Publications

August 2017 (Revised February 2024)
Teaching Note

Exotic Interest Rate Swaps: Snowballs in Portugal

By: Boris Vallee, Patrick Augustin and Philippe Rich

This case explores a complex swap transaction implemented by Metro do Porto in 2007. It represents an opportunity to study fixed income derivative instruments, such as plain-vanilla swaps and structured swaps, as well as understand the opportunities and challenges of... View Details

Keywords: Swaps; Public Finance; Structured Finance; Credit Derivatives and Swaps; Public Sector; Transportation Industry; Rail Industry; Portugal

2011
Other Unpublished Work

Innovation and Regulative Ambiguities in the U.S. Geothermal Power Sector

By: Shon R. Hiatt

While prior institutional research has focused on institutional ambiguity as an exogenous condition under which organizations exercise agency, this study examines the state's exercise of agency in making legal institutions more or less ambiguous and its impact on... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Policy; Energy Sources; Innovation and Invention; Energy Industry; United States

April 5, 2023
Article

We Need an Operation Warp Speed for Long COVID

By: Esther K. Choo and Scott Duke Kominers

With millions of people affected and at least $1 trillion of economic value at stake, long COVID is our next national health emergency. View Details

Keywords: COVID; COVID-19; COVID-19 Pandemic; Scientific Research; Policy; Health Policy; Innovation; Science; Public Finance; Public Health; Health Disorders; Health Care and Treatment; Human Capital

Read Now

18 Jun 2024
Cold Call Podcast

How Natural Winemaker Frank Cornelissen Innovated While Staying True to His Brand

Keywords: Re: Tiona W. Zuzul; Food & Beverage; Agriculture & Agribusiness

02 Mar 2016
What Do You Think?

Is Apple’s Real Privacy Challenge Technology Innovation Itself?

families, presidential candidates, and some citizens on the other. But is this just as much a struggle in which Apple is facing the inexorable consequences of IT innovation itself? For those who may have just returned from a jungle trip,... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology

23 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

Product Disasters Can Be Fertile Ground for Innovation

to answer: Would negative publicity from the accident affect future innovation in that segment of the medical device industry? Would people’s perception of safety issues reduce demand for products using... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health; Medical Devices & Supplies

October 2015 (Revised September 2016)
Technical Note

Flight: Now without Humans Aboard

By: Mitchell Weiss, Karim Lakhani, HT Kung and Kerry Herman

This note provides an overview of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) industry in September 2015. UAVs offered many potential applications in industries as diverse as aerial imaging and photography, agriculture, construction, infrastructure inspection and... View Details

Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Drones; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Product Design; Research and Development; Technological Innovation; Rights; Ethics; Strategy; Transportation Networks; Market Entry and Exit; Innovation and Management; European Union; Asia; United States

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

November 2019
Teaching Note

Hacking Heroin

By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah Mehta

This teaching note pairs with a case that is used in a course on Public Entrepreneurship, for a first module on "ideas." The case is designed to help students work through the question: where do new ideas to stubborn problems come from? And, in particular, the question... View Details

Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Hackathon; Heroin; Opioids; Crowdsourcing; Public Sector; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Health Pandemics; Public Administration Industry; Public Administration Industry; Ohio; Cincinnati

March 2024
Article

Medicare Price Negotiation and Pharmaceutical Innovation Following the Inflation Reduction Act

By: Matthew Vogel, Pragya Kakani, Amitabh Chandra and Rena M. Conti

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) requires Medicare to negotiate lower prices for some medicines with high Medicare spending. Using historical data from public and proprietary sources to apply the IRA's negotiation criteria retrospectively, we identify all drugs that... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Government Legislation; Health Care and Treatment; Negotiation; Price; Pharmaceutical Industry

Find at Harvard

3 Jun 2023
Talk

Health Care Innovation Opportunities Created by COVID-19 and How to Make Them Happen

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

The crush of patients created by COVID enabled the creation of sites for care outside the traditional hospital, such as retail pharmacies, ambulatory surgery centers, urgent care centers, telemedicine, and wireless sensors. Public policy mirrored these changes by... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Health Industry; Insurance Industry

03 Sep 2024
Cold Call Podcast

How the US Government Is Innovating in Its Efforts to Fund Semiconductor Manufacturing

Keywords: Re: Mitchell B. Weiss; Public Administration; Public Administration

August 2004
Teaching Note

Innovation at the Treasury: Treasury Inflation-Protection Securities (TN) (A) and (B)

By: Kenneth A. Froot, Peter A. Hecht and Christopher E.J. Payton

Teaching Note to (9-204-112) and (9-204-113). View Details

Keywords: Public Administration Industry; United States

October 2018 (Revised September 2020)
Case

Testing Autonomy in Pittsburgh

By: Mitchell Weiss and Brittany Urick

Pittsburgh’s mayor had been among the first to welcome self-driving vehicles but was now one of many needing to react after a pedestrian fatality involving an autonomous Uber in Arizona. He had originally preferred to roll out “the red carpet” instead of the “red... View Details

Teaching Interest

Overview

By: Mitchell B. Weiss

Public entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, leadership, business and government, cities, artificial intelligence View Details

Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Business And Government; Artificial Intelligence; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Public Sector; City; AI and Machine Learning

18 Nov 2021
Op-Ed

5 Principles for Scaling Change from IBM’s High School Innovation

students are graduates of Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH), an innovative six-year public high school program spearheaded by IBM that has improved college completion rates among... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

November 2016
Case

ShotSpotter

By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah McAra

SST, Inc. offered a subscription-based gunfire detection service, ShotSpotter Flex, to cities across the United States in addition to a few abroad. Over its 20-year history, SST had mostly honed a reliable business-to-government sales model, and the company had been... View Details

Keywords: ShotSpotter; SST; Internet Of Things; IoT; Smart Cities; Public Entrepreneurship; Enterprise Sales; Scaling And Growth; Government; Public Sector; Innovation; Ralph Clark; Entrepreneurship; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Public Administration Industry; California; United States

28 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

The FDA’s Speedy Drug Approvals Are Safe: A Win-Win for Patients and Pharma Innovation

Wiener Professor of Public Policy and Director of Health Policy Research at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Jennifer Kao of the University of California, Los Angeles and the FDA’s Kathleen Miller are also coauthors. Speeding... View Details

Keywords: by Kasandra Brabaw; Pharmaceutical

September 2013 (Revised June 2017)
Case

IBM and the Reinvention of High School (A): Proving the P-TECH Concept

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

IBM's Corporate Citizenship office created a social and organizational innovation in public education through a business-school partnership. IBM's Stanley Litow was the key architect in designing Pathways in Technology Early College High School, known as P-TECH. The... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Partnerships; Leadership; Partners and Partnerships; Education; Business and Community Relations; Change; Innovation and Invention; Education Industry