When Robin Ely, the Diane Doerge Wilson Professor of Business Administration and the faculty chair of HBS’s Race, Gender, and Equity Initiative, was studying questions of gender and race in organizations in the 1980s, research into building an inclusive economy was “a marginal topic.” Now, she says, people throughout the business community are interested in diversity in the workplace and looking to scholars to guide their decision making.

Studying the complex and multifaceted topic requires a group of investigators from a wide array of backgrounds and disciplines, says Ely. That’s exactly the type of collaboration and convenings that will be made possible by HBS’s new Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society (BiGS). “BiGS can support research and bring visiting fellows to HBS to think creatively about the problems,” Ely says of the School’s ambitious undertaking (see related story).

The Institute is currently focused on two key questions: how to respond to climate change and how to build a more inclusive economy. “BiGS was created to expand the research that our faculty are doing on these issues and to work closely with communities of practice,” explains Debora Spar, the Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration and senior associate dean for Business and Global Society, who leads the Institute. “We want to get their ideas out into the world and to make HBS the center of an ecosystem that is focused on dealing with societal issues.”

Those ideas include Ely’s research showing that good intentions and occasional, off-the-shelf training are not sufficient to build an inclusive workplace. “There’s no silver bullet here to address injustice, inequality, discrimination, and lack of diversity. You have to look at everything that happens in an organization, from hiring to development, promotion, retention, and leadership,” she says.

Developing effective approaches to organizational change requires a commitment of resources. “We have ideas that are well-grounded in both theory and data about what could work, but we have to try them out,” Ely says. Her newest research focuses on the creation and evaluation of a unique leadership development program that pairs a C-level executive with a more junior executive from an underrepresented minority. The program is designed to foster mutual development, in which the junior executive receives mentorship but also provides the more senior colleague with insight into how the organization functions for those who are in the minority. “The ultimate goal is to build the capacity of this pair to lead culture change in their organization,” Ely says.

At HBS, a growing number of faculty members were focused on questions of inclusivity even before BiGS launched in the fall of 2022, says Senior Lecturer Michael Chu. The new institute can connect those faculty members and their individual research interests—“the pieces of the bigger puzzle,” as Chu describes them. “BiGS can bring all these pieces together and help us better understand business’s role in society.” One step toward achieving that is the BiGS Seminar Series for HBS faculty next spring, which will focus on “Business Solutions for Inclusive Prosperity.”

The intersection of business and society is a topic Chu has been immersed in, as a practitioner and a researcher, for almost 30 years. He is a partner emeritus of the IGNIA Fund, a venture capital firm in Mexico dedicated to investing in disruptive enterprises delivering high-impact goods and services to the emerging middle class and low-income populations, which he cofounded in 2007.

At HBS, his work examines businesses serving low-income markets around the world, which means he is learning from and sharing success stories like that of a Japanese company with a business model selling affordable housing to first-time home buyers among the country’s poor, and outperforming the Tokyo Nikkei index. Chu coauthored the case, “Katitas: Home Ownership for the Majority of Japan,” and taught it this fall in his course Business at the Base of the Pyramid to illustrate to students that positive societal impact and business success can coexist.

“I think that’s what BiGS is all about,” Chu says. “It’s not about asking ‘how do we make society better despite being a business?’ It’s asking ‘how can we unleash the potential of business in something that matters to people’s lives?’”

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