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- March 2024
- Case
Nomad: A License to Bank
By: Paul A. Gompers and Pedro Levindo
In late 2023, Lucas Vargas, CEO and co-founder of Nomad, a fintech that offered financial services in the United States for Brazilian residents, had to decide what to do to ensure the company’s continued expansion. Nomad launched its first product, a U.S. digital bank...
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Keywords:
Mergers and Acquisitions;
Business Startups;
Customer Satisfaction;
Decision Making;
Entrepreneurship;
Banks and Banking;
Initial Public Offering;
Global Strategy;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Brands and Branding;
Marketing Strategy;
Product Launch;
Organizational Culture;
Going Public;
Ownership Stake;
Innovation and Invention;
Strategic Planning;
Business and Government Relations;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Business Strategy;
Competitive Advantage;
Corporate Strategy;
Diversification;
Expansion;
Vertical Integration;
Leadership;
Law;
Banking Industry;
Technology Industry;
Service Industry;
Brazil;
United States;
North America;
Latin America
- February 2024
- Case
Can Cities Beat the Heat? (A): A Comparative Analysis of Climate Actions and Change Enablers in 14 U.S. Cities
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jacob A. Small
Throughout the early 2000's, emphasis was placed on initiatives to adapt to and mitigate climate action in cities. This series presents overviews (snapshots) of 14 U.S. metropolitan regions to help identify similarities, differences, and opportunities for developing...
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Keywords:
Climate;
Climate Impact;
Innovation;
Mitigation Policies;
Carbon Footprint;
Investing;
Climate Finance;
Renewable;
Mobility;
City;
Climate Change;
Adaptation;
Renewable Energy;
Weather;
Problems and Challenges;
United States;
Boston;
Detroit;
Miami;
Minneapolis;
St. Paul;
Pittsburgh;
Seattle;
San Jose
- October 2023 (Revised November 2023)
- Case
Rheaply: Circularity For Every Business
By: Rembrand Koning and Alicia Dadlani
In March 2023, Garry Cooper, cofounder and CEO of Chicago-based Rheaply, needed to demonstrate that Rheaply’s expanded vision could translate into building cash flows and metrics needed to raise a Series B and turn the business into a model for financial and...
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- September 2023
- Case
Diamond Standard
By: Lauren H. Cohen, Zhaoheng Gong and Grace Headinger
Cormac Kinney, Founder and CEO of Diamond Standard, was on a mission to transform the U.S. diamond market through unlocking the precious gems as market-traded assets. As a serial FinTech entrepreneur, he hoped to add an additional service to his vault: Carats. The...
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Keywords:
Tokenization;
Fintech;
Cryptocurrency;
Liquidity;
Digital;
Rare Earth Minerals;
Decentralized;
Crypto Economy;
Financial Product;
Metals;
Diamonds;
Commodity;
Assets;
Financial Instruments;
Financial Institutions;
Financial Markets;
Investment;
Technological Innovation;
Natural Resources;
Business Startups;
Currency;
Financial Services Industry;
United States
- July 2023 (Revised August 2024)
- Case
Revenue Recognition at Stride Funding: Making Sense of Revenues for a Fintech Startup
By: Paul M. Healy and Jung Koo Kang
The case explores the challenges of revenue recognition and financial reporting for Stride Funding (Stride), a fintech startup that has disrupted the student loan market. Stride leveraged proprietary machine learning and financial models to underwrite alternative...
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- June 2023
- Case
Launching Egypt’s First Digital Banking Platform: QNB Bebasata
By: Mark Egan, Billy Chan and Ahmed Dahawy
The leadership team at QNB Alahli, Egypt's second biggest private bank, looked back on their efforts to create a brand-new, fully digital banking platform since 2019. A digital-only banking service was unprecedented in Egypt, a country where over 90% of financial...
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- February 2023 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Accelerating the Accelerator: Raja Al Mazrouei at DIFC Fintech Hive
By: Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards and Lydia Begag
In January 2023, Raja Al Mazrouei became the Managing Director and Acting CEO of Etihad Credit Insurance (ECI) in Dubai, UAE. In her previous role as the Executive Vice President of the DIFC Fintech Hive, she successfully built and led an accelerator program for...
