Faculty News
May 22 2012
Are You Sleeping With Your Smartphone?
Do you check your wireless device when you're not working? What causes you to do so? Does the job require it? Do you like feeling needed? Yes, the client or customer might call. Yes, there are stresses from managing across time zones. Yes, there are real external and legitimate factors that affect how much we work. But, none of this adequately accounts for how much we are actually connected.
May 21 2012
Predictable Time Off: The Team Solution To Overcoming Constant Work Connection 
Reflecting on his relationship with his smartphone, one manager pronounced: "I love the thing and I hate it at the same time. The reason I love it is that it gives me so much power. And the reason I hate it is that it has so much power over me."
May 21 2012
How To Get A Celebrity Endorsement From The Queen Of England
The idea of signaling is not brand new. Companies have been signaling for decades, centuries even, using enticing packaging and pricey celebrity endorsements to showcase something special about their brand.
May 19 2012
Speaking out against the marriage amendment
Now that the debate over the Vikings stadium is settled, taking center stage is an issue that has far graver consequences for Minnesota's future: the marriage amendment. President Obama's unqualified support for same-sex marriage came on the heels of North Carolina's overwhelming vote to pass a constitutional amendment banning it.
May 16 2012
Good versus Bad, Rethinking Business Leadership
As Dean of Harvard Business School, I am privileged to meet amazing business leaders all over the world. Nearly every businessperson I meet inspires me. They are good people—committed to creating value through their businesses, bringing products and services to consumers, jobs and opportunities to employees, profits and returns for investors, and prosperity to their community.
May 14 2012
Message to Managers: Your Strategy Is Not What You Say It Is
If you study the root causes of business disasters and management missteps, you'll often find a predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. Many companies' decision-making systems are designed to steer investments to initiatives that offer the most tangible returns, so companies often favor these and short-change investments in initiatives that are crucial to their long-term strategies.
May 14 2012
Breaking the Smartphone Addiction
In her new book, Sleeping With Your Smartphone, Leslie Perlow explains how a small group of high-powered consultants made a concerted effort to disconnect from their mobile devices for a few predetermined hours every week—and how they became more productive as a result. This excerpt from the book introduces the idea the scheduled disconnecting process, dubbed "predictable time off," which helped these phone-addled employees to take better control of both their workdays and their lives.
May 14 2012
Clayton Christensen On How To Find Work That You Love
When we find ourselves stuck in unhappy careers, it is often the result of a fundamental misunderstanding of what truly motivates us, says Clayton Christensen, co-author of the new book "How Will You Measure Your Life?"
May 11 2012
Charlotte's competitive muscle
As America faces its most severe employment crisis since the Great Depression, business leaders in Charlotte are taking decisive actions to create sustainable jobs in this region. While the federal government has shown little progress in addressing the jobs issue, around the country local initiatives such as Charlotte's are demonstrating exactly what it takes to tackle these problems.
May 10 2012
Culture Takes Over When the CEO Leaves the Room
Here's a rough summary of our worldview: excellence = design x culture. Your job as a leader is to get both right. You must build a winning structure for your organization and then foster the often unspoken rules and values that will bring that structure to life.
May 09 2012
Stop Trying to Be the Super Manager: New Book
Bold, confident, visionary leaders who take their businesses in new directions are widely admired and sought after. Isn't that a key part of strategy and leadership? Yes, but: when confidence balloons into the belief that a good manager can win in any situation, the business is headed for trouble.
May 07 2012
Checking In with Employees (Versus Checking Up)
Recently we wrote about how managing for innovation requires balancing four critical factors to produce a highly motivated and creative workforce. Perhaps the most difficult of those balancing acts is ensuring that employees have clear, meaningful goals as well as considerable autonomy (PDF) in meeting those goals. It's not easy, but some companies have pulled it off — sometimes, rather ingeniously.
May 07 2012
Crush the "I'm Not Creative" Barrier
Did you know that if you think you are creative, you're more likely to actually be creative? This surprising fact pops up again and again in our research. In our database of over 6,000 professionals who have taken the Innovator's DNA self & 360 assessments, people (entrepreneurs and managers alike) who "agree" with the survey statement "I am creative" consistently deliver disruptive solutions...
May 07 2012
The Art of Haggling
When teaching negotiation skills, many educators now focus almost exclusively on an interest-based approach in which both parties openly collaborate to find a mutually satisfying solution. However, argues HBS Professor Mike Wheeler, it's important for students to know that there's still a time and place for old-school haggling.
May 03 2012
Does high stress trigger creativity at work?
Ask people how they feel about deadlines and you'll hear, "I hate them" or "I can't live without them." But quite often, it's both. So, what's the deal? My research team and I discovered the source of that ambivalence. On days with looming deadlines, people can feel both jazzed about their work and highly frustrated by distractions.
May 02 2012
Overcome Your Work Addiction
Consider the following: Works long hours. Carries wireless device everywhere. On the phone at kid's soccer game. Checks in frequently over vacation. Does this describe your life?
May 01 2012
Why Everyone at Your Company Should Speak (A Little) English
Tsedal Neeley, Harvard Business School assistant professor, explains why every company needs a language strategy. For more, go to the article Global Business Speaks English.
Apr 30 2012
India's Ambitious National Identification Program
The Unique Identification Authority of India has been charged with implementing a nationwide program to register and assign a unique 12-digit ID to every Indian resident—some 1.2 billion people—by 2020. In a new case, Professor Tarun Khanna and HBS India Research Center Executive Director Anjali Raina discuss the complexities of this massive data management project.
Apr 30 2012
Boston's innovation swagger
Northern California may have outpaced our region over the last 25 years. But innovation remains in our DNA, and there's every reason to believe Boston will remain a superb choice as a location for company builders. And nearly 25 years after my wife and I decided to place our bet on Boston instead of Silicon Valley, we remain convinced we made the right choice.
Apr 30 2012
Innovators, Are You Applying the Wrong Lessons from Manufacturing?
Product developers can learn much from manufacturing, but many have gone too far in applying ideas that work in manufacturing to their realm. That's because they have ignored some fundamental differences between the two disciplines. Let's look at three and their implications.
Apr 25 2012
What Doesn't Motivate Creativity Can Kill It
Management is widely viewed as a foe of innovation. The thinking goes that too much management strangles innovation (just let a thousand flowers bloom!). But we have found a much more nuanced picture. You really can manage for innovation, but it starts by knowing what drives creativity in the people who generate and develop the new ideas that, when implemented, will become tomorrow's innovations.
Apr 23 2012
How to Brand a Next-Generation Product
Upgrades to existing product lines make up a huge part of corporate research and development activity, and with every upgrade comes the decision of how to brand it. Harvard Business School marketing professors John T. Gourville and Elie Ofek teamed up with London Business School's Marco Bertini to suss out the best practices for naming next-generation products.
Apr 22 2012
US hedge funds rules relaxed by accident
Earlier this month, President Obama signed into law the Jobs Act, short for Jumpstart Our Business Startups. This Act won bipartisan support because it purports to create jobs by making it easier for small businesses to raise capital. However, the Jobs Act will also significantly loosen the regulatory requirements on hedge funds — whether or not this was the intent of Congress.
Apr 20 2012
For People to Trust You, Reveal Your Intentions
Think of the most chilling villain you've seen in the movies, the one who shows up in your nightmares, the one you would avoid at all cost if he really existed, the one, in short, you absolutely cannot trust. We don't know what villain comes to mind for you, but one of our most memorable is Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs, played by Anthony Hopkins.
Apr 20 2012
How Introverts Can Become Better Innovators
Whether you are trying to create a new product, solve problems more effectively, become the most successful company in your industry, or find creative ways to meet your customers' needs, innovation is likely one of your most critical objectives at work. But a factor often overlooked may get in the way of your expressing and implementing your excellent ideas: You are an introvert.
Apr 18 2012
Turning off Your Smartphone: More Stress Or Less?
When it comes to creating stress, smartphones are near the top of the list. Although these ubiquitous devices put the world at our fingertips, and seemingly free us from the shackles of the office, they also invade our lives and psyches. More and more frequently these days, people have two modes -- on-the-job and on-call.
Apr 16 2012
The Inner Workings of Corporate Headquarters
Analyzing the e-mails of some 30,000 workers, Professor Toby E. Stuart and colleague Adam M. Kleinbaum dissected the communication networks of HQ staffers at a large, multidivisional company to get a better understanding of what a corporate headquarters does, and why it does it.
Apr 15 2012
Why Medical Bills Are a Mystery
Rising health care costs are busting the federal budget as well as those of states, counties and municipalities. Policy makers and health care leaders have spent decades trying to figure out what to do about this. Yet their solutions are failing because of a fundamental and largely unrecognized problem: We don't know what it costs to deliver health care to individual patients, much less how those costs compare to the outcomes achieved.
Apr 14 2012
Greatest Generation is passing local leadership torch
In recent weeks three of the Twin Cities' greatest business and civic leaders -- all part of Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" -- have passed from the scene. This trio includes Edson Spencer, who built Honeywell into a great global corporation; John Cowles, leader of Cowles Media and the Star Tribune, and John Morrison, who led Norwest Corp. (now Wells Fargo) into the modern banking era.
Apr 11 2012
The High Risks of Short-Term Management
"One important takeaway is that firms with long-term horizons exist," says Harvard Business School Assistant Professor George Serafeim, coauthor of the working paper Short-termism, Investor Clientele, and Firm Risk, with HBS Assistant Professor Francois Brochet and doctoral candidate Maria Loumioti. "We tend to make sweeping statements and overgeneralize," Serafeim says. "Many companies are being managed for the long term."
Apr 11 2012
The New Science of Viral Ads
It is the holy grail of digital marketing: The viral ad, a pitch that large numbers of viewers decide to share with family and friends. In our research, two colleagues and I use infrared eye-tracking scanners to determine what people are looking at when they watch video ads.
Apr 11 2012
The 'Links' Between Golf and Leadership
This lesson runs parallel to what we do at Kotter International when we help new clients to build the internal capabilities they need to quickly and effectively implement new strategies.
Apr 09 2012
Who Sways the USDA on GMO Approvals?
Government agencies can be "captured" by the very companies or industries they regulate. Looking at how genetically altered food products are approved, Assistant Professor Shon R. Hiatt finds unexpected influencers on the US Department of Agriculture.
Apr 04 2012
Target and the Threat of Free Riders
Target is getting nervous, for the first time in a while. Some Target shoppers are browsing comfortably in the company's high-design stores, then closing the deal online with lower-priced vendors. It's enough of a phenomenon that CEO Gregg Steinhafel recently penned a letter to his suppliers with a competitive battle cry: "we aren't willing...to let online-only retailers use our brick-and-mortar stores as a showroom."
