology

Educators

2011
Working Paper

Big BRICs, Weak Foundations: The Beginning of Public Elementary Education in Brazil, Russia, India, and China

By: Latika Chaudhary, Aldo Musacchio, Steven Nafziger and Se Yan

Our paper provides a comparative perspective on the development of public primary education in four of the largest developing economies circa 1910: Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). These four countries encompassed more than 50 percent of the world's population... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth; Early Childhood Education; Government and Politics; Wealth and Poverty; China; India; Russia; Brazil

March–April 2022
Article

School Choice in Chile

By: Jose Correa, Natalie Epstein, Rafael Epstein, Juan Escobar, Ignacio Rios, Nicolas Aramayo, Bastian Bahamondes, Carlos Bonet, Martin Castillo, Andres Cristi, Boris Epstein and Felipe Subiabre

Centralized school admission mechanisms are an attractive way of improving social welfare and fairness in large educational systems. In this paper, we report the design and implementation of the newly established school choice system in Chile, where over 274,000... View Details

Keywords: Early Childhood Education; Secondary Education; Middle School Education; Family and Family Relationships; Welfare; Chile

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

2017
Supplement

Uncommon Schools (B): Seeking Excellence at Scale through Standardized Practice

By: John J-H Kim and Sarah McAra

The (B) case provides an update to the (A) case by illustrating how charter school management organization Uncommon Schools responded to the disparity in its students’ 2013 standardized test results. In 2015, CEO Brett Peiser and his management team decided to align... View Details

Keywords: Charter Schools; Nonprofit Organizations; Strategy; Teaching; Talent And Talent Management; Innovation; Education; Early Childhood Education; Middle School Education; Organizational Structure; Performance Consistency; Growth and Development Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Education Industry

Forthcoming
Article

Government, Business and Making China an Educational Powerhouse Since the 1980s

By: Geoffrey Jones, Yuan Jia-Zheng, Yuhai Wu and Qianru Wang

This article examines how China successfully built a highly competent K-12 education system since the 1980s achieving high literacy rates, broad basic education and gender equality. It argues that this success was driven by a strategy of blending public and private... View Details

Keywords: Early Childhood Education; Secondary Education; Literacy; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Business and Government Relations; Policy; Education Industry; China

10 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 10

http://people.hbs.edu/mbaker/cv/papers/Investor_Sentiment_JFE_Article_In_Press.pdf Memory Lane and Morality: How Childhood Memories Promote Prosocial Behavior Authors:F. Gino and S. Desai Publication:Journal of Personality and Social... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2017
Case

Uncommon Schools (A): A Network of Networks

By: John J-H Kim and Sarah McAra

In 2013, Brett Peiser, CEO of the charter school management organization (CMO) Uncommon Schools, is reassessing the nonprofit’s strategy. For nearly 10 years, Uncommon had fulfilled its mission to bring high-quality education to students in low-income, urban areas... View Details

Keywords: Charter Schools; Nonprofit Organizations; Teaching; Talent Management; Innovation; Organization Structure; Education; Early Childhood Education; Middle School Education; Organizational Structure; Performance Consistency; Strategy; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Education Industry

October 2001
Case

SchoolSuccess.net

By: James E. Austin and Arthur McCaffrey

The mission of the nonprofit Jumpstart for Young Children was to address the problem of school readiness of low-income family preschoolers. It had been growing significantly, and to achieve its projected expansion would require major increases in funding. After... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Early Childhood Education; Venture Capital; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Startups; Management Teams

Find at Harvard

13 May 2014
First Look

First Look: May 13

http://hbr.org/product/fei-cheng-wu-rao/an/414056-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 712-463 Sweet Deal-Industry Self-Regulation of Breakfast Cereal Advertising to Children In response to growing concern about childhood obesity, in... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2022
Case

EducationSuperHighway 2.0

By: William A. Sahlman, Allison M. Ciechanover and Emily Grandjean

In 2012, Evan Marwell launched EducationSuperHighway (ESH) to address a major problem: though most public K-12 schools in the US had access to the Internet, only roughly 30% had true broadband access that would enable every student to have high speed connectivity. ... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Social Entrepreneurship; Social Issues; Leading Change; Early Childhood Education; Infrastructure; Internet and the Web; Telecommunications Industry; Education Industry; Technology Industry; United States; San Francisco

Educators

March 2010 (Revised March 2012)
Teaching Note

PNC Financial: Grow Up Great (TN) (A) and (B)

By: Christopher Marquis, V. Kasturi Rangan and Bobbi Thomason

Teaching Note for [409108]. View Details

Keywords: Investment; Problems and Challenges; Opportunities; Leadership; Early Childhood Education; Brands and Branding; Organizational Structure; Success; Financial Services Industry

18 Nov 2009
HBS Case

Customer Feedback Not on elBulli’s Menu

prepared by Adrià and his team of thirty to forty cooks. The meal costs roughly 230 euros and represents hours of laborious research, testing, and preparation. In addition to engaging a diner's five senses, Adrià and his team hope to evoke irony, humor, and even View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Food & Beverage

15 Feb 2011
First Look

First Look: Feb. 15

of performance feedback in motivating productivity in repetitive tasks. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/11-078.pdf Memory Lane and Morality: How Childhood Memories Promote Prosocial Behavior Authors:Francesca Gino and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

1989
Book

Growing Up Creative

By: T. M. Amabile

Keywords: Creativity; Early Childhood Education; Learning; Teaching; Training; Social Psychology; Personal Characteristics; Motivation and Incentives; Performance; Cognition and Thinking

January 2010
Case

Pratham - Every Child in School and Learning Well

By: Srikant M. Datar, Stacey M. Childress, Rachna Tahilyani and Anjali Raina

The case focuses on how Pratham, a non-governmental organization, provided quality education to underprivileged children in India by collaborating with the government. It focuses on the problem Madhav Chavan, the founder, is trying to solve, the contributing factors... View Details

Keywords: Non-Governmental Organizations; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Social and Collaborative Networks; Performance Evaluation; Change Management; Organizational Design; Early Childhood Education; Management Systems; Strategy; Quality; Education Industry; India

Educators

12 Feb 2001
Research & Ideas

John Irving’s Lessons for Business

as well as how to nurture creativity, both in individuals and in organizations. Amabile interviewed John Irving in 1986, when he agreed to share memories of his childhood as part of a research project Amabile was conducting on children... View Details

Keywords: by Mallory Stark & Martha Lagace

31 Mar 2009
First Look

First Look: March 31, 2009

Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (Minneapolis Fed), Art Rolnick and his colleague, Rob Grunewald, had written "Early Childhood Development: Economic Development with a High Public Return." The thesis was fairly straightforward: early... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

01 Jun 2010
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Social Reporting

benefit the environment as well as a company's bottom line," Rangan adds. Good examples are the early childhood literacy initiative of PNC, a financial services organization based in Pittsburgh, and the 10,000 Women initiative of... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

January 2005 (Revised August 2006)
Case

Lean Forward Media

By: Teresa M. Amabile and Victoria Winston

Jeff Norton and Michelle Crames, the co-founders of Lean Forward Media, face several options for producing the world's first interactive DVD film for children. Their vision is to build a company whose products simultaneously entertain children, engage them actively in... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Early Childhood Education; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Management Practices and Processes; Risk Management; Partners and Partnerships; Opportunities; Creativity