All Insights Articles

Private companies Orbital Sciences and SpaceX are putting rockets into space to resupply the International Space Station. According to Orbital’s Bill Claybaugh, the only thing tougher than rocket science may be making the rocket business work.

Reduced launch costs, an explosion of angel investing, and a proliferation of incubators has created a bumper crop of early-stage startups, but taking the next step and receiving venture funding is a bigger challenge. Daniel Ciporin of Canaan Partners talks about the most promising markets and what it takes to get institutional venture capital excited.

Development organizations find themselves in fierce competition for funding. How can small nonprofits differentiate themselves so their capabilities aren't overlooked among the giants? We talked with one expert who has been delivering global health to underserved populations for decades.

The days of U.S. boycotts of South Africa are long gone. The country is an economic powerhouse in Africa and a key economic partner for the U.S. In four years as U.S. ambassador to South Africa, Donald Gips ’89 worked to increase investment and trade flows between the countries.

Liang Meng, who founded a private equity firm after leading D.E. Shaw’s China operations, gives an overview of the fast-developing private equity market in China. He describes how demographic trends inform his investment strategy.

The omnipresent smartphone has the potential to change the entire shopping experience.

More and more, the answer is yes, as the credit card industry reaches billions of consumers and tens of millions of outlets. The CMO of MasterCard WorldWide talks about the company’s efforts to compete in this global market while responding to radically different technological infrastructures, legal institutions, and cultural understandings of debt.

As housing, unemployment, the stock market, and the overall economy show signs of recovery, Professor Robert Shiller writes in the New York Times that we understand little about how people’s confidence affect these major turning points. "…[P]ublic thinking is inscrutable. We can keep trying to understand it, but we’ll be puzzled again the next time the markets or the economy make major moves."

Efforts to improve the U.S. educational system come from all directions, ranging from the president’s Race to the Top program to PTO bake sales. But debate rages about what efforts are genuinely effective. We talked with an expert with first-hand experience building successful schools for one perspective.

The Federal Reserve’s policy of open-ended quantitative easing emphasizes short-term tactics over longer-term strategy, writes Stephen Roach. “The focus, instead, should be on accelerating the process of balance-sheet repair, while at the same time returning monetary and fiscal policy levers to more normal settings.”