Apr 04 2012
Firing Yourself
Many founders ride their companies up the value ladder, and then down it. Last week saw the latest example of this phenomenon, as the next dramatic chapter was written in the evolution of Research-in-Motion (RIM), the once world-beating maker of the Blackberry smartphone. Once again, a founder overstayed his welcome and paid a price.
Apr 02 2012
Do Online Dating Platforms Help Those Who Need Them Most?
The $2 billion online dating industry promises the possibility of a priceless product: romantic love. Associate Professor Mikolaj Piskorski investigates whether these sites are helping the lonely—or just making life easier for young singles who are popular already.
Apr 01 2012
Celebrate Innovation, No Matter Where It Occurs
What if the United States loses its unrivaled edge in invention? The country's innovation capabilities have long been central to its competitive advantage. But the rate of innovative activity is increasing sharply in other countries, and some may worry that this is the greatest threat to America's economic leadership.
Mar 28 2012
People Are Irrational, But Teams Don't Have to Be
When most organizations design new work processes, they assume that team members will make the best possible use of them to improve team performance. That is, they assume that team members will act rationally. In most cases, this assumption is wrong.
Mar 28 2012
The good intentions that will kill your business
The world is desperate for good service. Companies that get service right – see Southwest and Zappos – are rewarded with profitable growth and devoted customers. And companies that get it wrong are relentlessly punished. Bank of America's persistent presence at the very bottom of the rankings for customer satisfaction is one such example.
Mar 26 2012
Manage Your Team's “Dissensus”
Have you ever been in a team meeting and wondered something like, "Why did the boss gave Jamie that assignment? I think Susan is a better match for the job." Or observed a colleague asking another for help and thought, "It never occurred to me to ask for his input on that topic.
Mar 26 2012
What Neuroscience Tells Us About Consumer Desire
It's easy for businesses to keep track of what we buy, but harder to figure out why. Enter a nascent field called neuromarketing, which uses the tools of neuroscience to determine why we prefer some products over others. Uma R. Karmarkar explains how raw brain data is helping researchers unlock the mysteries of consumer choice.
Mar 23 2012
How to Charge a Fee (Without Starting a Customer Rebellion)
Consumers are up in arms. From airlines to banks to telecoms, companies are gouging us in our moment of need, piling shady fees on top of mediocre service as people struggle with the ongoing effects of the Great Recession. Getting trapped in a phone tree...
Mar 22 2012
Global Team Leaders Must Deliberately Create “Moments”
Global teams face the challenge of having to operate with limited face-to-face contact and across vast distances, time zones, language backgrounds, and contexts, as well as cultural differences. In turn, these differences generate disruptions to team cohesion and top performance outcomes.
Mar 22 2012
To Build Trust, Competence is Key
In our last blog , we discussed the importance of trust. It's the foundation of all you do as a leader and manager. Your ability to influence others, which is your fundamental task, begins with people's willingness to be influenced by you. And their willingness begins with their trust in you — their confidence that you will do the right thing.
Mar 19 2012
HBS Cases: Overcoming the Stress of ‘Englishnization’
CEOs of global companies increasingly mandate that their employees learn English. The problem: these workers can experience a loss of status and believe they aren't as effective in their learned language, says Assistant Professor Tsedal Neeley.
Mar 18 2012
Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?
Clearly, the process works for training MBAs. So, why not entrepreneurs? After all, entrepreneurs are the ultimate general managers. They can benefit from much of the same knowledge, complemented by lessons that are specifically tailored to start-ups.
Mar 14 2012
Bill to help businesses raise capital goes too far
The House voted 390 to 23 last week for a bill to provide regulatory relief for small companies trying to raise capital. The bill is moving quickly through the Senate; no one likes unnecessary regulations that burden economic growth. But this bill does more than trim regulatory fat; parts of it cut into muscle.
Mar 08 2012
Demographics Could Give the U.S. Competitive Edge
The March issue of HBR on U.S. competitiveness strikes a pessimistic tone about certain demographic facts — the education gap between young people and the jobs which are and will be available, the aging of the American population, and the related rise in health care costs. However, we see one striking omission about demographic patterns in the U.S...
Mar 08 2012
How Star Women and Star Men Fare Differently in the Workplace
With today's 101st anniversary of International Women's Day, it's a good time to reflect on how companies are doing with respect to their female employees. The focus of IWD tends to be on headcount — what percentage of women are on boards or CEOs, for instance. The numbers of not encouraging when it comes to number of women in leadership positions in the United States.
Mar 08 2012
Unplugged: What Happened to the Smart Grid?
Replacing the antiquated electrical system in the United States with a super-efficient smart grid always seemed a surefire opportunity for entrepreneurs. So what went wrong? asks Professor Rebecca M. Henderson.
Mar 06 2012
Enhance Your Overseas Experience
As the world becomes increasingly global, the need for true global citizens to lead organizations in business, nonprofits, and government is far greater than in decades past. Global citizens who understand the importance of cultural nuances are able to bring people together across organizational boundaries and are more effective working and collaborating anywhere in the world.
Mar 06 2012
How to completely, utterly destroy an employee's work life
Recall your worst day at work, when events of the day left you frustrated, unmotivated by the job, and brimming with disdain for your boss and your organization. That day is probably unforgettable. But do you know exactly how your boss was able to make it so horrible for you?
Mar 05 2012
Get Creative
In a hypercompetitive global economy, creativity has never been more important for success . But how do you create a company that unleashes and capitalizes on innovation? For answers, we turned to five HBS faculty experts in culture, customers, creativity, marketing, and the DNA of innovators. What they have to say might surprise you.
Mar 05 2012
What the U.S. Has in Common with Emerging Markets
We should take a look at the most dynamic parts of today's global economy — the so-called emerging markets — while thinking about how to shore up American competitiveness.
Mar 05 2012
It's Manufacturing's Turn for Special Treatment
Following up on his pledge to provide greater support for manufacturing in his State of the Union address, President Obama has announced a proposal to cut the effective tax rate for manufacturers to 25%. A number of economists howled against this so-called "industrial policy" and criticized the president's singling out manufacturing for "special treatment" — something they say no industry should get.
Mar 05 2012
Is JC Penney’s Makeover the Future of Retailing?
The stuffy department store chain has become emboldened under new CEO Ron Johnson, with plans for an innovative store upgrade, simplified prices, and a brand polish. Professor Rajiv Lal discusses whether Johnson can repeat his previous magic at Apple and Target.
Mar 02 2012
Developing Global Leaders Is America's Competitive Advantage
As global companies focus their strategies on developed and emerging markets, they require substantial cadres of leaders capable of operating effectively anywhere in the world. American companies and academic institutions possess unique competitive advantages in developing these global leaders.
Mar 01 2012
Enriching the Ecosystem
Innovation, which has long been the key to U.S. success in world markets, rests on foundational institutions that provide fertile soil in which to seed, grow, and renew enterprises. But these institutions—such as universities, venture creators, supply chains, labor markets, and job-training programs—are less effective as economic agents when they operate in isolation.
Mar 01 2012
Macroeconomic Policy and U.S. Competitiveness
The United States is on a glide path to fiscal disaster, with experts projecting that the federal government will take in far less money than it spends—indefinitely. Although in our experience business leaders have a general sense that this state of affairs is dangerous...
Mar 01 2012
Does America Really Need Manufacturing?
Too many American companies base decisions about how to source manufacturing largely on narrow financial criteria, never taking into account the potential strategic value of domestic locations. Proposals for plants are treated like any other investment proposal and subjected to strict return hurdles.
Mar 01 2012
Choosing the United States
A location decision is, in many respects, a referendum on a nation's competitiveness. When a company decides, say, to build a factory with good jobs in China or Poland rather than in the United States, it is effectively voting on the question of which country can best enable its success in the global marketplace.
Mar 01 2012
How to Make Finance Work
The U.S. financial sector's share of GDP grew from less than 5% in 1980 to more than 8% in 2007—the largest share in any advanced economy except Switzerland. With this growth came big increases in financial sector employment and compensation.
Mar 01 2012
Capitalism's New Agenda
It was easy to dismiss the Occupy Wall Street protesters. By many accounts, they were disorganized, lacked a clear agenda, advanced arguments that were inconsistent and poorly reasoned, and had no solutions. In style, they were a bit too scruffy and theatrical for some people.
Mar 01 2012
Send a Message to the Women in Your Company
Next Thursday, March 8, people all across the world will celebrate International Women's Day. In some countries, it's a nationally observed holiday. For business leaders, it provides an occasion to think with renewed urgency about the goal of including women fully and productively in the life of their company.
Mar 01 2012
The Incentive Bubble
The past three decades have seen American capitalism quietly transformed by a single, powerful idea—that financial markets are a suitable tool for measuring performance and structuring compensation.
Feb 27 2012
How Can Workplace Stress Be Reduced?
Over the past twenty years, the level of job satisfaction has fallen, while stress levels have tended to increase. These developments have been observed in many western nations, including France and the US. Larger workload...
Feb 27 2012
Reviving Entrepreneurship
America's economic culture has traditionally been distinguished by a willingness to pursue opportunities; a parallel willingness to adopt new products and services; social, legal, and economic tolerance for failure; and the ability to efficiently redeploy people and money.
Feb 23 2012
Surviving the Global Financial Crisis: The Role of Foreign Ownership (pdf)
The severity of the crisis led many economists to explore its patterns and causes. In a new paper Alfaro and Chen investigate the micro responses to the crisis, an aspect receiving less attention. They examine differences in the performance of establishments during the crisis, with an emphasis on how foreign ownership affected resil¬ience to negative shocks.
Feb 22 2012
How to tax US companies' foreign profits
The current system for taxing earnings of foreign subsidiaries controlled by US companies is controversial and counterproductive. Such foreign earnings are theoretically taxed at a 35 per cent rate if brought back to the US, but not taxed at all by the US as long as these earnings are kept abroad.
Feb 22 2012
Employee Happiness Matters More Than You Think
Productivity measures across national economies have captivated the attention of policy makers and executives alike. Ultimately, though, the source of productivity is the individual knowledge workers who get things done every day. And the evidence is clear: People perform better when they're happier.
Feb 21 2012
On Ethics, You Set the Tone
You may hate them and resent them and vote for anyone who promises to get rid of them. But for now, there's no avoiding them. Laws and regulations affect every business. Sometimes it feels like a maze to work through these various rules and prohibitions.
