HBS Begins Teaching Consumer Finance
| Q&A with: | Peter Tufano |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 28, 2009 |
| Feature: | Lessons from the Classroom |
Last spring HBS became the first top-ranked U.S. business school to offer a course in consumer finance. Professor Peter Tufano talks about the course and his determination to make consumer finance a broadly accepted academic pursuit. From the HBS Alumni Bulletin.
HBS Past and Present
| Published: | October 7, 2009 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | HBS Business Summit |
Eight enduring themes have characterized Harvard Business School from its earliest years, and remain as integral as ever to the way the School thinks and operates.
Harvard and HBS: The Next 100 Years
| Published: | September 30, 2009 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | HBS Business Summit |
Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust reflected on Harvard Business School's past 100 years and shared her vision of the future, while HBS Dean Jay Light discussed the School's history and highlighted key focus areas for the future.
Business Summit: Business Education in the 21st Century
| Published: | July 24, 2009 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | HBS Business Summit |
Business schools are innovating and experimenting to change the MBA experience, and to help business education regain its relevance and value. Along with a changing curricula, programs are attempting to make the learning experience more interactive, engaging, global, and experiential.
Business Summit: The Role of Social Entrepreneurship in Transforming American Public Education
| Published: | July 2, 2009 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | HBS Business Summit |
Amid formidable barriers, a set of passionate social entrepreneurs are disrupting the status quo in education with innovative and effective approaches that are producing measurable results. The challenge now is to build support so these solutions can be applied elsewhere.
Demographics, Career Concerns or Social Comparison: Who Games SSRN Download Counts?
| Authors: | Benjamin G. Edelman and Ian I. Larkin |
|---|---|
| Published: | March 25, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | February 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Why do certain individuals commit fraudulent acts—in this case repeatedly downloading their own working papers from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) repository to increase the papers' reported download counts? HBS professors Benjamin G. Edelman and Ian I. Larkin study the relative importance of demographic, economic, and psychological factors leading individuals to commit this kind of gaming. Authors engage in deceptive self-downloading to improve a paper's visibility on SSRN, to obtain more favorable assessments of paper quality, and to obtain possible benefits for promotion and tenure decisions at those schools that consider download counts in tenure decisions. Data indicates that authors are more likely to inflate their papers' download counts when a higher count greatly improves the visibility of a paper on the SSRN network. Authors are also more likely to inflate their papers' download counts when their peers recently had successful papers—suggesting an "envy" effect in download gaming. Download inflations are also affected somewhat by career concerns (e.g. just before changing jobs) and by demographic factors, though these effects are smaller. On the whole, analysis suggests a heightened risk of fraudulent acts not only where economic returns are high, but also where prestige, status, or reputation are important.
Smart Money: The Effect of Education, Cognitive Ability, and Financial Literacy on Financial Market Participation
| Authors: | Shawn Cole and Gauri Kartini Shastry |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 14, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2008, revised February 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
(Previously titled "If You Are So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich? The Effects of Education, Financial Literacy and Cognitive Ability on Financial Market Participation.") Individuals face an increasingly complex menu of financial product choices. The shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pension plans, and the growing importance of private retirement accounts, require individuals to choose the amount they save, as well as the mix of assets in which they invest. Yet, participation in financial markets is far from universal in the United States. Moreover, researchers have only a limited understanding of what factors cause participation. Cole and Shastry use a very large dataset new to the literature in order to study the important determinants of financial market participation. They find that higher levels of education and cognitive ability cause increased participation—however, financial literacy education does not.
Published in 2008
'Ted Levitt Changed My Life'
| Published: | December 17, 2008 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Lessons from the Classroom |
Many students say legendary Harvard Business School marketing professor Ted Levitt changed their lives inside his classroom and out. "Ted Levitt was the most influential and imaginative professor in marketing history," HBS professor and senior associate dean John Quelch eulogized on the occasion of Levitt's death in 2006. Colleagues and students remember a life and times. From HBS Alumni Bulletin.
Harvard Business School Discusses Future of the MBA
| Published: | November 24, 2008 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | HBS Centennial Colloquia Reports |
The MBA industry is in turmoil. Many business schools are revisiting their offerings to see if they still have relevance in the 21st century. And HBS is using its centennial year to convene worldwide experts on business education and plot its directions for the next 100 years. From HBS Alumni Bulletin.
