Helping and harnessing business to address society’s greatest challenges.
At the Institute for Business in Global Society (BiGS), we empower business leaders to make an impact on the biggest challenges of our time. Together, we are building an intellectual hub to advance our understanding of business' role in society and developing a thriving ecosystem for translating that research into action.
Societies worldwide are facing pressing social, environmental, and economic challenges. As these issues intensify, consumers, employees, investors, and policymakers increasingly call on businesses and their leaders to help find solutions—roles once viewed solely as governmental or nonprofit responsibilities.
The pace of these evolving expectations has placed many business leaders in unfamiliar territory. They are expected to decarbonize operations and supply chains, create inclusive organizations, expand economic mobility, and explore new governance models—all while spurring economic growth. Seeking reliable guidance, many look to academia for impartial, data-driven strategies, frameworks, and tactics.
HBS founded the Institute for Business in Global Society (BiGS) in 2022 to help business leaders understand and respond to these new demands. Building on HBS's strong foundation of work on issues like responding to climate change and building inclusive organizations, BiGS focuses on integrating and expanding that research while building platforms to educate leaders and catalyze action on this complex and expanding set of issues.
Harvard Business School’s Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society (BiGS) works to help and harness business to address society’s biggest challenges. Hear more from Professor Debora Spar, Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp, CEO & Co-Founder of Social Finance Tracy Palandjian, former Carnival CEO Arnold Donald, Professor George Serafeim, Professor Peter Tufano, and Professor Robin Ely.
Our Mission & Objectives
Go deeper on our mission and long-term objectives
Related Initiatives & Projects
Business & Environment Initiative
This initiative brings together more than 40 affiliated faculty members who collectively represent the School's ten units.
Business History Initiative
The impact of historical perspective— innovative, disruptive, secular— continues to shape teaching, research, and multi-faculty projects at HBS today.
Entrepreneurship Initiative
The Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship is a vital resource to HBS students and a champion for entrepreneurship at HBS.
Health Care Initiative
With global health care spending greater than $8.5 trillion, there is no shortage of opportunities to make an impact in this demanding sector.
Leadership Initiative
Leaders have always faced the job of inspiring others while making important decisions with incomplete information.
Race, Gender & Equity Initiative
We catalyze and translate cutting-edge research to transform practice, enable leaders to drive change, and eradicate gender, race, and other forms of inequality in business and society.
Social Enterprise Initiative
We educate, support, and inspire leaders innovative business practices and managerial disciplines to drive sustained, high-impact social change.
Managing the Future of Work
Multiple forces of change – demographics, technology, automation, globalization – are coming together at an unprecedented pace and scale. How can leaders prepare their organization and create the workforce of the future?
Global Leadership Roundtables
Harnessing business to address society's greatest challenges.
The BiGS Global Leadership Roundtables bring together leaders from business, NGOs, government, and academia to discuss best practices and address society's most pressing challenges. Each Roundtable focuses on regional challenges while exploring the evolving role of business in society.
BiGS Visiting Fellows
The BiGS Visiting Fellows are scholarly researchers who relocate to HBS's campus for one academic year to work on specific projects related to issues of business and society.
Fellows are vital to our work of deepening our understanding of business' role in society. They provide intellectual leadership and research support that accelerates the process of knowledge creation at HBS and leverages the expertise of our facility.
We have two groups of scholars: one whose work focuses on the role of business in addressing climate change and environmental sustainability and another whose work examines racial inequities in the business sector, and emerging best practices for combatting or addressing them.
Our third cohort of Fellows will start in September 2024.
Leadership Donors
We gratefully acknowledge the following donors who, through their generous support, are helping to harness business to address society’s greatest challenges.