Feb 21 2012
Leadership Program for Women Targets Subtle Promotion Biases
Despite more women in the corporate work force, they still are underrepresented in executive officer positions. Harvard Business School Professor Robin Ely and colleagues propose a new way to think about developing women for leadership.
Feb 19 2012
Time to tighten rules on US pensions
Last year was tough for US pension plans—both private and public. But while it looked like private plans were hardest hit, this is merely a matter of appearances. Public plans are in much worse shape, though lenient accounting rules allow them to paint a misleadingly rosy picture of their funding status.
Feb 15 2012
Occupy Wall Street Protestors Have a Point
It's been easy to dismiss the Occupy Wall Street-and-beyond protesters. To many, they seem disorganized, lack a clear agenda, and advance simple solutions to complex problems. But in reality their concerns are not very different from the concerns we heard when we talked to business leaders around the world about the problems they thought might constitute material threats to the sustainability of market capitalism.
Feb 15 2012
4 Top Myths About Start-up Pay
Entrepreneurial decision-making is often guided by anecdotes, rules of thumb, and intuition. Sometimes that's because entrepreneurs don't have time to look at reams of data, sometimes it's because they've learned to trust their gut, and often it's because the data just isn't there.
Feb 15 2012
Will Business Step Up or Step Out?
The current discourse on U.S. competitiveness is dominated by the question, "What must government do?" To some extent, the emphasis on government action is fitting. Many steps toward a more competitive America lie in the domain of policy. For instance, only the government can lead in putting the country on a sustainable fiscal path, reforming the corporate tax code, or countering distortions in the international trading system.
Feb 15 2012
Welcome to the American Competitiveness Insight Center
The good news, as I write in an introductory essay in this month's special issue of Harvard Business Review, is that the rest of the world is rooting for the U.S. to retain its status as an economic leader. They realize that the U.S. remains a vital piece of the global economy, and that the world is too interdependent for other countries to thrive while America falls behind.
Feb 13 2012
It's Harder than Ever to Be a Senior Executive
The job of the senior executive is much more complicated today than it was a decade or two ago — and that trend will continue, especially if you hope to play on a global stage (which is a nearly universal condition these days for many companies). Why? Here are five reasons.
Feb 13 2012
The Case Against Racial Colorblindness
Research by Harvard Business School's Michael I. Norton and colleagues shows that attempting to overcome prejudice by ignoring race is an ineffective strategy that—in many cases—only serves to perpetuate bias.
Feb 09 2012
How to Lead Through Uncertainty
The recent stock market rally and more positive US employment data have raised hopes that we are in the midst of a strengthening economic recovery. I hope it's true—yet the US unemployment rate is still over 8%, Europe appears to be heading for a recession, and we know the US budget deficit is at record levels and will have to be addressed.
Feb 08 2012
Win on Service in a Tough Economy
Great service is always a differentiator, even more so when people are hurting. The service companies that thrived coming out of the Great Depression — think Macy's and Disney — figured out how to take care of their customers in a climate of fear and uncertainty. The fog of recession may be starting to lift, but most households and businesses are still feeling vulnerable today.
Feb 04 2012
When Life Is a Bunch of Carrots
What does it mean to treat human behavior as if everyone has a price? That's the broad question animating "Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives" (Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton) by Ruth W. Grant.
Feb 03 2012
The Five Proofs of Facebook’s IPO
The record-breaking Facebook IPO proves a number of things. But one thing it won't prove is that investors who buy now will get wealthy.
Feb 02 2012
Will Facebook Live Up to the Hype?
After months of speculations and hype, Facebook filed its S-1 yesterday as it prepares to go public. This public offering could value the company at almost $100 billion, more than the GDP of Iceland, Cyprus, Jordan and Kenya combined; and almost five times the initial market value of Google when it went public in 2004.
Jan 31 2012
Dating and business: Not all that different
We've all fallen victim to or been perpetrator of the classic dating power play – waiting just a few days longer before calling. But this tactic can teach companies a thing or two on how they should be dealing with their customers, especially in light of Verizon (VZ) and Bank of America's (BAC) relatively recent fee fiascos.
Jan 29 2012
India's wasting infrastructure
On a visit to a public hospital—fortunately for me, not to address a malady, but to indulge my curiosity—there were all the insalubrious aspects that I had been conditioned to expect of India's healthcare infrastructure for the masses: dilapidated and dingy equipment, undercared for facilities, and a goodly number of disengaged health providers who had to be chased from pillar to post to get anything done.
Jan 26 2012
The Human Cost of Kodak's Bankruptcy
Kodak's filing for Chapter 11 protection has gotten a great deal of attention. Much has been said about the causes of the fall of an iconic brand. And there has been a good deal of speculation over whether and how Kodak will be able to rebuild.
Jan 23 2012
Break Your Addiction to Service Heroes
In their new book, Uncommon Service, coauthors Frances Frei and Anne Morriss show it is possible for organizations to reduce costs while dramatically enhancing customer service. The key? Don't try to be good at everything.
Jan 22 2012
Why Lie When You Can Evade?
"You get to ask the questions you like. I get to give the answers I like," Mitt Romney told a reporter dissatisfied with an evasive answer. The ensuing criticism – "How dare he not answer our questions?" – seemingly suggested that Romney's efforts to dodge questions was out of the ordinary. In fact, the only thing unusual about Romney's dodge attempt was that it failed.
Jan 20 2012
What Business Schools Can Learn from the Medical Profession
A few years ago, a family member visiting from India became ill. Soon he was sitting on a hospital gurney, surrounded by people in lab coats—people who were, for the most part, incredibly inexperienced.
Jan 19 2012
What's Your Story? How Personal Narratives Impact Leadership
Each of us has a life story. In fact, we have several stories. We have a "success story." This is a story that we normally tell in job interviews, sales pitches or describe in our biography or resume. It's the story that our family tells to brag about us. It's a narrative that describes about our accomplishments, triumphs and terrific qualities.
Jan 18 2012
How IBM's Sam Palmisano Redefined the Global Corporation
In the 20th century, a select group of leaders — General Motor's Alfred Sloan, HP's David Packard and Bill Hewlett, and GE's Jack Welch — set the standard for the way corporations are run. In the 21st century only IBM's Sam Palmisano has done so.
Jan 16 2012
Private Meetings of Public Companies Thwart Disclosure Rules
Despite a federal regulation, executives at public firms still spend a great deal of time in private powwows with hedge fund managers. Eugene F. Soltes and David H. Solomon suggest that such meetings give these investors unfair advantage.
Jan 13 2012
Crowdsourcing Management Reviews for Better Management
The January-February issue of Harvard Business Review features a series of short articles that each present an "audacious idea." Our piece in that series — "Crowdsource Management Reviews — And Make Them Public, Too" asks what you would do if your employees were assessing their bosses online and making their collective assessments public.
Jan 11 2012
How leaders kill meaning at work
Senior executives routinely undermine creativity, productivity, and commitment by damaging the inner work lives of their employees in four avoidable ways.
Jan 11 2012
Success: A Breeding Ground for Complacency?
More often than not, great accomplishments cause individuals and organizations to become comfortable with their way of doing things. Businesses turn static. Workers turn their focus inward. Even the most dynamic of organizations can turn complacent, thinking that what they are doing is right, that there is no need to change, regardless of what's happening outside...
Jan 09 2012
Location, Location, Location: The Strategy of Place
Business success in one geographic location doesn't necessarily follow a company to a new setting. Professor Juan Alcácer discusses the importance of taking a long-term strategic view.
Jan 07 2012
What Minnesota can learn from Germany
The United States seems in awe of China's economic miracle, but rather disdainful of Europe, especially Germany. To the contrary, there is great wisdom in the German economic model from which Minnesotans can learn.
Jan 06 2012
Is sustainability now the key to corporate success?
The broader societal concern about sustainability has grown from almost nothing in the early 1990s to a dominant theme today. Meanwhile, leaders of major corporations worldwide are increasingly facing the challenge of managing organisations that meet the expectations of a broad range of stakeholders (often themselves in conflict), while still delivering a return to shareholders.
Jan 06 2012
The Power of Local Leaders
To understand what makes people happy, motivated, productive, and creative at work, we have been studying what we call inner work life—the confluence of emotions, perceptions, and motivations that occur continually throughout the workday. When inner work life is positive, people feel happy, have positive perceptions of their work and those they work with, and are highly motivated by the work itself.
Jan 04 2012
Are You a Coach?
Coaching gets discussed constantly in business. Yet, most employees lament that they don't receive coaching at work. Why the disconnect? First, coaching is not the same as mentoring. Coaching requires direct observation. Mentoring is normally based on hearing a person tell a story. The advice is only as good as the narrative. Unfortunately, most people have blind spots and may tell the story in a way that reflects those blind spots.
Jan 02 2012
HBS Cases: Clocky, the Runaway Alarm Clock
In the spring of 2005, media outlets from Gizmodo to Good Morning America were buzzing about Clocky, an alarm clock that jumped off the nightstand and rolled away chirping and beeping, forcing its owner to get out of bed to turn it off and stop the cacophony.
Jan 01 2012
Gingrich's frightening fiscal fantasies
The idea of Newt Gingrich becoming president is no longer so far-feteched. So now that he has obtaiend front-runner status in some Republican presidential primaries, his positions on important public policies such as Social Security and income taxes deserve greater scrutiny. In both cases, Gingrich adopts familiar Republican concepts - but then undermines their key objectives.
Dec 30 2011
Five Resolutions for Aspiring Leaders
As the New Year approaches, people will be making resolutions to eat better, exercise more, get that promotion at work, or spend more time with their families. While these are worthwhile goals, we have a more important challenge for young people: Think seriously about your development as a leader.
Dec 27 2011
Start the New Year with Progress
To get yourself and your team off to a good start for the new year, focus on progress. Our research discovered that fostering progress in meaningful work is the most important way to keep people highly engaged at work — even if that progress is a "small win."
Dec 25 2011
Leadership Lessons From the Shackleton Expedition
Polar explorer Ernest Shackleton faced harsh conditions in a way that speaks directly to our time. The 1914 expedition is a compelling story of leadership when disaster strikes again and again.
Dec 21 2011
Are You Wasting Your Most Valuable Asset?
Surely you agree that you should spend most of your time on your company's top priorities and less on what doesn't matter. So, uh, why don't you?
Dec 20 2011
The problem with green rankings
Star performers in corporate green lists, like Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, can often be found working against climate action behind the scenes. Something doesn't quite add up, write Auden Schendler and Michael Toffel.
Dec 19 2011
Death Knell for the Category Killers?
