More from the Author

• Chapter | Climate Change: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review | 2020

  Climate Change Is Going to Transform Where and How We Build

  John D. Macomber

  As fires, floods, and droughts increasingly threaten homes, businesses, and other institutions, climate risk has become financial risk. This implies that homeowners and investors have been making location decisions without properly pricing the cost of potential peril, and that the government has been enabling the oversight.
  It’s not just homeowners investing recklessly—many businesses have been equally short-sighted in where they place new assets, such as factories, and what to do with existing assets in once-safe areas now threatened by these perils. While laudatory efforts continue to mitigate climate change at the international level, it’s long past time to accept that the climate is already irreversibly changing, and we must adjust our mindset accordingly. We can’t just keep piling sandbags, pumping basements, dousing flames, and expecting government bailouts forever; a methodology is needed for homeowners, businesses, mortgage holders, governments—all of society—to figure out which assets to reinforce and what other courses of action are available.
  Alas, we seem to be headed in the wrong direction. While virtually no private insurance companies retain residential flood risk in Florida, Virginia, and other coastal states due to sea rise, government-subsidized programs such as NFIP continue to keep residences insured. Making things even worse is a general lack of restrictions on where one can build and what can be built. A society that prides itself on free will and self-determination is loath to say what a property owner can and cannot build on their own land as long as it meets rudimentary building and zoning codes: So more and more people move into harm’s way in flood plains, low-lying coastal areas, and tinder dry western landscapes.
  There are five basic choices in investing in resilience: reinforce, rebuild, rebound, restrict, and retreat. Together, they can be used as a decision-support tool for what to do with assets exposed to climate risk.

  Keywords: Climate Change; Housing; Mortgages; Geographic Location; Real Estate Industry;

  Citation:

  Macomber, John D. "Climate Change Is Going to Transform Where and How We Build." In Climate Change: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review. Vol. 12. HBR Insights Series. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020.  View Details

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• Panel Discussion | Jun 2020

  COVID-19 in Africa: Reflections, Challenges and Next Steps

  John D. Macomber, Mattias Fibiger, Hakeem Belo-Osagie, Shikhar Ghosh, Anywhere Sikochi, Laura Alfaro, Euvin Naidoo and Suraj Srinivasan

  In June 2020, the Africa Research Center hosted a four-part webinar series titled COVID-19: Reflections, Challenges and Next Steps. The series brought together alumni and friends from across Africa and provided the opportunity to get to know HBS professors who are doing work related to the continent. HBS professors John Macomber, Mattias Fibiger, Hakeem Belo-Osagie, Shikhar Ghosh, Anywhere (Siko) Sikochi, Laura Alfaro, Euvin Naidoo and Suraj Srinivasan shared insights and discussed how to respond to the global pandemic. The series attracted over 4,000 attendees from 50+ countries.

  Keywords: COVID-19; Health Pandemics; Macroeconomics; Leadership; Strategy; Africa;

  Citation:

  Macomber, John D., Mattias Fibiger, Hakeem Belo-Osagie, Shikhar Ghosh, Anywhere Sikochi, Laura Alfaro, Euvin Naidoo, and Suraj Srinivasan. "COVID-19 in Africa: Reflections, Challenges and Next Steps." Harvard Business School Africa Research Center, June 2020.  View Details

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• Book | 2020

  Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity

  Joseph Allen and John D. Macomber

  By the time you reach 80, you will have spent 72 years of your life indoors. Like it or not, humans have become an indoor species. This means that the people who design, build, and maintain our buildings can have a major impact on our health.
  Ever feel tired during a meeting? That’s because most offices and conference rooms are not bringing in enough fresh air. When that door opens, it literally breathes life back into the room. But there is a lot more acting on your body that you can’t feel or see. From our offices and homes to our schools and hospitals, the indoor spaces where we work, learn, play, eat, and heal have an outsized influence on our performance and well-being. They affect our creativity, focus, and problem-solving ability and can make us sick—dragging down profits in the process.
  Charismatic pioneers of the healthy building movement who have paired up to combine the cutting-edge science of Harvard’s School of Public Health with the financial know-how of the Harvard Business School, Joseph Allen and John Macomber lay out the science of healthy buildings and make the business case for owners, developers, and CEOs. They reveal the 9 Foundations of a Healthy Building and show how tracking health performance indicators with smart technology can boost performance and create economic value. While the “green” building movement tackled energy, waste, and water, the new healthy building movement focuses on the most important (and expensive) asset of any business: its people.

  Keywords: architecture; real estate development; air pollution; air quality; public health; Productivity gains; Buildings and Facilities; Health; Pollutants; Performance Productivity; Construction Industry;

  Citation:

  Allen, Joseph, and John D. Macomber. Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020.  View Details

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