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- March 2025
- Case
GiveDirectly: Can Direct Cash Transfers End Extreme Poverty?
By: Natalia Rigol, Benjamin N. Roth, Sarah Mehta and John Schultz
Founded in 2008, GiveDirectly was a nonprofit organization that used direct cash transfers—giving people cash via mobile money—to combat poverty worldwide. By August 2024, the organization had transferred over $800 million to poor people in targeted communities and... View Details
- August 2024
- Case
Circle: Reinventing the Future of Money
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
In early 2024, Circle Internet Financial's leadership team gathered to discuss the company's strategic path as it prepared for an IPO. Founded in 2013 by Jeremy Allaire, Circle had emerged as a pioneer in digital finance through its USD Coin (USDC), a regulated... View Details
- June 2023
- Case
The Business of Campaigns
By: Vincent Pons and Mel Martin
In 2022, the U.S. Congress examined the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act, the latest in a long series of campaign finance reforms. According to its authors, the law would be the “most consequential overhaul of federal... View Details
- January 2023 (Revised August 2023)
- Case
Nick Saban: Embracing 'The Process' of Sustaining Success
By: Ranjay Gulati and Eppa Rixey
Nick Saban, head coach of the University of Alabama football team from 2007-2022, fielded teams that won 183 of 208 games (88%), including a record-tying six national championships. Saban’s approach to coaching, known to many as “The Process,” and the consistent... View Details
Keywords: Purpose; Leadership And Managing People; Football; Recruiting; Talent Acquisition; Talent And Talent Management; Talent Development And Retention; Organization Change And Adaptation; Organizational Behavior; Sports; Leadership; Leadership Development; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Sports Industry; United States
- 2022
- Working Paper
Social Protection and Social Distancing During the Pandemic: Mobile Money Transfers in Ghana
By: Dean Karlan, Matt Lowe, Robert Osei, Isaac Osei-Akoto, Benjamin N. Roth and Christopher Udry
We study the impact of mobile money transfers to a representative sample of low-income
Ghanaians during the COVID-19 pandemic. The announcement of the upcoming transfers
affects neither consumption, well-being, nor social distancing. Once disbursed,... View Details
- May 2022
- Case
Rawbank's Illico Cash: Can 'Fast Money' Overcome Cash Dependency in the DRC?
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
Thomas de Dreux-Brézé, the Head of Strategy and Project Management at Rawbank Congo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was perplexed as he reviewed annual adoption rates for the bank’s launch of Illico Cash 2.0. As the bank’s mobile money app, Illico Cash... View Details
Keywords: Fintech; Inflation; Deflation; Rural; Urban; Emerging Market; Mobile Technology; Finance; Money; Inflation and Deflation; Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Demographics; Developing Countries and Economies; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Behavioral Finance; Currency; Banks and Banking; Commercial Banking; Financial Strategy; Rural Scope; Urban Scope; Innovation Strategy; Emerging Markets; Network Effects; Consumer Behavior; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Technology Adoption; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Congo, Democratic Republic of the
- March 2022
- Case
In Data We Trust: Be Mobile Africa and Furthering Financial Inclusion Across the African Continent
By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Pierre Marchesseault
To Cédric Jeannot, leveraging technology to promote financial inclusion was personal. After no established financial institution would accept his technology platform to lower transaction costs for free, Jeannot launched FinTech company Be Mobile Africa in May 2020.... View Details
Keywords: Finance; Fintech; Emerging Market; Fundraising; Financial Inclusion; Strategy; Expansion; Management; Entrepreneurship; Personal Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; Africa; Togo; Nigeria; Ghana
- 2022
- Article
Alleviating Time Poverty Among the Working Poor: A Pre-Registered Longitudinal Field Experiment
By: A.V. Whillans and Colin West
Poverty entails more than a scarcity of material resources—it also involves a shortage of time. To examine the causal benefits of reducing time poverty, we conducted a longitudinal feld experiment over six consecutive weeks in an urban slum in Kenya with a sample of... View Details
Keywords: Time; Subjective Well Being; Administrative Costs; Friction; Poverty; Well-being; Money; Perception; Kenya
- Article
Geographic Mobility, Immobility, and Geographic Flexibility—A Review and Agenda for Research on the Changing Geography of Work
I review and integrate a wide range of literature that has examined how geographic mobility of high-skilled workers creates value for organizations and individuals. Drawing on this interdisciplinary literature, I document that geographic mobility creates value by... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Friends and Family Money: P2P Transfers and Financially Fragile Consumers
By: Tetyana Balyuk and Emily Williams
We assess the impact that real time money transfer technology has on consumer outcomes, particularly during periods of financial fragility. We do this by developing a new data set that documents use of Zelle—the most widely used P2P money transfer technology in the... View Details
