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While the importance of innovation to economic development is widely understood, the conditions conducive to it remain the focus of much attention. This volume offers new theoretical and empirical contributions to fundamental questions relating to the economics of... View Details

July 2024 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors: Bringing Systematic Investment to Philanthropy

By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, Alexander Bischoff and Sophia Pan

Melissa Berman, CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA), evaluated her client’s philanthropy project and its mediocre performance. RPA was a segment of the Rockefeller Family Office’s Philanthropy Department, becoming an independent charity in 2002. Consistently... View Details

14 Jan 2022
Blog Post

Embracing Activism for Social Change

MBAs the financial flexibility to explore careers in high-impact nonprofit or public sector positions for a year at a competitive salary. For Mendu, that meant the chance to work with Detroit’s former Chief Policy Officer Kim Rustem on a... View Details

18 Nov 2014
First Look

First Look: November 18

https://hbr.org/product/indus-towers-from-infancy-to-maturity/415005-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 814-031 Homestrings, Inc.: Diaspora-Based Financing and the Crowd Funding of Development Homestrings is an online investment... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Jul 2013
Research & Ideas

Crowdfunding a Poor Investment?

When Congress passed President Obama's JOBS Act in March 2012, one of the most intriguing provisions would enable crowdfunding—the ability for large groups of anonymous investors to fund startups. More than a year after the law was... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

23 Jun 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovative Ways to Encourage Personal Savings

that I've done over the course of the last 10 years has been field-based, working in conjunction with HBS student teams, partners in business and the nonprofit sector, and especially through the nonprofit... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services

04 Oct 2021
Blog Post

Tapping into “Nontraditional” Private Equity and Venture Capital Talent at HBS

Mbanusi (MBA 2021) and Morgan Sheil (MBA 2021), who came to business school from nonprofit and chemical engineering backgrounds respectively, prove that experience outside of investing can also be highly transferable and valuable to the... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Venture Capital

September 2021 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Harambe: Mobilizing Capital in Africa

By: Anywhere (Siko) Sikochi, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Francesco Tronci

Harambe was a non-profit organization whose mission was to build an ecosystem to identify promising young African entrepreneurs and provide them access to training, markets, capital, and support networks. From 2007 to 2021, Harambe had grown to a network of 367... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Nonprofit Organizations; Business Model; Strategy; Organizational Structure; Business Startups; Capital; Venture Capital; Social and Collaborative Networks; Networks; Developing Countries and Economies; Emerging Markets; Africa; South Africa

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

October 2012 (Revised October 2013)
Case

Rock Health

By: Robert F. Higgins and Ian McKown Cornell

Rock Health was a San Francisco–based nonprofit organization offering accelerator services to spur innovation at the intersection of healthcare and technology. The company was the creation of Halle Tecco (HBS '11) and her HBS classmate Nate Gross (HBS '11), who met... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Incubation; Healthcare Technology; Startups; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Management; Health Care and Treatment; Business Startups; Health Industry; San Francisco; California; United States

06 Sep 2024
Blog Post

Harvard Business School Announces 2024 Goldsmith Fellows

training, and college and career prep programs. Over the past two years, she also worked as an investment associate at ICA Fund, a nonprofit venture capital fund that uses investments to address the gender... View Details

September 2016
Case

Ekal Vidyalaya: Education for Rural India

By: David Drake, Namrata Bhattacharya, Pooja Godbole and Amrita Saigal

By examining Ekal Vidyalaya (Ekal), a nonprofit network of schools in India, this case focuses on the classic challenge faced by organizations that grow through replication (e.g., McDonald's, Starbucks, Walmart, Whole Foods): How can they continue to drive growth when... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Early Childhood Education; India

Louis Caldera is a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He teaches Leadership and Corporate Accountability, a required first-year course in the MBA program. He has previously taught law school courses on corporate... View Details

January 2016 (Revised February 2016)
Case

Citizens United and Corporate Speech

By: David Moss and Marc Campasano

The story of Citizens United began in late 2007, as leading members of the Republican and Democratic parties were preparing for the 2008 presidential primaries. Democrats expected a three-way contest in their party between Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, Senator (and... View Details

Keywords: Rights; Internet and the Web; Political Elections; Lawsuits and Litigation; Business and Government Relations