News & Highlights

  • September 2023
  • HBS Alumni Bulletin

Made in Italy

A cohort of 45 students, under the guidance of Professors Arthur Segel, Sophus Reinert, and Dante Roscini, recently undertook an 11-day immersive journey delving into the past and future of capitalism, centering around iconic Italian brands. As part of Harvard Business School’s immersive field courses (IFCs), this longstanding initiative propels students beyond conventional classrooms to interact with global business leaders. The Italy IFC featured visits to landmarks such as Florence’s Palazzo Tornabuoni, Milan’s Bosco Verticale towers, and Lamborghini’s headquarters in Bologna. Culminating in research projects, the course uniquely bridged business, art history, and political science, examining the Renaissance’s impact on capitalism.
  • September 2023
  • HBS Alumni Bulletin

Startup Success Beyond Silicon Valley

In a groundbreaking research endeavor, Professor Paul Gompers investigates the emergence of entrepreneurial hotspots in unexpected global locations, challenging the notion that entrepreneurship is confined to tech hubs like Silicon Valley. With over a year of immersive field research across continents, Professor Gompers is on a mission to uncover the driving forces behind this global surge and distill valuable insights for developing economies and business leaders. Supported by the global research centers at Harvard Business School, this ambitious project is shaping a new MBA elective course, “Entrepreneurship Outside the Valley,” a corresponding book, and a suite of at least 15 new cases. The Europe Research Center played a pivotal role, facilitating Professor Gompers’ exploration through a three-week immersion in Central and Eastern Europe, where he engaged with over 50 entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers.
  • July 2023
  • Cold Call Podcast

How Unilever Is Preparing for the Future of Work?

Unilever’s 2016 Future of Work initiative aimed to propel organizational change and ready its workforce for a digital and highly automated future. Despite three years of success, the program grapples with implementation challenges. How can Unilever, a global consumer goods giant, effectively prepare its workforce for the future amidst rapid technological shifts? Professor Bill Kerr and Unilever’s VP of Global Learning and Future of Work, Patrick Hull, delve into the Harvard Business School case, “Unilever’s Response to the Future of Work,” supported by Emilie Billaud and Mette Fuglsang Hjortshøj of the Europe Research Center. They explore the complexities of leading agile workforce transformations across diverse geographies in the era of AI, machine learning, and automation.

New Research on the Region

  • 2023
  • Working Paper

Geographies of Discontent: Public Service Deprivation and the Rise of the Far Right in Italy

By: Simone Cremaschi, Paula Rettl, Marco Cappelluti and Catherine E. De Vries

Electoral support for far-right parties is often linked to geographies of discontent. We argue that public service deprivation, defined as reduced access to public services at the local level, plays an important role in explaining these patterns. By exploiting an Italian reform that reduced access to local public services in municipalities with fewer than 5,000 residents we demonstrate that far-right support in national elections increased more after the reform in affected municipalities than in unaffected ones. We use geo-coded individual-level survey data and party rhetoric data to explore the mechanisms underlying this result. Our findings suggest that exposure to the reform increased concerns about immigration, and that far-right parties increasingly linked public services to immigration in their rhetoric after the reform. These demand and supply dynamics help us understand how public service deprivation shapes geographic patterns in far-right support.

  • October 2023
  • Case

Making Progress at Progress Software (A)

By: Katherine Coffman, Hannah Riley Bowles and Alexis Lefort

In this case, the Human Capital team at Progress Software has identified that some employees have a hard time understanding how to advance within Progress. This realization leads the team to develop several major people-process innovations: the introduction of clear-cut, widely accessible leveling information as well as the development of several other programs, among them an internal mobility program that calls for quarterly conversations between managers and direct reports about professional development called “Career Conversations.” The case details the development of these programs and asks students to consider why some employees might have a harder time than others accessing career information and how managers could play a role in that imbalance.

  • October 2023
  • Case

JPMorgan Chase in Paris

By: Joseph L. Bower, Dante Roscini, Elena Corsi and Michael Norris

In 2019, Daniel Pinto, President and COO of JPMorgan Chase, has to make a recommendation to the bank’s Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, about where to physically locate the bank’s European trading operations after Brexit takes effect in 2020. The decision-making process considered a range of European locations, including Dublin, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Paris, and ultimately Pinto is left with a choice between Frankfurt and Paris. The case describes the decision-making process and gives an overview of JPMorgan’s history in France and the French government’s efforts to make the country more economically competitive to lure banks moving from London in the wake of Brexit.

See more research

Paris Staff

Vincent Dessain
Executive Director
→ Biography
Filomena Berreby
Office Coordinator
Daniela Beyersdorfer
Senior Associate Director, Research and Administration
Emilie Billaud
Assistant Director
Elena Corsi
Associate Director
Lena Duchene
Research Assistant
Hugo Etchegoyhen
Research Assistant
Nikolina Jonsson
Research Assistant
Tonia Labruyere
Senior Researcher
Emer Moloney
Senior Researcher
Carlota Moniz
Research Assistant
Jan Pianca
Associate Director, Educational Programs