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Keywords:
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Organizational Culture;
Organizational Design;
Organizational Structure;
Management;
Strategy;
Technology Adoption;
Information Infrastructure;
Financial Management;
Financial Strategy;
Technological Innovation;
Digital Marketing;
Digital Strategy;
Digital Transformation;
Global Strategy;
Globalized Markets and Industries;
Banks and Banking;
Corporate Finance;
Leadership;
Leadership Development;
Leadership Style;
Financial Services Industry;
Technology Industry;
Banking Industry;
Middle East;
Singapore;
London;
United Arab Emirates;
Dubai
- February 2023
- Supplement
Astyanax Kanakakis at norbloc: A Founder's Experience with the DIFC Fintech Hive
By: Linda A. Hill and Lydia Begag
norbloc was founded in 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden, by Astyanax Kanakakis and his co-founders, Vitalii Demianets and Sam Saatchi. Kanakakis and Demianets got to work to address a key gap in the industry: Know Your Customer (KYC) data sharing. As the first distributed KYC...
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Keywords:
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Organizational Design;
Organizational Culture;
Organizational Structure;
Organizations;
Leadership;
Leadership Development;
Leadership Style;
Collaborative Innovation and Invention;
Digital Transformation;
Digital Strategy;
Digital Platforms;
Technology Adoption;
Technological Innovation;
Corporate Entrepreneurship;
Business and Government Relations;
Business Startups;
Financial Services Industry;
Technology Industry;
Banking Industry;
Information Technology Industry;
Sweden;
Europe;
Singapore;
London;
United Arab Emirates;
Dubai;
Middle East;
Athens;
Greece
- November 2022
- Technical Note
National Security and Transnational Capitalism
By: Meg Rithmire
Though the relationship between national security and transnational commerce had long been interrogated and contested, the 2020s saw the escalation of concerns about insecurity and interdependence. These concerns manifested in a suite of institutional innovations and...
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- October 2022
- Case
Single.Earth
By: Rembrand Koning and Emer Moloney
Estonian greentech company Single.Earth is launching a nature-backed token that is linked to and funds the protection of a specific plot fo land. The first landowners had been onboarded to the company's Digital Twin, a virtual representation of the planet's natural...
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Keywords:
Alternative Assets;
Business Startups;
Entrepreneurship;
Climate Change;
Environmental Sustainability;
Green Technology;
Natural Resources;
Pollution;
Analytics and Data Science;
Marketing;
Product Marketing;
Product Launch;
Product Positioning;
Markets;
Market Timing;
Strategy;
Green Technology Industry;
Estonia
- 2024
- Working Paper
You've Got Mail! The Late 19th-Century U.S. Postal Service Expansion, Firm Creation, and Firm Performance
By: Astrid Marinoni and Maria P. Roche
This paper examines the impact of the expansion of the US Postal Service in the late 19th century
on firm creation and performance. Utilizing newly digitized archival data on historic business establishments,
post office locations, and road networks in California,...
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- September 2022
- Article
Energy Innovation Funding and Institutions in Major Economies
By: Jonas Meckling, Clara Galeazzi, Esther Shears, Tong Xu and Laura Diaz Anadon
Accelerating energy innovation for decarbonization hinges on public investment in research, development and demonstration (RD&D). Here we examine the evolution and variation of public energy RD&D funding and institutions and associated drivers across eight major...
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- 2022
- Book
Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China
By: William C. Kirby
The modern university was born in Germany. In the twentieth century, the United States leapfrogged Germany to become the global leader in higher education. Will China challenge its position in the twenty-first?
Today American institutions dominate nearly every... View Details
Today American institutions dominate nearly every... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Are Experts Blinded by Feasibility?: Experimental Evidence from a NASA Robotics Challenge
By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Zoe Szajnfarber, Jason Crusan, Michael Menietti and Karim R. Lakhani
Resource allocation decisions play a dominant role in shaping a firm’s technological trajectory and competitive advantage. Recent work indicates that innovative firms and scientific institutions tend to exhibit an anti-novelty bias when evaluating new projects and...
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- May 2022
- Case
Rawbank's Illico Cash: Can 'Fast Money' Overcome Cash Dependency in the DRC?
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
Thomas de Dreux-Brézé, the Head of Strategy and Project Management at Rawbank Congo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was perplexed as he reviewed annual adoption rates for the bank’s launch of Illico Cash 2.0. As the bank’s mobile money app, Illico Cash...
