Publications

Find at Harvard

Read Now

David Ager is a Senior Lecturer in Executive Education. He engages CEOs, CHROs, and their teams to design and deliver customized executive development experiences for executive, senior and high potential leaders. The companies hail from diverse sectors including... View Details

November 2005
Case

Playgrounds and Performance: Results Management at KaBOOM! (A)

By: Herman B. Leonard, Marc J. Epstein and Laura Winig

KaBOOM!, a successful playground-building social enterprise funded through corporate partnerships, wants to develop a performance measurement system that will enable the organization to expand its impact substantially. The board of directors and management are trying... View Details

Keywords: Governing and Advisory Boards; Growth and Development Strategy; Social Enterprise; Performance Evaluation; Management Systems; Design; Construction Industry

September 2021 (Revised October 2021)
Case

Dream: Impact Through Real Estate

By: Michael Chu and John Masko

The Canadian city of Toronto had one of the largest housing affordability problems of any city in the developed world. One company trying to address this problem was Dream, one of the largest real estate groups in Canada. In 2021, Dream had just launched a new system... View Details

Research Summary

Overview

By: Frank Nagle

Professor Nagle studies how competitors can collaborate on the creation of core technologies, while still competing on the products and services built on top of them. His research falls into the broader categories of the futures of work, the economics of IT, and... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Strategy; Technological Innovation; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Economic Growth; Entrepreneurship; Technology; Internet; Mobile Technology; Online Technology; Technology Adoption; Technology Networks

Research Summary

Overview

Dr. Bos conducts research in three primary areas: decision making, sleep, and technology and psychology. In his research, he makes use of modern technology to both measure and influence performance— on a minute scale in the lab as well as on a larger scale outside of... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Power and Influence

05 Dec 2013
What Do You Think?

Is Walmart Defying Economic Gravity?

Summing Up When Does Friction Trump Scale in the Corporate Life Cycle? This month's column raised the issue of size limits on an organization's ability to compete In today's global economy. The specific case in point was Walmart and... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Retail

May 2015
Case

China Yintai: Developing Shared Value in China

By: Christopher Marquis, Ying Zhang and Shiyu Yang

Under the leadership of CEO and President Shen Guojun, China Yintai was increasingly committed to philanthropic initiatives. Drawing upon his experience as an entrepreneur and a philanthropist, Mr. Shen saw the urgent need to build bridges between business practices... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; China

Brian Trelstad is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School in the General Management Unit and the Faculty Chair of the Advanced Leadership Initiative. He teaches elective courses on Social Entrepreneurship and Systems... View Details

Keywords: education industry; health care; service industry; emerging market private equity; private equity (other); venture capital industry

June 2016
Case

Publicis Groupe 2016: Maurice and the Millennials

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen

Having built Publicis Groupe through acquisitions maintained as separate brands, CEO Maurice Lévy wanted to transform the advertising and marketing firm to an integrated digital-ready enterprise to address industry changes. In early 2016, following a reorganization, he... View Details

29 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

Is There a Method to Musk’s Madness on Twitter?

and social graph of Twitter stays active. There are a lot of features on the surface that you can play around with—say, the blue checkmark—but most importantly, he needs to make sure the website and basic app continue to run. For... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Technology

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

14 Feb 2023
News

New MBA Course Asks Students: What’s More Important—Purpose or Profits?

Tarun Khanna

Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School. For almost three decades, he has studied entrepreneurship as a means to social and economic development in emerging markets. At HBS since 1993, after obtaining degrees from Princeton... View Details

February 2020
Article

Gender and Entrepreneurship in the Renewable Energy Sector of Rwanda

By: Manuel Barron, Rowan P. Clarke, Amanda Elam, Rebecca Klege, Anita Shankar and Martine Visser

Until recently, women have not been seen as having the potential for entrepreneurial success. Yet women’s engagement in the energy sector could substantially improve energy access for those most underserved. This article examines the role of women as energy... View Details

Keywords: Economic Development; Renewables; Economics; Entrepreneurship; Gender; Renewable Energy; Performance Effectiveness; Emerging Markets; Energy Industry; Africa

Read Now

05 Feb 2007
Research & Ideas

Business and the Global Poor

partnership with another social enterprise course on business leadership taught by Professor Dutch Leonard), and that might broaden the appeal. The second course, B-Bop, deals exactly with the kind of issues... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

February 2022 (Revised February 2023)
Case

TikTok in 2020: Super App or Supernova? (Abridged)

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

Keywords: Digital Platform; Artificial Intelligence; AI; Mobile App; Mobile App Industry; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Market Entry and Exit; Brands and Branding; Growth and Development Strategy; China