Retailing is at a tipping point, with category killers — highly focused stores like Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, and Staples — being the first significant casualties of the revolution under way. Retail store asset productivity has been in decline since the recession of 2007 and we believe that this trend will accelerate over the coming years.
Dec 18 2011
The case for labelling Newcits as complex
If a fund uses derivatives heavily, does it become too complex for the average retail investor? That is the critical question facing the global fund industry right now.
Dec 14 2011
“I'm a leader, not a manager!”
One of Kent's friends — we'll call him Roy — is a master craftsman who owns a small business that makes custom wood furniture. After making some cutbacks in 2009, his little company still employs three fine woodworkers, an office supervisor/customer service rep, and an apprentice.
Dec 13 2011
Do You Have a Vision For Your Company? Are You Sure?
What is a vision? A vision is a vivid aspiration regarding what positive impact you want to make on the world. It articulates the difference you hope to make to your key constituencies (e.g. customers). It describes what the world would lose if you didn't exist. It gives you and your organization a reason to jump out of bed in the morning, and it's what you would want to tell your grandkids one day when they ask why you started your company all those years ago.
Dec 07 2011
Yelp is Leaving Chains Behind
The power of chain stores and chain restaurants lies in their familiarity. For the consumer visiting a new city, a Target or an Applebee's looks like a safer bet than Mack & Dave's Department Store or Lagniappe Cajun Creole Eatery. But Yelp seems poised to change that competitive landscape.
Dec 06 2011
Great Leaders Don't Have to Know All the Answers
Many people believe that great leaders are simply blessed with a knack for having the right answers. They have a natural instinct for leadership because they were born with superior talents, skills, insight and charisma.
Dec 06 2011
How to Save an Unproductive Day in 25 Minutes
We discovered that nothing makes people feel happier and more engaged at work than making meaningful progress on something they care about. We call that the progress principle. But this progress principle has a serious downside: Nothing makes people feel worse than being stalled in their work – and this negative effect is much stronger.
Dec 05 2011
It's Alive!: Business Scholars Turn to Experimental Research
Business researchers are turning increasingly to experiments in the lab and field to unlock the secrets of what motivates CEOs, consumers, and policymakers.
Dec 04 2011
That Eternal Question of Fairness
The growing gap between the top earners and everyone else is agitating our society in newly public ways. The Occupy Wall Street movement is one example. The anger spilling out over deficit reduction — or lack thereof — in Congress is another.
Dec 01 2011
Beware of Short-term Management, Not the Short-term Investor
Much has been made in recent years about the pernicious influence of short-term investors on corporate performance. I believe these arguments often miss a nuance: It is not the short-term investor but short-term management that is the problem. The short-term investor does not reduce the firm's long-term competitiveness and value;short-term management does.
Dec 01 2011
Health-care changes signal much-needed shift
The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Nov. 14 it will hear a case that challenges certain aspects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Regardless of the law's pros and cons, some of the government's most significant, positive changes to health care exist outside of it.
Nov 30 2011
Yelp's IPO Will Test the Flaws in Its Business Model
Yelp's IPO filing comes hot on the heels of successful IPOs and high valuations for Angie's List and Groupon. Yelp's timing reflects both a tech-friendly market and the company's current position as the dominant consumer-review web site. Yelp has 22 million reviews, and the supposedly imminent onslaught of competing review sites has yet to materialize.
Nov 29 2011
What We Really Know About Consumer Behavior
Some fifteen years ago, in a period that seemed full of change and uncertainty in marketing, I asked my colleague Ted Levitt where he saw our field heading. Levitt, who had a marvelous talent for speaking in epigrams, responded, "The future of marketing will be more like its past than anyone imagines."
Nov 28 2011
Rethinking the Fairness of Organ Transplants
Because of an organ shortage, hundreds or even thousands of people miss out on needed organ transplants each year. Business researchers at Harvard and MIT are rethinking how kidney transplants are allocated to give patients longer lives. An interview with professor Nikolaos Trichakis
Nov 22 2011
For Your Team's Success, Remember the How
You've been named head of a task force charged with determining how to respond to an emerging technological shift in your company's competitive landscape. At the end of roughly six months, you will have to answer for the joint efforts of fifteen people from across the organization whose work may determine the future success of your firm.
Nov 16 2011
What Your Boss Needs to Know About Engagement
On October 28, Gallup posted an article with the sobering headline "Majority of American Workers Not Engaged in Their Jobs." This should disturb every American worker and business leader. In an earlier report, Gallup estimated that worker disengagement accounts for more than $300 billion annually in lost productivity in the U.S. alone.
Nov 14 2011
Creating a Global Business Code
In the wake of corporate scandals, many companies face the daunting task of creating a corporate code of ethics. Realizing the complexity of this issue, professors Rohit Deshpandé, Lynn S. Paine, and Joshua D. Margolis decided to evaluate corporate ethics practices around the world—one of the most daunting research projects the Harvard Business School has undertaken.
Nov 07 2011
Lutte contre la pauvreté et recherche du profit
Près de quatre milliards de personnes dans le monde vivent avec moins de 5 dollars (3,6 euros) par jour. Il y a une dizaine d'années fut lancée l'idée selon laquelle cette population, dite du "bas de la pyramide", représente un marché potentiel pour les multinationales : en la ciblant, elles s'ouvrent une nouvelle source de revenus et aident ces consommateurs potentiels en leur donnant accès, à un prix abordable, à des biens et services qui améliorent leurs conditions de vie.
Oct 26 2011
Boards are Key to Fixing the System
No conversation regarding a call for a new CEO can be complete without a discussion of corporate boards and their role as the primary, determinative actors in the selection process. It is the board, after all, who is charged with succession planning and choosing the chief executive. But how well is this planning being executed in boardrooms across the globe?
Oct 26 2011
A Quiet Revolution in Clean Energy Finance
Between 2006 and 2008, more than $1 billion venture-capital dollars were channeled into startups focused on solar, wind and biofuel technologies. In the last year, however, early-stage investments in clean energy production technologies have fallen substantially (see the table at the end of this piece for more detail). Many venture capitalists are limiting their investments to the "demand-side" — aimed at reducing energy use — rather than investing in startups trying to change the way we produce energy.
Oct 25 2011
Chasing Stars: Why the Mighty Red Sox Struck Out
When the Red Sox announced they had signed away veteran pitcher John Lackey from the Anaheim Angels, it was the start of one of the most expensive talent hunts in baseball history. So why were the Red Sox an epic failure in 2011? Lackey's lackluster performance is a case study in the perils of chasing superstars, says Professor Boris Groysberg.
Oct 24 2011
The Yelp Factor: Are Consumer Reviews Good for Business?
In a new study, Assistant Professor Michael Luca shows just how much restaurant reviews on Yelp affect companies' bottom lines. The more difficult question: Are these ratings reliable as a measure of product quality?
Oct 24 2011
In Hiring and Promoting, Look Beyond Results
Would you have more confidence in a new CEO who came from a company in a growing field or a troubled industry? Would you promote a top performer if you learned he or she used shady tactics to reach sales targets?
Oct 20 2011
Herman Cain's Retirement Proposal
Herman Cain has been busy lately touting his 9-9-9 tax plan, which I wrote about on Monday. He has countered criticisms that his plan is regressive by noting that the current 15.3% payroll tax (which applies to the first $106,800 of income) would be abolished -- lowering the tax burden for the working class.
Oct 19 2011
What's the Greenest Building? The Problem With Ranking Systems
What if there was a building that was so "green" that it was awarded the well-regarded Silver LEED rating? And what if that building housed a company that, among other things, was spreading disinformation about climate science that was undermining public support for climate-change regulations and the U.S. EPA? A fairly basic question would come to mind: is that building really green?
Oct 17 2011
Let's Get Real About 9-9-9
Herman Cain is now considered a front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination. Mr. Cain's meteoric rise in the polls has been driven by his proposed 9-9-9 tax plan, which would scrap the current tax code in favor of a 9% flat tax on personal income, sales, and "business income."
Oct 14 2011
Steve Jobs, the Immediate Case Study
In all kinds of places this past week — from Twitter feeds to boardrooms — people discussed Steve Jobs's career at Apple as a kind of informal but very important case study. This is not surprising, given his contributions to technology and the lasting impact he'll have on the way we communicate.
Oct 12 2011
Why we must invest your tax dollars: Solyndra failed, but lots of federal spending pays off
Should the government subsidize clean energy? Several observers have suggested that Solyndra's recent bankruptcy following its receipt of more than $500 million in federal loan guarantees is proof that we ought to keep federal tax dollars out of the marketplace...
Oct 11 2011
The rise of online education
This year's math classes for many students in the Los Altos School District in California look radically different from those in the past. Powered in part by the Khan Academy—a non-profit that offers free educational resources such as online lessons and online assessments—the school district is expanding the "blended-learning" pilot it ran last year. The district's fifth, sixth and seventh graders learn online for a significant portion of their in-class math periods at the path and pace that fit their individual needs.
Oct 06 2011
Steve Jobs's Bicycles for the Mind
Steve Jobs logged off too soon. He was a serial innovator whose illness cost the world a bright talent who was also a great company leader. I hope that the music from the hymns of praise sung to him in his waning days is playing on his iPod as he ascends into the firmament of the greatest American business leaders.
Oct 04 2011
Ten Reasons Amazon Kindle Fire Will Succeed
Apple is a formidable player in the tablet market with almost 30 million iPads sold to-date. Similar tablets from Samsung, RIM, HP and others have struggled to make any dent in the iPad market. And now comes Amazon's Fire. Will it succeed? I think so. Here are my 10 reasons why Amazon has a very good chance to take a big bite out of Apple's iPad business:
Oct 03 2011
Putting Steve Jobs in perspective
At this week's iPhone 5 launch, we have our first official glimpse into Tim Cook's leadership style as he takes the stage as Apple's CEO. Many wonder how Cook will handle running a business handed over by one of greatest leaders and entrepreneurs of our time, Steve Jobs. Jobs is an icon who forever changed the way we connect.
Oct 03 2011
Transforming Manufacturing Waste into Profit
Every manufacturing process leaves waste, but Assistant Professor Deishin Lee believes much of this left-behind material can be put to productive...and profitable...use.
Sep 30 2011
The Most Successful CEOs Come from Within
To achieve sustained growth and profit in today's hyper-competitive global markets, leadership must have a deep commitment to and knowledge of those who truly invest in the firm — employees, vendors, customers, the community, and owners in for the long term. My view is that an emphasis on short term (i.e., quarterly) earnings has many damaging effects on a company's ability to pursue an innovative or entrepreneurial corporate strategy.
