Karen Gordon Mills is a Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School and a leading authority on U.S. competitiveness, entrepreneurship and innovation. She served in President Barack Obama’s Cabinet as the Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration from 2009 to 2013, and was a member of the President’s National Economic Council. She is an expert on the economic health and well-being of the nation’s small businesses.
Mills frequently provides analysis and insight on the small business lending market and its impact on the nation’s economy, including on the rapid growth of “fintech” online lenders. She is the author of the book Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream: How Technology is Transforming Lending and Shaping a New Era of Small Business Opportunity (March 2019, Palgrave Macmillan). She is also the author of two seminal working papers on the small business economy: The State of Small Business Lending: Innovation and Technology and Implications for Regulation (November 2016) and The State of Small Business Lending: Credit Access in the Recovery and How Technology May Change the Game (July 2014). With a focus on the link between entrepreneurship and middle-class opportunity, she authored portions of the U.S. Competitiveness project’s reports The Challenge of Shared Prosperity and Growth and Shared Prosperity , as well as contributed to the University of Virginia’s Milstein Commission’s report Can Startups Save the American Dream? .
Mills is a venture capitalist and the President of MMP Group, whose investments include companies in software services, food, skin care, and large-scale data analytics. She is the Vice Chair of Envoy, an immigration services provider, and a Director of Churchill Capital II and Clarivate Analytics. She also serves in leadership roles for several policy organizations, including as Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Private Capital Research Institute; Co-Chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Main Street Finance Task Force; Member of the Council on Foreign Relations; Member of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee; and Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is a Member of the Harvard Corporation and a past Vice Chair of the Harvard Overseers. She was previously a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School.
In Obama’s Cabinet as SBA Administrator, Mills was a key member of the White House economic team. At SBA, she led a team of more than 3,000 employees and managed a loan guarantee portfolio of over $100 billion. At the height of the Great Recession, she took steps that led to record-breaking years for SBA lending and investments in growth capital. Additionally, Mills’ efforts helped small businesses create regional economic clusters, gain access to early-stage capital, boost exports, and tap into government and commercial supply chains.
Prior to SBA, Mills held leadership positions in the private sector, including as a partner in several private equity firms. She has served on numerous public boards, including Arrow Electronics, Scotts Miracle-Gro, Triangle Pacific Corporation, and Guardian Life Insurance. In 2007, Maine Governor John Baldacci appointed Mills to Chair Maine’s Council on Competitiveness and the Economy, where she focused on regional development initiatives, including a regional economic cluster with Maine’s boatbuilding industry.
Mills earned an AB in economics from Harvard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar. She is a recipient of the U.S. Department of the Navy’s Distinguished Public Service Award, and is a frequent guest on news outlets, including Bloomberg radio and TV and CNBC, with recent op-ed placements in American Banker, Fortune, Forbes, The Hill, and Harvard Business Review.
- Featured Work
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Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream describes the needs of small businesses for capital and demonstrates how technology—novel data sources, artificial intelligence, machine learning—will transform the small business lending market. This market has been plagued by frictions: it is hard for a lender to determine which small businesses are creditworthy and it is difficult for business owners to understand their own cash flow and prospects. Now the fintech innovation cycle is at an inflection point—new streams of data have the power to illuminate the opaque nature of a small business’s finances. The playing field is wide open, with technology companies like Amazon and Square, new fintech entrepreneurs, and banks—small and large—vying for a position. Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream grapples with the broad significance of small business to the economy, the historical role of credit markets, the dynamics of innovation cycles, and the policy implications for regulation.
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Pioneering Research Book PageCOVID-19 will put many small businesses on life support. Karen G. Mills, who has been advising policymakers on aid options, offers guidance to owners on the brink of ruin.
Return guest, Harvard Business School senior fellow Karen Mills, is uniquely qualified to assert that the Covid-19 pandemic poses a greater threat to US small businesses than the Great Recession of 2008-2009. She directed the Small Business Administration from 2009 to 2013 and has been advising Congress and fintech companies on how to help small businesses through the pandemic. She is the author of Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream.
In the wake of COVID-19 some small businesses are closing their doors, maybe forever, but there's hope on the way in the form of the new relief package from Congress that potentially promises a brighter future. Professor Karen Mills, a former U.S. Small Business Administrator, took a quick break from actually helping to pass the bill through Congress to talk through how it can help, some of the challenges small businesses are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic and offer some advice.
