Business History →
- 20 Mar 2018
- Working Paper Summaries
Countering Political Risk in Colonial India: German Multinationals and the Challenge of Internment (1914–1947)
Internment during wartime is a frequent occurrence, but little has been written about internment as a political risk for multinational enterprises. Examining German businesspeople interned in British camps in India during both World War I and II, this study identifies major issues and questions for future scholarly research on internment.
- 22 Feb 2018
- Book
The New History of American Capitalism
Historians are taking a new look at capitalism in light of its adoption in most of the developed world. From the edited volume American Capitalism: New Histories, by Sven Beckert and Christine Desan, the authors delve into the evolution of these new historic views. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 05 Dec 2017
- Research & Ideas
What We've Learned from 101 Entrepreneurs in Emerging Markets
Harvard Business School’s project exploring the evolution of business leadership in emerging economies has reached an important milestone. Project leaders Geoffrey Jones and Tarun Khanna discuss what's been learned from the Creating Emerging Markets study so far. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 29 Nov 2017
- Research & Ideas
How to Succeed in Business (According to a 15th Century Trade Merchant)
Does a 15th century Italian merchant have something to teach leaders about the proper ways to conduct business? Sophus Reinert and Dante Roscini discuss the first English translation of The Book of the Art of Trade. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 07 Nov 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Business and Sustainability: New Business History Perspectives
This paper provides a long-term business history perspective on sustainability, arguing that it is now matter of urgency to make sustainability a mainstream topic in business history.
- 18 Oct 2017
- Research & Ideas
How Economic Clusters Drive Globalization
Historical research by Valeria Giacomin shows that industrial clusters, often cited in explaining local economic growth, have had a much wider impact, especially in developing countries. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 04 Oct 2017
- Book
Five Leaders Forged in Crisis, and What We Can Learn From Them
Business historian Nancy Koehn details the leadership skills of five people forged in crisis: Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Shackleton, Frederick Douglass, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Rachel Carson. Includes book excerpt. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 26 Sep 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Merchants and the Origins of Capitalism
This chapter shows how a new kind of predominantly Italian merchants emerged as global figures during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Then as now, they pooled capital and shared risk to enrich themselves and their polities, utilized the infrastructure and markets that they helped make, and created new legal and financial instruments to facilitate their ventures.
- 11 Sep 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
A Historical Approach to Clustering in Emerging Economies
Clusters are geographically concentrated and interlinked agglomerations of specialized firms in a particular domain. This paper argues that long-term studies of clusters in developing countries are necessary to explain the relevance of clusters for the activities of multinational enterprises, making of global business, and building of an integrated marketplace.
- 18 Aug 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Emerging Markets and the Future of Business History
This paper argues that there are important commonalities about the business history of countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America despite differences between countries and within regions of each country. It is possible to discern a distinctive body of scholarship different from that on the West.
- 01 Aug 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Business History, the Great Divergence and the Great Convergence
Among economic historians, the Great Divergence means the rise of the income gap between the West and the Rest since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The more recent Great Convergence is a narrowing of that gap. This paper integrates a business history perspective into debates surrounding these macro transformations. It calls for greater attention to micro processes that generate productive firms and entrepreneurs.
- 26 Jul 2017
- Cold Call Podcast
The Revolution in Advertising: From Don Draper to Big Data
The Mad Men of advertising are being replaced by data scientists and analysts. In this podcast, marketing professor John Deighton and advertising legend Sir Martin Sorrell discuss the positives and negatives of digital marketing. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 26 Jun 2017
- Research & Ideas
How Cellophane Changed the Way We Shop for Food
Research by Ai Hisano exposes cellophane's key role in developing self-service merchandising in American grocery stores, and how its manufacturers tried to control the narrative of how women buy food. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 21 Jun 2017
- Book
Meet the Oddball Entrepreneurs Who Invented Green Businesses
Historians have hardly noticed the fringe-of-society entrepreneurs who gave birth to the green business movement starting in the 19th century. In a new book, Profits and Sustainability: A History of Green Entrepreneurship, Geoffrey Jones chronicles the pioneers of healthy food, alternative energy, and alternative living. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 05 Jun 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Cellophane, the New Visuality, and the Creation of Self-Service Food Retailing
Offering a visual perception of freshness, the expansion of cellophane packaging material dramatically altered how consumers understood food quality. This paper examines the importance of cellophane as “scientific” and “modern” in the early to mid-20th-century United States. It shows how business strategies helped shape, and were shaped by, cultural narratives about cellophane. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 03 May 2017
- Book
The Clear Connection Between Slavery and American Capitalism
Slavery is often depicted as a regional institution of cruelty in the South, but it was also the driver of broader American economic prosperity. Sven Beckert discusses Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, an exploration by 16 scholars of the ties between the brutal system of human bondage and 19th century economic development across the nation. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 07 Apr 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Explaining the Vertical-to-Horizontal Transition in the Computer Industry
This paper shows how the vertical-to-horizontal transition in the computer industry was an organizational response to a change in economic rewards brought by the competing technologies of rationalized step processes and open platform systems. The spread of modular architectures—and the rapid pace of change in semiconductor technology—shifted the balance of rewards away from predictability toward flexibility.
- 27 Feb 2017
- Research & Ideas
Reputation is Vital to Survival in Turbulent Markets
Reputation and resilience are key ingredients that determine whether companies will survive tumultuous markets, according to a new paper by Geoffrey Jones, Tarun Khanna, Cheng Gao, and Tiona Zuzul. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 30 Jan 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
The Environmental Legacies of The North Face's Doug Tompkins and Patagonia's Yvon Chouinard
The contrasting strategies taken by founders of Patagonia and The North Face provide a new lens on current debates about the ability of business to contribute to environmentalism. This paper suggests that the strategies of both founders bring positive environmental benefits but with trade-offs and limitations. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
How Companies Managed Risk (and Even Benefitted) in World War Internment Camps
Foreign businesses located in at-war countries are often victims of expropriation. Historian Valeria Giacomin explores how German businesses in the United Kingdom and India mitigated risk and even benefitted when their employees were placed in internment camps during the World Wars. Open for comment; 0 Comments.