article thumbnail

Why Germany Dominates the U.S. in Innovation

Harvard Business Review

has the world’s most sophisticated system of financing radical ideas, and the results have been impressive, from Google to Facebook to Twitter. by 66%, manufacturing in Germany employed 22% of the workforce and contributed 21% of GDP in 2010. Indeed, as part of an effort to learn from Germany about effective innovation, U.S.

article thumbnail

If Greece Embraces Uncertainty, Innovation Will Follow

Harvard Business Review

This helps to explain why Greece has one of the lowest license and patent revenues from abroad as a percentage of its GDP, as well as one of the lowest contributions from high-tech product exports to its trade balance. We Greeks must learn to accept and tolerate more risk and uncertainty about the future. And it all starts in school.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

The Global Rise of Female Entrepreneurs

Harvard Business Review

On the other end of the growth spectrum, analysis of a dataset from 350 micro finance institutions across 70 countries indicated lending to more women was associated with lower write-offs and lower portfolio-at-risk. For instance, recent Dow Jones research on venture-backed companies in the U.S.

article thumbnail

What an Economist Brings to a Business Strategy

Harvard Business Review

Ask them if they apply much else from else from economics in their actual business careers, and you’re likely to hear “not much.”. For several decades after World War II, economists used statistical techniques to build increasingly complex models to forecast key macroeconomic variables, notably, GDP growth, inflation and unemployment.

article thumbnail

The Irish Banking Crisis: A Parable

Harvard Business Review

Heres what orthodox economics would have predicted for a country without banks: A collapse in the money supply, a credit crunch, a trade implosion, mass unemployment, an atomized GDP, and the gears of industry and commerce grinding to a crashing halt. Imagine all the veins in your body suddenly shrinking and collapsing — Avada Kedavra!!

Banking 16
article thumbnail

Why Is Ukraine’s Economy Such a Mess?

Harvard Business Review

She went onto a journalism career at the Financial Times, Globe and Mail, and Reuters, and wrote books on Russia’s transition to capitalism and the rise of the global plutocracy. And some important reforms of state finances haven’t happened. But what they failed to do was build an effective rule of law and government institutions.

article thumbnail

What Alan Greenspan Has Learned Since 2008

Harvard Business Review

I tried to get Greenspan to talk me for my November HBR article on economics and finance since the crisis , but he said he’d promised his publisher to keep mum until the book was out, which was too late for my purposes. It’s true of GDP. The dot-com boom when it collapsed, you can’t find it in the GDP figures in 2001, 2002.