Sep 29 2011
The myth of corporate tax reform
House Speaker John Boehner recently joined the chorus of notables calling for corporate tax reform in any deficit-reduction package. Both Democrats and Republicans want to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, in return for eliminating the tax credits and deductions available primarily to U.S. corporations.
Sep 26 2011
HBS Cases: Lady Gaga
What goes into creating the world's largest pop star? Before her fame hit, Lady Gaga's manager faced decisions that could have derailed the performer's career. A new case by Associate Professor Anita Elberse examines the strategic marketing choices that instead created a global brand.
Sep 26 2011
Les multinationales dans les filets des réseaux sociaux
Il donne la possibilité aux consommateurs potentiels de communiquer les uns avec les autres, grâce à différents types de plateformes en ligne, tels que les forums de discussion, les blogs, les wikis, les réseaux sociaux et les sites de partage d'informations et de vidéos.
Sep 20 2011
Do Taxes Narrow the Wealth Gap?
President Obama's recent proposal to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans will surely find opposition among many wealthy voters. But if recent history is a guide, we can expect some middle- and even lower-income voters to be surprisingly lukewarm on the idea as well. After all, these voters previously voiced support for the tax cuts implemented by the George W. Bush administration and elimination of the estate tax.
Sep 19 2011
How to Bring Our Companies' Foreign Profits Back Home
As Congress starts the next round of debt ceiling negotiations, the United States Chamber of Commerce and other business groups are advocating tax relief for foreign profits of corporations based in the United States. Those profits are now subject to a 35 percent corporate tax rate...
Sep 19 2011
Bill Clinton and How to Use Convening Power
The best CEOs do it. Effective entrepreneurs do it. Middle managers who become change agents do it. Individuals with passion do it. Weak leaders are too timid to do it. On September 20-22 former President Bill Clinton is doing it.
Sep 19 2011
Doomsday Coming for Catastrophic Risk Insurers?
Insurance "reinsurers" underwrite much of the catastrophic risk insurance taken out to protect against huge disasters natural and man-made. Problem is, says Professor Kenneth A. Froot, reinsurers themselves are in danger of failing from a major catastrophic event.
Sep 16 2011
Seeing Yourself as Others See You
In our last blog, we argued that becoming a great boss required courage — in particular, the courage to find out how others see you. Almost certainly, we said, others' perceptions of you will differ in important and perhaps disconcerting ways from your self-perceptions.
Sep 15 2011
Three Ways to Turn Setbacks into Progress
People can't do their most productive, creative work unless they are highly engaged in their projects. According to the progress principle, of all the events that can keep people engaged and happy at work, the most important is simply making progress on meaningful work...
Sep 12 2011
The Untold Story of 'Green' Entrepreneurs
The history of entrepreneurs in green industries is largely unwritten, a fact that Harvard Business School business historian Geoffrey Jones is trying to remedy. In a new paper, Jones explores the edge-of-society pioneers who created the wind turbine industry.
Sep 08 2011
Make sure you're not the problem with your boss
Most bosses, we've found, usually mean well, more or less, but they don't often do well. The difference is usually driven by ignorance of what they should be doing and how people are responding to their words and actions. In fact, bosses and their staff often tumble into a downward spiral of action-misunderstanding-reaction that feeds on itself and ultimately produces a relationship so toxic it can't be recovered.
Sep 07 2011
Top executives need feedback—here's how they can get it
By the time you become a senior executive, you have no doubt honed a set of skills and talents that enable you to be effective in your job. To help you get to this point, you likely had coaches and mentors who closely monitored your progress, prodded you to develop your talents, and, when necessary, confronted you with criticisms...
Sep 07 2011
Judging success in funding medical research
Many charities are funding applied medical research -- trying to turn scientific discoveries into new treatments. How can the governing boards of these charities determine whether their efforts have been successful?
Sep 07 2011
How Small Wins Unleash Creativity
In their new book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, authors Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer discuss how even seemingly small steps forward on a project can make huge differences in employees' emotional and intellectual well-being. Amabile talks about the main findings of the book.
Sep 06 2011
Starbucks' Howard Schultz and how to Restore Confidence
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's message about finding common grounds for action has nothing to do with coffee grounds. Shultz is on a campaign to restore confidence in America and the American economy. He wants to ignite a contagious upward spiral of confidence. He has called for a national call-in conversation on September 6.
Sep 04 2011
Do Happier People Work Harder?
Labor Day is meant to be a celebration of work. Yet, on this Labor Day, few have reason to rejoice. Even those who have jobs. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which has been polling over 1,000 adults every day since January 2008, shows that Americans now feel worse about their jobs — and work environments — than ever before.
Sep 03 2011
True North Groups offer approach to developing leaders
Minnesota companies like General Mills, 3M and Cargill have developed national reputations for their leadership development programs. As a result, they have developed many exceptional leaders, which has enabled them to sustain their performance for decades.
Aug 31 2011
The Corner Diner in a Storm
I frequently talk about the need to articulate a "vision." You need to have a clear vision (with 3 to 5 key priorities) to build a great business or non-profit. The vision is an aspiration - the impact you want to make on your customers and the world. It is the guide around which you align your organization. It informs all key decisions.
Aug 30 2011
Jobs made Apple great by ignoring profit
Steve Jobs retires as the CEO of Apple (AAPL.O) with a reputation that will place him among the pantheon of history's great global business leaders. Many people have written about what makes Jobs and Apple special, but I think they're missing what truly set him apart.
Aug 29 2011
Nine Do's and Don'ts for Dealing with the Disgruntled
In a volatile world, anxiety and uncertainty make people a little testy. Cranky people can drag everyone else down by spreading negativity and sowing seeds of doubt just when leaders need commitment. And when everyday crankiness is exacerbated by performance problems...
Aug 29 2011
Decoding Insider Information and Other Secrets of Old School Chums
Associate Professors Lauren H. Cohen and Christopher J. Malloy study how social connections affect important decisions and, ultimately, how those connections help shape the economy. Their research shows that it's possible to make better stock picks simply by knowing whether two industry players went to the same college or university.
Aug 28 2011
In Gaddafi's Wake
It still works. Western military intervention—no matter how halfhearted and apparently ineffectual—is still sufficient to tip the balance against a rogue regime. The fall of Muammar Gaddafi had the same distinctive qualities as his entire career: a strange mixture of the bloody and the farcical, like a cross between Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup.
Aug 26 2011
Stop Ignoring the Stalwart Worker
There's an unnoticed population of employees in business today. Strangely enough, they're also the majority. The diagram below illustrates the labels that organizations often use (knowingly or unknowingly) to classify their employees.
Aug 23 2011
How to Stay Engaged (and Employed?) in a Downturn
Are you getting whiplash from following the stock market the past couple of weeks? You're not alone. Few people are having much fun on this roller coaster ride. In our previous post, we discussed what managers can do to keep their organizations on the right track in times of economic panic.
Aug 22 2011
Why HP's Departure from the PC Business Was Inevitable
HP's announcement that it is considering spinning off its PC business surprised a lot of people given that it's the largest seller in the industry. But it was an inevitable consequence of the value chain strategy that the company pursued in a highly constrained innovation space...
Aug 22 2011
Getting to Eureka!: How Companies Can Promote Creativity
As global competition intensifies, it's more important than ever that companies figure out how to innovate if they are going to maintain their edge, or maintain their existence at all. Six Harvard Business School faculty share insights on the best ways to develop creative workers
Aug 22 2011
US must learn from others' pension plans
The retirement system in the US today requires that Americans make lots of choices. Individuals must decide for themselves how much they will save, how they will invest those savings, how they will tap into them once they stop working — and even whether they will save for retirement at all or just rely on social security.
Aug 19 2011
Educating Business Leaders for a Global Century
When I arrived at Harvard Business School (HBS) in 1988, it was a thoroughly American institution. Perhaps 10 percent of the case studies analyzed during M.B.A. students' two-year course utilized overseas business problems. The primary focus was on teaching future business leaders how to succeed in an American context.
Aug 15 2011
When being good at your job isn't good enough
Remember Pete Best? Best was the Beatles drummer before Ringo Starr took the job and the group went on to become the Fab Four. Best was invited by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison -- the original Beatles -- to join them in 1960
Aug 15 2011
Should Leaders Go on Vacation?
When former auto executive Lee Iaccoca titled a book, "Where Have All the Leaders Gone?" he was decrying the sorry state of leadership, not asking about particular places. Currently, the question is more literal and immediate: Where have all the leaders gone on vacation?
Aug 15 2011
The Power of Small Wins in Times of Panic
The current turmoil in the markets has everyone worried; some are panicking. But, like many crises, this one presents both threat and opportunity for what goes on inside organizations. The threat: Leaders in business will become ever more singlemindedly focused on the financials of their companies...
Aug 15 2011
The Current Crisis and the Essence of Captialism
The worldwide economic downturn is no short-term blip but a full-fledged crisis of capitalism. Amid the din of commentary and political posturing, it is appropriate to return to first principles for a better understanding of the crisis. What are these principles? The answer requires a foray into history.
Aug 14 2011
Inside the Greek Volcano
Government debt has been top of mind this summer. As Congress and the White House played a dangerous game of political brinkmanship over the federal debt ceiling, and, last week, as Washington tried to digest a lowering of the nation's credit rating...
Aug 09 2011
Enough talk about jobs. Where's the action?
As Standard & Poor's lowered the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+ in an historic move last Friday, the president called jobs his "singular focus." In December 2010, he announced a "pivot and focus" on jobs. The previous year he called it "a sustained and relentless focus." Financial markets have voted with their feet, as investors have reduced equity values by more than 11 percent in the past week.
Aug 09 2011
Downgrading America?
I don't know how most Americans feel these days, but I haven't felt like this since just before Richard Nixon left office in 1974. Our political leaders (think "jumbo shrimp" or "military intelligence") have just completed a grand game of chicken. They ended up in just the same position Neville Chamberlain was when he negotiated with Adolf Hitler.
Aug 07 2011
Debt Debate: China's View
Xian, China—viewed from inside the Beltway, the passage of legislation to raise the federal debt ceiling was a triumph for democracy. "The push and pull Americans saw in Washington these past few weeks...was the will of the people working itself out," declared Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate. The appearance of Gabrielle Giffords to vote for the bill raised not just the ceiling but also the roof.
Aug 04 2011
The First Requirement for Becoming a Great Boss
Among the many requirements placed on those who take responsibility for the performance of others, there is one that is rarely mentioned. Yet, ironically, it may be the most important because so much else depends on it.