Secrets of the Academy: The Drivers of University Endowment Success
| Authors: | Josh Lerner, Antoinette Schoar, and Jialan Wang |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 17, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | August 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
University endowments are important and interesting institutions both in the investing community and society at large. They play a role in maintaining the academic excellence of many universities that rely heavily on income from their endowments. In contrast, poor finances can undermine a school's ability to provide academic services altogether. Endowments have also received much attention recently for their superior investment returns compared with other institutional investors. In this study, the authors document the trends in college and university endowment returns and investments in the United States between 1992 and 2005.
Is Case Method Instruction Due for an Overhaul?
| Published: | September 5, 2008 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | What Do YOU Think? |
| Forum: | closed | 111 Comments posted |
Online forum now closed. The case method of teaching business management has come under criticism on a number of fronts as educators rethink how to incorporate new teaching tools and methods made available by technology. Responses to Professor Jim Heskett's recent column, however, suggest that the case method might even be gaining relevance over time.
How Disruptive Innovation Changes Education
| Q&A with: | Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis W. Johnson |
|---|---|
| Published: | August 18, 2008 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
HBS professor Clayton M. Christensen, who developed the theory of disruptive innovation, joins colleagues Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson to advocate for ways in which ideas around innovation can spur much-needed improvements in public education. A Q&A with the authors of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.
HBS Cases: Reforming New Orleans Schools After Katrina
| Q&A with: | Stacey M. Childress |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 14, 2008 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
The New Orleans public school system, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, is now getting a boost from charter schools—today about half of the city's 80 schools are charter schools, says HBS lecturer and senior researcher Stacey M. Childress. She explains what New Orleans represents for entrepreneurial opportunities in U.S. public education.
The Intellectual History of Harvard Business School
| Published: | May 7, 2008 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | HBS Centennial Colloquia Reports |
This colloquium held at HBS in April looked at key developments in the areas of entrepreneurship, organizational behavior, accounting, and strategy, among others. HBS professor Richard S. Tedlow describes the highlights.
Chris Christensen: Legend of the Classroom
| Published: | April 16, 2008 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Lessons from the Classroom |
Professor C. Roland ("Chris") Christensen was the maestro of Harvard Business School's case method of teaching. Over a career spanning half a century, Christensen made his colleagues better teachers, and his students better leaders. From the HBS Alumni Bulletin.
Incompatible Assumptions: Barriers to Producing Multidisciplinary Knowledge in Communities of Scholarship
| Authors: | Corinne Bendersky and Kathleen L. McGinn |
|---|---|
| Published: | March 25, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Just as flows of knowledge within and across communities of practice improve the quality of new products, knowledge sharing among knowledge workers within interdisciplinary communities may be critical for new discoveries and for a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of phenomena. In spite of this, biologists tend to talk to biologists, economists tend to talk to economists, and lawyers tend to talk to lawyers. This paper argues that producing and disseminating knowledge within a multidisciplinary community of practice is enhanced when knowledge workers hold compatible assumptions, even when the form and content of knowledge generation across those workers varies.
Published in 2007
Teaching The Moral Leader
| Q&A with: | Sandra J. Sucher |
|---|---|
| Published: | November 19, 2007 |
| Feature: | Lessons from the Classroom |
In The Moral Leader course at Harvard Business School, students exchange their business management case studies to discuss some of the great protagonists in literature. Professor Sandra Sucher discusses how we all can find our own definition of moral leadership.
Management Education's Unanswered Questions
| Q&A with: | Rakesh Khurana |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 8, 2007 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Managers want the status of professionals, but not all managers want the constraints that go along with professions. Why? For more than 100 years, business education at the top universities has been searching for its soul. HBS professor Rakesh Khurana, author of a new book, says business school education is at a turning point.
Learning to Make the Move to CEO
| Published: | June 27, 2007 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Executive Education |
Even experienced managers need to learn more if they hope to ascend to the C-Suite. In a program created by Harvard Business School Executive Education, participants learn new techniques and perspectives not only from faculty but from their cohorts as well.
