Every company is in the health care business, no matter its industry. So says John Quelch, a professor at both the Harvard Business School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where Quelch has devoted an entire class to the intersection of business and health care called “Consumers, Corporations and Public Health.” The course uses cases on a wide range of subjects, from HealthCare.gov to Royal Caribbean Cruises, to medical marijuana, to dig into issues of corporate strategy, employee safety, and how to solve health problems through research and innovation.

The Business

Health Care is Every Company’s Business

Twitter’s Founder, Jack Dorsey, talks about the history of Twitter, the founding of Square, and how he made the transition from programmer to CEO.

You Don’t Know @Jack: Twitter’s Founder Talks Entrepreneurship

Year-Up, a business taking low-income 18 to 24 year olds from poverty to a professional career, seems more relevant than ever with business professionals pushing to fill the middle skills gap. Listen to last year’s interview with 2014 Harvard Business School Alumni Achievement Award Winner Gerald Chertavian about how Year-Up is teaching young adults middle skills for success in Fortune 500 companies.

Man of the Year-Up: Creating Opportunity for Young Adults

HBS alumnus Sir Ronald Cohen, founder of Apax Partners and known as the father of venture capital in Great Britain, sits down with CMO Brian Kenny on The Business to talk about the importance of social impact investing, a new way to link financial incentives directly to social improvements that could change the world and revolutionize the philanthropic and not-for-profit sectors.

Philanthropy 2.0: Investing with a Purpose

On the 100th Anniversary of explorer Ernest Shakleton’s colossal failure to traverse Antarctica, professor and historian Nancy Koehn explains how Shackleton’s extraordinary crisis leadership ensured the survival of his crew. Listen for story of the Endurance expedition and lessons from the HBS case study.

Ernest Shackleton: The Entrepreneur of Survival

HBS Alumni Dan Koh (MBA 2011) and Senior Lecturer Mitch Weiss (MBA 2004) both served as Chief of Staff to the Mayors of Boston. Under the guidance of former Mayor Tom Menino and Mayor Marty Walsh, they learned to lead in the public sector for the greater good, but their path to get there wasn’t always a smooth one.

The Men Behind the Mayors: How Business Can Impact Government

What books would guests on The Business give as holiday gifts? Listen for what Mitch Weiss, Dan Koh, Nancy Koehn, Max Bazerman, Frank Cespedes, and host Brian Kenny would recommend for the bookworm in your life.

Not Your Basic Business Books

Professor Frank Cespedes sits down to talk to Brian Kenny about his new book “Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems, and Behaviors that Drive Effective Selling” and why sales and strategy are so important to business.

The Revival of a Salesman: The Importance of Sales and Strategy to Business

If you want to know what “collective genius” can look like, watch a Pixar film. Pixar Animation Studios produce the first computer generated (cg) feature film, “Toy Story,” nearly twenty years ago. More blockbusters followed, including “Finding Nemo,” and “Monsters, Inc.” Pixar has thrived because it has never stopped innovating. Our guest on this edition of “The Business” is Harvard Business School Professor Linda Hill, one of the authors of the new book “Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation.” She says every one of these cg films has been an innovative tour de force, yet no solitary genius, no flash of inspiration, produced those movies.” Instead, she writes, they were the product of hundreds of people, years of work, and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Collective Genius

Carnegie Corporation co-Chief Investment Officers Kim Lew (MBA 1992) and Meredith Jenkins (MBA 1999) talk about investment with a mission, what it’s like to share a leadership role, and offer advice for women in the HBS class of 2014.

Investing for Real and Permanent Good

A little over 100 years ago, the Chinese empire fell. 2000 years of imperial tradition ended, virtually overnight. After a century of searching for its political and moral core, China is once again poised to become the dominant global power. HBS Professors Bill Kirby, Warren McFarlan and Regina Abrami recently wrote Can China Lead? : Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth. Professor Kirby joins The Business to talk about China's major challenges and whether it will ever fulfill its potential. And then he breaks into song.

Can China Lead?

Harvard Business School Professor Ethan Bernstein talks about how, by planting researchers on factory lines in China, he found that giving employees more privacy can increase their productivity – a phenomenon he calls the Transparency Paradox.

Privacy and Productivity

Adrian Wooldridge, management editor and Schumpeter columnist at The Economist magazine, on his new book, The Fourth Revolution: the Global Race to Reinvent the State, written with John Micklethwait. They argue that global financial problems and technological innovation are forcing states to change the way they operate.

The Fourth Revolution: the Global Race to Reinvent the State

Christine Bader, author of The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil talks about what corporate social responsibility really means to big business.

When Girl Meets Oil

When former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg left Bloomberg, Inc. to take office, he handed the reins to Peter Grauer. Grauer talks with The Business about leadership, the anatomy of the company, maintaining its momentum, and how he met the billionaire who changed his life.

Inside Bloomberg, Inc. with Chairman Peter Grauer

The Business is a Harvard Business School podcast. Twice a month, host Brian Kenny will bring you a new take on the business world. Through unexpected stories, and conversations with business leaders, entrepreneurs and faculty members, our goal is to inspire listeners to think more broadly about the word business. Thanks for listening!

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