Aug 04 2011
Three Questions for Effective Feedback
When I was in graduate school, Phil Daniels, then a psychology professor at Brigham Young University, taught us about a feedback mechanism he called the SKS form. It was simply a process whereby we would ask others what we should stop (S), keep (K), and start (S) doing, given a particular role we might have as a teacher, friend, spouse, father, mother, etc.
Aug 03 2011
When Investing, Are You Asking These Three Questions?
This has been a tumultuous last four years for individual investors. Some have managed well during this period while others have lost a substantial portion of their wealth. Many individual investors are looking for answers regarding where to go from here and wonder what they could do to be more successful.
Aug 01 2011
Four Leadership Lessons from Debt-Ceiling Brinkmanship (and Baseball)
For many observers of the rancorous partisanship surrounding the budget crisis in Washington, leadership is hardly the first concept that comes to mind, although President Obama's efforts toward a workable framework exemplify CEO responsibility.
Aug 01 2011
Immigrant Innovators: Job Stealers or Job Creators?
The H-1B visa program, which enables US employers to hire highly skilled foreign workers for three years, is "a lightning rod for a very heated debate," says Harvard Business School professor William Kerr. His latest research addresses the question of whether the program is good for innovation, and whether it impacts jobs for Americans.
Jul 28 2011
The Main Highway of Commerce
There is a lot of talk right now about whether states should levy sales taxes on online purchases. The real question is: Do we want large, profitable online players, like Amazon, spending large amounts of time and money trying to shield their customers (and thus, their own top lines) from sales taxes, when virtually every state in the United States is starved for revenue?
Jul 25 2011
Five Tips for Coping with Uncertainty — and Finding Opportunity
Clouds of uncertainty hover over the Western world. The consequences are stalling action. Companies are sitting on piles of cash, several CEOs have told me, as they wait for a resolution to the U.S. debt crisis before deciding what and where to invest or whether to hire
Jul 22 2011
Beware "the Pledge"
As we hear each day in the news, numerous politicians have taken a "pledge" not to increase taxes (this apparently includes closing tax loop holes). The presidential campaign is getting into full swing and each Republican candidate is being asked whether they have signed the "pledge."
Jul 19 2011
Social Security Reform Is the Key to the Debt Ceiling Debate
To finance the U.S. government until after the 2012 elections, Congress must raise the U.S. debt ceiling by roughly $2.4 trillion. Many members of Congress will not support such an increase in the debt ceiling without a similar decrease in long-term federal spending.
Jul 19 2011
A debt plan Republicans can support
In the negotiations on the debt ceiling, Vice President Biden initially pushed for a $2.4 trillion deal — with $2 trillion in spending cuts and $400 billion in revenue raisers. Although President Obama recently suggested a larger deal with higher tax rates for the wealthy, Republicans have uniformly rejected that idea.
Jul 19 2011
The Isolation Instinct
Mike Martin (not his real name) was one of the most gifted traders on Wall Street. Morgan Stanley, where I was working at the time, hired him away from a leading bank. A month after he was hired, Martin called me on the phone. He said, "Tom, I've come back home," referring to his return to the bank where he had previously been employed.
Jul 18 2011
Horrible Bosses?
Why are bosses so often maligned in the media and our popular culture? A case in point is the new movie Horrible Bosses, whose characters, we are told, were based on the writer's real-life experiences.
Jul 18 2011
Looking in the Mirror: Questions Every Leader Must Ask
"Show me a company or nonprofit or government in trouble, and I will almost invariably show you a set of leaders who are asking absolutely the wrong questions," says professor Robert Steven Kaplan. He discusses his new book, What to Ask the Person in the Mirror.
Jul 18 2011
Rupert Murdoch and the News about Honor (or the Lack Thereof)
The frail, forlorn face of Rupert Murdoch in the news exposes the vulnerability at the heart of his News Corporation media empire: his reputation for ruthlessness. Murdoch is on the line for the phone-hacking scandal in the U.K. and faces potential bribery charges that reach to the U.S. under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Jul 18 2011
News Corp and Questions Boards Need to Ask
Much has been written and said regarding News Corp and its activities in the UK, and serious questions have been raised about the leadership and culture of this company. Some of these questions have been directed at the company's board of directors: did it properly fulfill its independent fiduciary responsibilities in overseeing this global organization?
Jul 12 2011
The Fundamental Purpose of Your Team
You've been put in charge of a task force recently created to resolve a severe quality problem with one of your company's most popular products. Your mandate: "Fix it." Customer anger is creating an uproar on the Web — Tweets galore, a Facebook group dedicated to your "victims,"...
Jul 12 2011
Change Management vs. Change Leadership — What's the Difference?
I am often asked about the difference between "change management" and "change leadership," and whether it's just a matter of semantics. These terms are not interchangeable. The distinction between the two is actually quite significant.
Jul 11 2011
Non-competes Push Talent Away
California is among several states where non-compete agreements are essentially illegal. Is it a coincidence that so many inventors flock to Silicon Valley? New research by Lee Fleming, Matt Marx, and Jasjit Singh investigates whether there is a "brain drain" of talented engineers and scientists who leave states that allow non-competes and move to states that don't.
Jul 07 2011
The Right to Straight Talk
During World War II, Winston Churchill was marking up a classified document that the Allied forces were waiting for in order to go into action. On one of the pages Churchill wrote, "Watch the borders," referring to the manner in which the typist had left little room for him to make comments in the margins.
Jul 06 2011
Washington's Complacency Cancer
Last week, I was asked to contribute a piece to the Washington Post's On Leadership roundtable about the leadership issues at the core of U.S. debt ceiling debate, and why Washington leaders have not been able to solve the country's debt problems.
Jul 05 2011
Three Reasons Everything Goes Better with Partners
Successful entrepreneurs and innovators might be strong-willed individuals with unique dreams, but they aren't do-it-yourselfers. Leaders might be singled out for their accomplishments, but the best of them walk hand in hand with strong partners. Even "solopreneurs," a new term for people who work alone, need a support system.
Jul 04 2011
Making the Case for Consumer-Driven Health Care
Even as so-called Obamacare becomes a central issue in the 2012 presidential election, policymakers and academics continue the debate on how best to deliver affordable and efficient health care services to millions of Americans. In this video interview, professor Regina Herzlinger makes the case that consumers should have more say over their own care.
Jul 04 2011
Declaring Independence in the Workplace
On July 4, 1776, in a sweltering hall in Philadelphia, 56 men gathered to sign "the unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America." Well, it's July again, and we think it's time for another kind of declaration of independence. Too many knowledge workers — professionals with immense talent, experience, and drive to do meaningful work — are stifled by managers who misunderstand what effective management means.
Jul 02 2011
The Moral Behind All the Numbers
In "Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest for Economic Meaning From Gilgamesh to Wall Street" (Oxford, $27.95), Mr. Sedlacek takes mainstream economics as his clay, digging both his arms in up to the elbows in an attempt to explain the beliefs and ethical values underlying modern economics.
Jul 01 2011
Searching for Professional Significance
Before you proceed, grab a pen and paper and take a moment to do this quick exercise: Write the name of the best leader, teacher, or coach you've ever had. Write the name of the individual who made a difference in your life, who seemed to care more about you than you cared about yourself.
Jun 28 2011
Turn Your Group into a True Team
Are the people who work for you a real team? It's easy to extol teamwork, but not every group is a team. In fact, most teams we see, aren't — because their managers focus on building the most effective relationships they can with each individual who works for them.
Jun 27 2011
Obama's Choice on Jobs: Politics or Policy
With job growth stagnant and the nation's underemployment stuck at 16 percent — that's 25 million Americans — the meeting represented an ideal opportunity for the president to develop a list of sound ideas he could put into action.
Jun 27 2011
A Plan to Tax the Foreign Income of U.S. Companies
The current system for taxing foreign source income of U.S. corporations makes no sense. In theory, income earned by controlled foreign subsidiaries of American companies is taxed at the U.S. corporate rate of 35 percent; in practice, the Treasury receives no taxes on that income as long as it is held overseas.
Jun 27 2011
Recovering from the Need to Achieve
In his new book, Flying without a Net: Turn Fear of Change into Fuel for Success, HBS professor Thomas J. DeLong explores the world of "high-need-for-achievement professionals" or HNAPs—those for whom the constant, insatiable need to achieve can lead to anxiety and dysfunction.
Jun 23 2011
Excite Employees by Tapping Their Minds and Hearts
Leaders often struggle to connect with employees about organizational goals in a way that appeals to both the head and the heart. This is something many processes for creating change tend to miss, but I've found it's an essential catalyst for truly changing behavior.
Jun 20 2011
Why chronic comparing spells career poison
I assured him that many students were his intellectual equal, but he persisted in asking me to rank his strategic sense against one student or his analytical acumen against another. Not once did this budding business leader talk about his interests and aspirations and how his abilities might serve those interests; it was all about his strengths relative to others.
Jun 20 2011
Fame, Faith, and Social Activism: Business Lessons from Bono
Many executives struggle to balance work, family, and community, but for rock star Bono the effort is spread across the globe. In the HBS case "Bono and U2," professor Nancy F. Koehn discusses key business lessons to be learned from the famous band.
Jun 19 2011
Don't hobble money market funds
Money market funds are under regulatory attack. Their critics are calling for radical change in how these funds operate, proposing that money market funds either be prohibited from maintaining a constant $1 share price or required to maintain a substantial cushion against potential losses.
Jun 17 2011
Devoted to Debt
In the first quarter of 2011, the average American household carried $115,000 of mortgage, credit-card, and other forms of debt—a huge sum, but less (because of the recession) than the figure for the third quarter of 2008, when the average family owed more than $125,000 to financial institutions and other organizations.
Jun 17 2011
The Value in Vulnerability
Long before he achieved tabloid status for his personal life, Tiger Woods won the 1997 Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, by 12 strokes. It was such an overwhelming victory that Augusta redesigned its course to increase the odds that Woods would not repeat the feat.
Jun 13 2011
Why American Management Rules the World
After a decade of painstaking research, we have concluded that American firms are on average the best managed in the world. This is not what we — a group of European researchers — expected to find. But while Americans are bad at football (or soccer, as it's known as locally), they are the Brazilians of Management.
Jun 13 2011
HBS Cases: Mobile Banking for the Unbanked
A billion people in developing countries have no need for a savings account–but they do need a financial service that banks compete to provide. The new HBS case Mobile Banking for the Unbanked, written by professor Kash Rangan, is a lesson in understanding the real need of customers
Jun 13 2011
Five Tough Questions Every Entrepreneur Must Ask about Growth
Getting a venture underway is often easier than keeping it going and growing. At each major stage from start-up to sustainable success, entrepreneurs face tough questions about shifting gears, making major changes, and letting go of people, partners, and products.