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Keywords:
Fintech;
Inflation;
Deflation;
Rural;
Urban;
Emerging Market;
Mobile Technology;
Finance;
Money;
Inflation and Deflation;
Business Growth and Maturation;
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Demographics;
Developing Countries and Economies;
Corporate Entrepreneurship;
Behavioral Finance;
Currency;
Banks and Banking;
Commercial Banking;
Financial Strategy;
Rural Scope;
Urban Scope;
Innovation Strategy;
Emerging Markets;
Network Effects;
Consumer Behavior;
Mobile and Wireless Technology;
Technology Adoption;
Banking Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
Technology Industry;
Congo, Democratic Republic of the
- April 2022
- Case
Mastercard: Creating a World Beyond Cash
In late 2021, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach and Chairman and former CEO Ajaypal “Ajay” Banga considered how Mastercard could best position itself for continued success in the years to come. Since Mastercard’s initial public offering in 2006, the company had grown and...
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Keywords:
Technological Innovation;
Leadership;
Leading Change;
Organizational Culture;
Business Strategy;
Change;
Change Management;
Money;
Cash;
Credit;
Financial Institutions;
Banks and Banking;
Central Banking;
Financial Instruments;
Credit Cards;
Financial Markets;
Globalization;
Innovation and Invention;
Innovation and Management;
Innovation Strategy;
Leadership Style;
Competitive Advantage;
Corporate Strategy;
Diversification;
Information Technology;
Banking Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
New York (state, US)
- March 2022 (Revised April 2023)
- Case
Pittsburgh: A Successful City?
Pittsburgh, PA, was once the crown jewel of American heavy industry. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the city was an undisputed leader in steel production, boasting some of the largest companies and wealthiest individuals in the world. Its abundance of...
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Keywords:
Economic And Social Disparities;
Economic Development;
Local Economic Development;
Contextual Intelligence;
Contextual Knowledge;
Context;
City Growth;
City Innovation;
City Leadership;
Pittsburgh;
Local Government;
Local Stakeholders;
Business And Community;
Business And Community Relations;
Community Engagement;
Community Relations;
Cross-sector Collaboration;
Innovation;
Innovation Economy;
Innovation Clusters;
Innovation Ecosystems;
Shared Prosperity;
Equality Of Opportunity;
Equity;
Inclusion;
Business And Government;
Business ＆ Government Relations;
Business And Government Relations;
Business And Society;
Neighborhoods;
Race And Ethnicity;
Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship;
Diversity;
Ethnicity;
Race;
Household;
Income;
Economic Growth;
Economic Sectors;
Economics;
Local Range;
Urban Development;
Urban Scope;
City;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
Government and Politics;
Government Administration;
Growth and Development;
History;
Leadership;
Goals and Objectives;
Philanthropy and Charitable Giving;
Society;
Civil Society or Community;
Culture;
Human Needs;
Public Opinion;
Public Sector;
Social Issues;
Poverty;
Equality and Inequality;
Manufacturing Industry;
Steel Industry;
Education Industry;
Medical Devices and Supplies Industry;
Technology Industry;
United States;
Pittsburgh;
Pennsylvania
- 2022
- Book
Leadership to Last: How Great Leaders Leave Legacies Behind
By: Geoffrey Jones and Tarun Khanna
Society tends to glorify the get-rich-quick entrepreneur who builds a company, takes it public and then (maybe) contributes to charity.
In Leadership to Last, Geoffrey Jones and Tarun Khanna discuss the interviews they and other Harvard faculty have undertaken...
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- Winter 2021
- Article
Can Staggered Boards Improve Value? Causal Evidence from Massachusetts
By: Robert Daines, Shelley Xin Li and Charles C.Y. Wang
We study the effect of staggered boards (SBs) using a quasi-experiment: a 1990 law that imposed an SB on all Massachusetts-incorporated firms. The law led to an increase in Tobin's Q, investment in CAPEX and R&D, patents, higher-quality patented innovations, and...
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- October 2021 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
Customer-Centric Design with Artificial Intelligence: Commonwealth Bank
By: Karim R. Lakhani, Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Jin Hyun Paik and Steven Randazzo
As Commonwealth Bank (CommBank) CEO Matt Comyn delivered the full financial year results in August 2021 over videoconference, it took less than two minutes for him to make his first mention of the organization's Customer Engagement Engine (CEE), the AI-driven customer...
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