As technology opens the doors to vast troves of data, opportunities are emerging to create new insights on a small business’s health and prospects. Insights from this data have the potential to resolve two defining issues that have faced lenders and borrowers in the sector: heterogeneity—the fact that all small businesses are different, making it difficult to extrapolate from one example to the next—and information opacity, the fact that it is hard to know what is really going on inside a small business.
If you’ve used Venmo, Coinbase or Robinhood, then you’ve used Plaid, whose software links users’ bank accounts to these apps. Investors include the venture capital arms of Goldman Sachs and Google parent Alphabet. Plaid’s mission is to help consumers own their banking data by being able to more easily see their complete financial picture. This goal is part of an “open banking” movement, sweeping across the fintech industry.
The former head of the Small Business Administration and current Harvard professor says data sharing can be transformational for banks.
It's very important for a small business owner to understand where their business is going, what's the customer need that they're going to meet, and how are they going to survive financially. What are going to be the resources that they're going to use to start the business? How are they going to generate the resources they need to stay in business and pay their employees? Mills notes that in the era of fintech, small businesses have more tools than ever to establish their foundation.
Former Small Business Administrator Karen Mills talks with Pedro Echevarria about her new book on technology’s impact on small businesses.
Karen Mills, former director at Small Business Administration, discusses the influence of smaller financial technology companies on big banks and how the U.S. government could help small businesses.
The former head of the Small Business Administration and current Senior Fellow at Harvard talks about her new book and how we are moving towards small business lending utopia.
Was Eastern Labs a huge success or an expensive mistake? Eastern Bank CEO Bob Rivers innovated from within by partnering with fintech entrepreneur Dan O’Malley to launch a completely automated small-business lending product. Karen Mills discusses key questions from her case study: Did Rivers have the right intrapreneurship model? Did he change the culture at Eastern? Did he make a mistake spinning off Numerated into a separate company?
David Mindell, Karen Mills and Robert Solow discuss what we can learn from past examples of massive disruption in the workforce. Which lessons apply today, and where might we be in uncharted territory.
April 11, 2018 - Karen Mills leads a discussion between Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and JPMorgan Chase's President and CEO Jamie Dimon and Head of Corporate Responsibility Peter Scher for a discussion on cross-sector collaboration to drive economic opportunity in America's cities. The discussion, which was hosted by the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics, looks at how partnerships like the one between JPMorgan Chase and the City of Detroit are succeeding at addressing community challenges and creating pathways to greater economic opportunity for individuals and families.
Policy Briefing: An alternative framework that focuses on the suppliers of goods and services to businesses and the government: the “supply chain economy.” Our research shows that by categorizing the economy into Supply Chain versus Business-to-Consumer industries, a different picture emerges.
Small businesses are core to America’s economic competitiveness. Not only do they employ half of the nation’s private sector workforce – about 120 million people – but since 1995 they have created approximately two‐thirds of the net new jobs in our country. Yet in recent years, small businesses have been slow to recover from a recession and credit crisis that hit them especially hard. This lag has prompted the question, “Is there a credit gap in small business lending?”
This paper compiles and analyzes the current state of access to bank capital for small business from the best available sources. We explore both the cyclical impact of the recession on small business and access to credit, and several structural issues in that impede the full recovery of bank credit markets for smaller loans.
In June 2015, 73 chief executives, mayors, governors, university presidents, economists, and thought leaders from across the political spectrum gathered at Harvard Business School to work on a question of deep and growing concern in the United States: How can our nation continue to grow while also providing a path to prosperity for more Americans? This briefing shares the highlights of the group’s deliberations.