Jun 13 2011
Winning, Losing, and Collaboration
In sports, it is a truism that winning can temporarily overcome various problems between teammates. For instance, the relationship between Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal was strained while they were teammates with the Los Angeles Lakers, even during their three consecutive NBA championship seasons.
Jun 09 2011
Reshaping Indian Higher Education
Indian higher-education today suffers from three serious maladies: inadequate competition among the better institutions, inadequate experimentation, and inadequate measurement of outcomes.
Jun 09 2011
The Comparing Trap
When I joined the Harvard Business School faculty, I received cards and letters from friends and family congratulating me on achieving one of the ultimate brass rings of academics. I felt pretty good about myself until I visited my assigned office in Morgan Hall.
Jun 06 2011
Reshaping India's higher education landscape
A few months have elapsed since then human resources development minister Kapil Sibal introduced his higher education Bill. The immediate brouhaha now having subsided, I feel it might be worthwhile to point to three generalized inadequacies in our higher education landscape that I hope this Bill...
Jun 06 2011
Why Leaders Lose Their Way
These talented leaders were highly successful in their respective fields and at the peak of their careers. This makes their behavior especially perplexing, raising questions about what caused them to lose their way...
Jun 06 2011
IBM and Six Strategic Reasons to Celebrate by Serving
The IBM Centennial celebration on June 15 is a birthday party for the world. It is not cake, candles, and fancy dress but more of a roll-up-you-sleeves-to-work day. Nearly 300,000 IBMers and family members have pledged at least 8 hours of service in 120 countries through over 3,500 projects that draw on IBM tools and capabilities.
Jun 06 2011
Academics need to get 'down and dirty'
The financial crisis that shook the world three years ago had multiple causes, including perverse incentives, inattentive corporate governance and weak regulation. But shortcomings in academic accounting research over the past 40 years also contributed, if only by errors of omission.
Jun 01 2011
Japan Disaster Shakes Up Supply-Chain Strategies
The full cultural and sociological aftershocks of the earthquake in Japan—the worst disaster to hit the country since World War II—are washing like a tsunami across many industries as manufacturers and their customers scramble to replace suppliers disrupted and even closed down by the events of March 11.
Jun 01 2011
A Lesson from Warren Buffet about Ethical Blind Spots
The data seem clear on David Sokol's conflict of interest in the Berkshire/Lubrizol deal. He bought shares in Lubrizol, and then encouraged Berkshire to buy the company. He claimed that because he didn't know whether Berskhire would follow his recommendation he didn't have inside information.
Jun 01 2011
Managing Yourself: The Paradox of Excellence
Why is it that so many smart, ambitious professionals are less productive and satisfied than they should or could be? Why do so many of them find their upward trajectories flattening into a plateau?
Jun 01 2011
What's after Fannie and Freddie?
Reforming the U.S. housing finance system remains perhaps the largest piece of unfinished business from the 2008–2009 financial crisis. The Obama administration in February proposed phasing out mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored enterprises whose collective missteps have cost taxpayers more than $134 billion since being placed in conservatorship in September 2008.
May 31 2011
A Lesson from Warren Buffet about Ethical Blind Spots
The data seem clear on David Sokol's conflict of interest in the Berkshire/Lubrizol deal. He bought shares in Lubrizol, and then encouraged Berkshire to buy the company. He claimed that because he didn't know whether Berskhire would follow his recommendation he didn't have inside information.
May 26 2011
The Internet Changes Everything — Except Four Things
At the e-G8 Forum in Paris this week, the Internet was venerated as a revolutionary force changing everything. French President Sarkozy, who commissioned the forum to provide recommendations to the G8 heads of state, was extravagant in his praise, calling it a new world and the eighth continent.
May 25 2011
For Oprah Winfrey, this is not the finale
The end of this week marks the first time in 25 years that the Oprah Winfrey Show won't be kicking off the 4 p.m. hour block. In the sweep of television history, as well as for millions of loyal viewers, this is a big inflection point. After all, we've grown accustomed to seeing Oprah in the role of talk show host, entrepreneur, educator, life coach, leader and, for many, friend.
May 23 2011
Hierarchy and Network: Two Structures, One Organization
Almost all companies organize people in a hierarchy, and then run well known managerial processes (planning, budgeting, staffing, measuring, etc) with it. We have all seen so many hierarchical org charts — sprawling boxes of letters and arrows arranged in inverted pyramids...
May 23 2011
What Loyalty? High-End Customers are First to Flee
Companies offering top-drawer customer service might have a nasty surprise awaiting them when a new competitor comes to town. Their best customers might be the first to defect. Research by Harvard Business School's Ryan W. Buell, Dennis Campbell, and Frances X. Frei.
May 23 2011
Managing the Double-Edged Sword of Collaboration
We have written here about our project collecting daily work dairies from over 200 people to understand the effect of everyday events inside organizations on employee inner work life — emotions, perceptions, and motivations.
May 23 2011
Winning in Emerging Markets: Spotting and Responding to Institutional Voids
This article builds on our structural definition of emerging markets to equip managers with toolkits to spot and respond to institutional voids.1 Emerging markets are hardly uniform in the nature and extent of their institutional voids. The development of business strategy in any economy is driven by three primary markets—product, labor, and capital—and institutional voids can be found in any, or all, of these markets in developing countries.
May 23 2011
Corporate Sustainability Reporting: It's Effective
In a growing trend, countries have begun requiring companies to report their environmental, social, and governance performance. George Serafeim of HBS and Ioannis Ioannou of London Business School set out to find whether this reporting actually induces companies to improve their nonfinancial performance and contribute toward a sustainable society.
May 22 2011
Jockeying for Stigma
Our recent research reveals that white and black Americans agree that bias against blacks was prevalent in the 1950's and 1960's. But while blacks see such racism as continuing, whites tend to see it as a problem that has been more or less "solved."
May 16 2011
Multinationals under fire from campaigning
The protests against multinationals, whether spontaneous or orchestrated by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly numerous. So last century activists sought primarily to influence the decisions of public authorities, hoping thereby indirectly contribute to the regulation of markets, they now target business directly.
May 16 2011
A Counter-Intuitive Approach to Making Complex Decisions
In our experience as social psychologists studying human behavior and decision making, we think the evidence is clear: Sleeping on it was the scientifically sound decision for Obama and is the right course of action for anyone facing a challenging quandary.
May 13 2011
Small Wins and Feeling Good
The power of small wins applies just as well to problems in business. Our recent research discovered how critical it is for teams and individuals working on complex problems to achieve small wins regularly.
May 12 2011
The Worrying Trap
Someone once said that there are no small worries for people with big ambition, since every obstacle on the road to goals looms large. Driven professionals often struggle to differentiate small worries from big ones, because every problem is given equal, exaggerated weight. Think about what work worries assault you in the middle of the night and prevent you from going back to sleep.
May 11 2011
Clinical Registries: The Opportunity For The Nation
On April 28, 2011, we co-chaired a national leadership meeting held at the Department of Health and Human Services of diverse stakeholders — health plans, purchasers, hospitals, physician specialty societies, pharmaceutical companies, patients, licensing and certification boards — to discuss how the public and private sectors could work together to advance the use of clinical registries in practice.
May 10 2011
Your Crucial - and Unwritten - Plan
Are you ready for the future? "Sure," you say, "we have a plan," as you point to a 3-ring binder on the shelf or pull up a slide-deck on your laptop. For many managers and organizations, that written document with its fixed view of the future — usually expressed as a set of hoped-for numbers and a to-do list with dates — is how they plan to deal with whatever lies ahead.
May 09 2011
Cisco and a Cautionary Tale about Teams
The news that Cisco is dismantling its unique structure of councils and boards to reduce bureaucracy presents a cautionary tale and an insight into the true meaning of teamwork and collaboration in organizations.
May 09 2011
Moving From Bean Counter to Game Changer
New research by HBS professor Anette Mikes and colleagues looks into how accountants, finance professionals, internal auditors, and risk managers gain influence in their organizations to become strategic decision makers.
May 03 2011
Leadership Lessons from the Saddle
And so it was a real challenge coming to terms with that fear when I began riding horses and competing in the show jumping ring some years ago. In the process, though, I realized that many of the lessons I learned on a horse have strong relevance and application for leading and motivating a team in pursuit of a worthy mission.
May 02 2011
Three Leadership Steps to Defuse Tense Situations
How do leaders maintain morale and momentum when members of their team are close to collapsing in frustration over the obstacles they face? Perhaps the issue is angry customers whose questions are hard to answer, or uncooperative peers from other groups who cause logjams and delay decisions.
Apr 28 2011
The Compensation Silly Season
Tis the season when public companies publish their 10Ks, complete with the Compensation Disclosure and Analysis section revealing the pay of their five most highly paid officers, including the highest paid of all, the CEO. When these figures are made public, the business media have a field day.
Apr 28 2011
Pain at the Pump? We Need More
Gasoline prices are above $4 per gallon in much of the country, a reminder that our dependence on oil carries a great cost. President Obama has promised that the Justice Department will be vigilant in pursuing price-gouging at the pump, but what we really need is to address the full set of energy-related problems, with a focus on spurring clean energy innovation.
Apr 27 2011
Four Reasons to Keep a Work Diary
Recently, Oprah offered her readers glimpses into her diaries, along with encouragement to keep their own. Many well-known figures throughout history, from John Adams to Andy Warhol, have faithfully kept records of their daily lives.
Apr 25 2011
What CEOs Do, and How They Can Do it Better
A CEO's schedule is especially important to a firm's financial success, which raises a few questions: What do they do all day? Can they be more efficient time managers? HBS professor Raffaella Sadun and colleagues set out to find some answers.
Apr 25 2011
Why CEOs Should Watch the Royal Wedding
The wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton might seem entirely frothy and unworthy of the time of busy executives. It seems an inconsequential event — no new international alliances are formed, no policies will change within their home nation, and the young couple doesn't seem all that interesting.
Apr 25 2011
Learn the tactics needed to break into emerging markets
In the private equity and venture capital industry, high growth markets like China offer considerable appeal to investors. Numerous local groups, and just about every major Western firm, vie to penetrate these potentially lucrative markets. But, to succeed, investors looking for opportunities in China and other emerging markets need to find a way through the global recession and credit crisis.
Apr 21 2011
Stumbling Into Bad Behavior
It's easy to look at big names like Warren E. Buffett, and big companies like Ernst and Young, and be judgmental. Of course they overlooked ethical lapses. Why wouldn't they? That's business.
