Publications

Video

Neveen El Tahri

Neveen El Tahri, Chairperson of Delta Shield for Investment, describes an increased interest in entrepreneurship among youth in the country particularly since the 2011 Egyptian revolution. View Details

Josh Lerner

Josh Lerner graduated from Yale College with a special divisional major. He worked for several years on issues concerning technological innovation and public policy at the Brookings Institution, for a public-private task force in Chicago, and on... View Details

Keywords: biotechnology; high technology; venture capital industry

06 Mar 2025
Blog Post

IFC India 2025: Sustainability in Action: Inside Hindustan Unilever’s Public Sanitation and Plastic Recycling Facilities

of sustainability efforts, decarbonization, and net zero in the context of a broader development agenda. The class culminated in a series of site visits in January 2025 View Details

October 2013 (Revised November 2021)
Case

Cynthia Carroll at Anglo American (A)

By: Gautam Mukunda, Lisa Mazzanti and Aldo Sesia

In 2007, Cynthia Carroll, the newly-appointed chief executive of mining giant Anglo American, was considering shutting down mines in South Africa for safety reasons, namely worker fatalities. No company had ever done so before. Carroll felt that operating a company... View Details

Keywords: Culture; Leadership; Gender; Safety; Working Conditions; Business Exit or Shutdown; Organizational Culture; Change Management; Mining; Mining Industry; South Africa

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

01 May 2009
Conference Presentation

The enabling and constraining effects of attention structures on entrepreneurial activity in the U.S. biodiesel industry

By: Shon R. Hiatt

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Energy Industry; Biotechnology Industry; United States

01 Jun 2017
News

Mentoring young India

January 2001
Case

Merck Global Health Initiatives (B): Botswana

By: James E. Austin, Diana Barrett and James Weber

The case series focuses on Merck's drug donation program and then raises new issues facing management about what to do about HIV/AIDS in Africa given the company's development of a new therapy. Describes collaboration among many parties including the Gates Foundation,... View Details

Keywords: Health Disorders; Health Care and Treatment; Private Sector; Public Sector; Alliances; Problems and Challenges; Africa; Botswana

04 Feb 2020
Video

Dr. Elizabeth Mary Okelo

Mary Okelo, who pursued a successful career as an executive of Barclays Bank In Kenya before founding the only women’s bank in Africa and the Makini schools system, explains how important it is for businesses... View Details

Anke Becker

Anke Becker is an Assistant Professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School.

Anke’s areas of research include economic development, political economy, economics of gender, and behavioral economics. Her recent work examines culture... View Details

September 2017 (Revised January 2019)
Case

Public Entrepreneurs? Picking a Path

By: Mitchell Weiss and Matthew Segneri

Direct entry into government remained an uncommon post-HBS path, with only 1%–2% of recent classes going directly into the public sector. But, for public-minded MBAs, government wasn’t the sole province for public problem-solving. MBAs could join or launch companies... View Details

18 Jan 2021
Book

How Thinking Like a Startup Helps Governments Solve More Problems

As we work on challenging public problems, embracing the entrepreneurial spirit can help in developing solutions, says Harvard Business School Professor Mitchell Weiss in a new book, We the Possibility:... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

January 2015 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Omar Selim: Building a Values-Based Asset Management Firm (A)

By: George Serafeim, Rebecca Henderson and Shannon Gombos

The sustainable investing market was a recent phenomenon in the first decade of the 21st century. However, an increasing number of investors began to integrated Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues in investment decisions. At Barclays Capital, Omar Selim... View Details

27 Apr 2023
Cold Call Podcast

Equity Bank CEO James Mwangi: Transforming Lives with Access to Credit

Keywords: Re: Caroline M. Elkins; Banking; Financial Services

July 2018 (Revised December 2018)
Case

SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command

By: Herman Leonard, Mitchell Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik and Kerry Herman

James “Hondo” Geurts, the Acquisition Executive for U.S. Special Operations Command, was in the middle of his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017 to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. The questions had a common theme: how... View Details

2008
Working Paper

Finding Missing Markets (and a disturbing epilogue): Evidence from an Export Crop Adoption and Marketing Intervention in Kenya

By: Nava Ashraf, Xavier Gine and Dean Karlan

In much of the developing world, many farmers grow crops for local or personal consumption despite export options which appear to be more profitable. Thus many conjecture that one or several markets are missing. We report here on a randomized controlled trial conducted... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Developing Countries and Economies; Trade; Profit; Product Marketing; Standards; Failure; Risk and Uncertainty; Non-Governmental Organizations; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Service Industry; Kenya; Europe