Faculty & Research

• HBS Book

What leads people to speak truth to power or act bravely under pressure? While we often assume courage is an innate trait, How to Be Bold reveals it's a skill anyone can develop. Ranjay Gulati delivers a science-backed playbook showing how specific ways of thinking and acting allow us to manage fear—especially in the face of uncertainty—and act decisively. Drawing on compelling stories from extreme situations to everyday challenges, Gulati uncovers the common thread: it's not fearlessness, but the ability to adopt mindsets that make courageous action possible. Cultivate personal and collective courage with actionable strategies for leadership in uncertain times, driving innovation, and achieving a more fulfilling life.

• New England Journal of Medicine 394, no. 6 (February 5, 2026): 521-523.

The corporatization of the U.S. health insurance industry may contribute to poor health care performance for the commercially insured population, but some supply-side and demand-side reforms could help.

• Review of Financial Studies 39, no. 2 (February 2026): 427-458.

We present evidence that pressure to maximize short-term stock prices and earnings leads banks to increase risk. We start by showing that banks increase risk when they transition from private to public ownership through a public listing or an acquisition. The increase in risk is greater than for a control group of banks that intended but failed to transition from private to public ownership, a result that is robust to using a plausibly exogenous instrument for failed transitions. The increase in risk is also greater than for a control group of banks that were acquired but did not change their listing status. We establish that pressure to maximize short-term stock prices helps to explain these findings by showing that the increase in risk is larger for newly public banks that are more focused on short-term stock prices and performance.

• Featured Case

In November 2019, Morten Molde, senior portfolio manager at Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), came across troubling signs that Wirecard, a German payment processor and a long-time holding of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global—the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, which NBIM managed on behalf of the Norwegian people—was inflating its financials. As his suspicion of large-scale fraud mounted, Molde grappled with a high-stakes decision: should NBIM act on its suspicions? And if so, how? Should it escalate concerns to regulators, auditors, or maybe even to the public? Should it short the stock, shielding itself from major losses but risking reputational fallout and regulatory scrutiny should his analysis be wrong? Or should the fund stay put, and risk heavy losses if Molde’s analysis was right after all?

• Featured Case

Between 2022 and 2025, Eli Lilly announced over $13 billion in investments in central Indiana’s LEAP Innovation District—the largest commitment in the state’s history. For Lilly, the expansion reflected urgency to scale production of its diabetes and obesity medicines. For state leaders, it was the centerpiece of a strategy to seed an innovation ecosystem around corporate anchors. Yet the initiative drew criticism over land use, subsidies, and water infrastructure, echoing past failures of place-based economic development. By early 2025, with nearly $1 billion in public funds already committed, stakeholders faced a central question: Would Lilly’s record-setting investment catalyze a lasting regional innovation engine, or remain narrowly tied to one company’s needs?

• HBS Working Paper

Despite massive investment in artificial intelligence and automation, many high value technology projects stall after approval or are adopted only symbolically, especially in B2B markets where adoption depends on the endorsement of managers whose roles are disrupted by the technology. We argue that dominant adoption theories focused on firm level readiness, usefulness, and institutional pressure overlook a central marketing problem: selling and governing technologies that undermine the approving role itself. We introduce Self Disruptive Technologies (SDTs), offerings that enhance organizational performance while eroding the authority, discretion, or span of control of the role responsible for approving them.

• Working Paper

This paper investigates whether economic hardship undermines preferences for honesty. We use controlled, high-stake measures of cheating for private benefit in a large sample of 5,664 Kenyans, exploiting three complementary sources of variation: experimentally manipulated monetary incentives to cheat, a randomized increase in the salience of one’s own financial situation, and the Covid-19 income shock (exploiting randomized survey timing, with respondents interviewed before vs. during the crisis). We find that cheating behavior is highly responsive to financial incentives in the experiment. Covid-19 economic hardship—marked by a 51% drop in monthly earnings—leads to a sharp increase in the prevalence of cheating, and the effect increases gradually with prolonged hardship. The effects are largest among the most economically impacted and are amplified when the salience of one’s own financial situation is experimentally increased.