Publications

March 2008 (Revised November 2008)
Case

Databank in Africa

By: Jordan Siegel and Yi Kwan Chu

This case tackles issues of regional strategy and strategic institutional arbitrage. Databank is a financial services firm designing its regional strategy for Africa and seeking to benefit from institutional arbitrage. View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Local Range; Emerging Markets; Service Operations; Business Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Africa

23 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

How to Break the Expert’s Curse

control group offered comments such as, "This player's hand placement is wrong." In contrast, those in the rediscovery group gave more constructive advice; for example, "Have that right hand flowing on the strings, and suspend the hand... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

11 Dec 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, December 11, 2018

cities between 1910 and 1930. Instrumenting immigrants’ location decision by interacting national changes in migration flows across ethnic groups with pre-existing immigrants’ enclaves across U.S. cities, we find that immigration raised... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

09 Jan 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, January 9, 2018

budget constraints, EDs must better understand bottlenecks and their effect on process flow to improve process efficiency. The primary objective of this study was to identify bottlenecks in obtaining a head... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

07 Nov 2011
Research & Ideas

The Forgotten Book that Helped Shape the Modern Economy

the foundations and future of their discipline? A: My analysis of the actual flows of economic translations in the European world between 1500... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

May 2025
Case

IQanat: Empowering Rural Youth in Kazakhstan

By: Boris Groysberg and Maxim Pike Harrell

In June 2025, IQanat CEO Aliya Salikova considered scaling opportunities for the foundation, which provided educational opportunities for children from rural regions of Kazakhstan. Established by Kazakhstani businessman and philanthropist Aidyn Rakhimbayev, IQanat... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Social Enterprise; Social Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Rural Scope; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Equality and Inequality; Education Industry; Central Asia; Kazakhstan

21 Jan 2016
Blog Post

HBS and the Arts

I am what you may consider an atypical candidate at HBS; I am an art history major in pursuit of an MBA, dedicated to a career path in the arts. My fascination with art stems from an experience I had in high school. I attended a... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit / Government; Entertainment / Media / Sports

21 Jan 2009
First Look

First Look: January 21, 2009

borrowers to restructure their debts. Performing mortgages could then potentially be resold in the secondary market. The case provides cash flow projections in various economic scenarios that are revealing View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

25 Sep 2012
First Look

First Look: September 25

their manufacturing operations in order to reduce costs. But we are now seeing the alarming long-term effect of those choices: in many cases, once manufacturing capabilities go away, so does much of the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

03 Nov 2015
First Look

November 3, 2015

November 2015 Quarterly Journal of Economics Behavioral Hazard in Health Insurance By: Baicker, Katherine, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Joshua Schwartzstein Abstract—A fundamental implication of standard moral... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

14 Nov 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas: November 14, 2017

develop new ways of working together. To bolster out-of-the-box thinking at their companies, boards should promote diversity among members. They should foster "creative abrasion" to keep ideas flowing and... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

16 Sep 2014
First Look

First Look: September 16

Publications September 2014 The Oxford Handbook of Innovation Management Mergers and Acquisitions and Innovation By: Ahuja, Gautam, and Elena Novelli Abstract—This article (a) identifies the different theoretical perspectives and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

December 2008
Article

Technology Usage Lags

By: Diego A. Comin, Bart Hobijn and Emilie Rovito

We present evidence on the differences in the intensity with which ten major technologies are used in 185 countries across the world. We do so by calculating how many years ago these technologies were used in the U.S. at the same intensity as they are used in the... View Details

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Global Range; Economy; Relationships; Performance Productivity; United States

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January 2023
Case

Baofeng's Philanthropic Efforts in China

By: Lauren Cohen, Hao Gao, Bo Li and Zhaoheng Gong

Yanbao Dang, President of Baofeng Group and founder of the Yanbao Foundation, Baofeng Group’s philanthropic arm, weighed how the family nonprofit could maximize its impact. On a mission to eliminating poverty through broadening access to educational opportunities in... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Entrepreneurship; Rural Scope; Social Enterprise; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Issues; Poverty; Resource Allocation; Green Technology Industry; Education Industry; China; Asia

21 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

Bio-Piracy: When Western Firms Usurp Eastern Medicine

own," Choudhury says. "You need both parts. You need the local entity that's close to the soil, because you need the rents to flow to the people directly connected to the herb. But you also need a national player with the... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Legal Services; Biotechnology

October 2016
Case

Yili Group: Building a Global Dairy Company

By: William C. Kirby and Nancy Hua Dai

From its humble beginnings as a local Chinese dairy company, the Inner Mongolia Yili Group has become one of the largest dairy companies in the world. To achieve this, Yili has aggressively expanded its footprint overseas including building the world’s largest... View Details