News & Highlights

  • JULY 2022
  • EVENT

Conversation with Professor Michael Chu and Marcelo Escobar

In July, Professor Michael Chu and Marcelo Escobar, president of Banco Sol in Bolivia, talked to entrepreneurs in Santa Cruz de la Sierra about the impact of technology in financial services. Escobar leveraged his extensive experience in Latin America, venture capital, and base of pyramid markets.
  • June 2022
  • EVENT

A Conversation with Professor Michael Chu and Professor John Kim

In Montevideo, Uruguay, in June 2022, a group of alumni and business leaders gathered with Professors Michael Chu and John Kim to talk about the importance of education as a driver for growth and human development in the world and the current and future challenges and opportunities of the educational systems globally and specifically in Uruguay.
  • JUNE 2022
  • EVENTS

Co-hosted Event with HBS Club of Brazil: Innovation on Boards

In June 2022, Celso Ienaga, Claudia Elisa, Michel Abadi and Renato Cunha (MBA’15) talked about the importance of innovation in boards of directors, how to measure innovation impact, and changes that generates growth opportunities (i.e. the Covid-19 pandemic). More than 70 alumni and friends attended the event.
  • June 2022
  • Creating Emerging Markets

Creating Emerging Markets Interview: María Emilia Correa

María Emilia Correa is co-founder of Sistema B, a Latin American organization promoting new economies and B Corporations. In her interview, she recalls how after returning to Colombia in 1985 after finishing her masters in New York City, she took a job with The Nature Conservancy and the Natura Foundation where she pursued her interest in biological resource conservation. After attending United Nations Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, Correa became inspired by the idea that the business sector could be a positive agent to build a balanced and sustainable society. After working with in several civil society organizations focused on helping business to become more sustainable, in 1999 she became the first sustainability vice president at Grupo Nueva, a multinational investment holding company specialized in forestry and wood derivatives. This experience enabled her to acquire expertise in many key business functions. This interview is part of the Creating Emerging Markets project which provides a unique research and teaching resource on business leadership in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East over recent decades.
  • JUNE 2022
  • CREATING EMERGING MARKETS

Creating Emerging Markets Interview: Erling Lorentzen

Erling Lorentzen relates his experience growing up in Norway as part of family of shipping magnates and industrialists, his service during World War II, his educational experience at Harvard Business School, his marriage into the Norwegian royal family, and his eventual move to Brazil in 1953. There, he pursued a career in the petroleum industry and in shipping. In 1968, he founded the Aracruz Celulose company, which became a massive manufacturer of pulp and paper. Lorentzen oversaw the construction of the largest pulp mill in Brazil and the acquisition of large forestry operations. He describes the difficulty of growing the business amid periods of rapid inflation, the challenges of raising money overseas (including by becoming the first Brazilian company listed on New York Stock Exchange), and by facing and confronting issues of sustainability. This interview is part of the Creating Emerging Markets project which provides a unique research and teaching resource on business leadership in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East over recent decades.

New Research on the Region

  • April 2023
  • Teaching Material

Netflix’s Culture: Binge or Cringe?

By: Hubert Joly, Leonard A. Schlesinger, James Barnett and Stacy Straaberg

In April 2022, streaming entertainment company Netflix lost customers for the first time in more than 10 years. Once a first mover in the streaming landscape, Netflix was facing competition from Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, and others. A key component of Netflix’s prior success was its unique “freedom and responsibility” culture, in which the company eschewed hierarchical decision-making, performance reviews, and vacation and expense policies, and employees were expected to maintain high performance or else get cut from the “dream team.” While some employees reported appreciation for Netflix’s culture, others described it as “cutthroat.” Given the company’s performance in spring 2022, was Netflix’s “no rules rules” culture still an asset or was it now a liability?

  • 2023
  • Book

Deeply Responsible Business: A Global History of Values-Driven Leadership

Corporate social responsibility has entered the mainstream, but what does it take to run a successful purpose-driven business? This book examines leaders who put values alongside profits to showcase the challenges and upside of deeply responsible business. Should business leaders play a role in solving society’s problems? For decades, CEOs have been told that their only responsibility is to the bottom line. But consensus is growing that companies―and their leaders―must engage with their social, political, and environmental contexts. Jones distinguishes deep responsibility, which can deliver radical social and ecological responses, from corporate social responsibility, which is often little more than window dressing. Deeply Responsible Business provides a historical perspective on the social responsibility of business, going back to the Quaker capitalism of George Cadbury and the worker solidarity of Edward Filene and carrying us through to impact investing and the B-corps. Jones profiles exemplary business leaders from around the world who combined profits with social purpose to confront inequality, inner-city blight, and ecological degradation, while navigating restrictive laws and authoritarian regimes. The business leaders profiled in this book were motivated by bedrock values and sometimes driven by faith. They chose to operate in socially productive fields, interacted with humility with stakeholders, and felt a duty to support their communities. While far from perfect, each one showed that profit and purpose could be reconciled. Many of their businesses were wildly successful―though financial success was not their only metric of achievement. As many companies seek to coopt more ethically sensitized consumers, Jones gives us a new perspective to tackle tough questions and envisions a future in which companies and entrepreneurs can play a key role in healing our communities and protecting the natural world.

  • March 2023
  • Case

Roche: ESG and Access to Healthcare

By: George Serafeim, Susanna Gallani and Benjamin Maletta

In May 2022, Roche Group, one of the largest healthcare companies in the world, hosted its first ESG investor event focused exclusively on its efforts to impact access to healthcare. While Roche had recently set an ambitious goal to double the number of patients that had access to its innovative medicines and diagnostic solutions within ten years, it was not at all clear how the firm should structure its resource allocation criteria, performance evaluations, reporting and incentive systems to align efforts internally toward these goals. Group CFO and CIO Alan Hippe was presented with two options, none of which he was particularly enthusiastic about. One was to lower the hurdle rate for projects related to ESG issues, thus relaxing profit expectations. The alternative was to incorporate a set of minimum ESG requirements in all of Roche’s new project proposals. In this case, however, the risk was to reduce the focus on ESG from a strategic priority to a compliance exercise. In the presentation shared with investors at the ESG event, access to healthcare had been positioned as Roche’s greatest contribution to society. This type of public commitment required more than a compliance-level of effort. In September, Alan Hippe would sit down with the executive committee to chart a path for integrating ESG issues into Roche’s project selection and business planning. Hippe went on to define three objectives for ESG at Roche, “we need to align on targets, we need to get resource allocation right, and we need to report both internally and externally.”

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Montevideo Staff

Fernanda Miguel
Christopher P. Torto Executive Director
Mariana Cal
Assistant Director, Research
Jenyfeer Martínez Buitrago
Senior Researcher
Maria Martha Ruiz Melo
Office Manager

Mexico City Staff

Carla Larangeira
Senior Researcher

São Paulo Staff

Ruth Costas
Senior Researcher
Patricia Thome
Brazil Office & Regional Program Manager
Pedro Levindo
Senior Researcher