Oral History and Business History in Emerging Markets

This article describes the motivation, structure and use of the Creating Emerging Markets (CEM) oral history-based project at the Harvard Business School. The project consists of lengthy interviews with business leaders from emerging markets. By June 2024 183 interviews had been conducted with business leaders in 34 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Selected interviewees needed at least three decades of experience in business, and they must be assessed as highly impactful. The CEM project was conceived from the beginning as a public goods project. The transcripts of interviews are fully accessible on the project website. They can be downloaded by anyone with an internet connection, and they can be used in research and teaching without permission. The article explains how the CEM database has been employed in multiple academic publications, targeted at both historical and management audiences, and employing multiple methodologies. Examples include a study of gender and skin color stereotypes in the film industries in India, a comparison of how businesses perceived political risk in Latin America and South Asia, an analysis of business investment in education geographies, and a study of spiritual philanthropy in emerging markets. Multiple methodologies have been employed including coding and the application of machine learning to undertake facial and text analysis of CEM interviews.