Faculty & Research

Facilitating faculty research and case development on an international scale

Our unprecedented network of research centers and regional offices in key areas of the world enable faculty to work with leaders, industry, government, and academia worldwide, and to learn from business challenges and innovations wherever they occur. Through sustained work in the field, faculty are provided the opportunity to immerse themselves in the culture and values – as well as intricacies and nuances – that lead to truly meaningful and insightful global research.

Research Centers & Offices

More than half the faculty are actively involved in international research, developing high-impact cases and course materials on relevant global issues and innovations.

New Research

Forthcoming
Article
Strategic Management Journal

Prior ties and the limits of peer effects on startup team performance

By: Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning

We conduct a field experiment at an entrepreneurship bootcamp to investigate whether interaction with proximate peers shapes a nascent startup team's performance. We find that teams whose members lack prior ties to others at the bootcamp experience peer effects that influence the quality of their product prototypes. A one-standard-deviation increase in the performance of proximate teams is related to a two-thirds standard-deviation improvement for a focal team. In contrast, we find that teams whose members have many prior ties interact less frequently with proximate peers, and thus their performance is unaffected by nearby teams. Our findings highlight how prior social connections, which are often a source of knowledge and influence, can limit new interactions and thus the ability of organizations to leverage peer effects to improve the performance of their members.

February 2019
Case

Extend Fertility: Conceiving the Market for Egg Preservation (A)

By: Debora L. Spar and Olivia Hull

In April 2003, entrepreneur and MBA student Christy Jones was planning a new venture to help women preserve their fertility. Her company, Extend Fertility, would commercialize a technique known as egg freezing, in which a woman’s eggs were extracted and stored at low temperatures until she was ready to become a mother. To date, the emerging technology had mostly been used to preserve the fertility of cancer patients whose treatment course could damage their eggs. Jones’s business would target a massively broader population: healthy women wishing to postpone motherhood. Before Jones could launch Extend Fertility, she needed to answer two pressing questions. What, exactly, would an egg-freezing service be selling? And to whom?

2018
Working Paper

In the Shadows? Informal Enterprise in Non-Democracies

By: Kristin Fabbe, Allison Spencer Hartnett and Steve L. Monroe

Why do regimes allow some low-income business owners to avoid taxes by operating informally? Electoral incentives are central to prevailing explanations of governments’ forbearance of informal enterprise. Yet many unelected regimes host large informal economies. This article examines forbearance in non-democracies. We argue that unelected regimes forbear their supporters’ informal businesses. We test this argument in Jordan. Using survey data of over 3,800 micro and small enterprises (MSEs), we find that informal businesses are more likely to operate in districts with higher rates of public sector employment, the crown jewel of the Jordanian regime’s patronage. Interviews with over sixty of the surveyed firm owners across four strategically paired districts illustrate that business owners covet forbearance, and that kinship ties to public sector employees limit forbearance to regime supporters. Communities that attract higher rates of public sector employment forfeit higher levels of fiscal revenue by permitting informality. This complementarity between public sector employment and forbearance amplifies inequalities between regime supporters and opponents in non-democracies.

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Global Colloquium for participant-centered learning

For senior faculty at top business schools in emerging economies who want to be trained in interactive methods of teaching and learning. GloColl comprises a seven-day session held on the HBS campus, followed by a three-day session held in two cities in Asia, Europe, or Latin America each year.

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In the News

- 17 Jan 2019
- Fortune
How 1850s America Offers a Model for Escaping Poverty

By: Clayton Christensen
- 09 Jan 2019
- HBS Working Knowledge
The UK Needs a Bold Competitive Strategy to Survive Brexit

Re: Michael Porter
- 03 Jan 2019
- Economist
Robots will help Chinese firms cope with wages and the trade war

Re: Willy Shih

17 Jan 2019
Fortune

How 1850s America Offers a Model for Escaping Poverty

By: Clayton Christensen

09 Jan 2019
HBS Working Knowledge

The UK Needs a Bold Competitive Strategy to Survive Brexit

Re: Michael Porter

03 Jan 2019
Economist

Robots will help Chinese firms cope with wages and the trade war

Re: Willy Shih

→More News