Publications

May 2025
Case

IQanat: Empowering Rural Youth in Kazakhstan

By: Boris Groysberg and Maxim Pike Harrell

In June 2025, IQanat CEO Aliya Salikova considered scaling opportunities for the foundation, which provided educational opportunities for children from rural regions of Kazakhstan. Established by Kazakhstani businessman and philanthropist Aidyn Rakhimbayev, IQanat... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Rural Scope; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Equality and Inequality; Education Industry; Central Asia; Kazakhstan

February 2021 (Revised March 2022)
Case

TikTok in 2020: Super App or Supernova?

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dan Maher and Dan O'Brien

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around a simple idea – helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. In less than a decade, it had become one of the world’s most valuable private companies, with investors... View Details

March 2011
Case

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Company in 2011

By: Willy Shih and Jia Cheng

When David Wang took over as the CEO of SMIC, he knew that if he was to capitalize on the company's strategic location in the China market, he would have to transform the company mindset and its operating structure from its roots in the manufacturing of DRAMs to the... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Resource Allocation; Market Entry and Exit; Business Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Customization and Personalization; Semiconductor Industry; China

01 May 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Better Deals Through Level II Strategies: Advance Your Interests by Helping to Solve Their Internal Problems

Keywords: by James K. Sebenius

09 Aug 2004
Research & Ideas

A Diagnostic for Disruptive Innovation

use to build asymmetric skills. For example, one chemical company we worked with realized that finding a way to reach nonconsumers in developing countries was its ticket to disruptive growth. It had an... View Details

Keywords: by Scott D. Anthony, Mark W. Johnson & Matt Eyring

06 Aug 2007
Research & Ideas

High Hills, Deep Poverty: Explaining Civil War in Nepal

working paper that Iyer coauthored with Quy-Toan Do, of the World Bank, probes this topic in depth by examining the country of Nepal, the land-locked home of Mount Everest. Nepal's internal conflict has killed more than 13,000 people... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

05 May 2011
Research & Ideas

How ‘Political Voice’ Empowers the Powerless

India is a country where many women struggle for survival from the day they are born. Girls in India are less likely to be breastfed than boys, for instance, and less likely to be immunized. But India also has the highest number of... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish

Teaching

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

Web

Help - Alumni

Program in Leadership (PPL) Program for Leadership Development (plus completion of 10 open-enrollment program days) (PLDA) Senior Executive Program, China (SEPCA) Senior Executive Leadership Program (SELP) Retired HBS programs which... View Details

02 Jan 2019
What Do You Think?

SUMMING UP: Do We Need an Artificial Intelligence Czar?

AI oversight and regulation. At least that’s the impression created by a small sample of comments on this month’s column. Sandeep made the case for an AI czar. “Any public servant is accountable to you and me and we can fire him and find... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology

01 Oct 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Organizational Factors that Contribute to Operational Failures in Hospitals

Keywords: by Anita L. Tucker, W. Scott Heisler & Laura D. Janisse; Health

January 2017 (Revised April 2017)
Supplement

Bridj and the Business of Urban Mobility (B): A New Model in Kansas City

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen

In late 2016, Bridj was expanding its digital platform to help address urban mobility problems faced by cities across the country and the world. Its founder and CEO, Matt George, weighed up several possible strategies for growth as he aimed to responsibly build the... View Details

11 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

How Hackathons Help Decide Platform Winners and Losers

Choosing the right software platform is a critical task for developers. It can be a business life-or-death decision picking between Android or iPhone, Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform, Xbox or PlayStation. At the same time, the hunt for talented software... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Technology

August 2017 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Enel: The Future of Energy

By: Mark R. Kramer and Bhanuteja Nadella

Enel has transformed from the Italian state-owned energy monopoly into a global leader in renewable energy and shared value creation. Through its open innovation model, the company has catapulted to the cutting edge of electric mobility and distributed power... View Details

Keywords: Energy Generation; Renewable Energy; Growth and Development Strategy; Strategic Planning; Energy Industry

2023
Working Paper

The International Price of Remote Work

By: Agostina Brinatti, Alberto Cavallo, Javier Cravino and Andres Drenik

We study how the price of remote work is determined in a globalized labor market using data from a large web-based job platform, where workers from around the world compete for remote jobs. Despite the global nature of the platform, we find that remote wages are higher... View Details

Keywords: Remote Work; Exchange Rates; Purchasing Power Parity; Offshoring And Outsourcing; Macroeconomics; Developing Countries and Economies; Wages; Trade; Globalization; Marketplace Matching; Currency Exchange Rate; Service Industry; Web Services Industry; Technology Industry

14 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

Water, Electricity, and Transportation: Preparing for the Population Boom

By 2050, the Earth's population will likely exceed 9 billion people, up 30 percent from 6.9 billion today, according to projections from both the US Census Bureau and the United Nations. What's more, the population in the world's cities is expected to increase by 3... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

Program

Audit Committees in a New Era of Governance

profit objectives Ensure the integrity of financial information Foster the right culture regarding compliance and risk Develop a financial reporting strategy Improve audit committee effectiveness Develop... View Details

14 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

When a Vacation Isn’t Enough, a Sabbatical Can Recharge Your Life—and Your Career

A few years ago, DJ DiDonna seemed to have everything going for him. He had started a successful venture called the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab, which used psychometric factors to help banks issuing microloans in the developing world... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

2014
Working Paper

Finance and Social Responsibility in the Informal Economy: Institutional Voids, Globalization and Microfinance Institutions

By: Hao Liang, Christopher Marquis and Sunny Li Sun

We examine the heterogeneous effects of globalization on the interest rate setting by microfinance institutions (MFIs) around the world. We consider MFIs as a mechanism to overcome the institutional void of credit for small entrepreneurs in developing and emerging... View Details

Keywords: Institutional Voids; Microfinance Institutions; Economic Globalization; Social Globalization; Microfinance; Globalization; Developing Countries and Economies