Rediscovering Schumpeter: The Power of Capitalism
| Q&A with: | Thomas K. McCraw |
|---|---|
| Published: | May 7, 2007 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Economist Joseph Schumpeter was perhaps the most powerful thinker ever on innovation, entrepreneurship, and capitalism. He was also one of the most unusual personalities of the 20th century, as Harvard Business School professor emeritus Thomas K. McCraw shows in a new biography. Read our interview and book excerpt.
Making the Move to General Manager
| Published: | April 2, 2007 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Executive Education |
Managers face a critical transition when they rise from functional expert to general manager. It's an exciting shift but it's also fraught with pitfalls. A new executive education program at Harvard Business School aims to smooth and accelerate this transition, as professor and program chair Benjamin C. Esty explains.
"UpTick" Brings Wall Street Pressure to Students
| Published: | February 12, 2007 |
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| Feature: | Lessons from the Classroom |
Money managers work in a stressful, competitive pressure cooker that's hard to appreciate from the safety of a business management classroom. That's why HBS professors Joshua Coval and Erik Stafford invented upTick—a market simulation program that has students sweating and strategizing as they recreate classic market scenarios.
Published in 2006
New at the Helm: A Talk with HBS Dean Light
| Q&A with: | Jay O. Light |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 18, 2006 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
As Harvard Business School's ninth Dean, Jay Light takes control at a critical point in time. Light discusses the opportunities brought by globalism, challenges in recruiting and developing faculty, and program innovation needed to meet the needs of 21st-century business leaders.
Mixing Students and Scientists in the Classroom
| Published: | September 6, 2006 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Lessons from the Classroom |
In his course on commercializing science and technology, Lee Fleming combines students from business, engineering, law, science, and medicine. The result: Ideas for products from scale-eating bacteria to quantum dot cancer treatments.
Meeting China's Need for Management Education
| Published: | July 28, 2006 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Report from the Field |
On a recent trip to China, Steven C. Wheelwright noted an increasing interest in entrepreneurship, globalization, and competitiveness. Most of all, the Chinese have an increasing thirst for management education.
Developing a Strategy for Digital Convergence
| Published: | July 17, 2006 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Lessons from the Classroom |
Technology was getting dull earlier this decade, says David Yoffie. But the sudden arrival of digital convergence has turned the tech world upside down. What are the right bets to place?
Writing the Case for Public School Reform
| Published: | May 8, 2006 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Lessons from the Classroom |
Professor David Thomas discusses his case studies on how the School District of Philadelphia is recruiting and retaining teachers and improving its human resources department. From HBS Alumni Bulletin.
Should More Transparency Extend to Education for Management?
| Published: | January 9, 2006 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | What Do YOU Think? |
| Forum: | closed | 35 Comments posted |
The pros and cons of grade disclosure is a hot topic at business schools these days, including Harvard Business School. Should students have to disclose their grades to recruiters? And how does this issue connect to the need for greater transparency in business generally?
Published in 2005
Public Education Goes to School
| Q&A with: | Stacey M. Childress and Allen S. Grossman |
|---|---|
| Published: | December 19, 2005 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Harvard's schools of Business and Education are bringing management skills to nine school districts across the country—and positive results are starting to show.
Promoting a Management Revolution in Public Education
| Authors: | Stacey M. Childress, Richard Elmore, and Allen S. Grossman |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 5, 2006 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2005 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Public school districts are difficult to lead and manage, and the idea of applying business principles to school reform is popular. But is it practical? This paper describes the work of Harvard's Public Education Leadership Program as it helps school districts grapple with performance challenges, including student achievement that compares unfavorably with other countries, and a significant performance gap between white and minority students. Complicating the picture: The concept of managing for accountability is new in education. The authors studied the effects of improved management on public school student performance by comparing fifteen large urban school districts with similar peer districts.
Published in 2003
Education, Technology, and Business: What’s the Catch?
| Published: | March 10, 2003 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
In a panel discussion on current and future business opportunities in the American education market, four entrepreneurs hashed out the pros and cons of entering this tricky sector. There are opportunities—for the daring and undaunted. HBS professor Alan MacCormack moderated this panel at the Conference on Social Enterprise held recently at Harvard Business School.
