To integrate and amplify HBS’s efforts, Dean Datar has appointed Debora Spar, the
Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration, to serve as Senior
Associate Dean for Business and Global Society. In this role, she will help launch
a new Business in Global Society (BiGS) Institute. BiGS will serve as a hub and provide
support for research in this arena, and ensure that the faculty's work can have maximum
impact and reach the widest possible audience.
Here are five examples of impactful research by HBS faculty members.
Finding “Hidden Workers”
Even before the pandemic upended the workforce, American companies complained about
the “skills gap” that left essential jobs unfilled while millions of Americans remained
unemployed. HBS’s Project on Managing the Future of Work, led by project co-chair
and professor of management practice Joe Fuller and in partnership with Accenture,
set out to understand why this mismatch occurs and how to solve it. A Harvard Business
Review article summarizes their findings, which include focusing on “skills-based”
hiring to help businesses access valuable pools of potential workers—such as veterans,
caregivers, immigrants, and individuals with mental or physical health issues—who
might otherwise be overlooked.
How AI Accelerated a COVID-19 Vaccine
Karim Lakhani, the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration,
and Marco Iansiti, the David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration, have long
studied how artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the competitive landscape, but
the example they explore in their
"Moderna" case study is perhaps the most dramatic. The case takes students inside the biotech firm led
by Stephen Bancel (MBA 2000) in the first days of 2020 to show how Moderna’s considerable
investments in AI and other digital tools allowed them to design and deliver a COVID-19
vaccine in just 41 days.
Reimagining Capitalism
Over the last 15 years, Rebecca Henderson, the John and Natty McArthur University
Professor, has asked herself—and her students—what business can and should do to address
climate change, wealth inequality, and political dysfunction. Her most recent book,
Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, which builds on her popular Reimaging Capitalism course, offers a roadmap to an
economy in which prosperity, environmental stewardship, social justice, and democracy
are not at odds. Henderson and former HBS Dean Nitin Nohria talked about the book
in an
alumni webinar.
Inspiring Public Entrepreneurship
“A public official can be every bit as much of an entrepreneur as can a private one,”
says Mitch Weiss, the Richard L. Menschel Professor of Management Practice. That’s
the premise of his
new book,
We the Possibility, which encourages governments to think like startups. For Weiss, who served as chief
of staff to Boston’s mayor and launched one of the first municipal innovation offices
before coming to HBS, that means identifying problems and dreaming up new solutions—that
may or may not work. Cities and towns can experiment with bold ideas, discard those
that don’t accomplish their goals, and scale those that do. Weiss calls it “possibility
government.”
Measuring Societal Impact
The traditional balance sheet does not account for a company’s cost to society. For
instance, airlines don’t figure in the environmental costs of travel, which can amount
to billions annually. HBS’s
Impact-Weighted Accounts Project, led by George Serafeim, the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration,
and Assistant Professor Ethan Rouen, wants to change that. The project is developing
tools to measure a company’s impact—negative and positive—on people and the planet.
This more accurate and transparent accounting will allow for smarter decision-making
on the part of corporations, governments, and consumers. Already, 1,800 businesses
have begun to calculate the true costs of their products.