Findings of Harvard Business School's 2015 Survey on U.S. Competitiveness
- Books
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- Book Chapters
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- Delgado, Mercedes, J. Daniel Kim, and Karen G. Mills. "The Servicification of the U.S. Economy: The Role of Startups versus Incumbent Firms." In The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth, edited by Aaron Chatterji, Josh Lerner, Scott Stern, and Michael J. Andrews. University of Chicago Press, forthcoming. View Details
- Mills, Karen G., and Annie Dang. "Creating 'Smart' Policy to Promote Entrepreneurship and Innovation." In The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth, edited by Aaron Chatterji, Josh Lerner, Scott Stern, and Michael J. Andrews. University of Chicago Press, forthcoming. View Details
- Journal Articles
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- Working Papers
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- Delgado, Mercedes, and Karen G. Mills. "The Supply Chain Economy: A New Industry Categorization for Understanding Innovation in Services." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 18-068, October 2017. (Revised July 2019.) View Details
- Delgado, Mercedes, and Karen G. Mills. "The Supply Chain Economy: A New Framework for Understanding Innovation and Services." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 18-071, January 2018. View Details
- Mills, Karen Gordon, and Brayden McCarthy. "The State of Small Business Lending: Innovation and Technology and the Implications for Regulation." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 17-042, November 2016. View Details
- Mills, Karen G., and Brayden McCarthy. "The State of Small Business Lending: Credit Access During the Recovery and How Technology May Change the Game." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 15-004, July 2014. View Details
- Cases and Teaching Materials
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- Mills, Karen, Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Martin Sinozich, and Gabriella Elanbeck. "The Black New Venture Competition." Harvard Business School Case 821-029, September 2020. View Details
- Mills, Karen G., and Annie Dang. "First Aid Beauty." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 321-013, September 2020. View Details
- Mills, Karen G., and Annie Dang. "Intrapreneurship: Leading Innovation Efforts in Established Organizations." Harvard Business School Technical Note 820-096, March 2020. View Details
- Mills, Karen, and Jan W. Rivkin. "Amazon's HQ2 (C): Choices." Harvard Business School Supplement 719-465, May 2019. View Details
- Mills, Karen, and Jan W. Rivkin. "Amazon's HQ2." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 718-507, May 2018. View Details
- Mills, Karen, Manjari Raman, and Jan W. Rivkin. "Amazon's HQ2 (B): Utah." Harvard Business School Supplement 718-503, March 2018. View Details
- Mills, Karen, and Jan W. Rivkin. "Amazon's HQ2 (A)." Harvard Business School Case 718-494, February 2018. (Revised August 2019.) View Details
- Hamermesh, Richard G., Karen Gordon Mills, and John P. Reed. "Crown Cork & Seal Co., Inc." Harvard Business School Case 378-024, August 1977. (Revised April 1987.) View Details
- Mills, Karen, and Annie Dang. "First Aid Beauty." Harvard Business School Case 319-082, January 2019. View Details
- Mills, Karen, and Aaron Mukerjee. "University of Michigan Men's Basketball: A Series of Fortunate Events?" Harvard Business School Teaching Plan 319-028, July 2018. View Details
- Mills, Karen, and Aaron Mukerjee. "University of Michigan Men's Basketball: A Series of Fortunate Events?" Harvard Business School Case 319-027, July 2018. View Details
- Mills, Karen, Dennis Campbell, and Aaron Mukerjee. "Eastern Bank: Innovating Through Eastern Labs." Harvard Business School Teaching Plan 319-037, September 2018. (Revised December 2019.) View Details
- Mills, Karen, and Aaron Mukerjee. "The River Café." Harvard Business School Teaching Plan 318-106, February 2018. View Details
- Mills, Karen, Dennis Campbell, and Aaron Mukerjee. "Eastern Bank: Innovating Through Eastern Labs." Harvard Business School Case 318-068, October 2017. (Revised April 2019.) View Details
- Mills, Karen G., Ben Arnstein, and Rafiq Ahmed. "The River Café." Harvard Business School Case 318-064, September 2017. View Details
- Mills, Karen. "The Maine Food Cluster Project." Harvard Business School Teaching Plan 317-107, March 2017. View Details
- Mills, Karen, and Aldo Sesia. "The Maine Food Cluster Project." Harvard Business School Case 316-008, October 2015. View Details
- Applegate, Lynda M., Karen Gordon Mills, Lena G. Goldberg, and Annelena Lobb. "The Grommet - Video Supplement." Harvard Business School Video Supplement 815-703, November 2014. View Details
- Other Publications and Materials
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- Delgado, Mercedes, and Karen G. Mills. "A New Categorization of the U.S. Economy: The Role of Supply Chain Industries in Performance." Paper presented at the Industry Studies Association, Minneapolis, MN, May 2016. View Details
- Mills, Karen G. "Growth & Shared Prosperity." Report, U.S. Competitiveness Project, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, September 2015 (With contributions from Joseph B. Fuller and Jan W. Rivkin.) View Details
- Rivkin, Jan, Karen G. Mills, and Michael E. Porter. "The Challenge of Shared Prosperity: Findings of Harvard Business School's 2015 Survey on U.S. Competitiveness." Report, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, September 2015 (With contributions from Michael I. Norton and Mitchell B. Weiss.) View Details
- Mills, Karen G., Elisabeth B. Reynolds, and Andrew Reamer. "Clusters and Competitiveness: A New Federal Role for Stimulating Regional Economics." Blueprint for American Prosperity, Brookings Institution, Metropolitan Policy Program, April 2008. View Details
- Additional Information
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Op-eds
- In The News
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