Harvard Business School associate professor Scott Duke Kominers emphasized consumer ease as a tenet of success for platforms in the NFT space. “A lot of the most successful players are the ones that have submerged some of the crypto-ness of the system in ways that make the experience for the consumer feel more like a normal online purchasing experience,” Kominers told CNBC.
Read more: OpenSea, Amid Insider Trading Controversy, Rolls Out NFT Marketplace App

The thing is: recruiters are missing out on millions of people, according to a new report from Harvard Business School and Accenture, that includes authors Joseph B. Fuller and Manjari Raman, because they’re screening out applicants who don’t check all their very specific and possibly unreasonable boxes. The researchers estimate there are more than 27 million of these “hidden workers” in the U.S.
Read more: Recruiters Stalk a Certain Kind of Engineer and Miss—Oh, like 27 Million Other People

People often go out of their way to avoid unpleasant information, but not always for the reasons you might expect. Research by Christine Exley and colleagues.
Read more: Don’t Bring Me Down: Probing Why People Tune Out Bad News

The industry has seen average annual capital growth in the past three years of about 17% to just over $700 billion, driven in part by rising interest among institutional investors. Last year, insurance companies and pension funds each accounted for about 4% of impact capital, up from nearly nil five years ago, according to GIIN. “Institutional investors are fiduciaries—they are finance-first and impact-second because they can’t be sacrificing returns,” says Vikram Gandhi, founder and CEO of New Delhi-based VSG Capital Advisors and senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School. “They wouldn’t be investing if they didn’t think they could make market-rate returns.”
Read more: Impact Investing’s Next Challenge

Yago Zavalia Gahan (MBA 2021) had just begun his career in litigation finance when he noticed that the industry had not yet flourished in Latin America. Litigation finance—an industry that has been present in the US, UK, and Australia since the 90s —provides funding to lawsuit plaintiffs who lack economic resources in exchange for a small share of their proceeds. By providing these funds, litigation finance can help plaintiffs move forward with their case without having to worry about capital, especially when they are up against parties who have access to higher financial assets. Zavalia Gahan co-founded Qanlex, a litigation finance firm that, although based in the US, is helping level the playing field across Latin America and other parts of the world. We sat down with Zavalia Gahan to discuss Qanlex, his HBS entrepreneurial journey, and his goals for his company.
Read more: A Q+A with Qanlex Co-Founder Yago Zavalia Gahan

Effective Fundraising. That’s Warren McFarlan’s new book. It’s written for potential board members, but it’s a valuable study for those on the ground, doing the work.
Read more: Effective Fundraising

Willy Shih of the Harvard Business School discusses the rise in ocean shipping costs and explains why the significant increase in transportation charges can be problematic for manufacturers.
Read more: Manufacturers, Retailers Face Price Increases on Rising Transportation Costs, Says Economist

First thing to know about hybrid work – not everyone is going to be able to do it. Some bosses have embraced the idea. Others have already asked people to be back at their desks full time. Tsedal Neeley is a professor at Harvard Business School and author of the book “Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere.” Fortunately, Neeley says, there has never been a better time to speak up about what you need to be happy and productive at work.
Read more: Life Kit: How To Make Hybrid Work Successful

This is the 64th edition of Conundrums — a rare power of 2! We won’t see another of those for more than a year. And as is customary for the column, we’re celebrating this mathematically interesting edition with a math game.
Read more: Kominers’s Conundrums: Pick a Number, Any Number at All

After more than a year of cancelled, rescheduled, and postponed programs, HBS Executive Education participants return to campus.
Read more: Up Close: A Return to In-Person Executive Education Programs