Social Innovation

November 04th, 2021

Renault’s Project ‘Mobilize’ Case Study

Mobilize, Renault’s affordable car project case, written by HEC Paris Professor Olivier Chatain, has just been released on the Case Centre platform. This case study explores how an automobile manufacturer creates an ecosystem to provide affordable mobility solutions for those in the suburban areas in France.

Professor

Strategy and Business Policy

Social Innovation

October 19th, 2021

Schneider Electric’s Pay-As-You-Go Solar Home Systems Fund in Kenya

Schneider Electric’s pay-as-you-go solar home systems fund in Kenya case, written by HEC Paris Professor Luc Paugam and Sookyoung Lee of HEC Paris S&O Institute has just been released on the Case Centre platform. This case study explores the concept of hybrid organization, which blurs traditional boundaries between nonprofit and for-profit organizations, reconciling profit motives with community needs.

Associate Professor

Accounting and Management Control

Social Innovation

September 14th, 2021

3 minutes

Veolia’s Eau du Grand Lyon: Orchestrating a Social Ecosystem in a Community Around Water Distribution

Veolia’s Eau du Grand Lyon case, written by HEC Paris Professor Bertrand V. Quélin, Bouygues Chair Professor in Smart City and the Common Good, and Anicet Fangwa, HEC Paris Ph.D. candidate, has just been released on the Case Centre platform. This case study explores how a company might reconcile profit motives with the greater needs of a community’s inhabitants.

Smart City and the Common Good Chair Professor

Strategy and Business Policy

Social Innovation

May 05th, 2021

3 minutes

Best Buy Case Study: How does Purposeful Leadership Impact Performance?

The case study “Purposeful Leadership at Best Buy” written by Rodolphe Durand, HEC Paris Professor of Strategy and holder of the Joly Family Purposeful Leadership Chair, has just been released on the Case Centre platform. This case study aims to better understand the characteristics of “Purposeful Leadership” and to identify the conditions of success to impact positively the performance of a company.

Professor

Strategy and Business Policy

Social Innovation

March 25th, 2021

Why Activist Hedge Funds Target Socially Responsible Firms, and How Executives and Investors Can Counteract Them

Danone’s CEO had to leave his position under the pressure of increasingly powerful and influential activist hedge funds. With their controversial tactics aimed at maximizing shareholder profit, they undermine sustainability practices, which they consider wasteful. Indeed, not only do they tend to suppress the corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of the companies they target, they also target companies with stronger CSR records in the first place, as a new study reveals. But its authors Mark DesJardine, Rodolphe Durand, and Emilio Marti also show that these companies can divert the attention of activist hedge funds, and that policymakers and socially minded investors can intervene, too.

By Mark Desjardine , Rodolphe Durand

Social Innovation

February 04th, 2021

6 minutes

Yes, Social Entrepreneurship Training Works. Here Is How

Social entrepreneurship is characterized by a deep commitment to a social cause and the desire to develop new business models with economic, social, and ecological impacts. But can people be trained to become better at social entrepreneurship? HEC Paris Professors Thomas Åstebro and Florian Hoos found that social entrepreneurship training works, but only if carefully designed.

By Thomas Åstebro , Florian Hoos

Social Innovation

January 22nd, 2021

How to Manage Innovators for the Public Good

Today’s major societal challenges – such as climate change, migration and inequality - urgently call for new ideas and approaches that can create both economic growth and social value. Recent years have seen a surge of support programs targeted specifically at nascent social entrepreneurs - new actors on the innovation scene -, widely thought to be invaluable for bringing forth and inspiring such ideas. It is essential, now more than ever, for organizations to understand how they can motivate and manage teams or nascent entrepreneurs to innovate for the public good. An interview with one of the scholars at the forefront of research on innovations for the public good, HEC Paris Professor Marieke Huysentruyt, Academic Director of the Social and Inclusive Business Inclusive Center at the Society & Organizations Institute (S&O), on her experimental approaches and results.

By Marieke Huysentruyt

Social Innovation

September 11th, 2019

cascad: A new certifying organization to help double-check scientific results

While scientific findings need to be assessed by peers and journal referees, the confidentiality of original data often makes the process arduous. An accredited organization launched by Christophe Pérignon (HEC Paris) and colleagues with access to the original research data can now ensure reproducibility of results. This not only promises huge gains in time and effort for researchers but will also shore up trust in scientific results.

Professor

Finance

Social Innovation

July 18th, 2019

Walking the Talk: Why Companies Should be Politically Transparent

More and more companies flaunt their policies regarding social or environmental sustainability. However, these same companies may promote policies that contradict their stated CSR objectives through their political actions. Enough is enough, says a group of top researchers (including Rodolphe Durand and Magali Delmas) arguing for political transparency in a paper that won the California Management Review’s Best Article Award 2019.

By Rodolphe Durand

Dow Chemical plant in South Charleston, West Virginia. West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive—Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-highsm-31713)

Social Innovation

April 17th, 2019

Making a Change: Teaching Sustainable and Inclusive Business

“Continuing to do business as usual is no longer an option,” argues Professor Bénédicte Faivre-Tavignot. She explains the push at HEC Paris to develop programs dedicated to sustainability and inclusive business and, just as importantly, to integrate those principles throughout the business school’s mainstream core offerings.

By Bénédicte Faivre-Tavignot