- August 2021
- Case
Livongo: Scaling a Purpose-Driven Organization in Healthcare
By: Ranjay Gulati, Aseem Shukla and Reva Nohria
When seasoned entrepreneur Glen Tullman founded the chronic health care startup Livongo in 2014, it was personal. His son lived with diabetes, and Tullman knew firsthand how taxing it could be to manage such an unrelenting disease. Livongo set out to empower people... View Details
- June 2021 (Revised November 2021)
- Case
Equity Bank: Charting the Future
By: Lauren Cohen, Michael Chitavi and Spencer C. N. Hagist
After climbing the ranks among Kenya's financial institutions from 66th to 1st, and toppling a quarter of the market share held by mobile money giant Safaricom, CEO James Mwangi must now guide Equity Bank into its next stage of development beyond "Equity 3.0." Should... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Personalized Game Design for Improved User Retention and Monetization in Freemium Games
By: Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer and Julian Runge
One of the most crucial aspects and significant levers that gaming companies possess in designing
digital games is setting the level of difficulty, which essentially regulates the user’s ability to
progress within the game. This aspect is particularly significant in... View Details
- July 2018
- Article
Global Collaborative Patents
By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr
We study the prevalence and traits of global collaborative patents for U.S. public companies, where the inventor team is located both within and outside of the United States. Collaborative patents are frequently observed when a corporation is entering into a new... View Details
- February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
Blue Haven Initiative: The PEGAfrica Investment
By: Vikram S. Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Amram Migdal
This case examines Blue Haven Initiative (BHI), an impact investing fund and family office, and one of its investments, PEGAfrica (PEG). BHI founder Liesel Pritzker Simmons’ motivations for using her family wealth to start a family office focused on impact investing,... View Details
Keywords: Impact Investing; Family Office; Development; International Development; International Development Investing; Development Fund; Sustainability; Solar Energy; Solar; Pay As You Go; PAYG; MFI; Social Venture; Business Ventures; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Economics; Development Economics; Energy; Energy Conservation; Energy Sources; Renewable Energy; Social Entrepreneurship; Finance; Assets; Asset Pricing; Capital; Capital Budgeting; Capital Structure; Venture Capital; Cash; Cash Flow; Currency; Currency Exchange Rate; Equity; Private Equity; Financial Instruments; Debt Securities; Stock Shares; Financing and Loans; Microfinance; International Finance; Investment; Investment Return; Investment Activism; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Price; Geography; Geographic Location; Emerging Markets; Ownership; Ownership Stake; Private Ownership; Social Enterprise; Value; Valuation; Value Creation; Energy Industry; Financial Services Industry; Green Technology Industry; Africa; United States
- March 2017 (Revised March 2019)
- Case
Ant Financial (A)
By: Feng Zhu, Ying Zhang, Krishna G. Palepu, Anthony K. Woo and Nancy Hua Dai
Headquartered in Hangzhou (China), Ant Financial has grown into a fintech “Unicorn.” The fintech empire that the company established spanned verticals such as mobile and online payment (Alipay), money market fund (Yu’e Bao), wealth management (Ant Fortune),... View Details
- March 2016
- Case
M-Pesa: Financial Inclusion in Kenya
By: Rajiv Lal, Lisa Cox and Sarah McAra
M-Pesa, a mobile money transfer service launched in 2007 in Kenya by telecommunications company Safaricom, allowed people to send money via mobile messaging to contacts, such as friends and family, or even to pay for goods and services, such as groceries or a taxi... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Mobile Money Services—Design and Development for Financial Inclusion
By: Rajiv Lal and Ishan Sachdev
Mobile money services are being deployed rapidly across emerging markets as a key tool to further the goal of financial inclusion. Financial inclusion, the development of novel methods to enable individuals at the base of the pyramid to access formal financial services... View Details
- March 2015
- Case
BOLT: Seed Venture Capital Firm
By: William A. Sahlman and Robert F. White
BOLT is a different kind of seed venture capital firm built to serve the needs of early-stage startups at the intersection of hardware and software.
In the past decade, the cost of entrepreneurial experimentation has dropped dramatically, particularly in web... View Details
In the past decade, the cost of entrepreneurial experimentation has dropped dramatically, particularly in web... View Details
- December 2014 (Revised May 2015)
- Case
Growth Hacking at Bazaart (A)
By: Jeffrey Bussgang and Matthew G. Preble
The four founding members of Bazaart—a young Israeli company whose sole product was its eponymous mobile application (app) which allowed users to create collages from photographs and other images—face an important strategic decision in June 2014. Since its founding... View Details