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19 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

Unlocking Your Investment Capital

How can the equity swap help alleviate the common mismatch between pension assets and liabilities that companies often carry? A: If the pension fund holds equities, then these assets have a "risk mismatch" with the corresponding... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen; Financial Services

17 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

Companies Detangle from Legacy Pensions

"That world has been disappearing," says Luis M. Viceira, the George E. Bates Professor at Harvard Business School. "In the past few years, there have been zero defined benefit plans created in the United States. The trend,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Aerospace; Financial Services

15 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

These VC Partners May Make Your Firm Less Innovative

the effects of these competitive ties? For starters, companies might benefit from looking beyond the traditional VC world to consider the wide range of funding options available—including super angel... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services; Banking

25 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

To Pay or Not to Pay: Argentina and the International Debt Market

crises emerges. A Shocking Idea I recommend returning to the pre-1976 world where there was absolute sovereign immunity, where each country issued sovereign debt under its own legal jurisdiction, and a creditor could not sue Argentina in... View Details

Keywords: by Laura Alfaro

12 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

Global Poverty Needs a Global Answer

HBS professor emeritus George C. Lodge's idea of a World Development Corporation has been percolating for years—he wrote a seminal article on the proposal in Foreign Affairs in 2002 (reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge). The WDC would be a... View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia Churchwell

September 2019 (Revised May 2021)
Case

pymetrics: International Expansion

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In August 2018, pymetrics, a solution offering neuroscience-based recruiting tests, closed a $40 million funding round that valued the business at $160 million. Over 60 companies around the globe were using pymetrics tests in their recruiting process, including... View Details

21 Feb 2007
Op-Ed

What a U.N. Partnership with Big Business Could Accomplish

poverty line. And yet, more than a trillion dollars has been spent by bilateral and multilateral organizations since World War II to try to alleviate this problem. The funds that were supposed to help... View Details

Keywords: by George C. Lodge & Craig Wilson

June 2021
Case

Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani at avatarin (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2016, Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani, aeronautical engineers at All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., began to wonder why, in a world of accelerating globalization and digital connectivity, those who lived in far-remote villages or impoverished urban areas could not... View Details

Keywords: Agility; Ecosystem; Innovation Ecosystems; Crowdsourcing; Open Innovation; Partnership; Government; Collaboration; Co-creation; Purpose; Impact; Social Impact; Movement; Organizational Behavior; Organizational Ambidexterity; Ambidexterity; Culture; Culture Change; Global Teams; Experimentation; Space; Airline Industry; Start-up; Platform Business; Platform Strategy; Platform; Digital; Robotics; Robots; Mobility; Strategy; COVID-19; Intrapreneurship; Public-private Partnership; XPRIZE; Space Industry; Avatar; Telepresence; Innovation Lab; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Partners and Partnerships; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Alignment; Leadership; Leading Change; Diversity; Organizational Culture; Change Management; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transportation Industry; Aerospace Industry; Japan

21 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

Searching for Better Practices in Social Investing

In order to garner the capital necessary to foot the bill for social change, nonprofits need to think less about traditional grants and more in terms of innovation--and so do the organizations that fund them. This was a key message from... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

28 Jun 2016
First Look

June 28, 2016

raise funds from outside investors. The relationship appears not to be causal but instead driven by selection effects across heterogeneous teams with varying degrees of inequality aversion. Publisher's link:... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2021
Working Paper

Studying the U.S.-Based Portfolio Companies of U.S. Impact Investors

By: M. Diane Burton, Gurveen Chadha, Shawn A. Cole, Abhishek Dev, Christina Jarymowycz, Leslie Jeng, Laura Kelley, Josh Lerner, Jaime R. Diaz Palacios, Yue (Cynthia) Xu and T. Robert Zochowski

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the reliance on market-based solutions to social and environmental problems around the world (Barman 2016; Horvath and Powell 2020). The growth of impact investing is a vivid example of this trend and, although there have... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Impact Portfolio Companies; Investment; Social Issues; Environmental Sustainability; Investment Portfolio; Business Ventures; Analytics and Data Science; Performance; United States

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31 Oct 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 31, 2017

business history. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53413 Mutual Funds as Venture Capitalists? Evidence from Unicorns By: Chernenko, Sergey, Josh Lerner, and Yao Zeng Abstract—Using novel... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

July 2020 (Revised September 2020)
Case

The Honor Foundation: Accessing Special Operations Talent

By: Boris Groysberg and John Masko

In 2020, The Honor Foundation (THF), a nonprofit dedicated to helping U.S. military special operators to transition into civilian careers, was facing a series of strategic challenges. THF had been founded in 2013 by former Navy SEAL trainee Joe Musselman, who observed... View Details

08 Jul 2014
First Look

First Look: July 8

But in a world of constant layoffs and dying industries, it has become increasingly difficult to "plan" your way to success. So what is the solution? Well, when it comes to dealing with uncertainty, nobody handles it better than... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

07 Nov 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia

Keywords: by Shane Greenstein & Feng Zhu; Information; Publishing

24 Jun 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Don’t Just Survive—Thrive: Leading Innovation in Good Times and Bad

Keywords: by Lynda M. Applegate & J. Bruce Harreld

September 2017
Case

Christine Lagarde

By: Julie Battilana, Carin-Isabel Knoop, Vanessa Ampelas and Noemie Assenat

The case covers the youth and career trajectory of Christine Lagarde across her time at Baker & McKenzie, as a minister in the government of France and as the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The case highlights the challenges and opportunities she faced... View Details

Keywords: Change; Personal Development and Career; Power and Influence; Leadership; Gender; Leading Change

July 2015
Case

Uncharted Play (A)

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Ali Huberlie

The case recounts the process of launching an early stage venture, from idea conception through initial efforts to validate the concept, followed by product launch, and fund raising. It emphasizes the Customer Value Proposition of the business model, and asks – Who is... View Details

Keywords: Early Stage; Female Protagonist; Value Proposition; Team Building; Founders' Agreements; Start-up; Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Business Startups; Sports; United States; North America; Nigeria; Africa