Apr 19 2011
If You Think You're Prepared, Think Again
Because achieving buy-in for new ideas is such an important challenge, I'm often asked to distill it down to one recommendation. "What's the one best thing I can do to increase my chances of getting buy-in for my proposal at this upcoming meeting?"
Apr 18 2011
It's Not Nagging: Why Persistent, Redundant Communication Works
Managers who inundate their teams with the same messages, over and over, via multiple media, need not feel bad about their persistence. In fact, this redundant communication works to get projects completed quickly, according to new research by Harvard Business School professor Tsedal B. Neeley...
Apr 18 2011
The Most Important Question a Manager Can Ask
When is the last time you asked the group you manage, and the individuals in it, this simple question: What can I do to help you be more effective? What question could be more central to being a good boss? If you want to manage and lead successfully, you've got to know what the people doing the work need.
Apr 13 2011
Why European funds are outgunning US rivals
While the mutual fund was born in the United States, its European cousin "the Ucits fund" is becoming the dominant form of collective investing around the world. Ucits stands for "undertaking for collective investment in transferable securities" and is the name of the directive of the European Parliament that created them in 1985.
Apr 11 2011
Teaching a 'Lean Startup' Strategy
Most startups fail because they waste too much time and money building the wrong product before realizing too late what the right product should have been, says HBS entrepreneurial management professor Thomas R. Eisenmann. In his new MBA course, Launching Technology Ventures...
Apr 06 2011
Boost Power Through Body Language
Amy Cuddy, assistant professor at Harvard Business School, describes a simple way to raise confidence and reduce stress.
Apr 06 2011
Has the Federal Government Already Shut Down?
Democrats and Republicans are working feverishly to negotiate a compromise that would avoid a government shutdown — at least until the debt ceiling next needs to be raised again.
Apr 05 2011
Why Does Criticism Seem More Effective than Praise?
When you coach someone or conduct a performance appraisal, where do you tend to focus? Probably on "opportunities for improvement," right? Sure, you mention some positive things, but we'll bet you spend much more time talking about faults and shortcomings.
Apr 03 2011
Why Red Flags Can Go Unnoticed
In the wake of recent disasters — from nuclear reactor failures to oil spills to the collapse of the subprime mortgage market — we have focused on which people and institutions might be to blame. How, we ask in hindsight, could people and institutions have failed to foresee clear signs of trouble — even in the face of warnings?
Apr 01 2011
A Three-Step Plan for CFOs
The latest news about the Lehman Brothers audit committee is startling — that they appeared to hew to the letter of the law but missed the fact that one of the firm's UK subsidiaries may have been engaged in quarter-end accounting shenanigans.
Mar 30 2011
Is This Tech Boom Different?
A major lesson of the technology bubble of the late 1990s was that periods of rapid innovation benefit consumers more than investors. Innovation spurs competition, as entrepreneurs respond to the excitement of new technology and to the easy financing terms offered by the capital markets.
Mar 30 2011
Zooming: How Effective Leaders Adjust Their Focus
Harvard Business School professor, explains why executives must constantly consider both the big picture and the details. She is the author of the HBR article Zoom In, Zoom Out.
Mar 29 2011
Four Reasons Any Action Is Better than None
It's well-known that busy people get the most done. Their secret is simple: They never stop moving. Of course, sitting still can be a good thing if it involves renewal, reflection, and focused attention (or having meals with the family).
Mar 28 2011
How to Get Involved Without Micromanaging People
One of the more vexing problems most managers face every day is how to get involved in the work of their people without doing the work themselves or micromanaging those doing it.
Mar 28 2011
Why Manufacturing Matters
After decades of outsourcing, America's ability to innovate and create high-tech products essential for future prosperity is on the decline, argue professors Gary Pisano and Willy Shih. Is it too late to get it back?
Mar 25 2011
Family Firms Need Professional Management
In emerging countries like India and Brazil, family-run firms are the norm, and even in the richer nations small and medium sized enterprises are predominantly family firms.
Mar 25 2011
Necessity, not Scarcity, is the Mother of Invention
Bravo for companies that are starting to focus on innovation again! It's about time. But even with this renewed attention to innovation, some managers keep projects resource-starved, in the belief that scarcity drives creative invention.
Mar 23 2011
The Economic Impact of the Japanese Disasters
Human suffering is certainly our main concern in the immediate aftermath of Japan's 3/11 tragedy. But even as we focus on immediate human needs, we cannot avoid recognizing — and coping with — the long economic shadow cast by this disaster.
Mar 22 2011
Why liberals should back Social Security reform
Liberals should not be fighting Social Security reform — they ought to be leading the charge for change, for a simple reason: The program is no longer progressive. Contrary to popular opinion, the structure of federal retirement programs today favors middle and high earners over less well-off retirees.
Mar 22 2011
Patience in Japan
The culture of Japan tends to be outer-directed. Thus, taking care of other people becomes much more central to its value system. This is one reason why Japanese companies tend to look out for the welfare of their employees in such an effective fashion.
Mar 21 2011
Rising Wealth Inequality: Should We Care
In a recent survey of Americans, my colleague Dan Ariely and I found that Americans drastically underestimated the level of wealth inequality in the United States. While recent data indicates that the richest 20 percent of Americans own 84 percent of all wealth, people estimated that this group owned just 59 percent &ndash believing that total wealth in this country is far more evenly divided among poorer Americans.
Mar 21 2011
Are We Thinking Too Little, or Too Much?
In the course of making a decision, managers often err in one of two directions—either over analyzing a situation or forgoing all the relevant information and simply going with their gut. HBS marketing professor Michael I. Norton discusses the potential pitfalls of thinking too much or thinking too little.
Mar 21 2011
Japan, Libya, and Why Leaders Should be Paranoid
There is no silver lining in the gray cloud surrounding the Japanese nuclear plant, or, for that matter, in the bomb trails above Libya. If you're in Northern California, reports of elevated radiation levels in Sacramento is unsettling, to say the least...
Mar 18 2011
Social Networks Will Change Product Innovation
Much is being written about the impact that new communication technologies and channels (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) have on traditional marketing. The deeper question is: Will these new communication channels actually force material changes not just in the way companies market their products but in the strategies and operations they use to develop and build those products as well?
Mar 17 2011
How to Use Facebook to Drive Higher Sales
As Facebook has grown to more than 600 million users, many companies have been struggling to figure out how to leverage it to help their businesses.
Mar 14 2011
G20 : les multinationales dans l'arène politique
Sous la présidence française, l'ambition du G20 est de poursuivre le rétablissement de l'ordre économique mondial. En renforçant la régulation financière, en développant la dimension sociale de la mondialisation et en luttant contre la corruption. Ces enjeux concernent au premier chef les multinationales.
Mar 14 2011
Mistaking Mistrust For Greed: How To Solve The NFL Dispute
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Those who learn the wrong lessons from the past may be equally doomed. The scenario unfolding in the contentious dispute between National Football League players and owners is an example of both problems.
Mar 14 2011
Water, Electricity, and Transportation: Preparing for the Population Boom
The conference—titled "Investing in Cities of the 21st Century: Urbanization, Infrastructure, and Resources"- tackled three giant subjects: water, energy, and transportation. The conference was sponsored by Harvard Business School's Business and Environment Initiative and co-chaired by professors Rebecca M. Henderson, John D. Macomber, and Forest L. Reinhardt.
Mar 11 2011
Supporting Change Is Worth the Risk
Revolutions, like Tolstoy's unhappy families, are all revolutionary in their own particular way. The current upheavals in the Arab world are no exception. What they have in common are good reasons for foreign businesses and Western governments to cheer the changes.
Mar 07 2011
Turning the Tables on a Fear-Mongering Attack
Fear is a very powerful emotion. And fear-mongering is one of the most effective attack strategies for killing good ideas. Fear-mongerers raise anxiety and make a thoughtful examination of a proposal difficult, if not impossible. One very common fear-based counter-argument to a new idea is the claim: "You and your proposal are abandoning our core values!"
Mar 07 2011
For International Women's Day, Think Outside the (Shoe)Box
To all foot soldiers in the equal-opportunity-diversity-and-inclusion revolution: It's time to vote with your feet. Celebrate International Women's Day on March 8 by sitting down and slipping your shoes off for a moment of relief.
Mar 07 2011
Why Companies Fail--and How Their Founders Can Bounce Back
The statistics are disheartening no matter how an entrepreneur defines failure. If failure means liquidating all assets, with investors losing most or all the money they put into the company, then the failure rate for start-ups is 30 to 40 percent, according to Shikhar Ghosh, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School who has held top executive positions at some eight technology-based start-ups.
Mar 06 2011
How to Stop Trading Away the Future
The world's leading economies are facing crises related to their vulnerability to booms and busts, rising income inequality, unsustainable government obligations, climate change and a widespread erosion of public trust, according to Diane Coyle, an economist and consultant.
Mar 02 2011
A Disruptive Solution for Health Care
The challenge that we face — making health care affordable and conveniently accessible to most people — is not unique to health care. Almost every industry began with services and products that were so complicated and expensive to provide that only people with a lot of skill and a lot of money could participate.
Mar 02 2011
The Best Ways to Discuss Ethics
How we communicate about values and good conduct is a challenging task in the best of circumstances. And recent corporate history — Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Parmalat, Andersen — has not provided us with the best of circumstances.
Feb 28 2011
The Importance of 'Don't' in Inducing Ethical Employee Behavior
In a new study, HBS professors Francesca Gino and Joshua D. Margolis look at two ways that companies can encourage ethical behavior: the promotion of good deeds or the prevention of bad deeds. It turns out that employees tend to act more ethically when focused on what not to do.
Feb 26 2011
Leadership skills start with self-awareness
Last week I served as faculty chair for Harvard Business School's new executive course, "Authentic Leadership Development." Sixty-four executives from 60 global companies spent five intense days honing their leadership.
Feb 25 2011
The New Path To the C-Suite
We know that different times and different circumstances call for different leadership skills. So when it comes to managing your own career, how do you prepare yourself to move up? What abilities should young would-be executives focus on developing as they choose companies, functions, and jobs?
Feb 25 2011
Rebuilding Egypt: How companies can fill the vacuum of trust
The unfolding protest movements in Egypt and across the Middle East have generated a dizzying mix of joy, fear, and uncertainty throughout the world, leaving many in the business community involved in the region -- including many of my students -- confused and unsure over how to respond. How do they protect their employees as well as their bottom lines? And, in Egypt's case in particular, how can they contribute to the reconstruction process?
Feb 23 2011
The Words Many Managers Are Afraid To Say
No one, boss or not, likes to admit error or ignorance. But an inability to recognize and admit openly when you lack knowledge or make a mistake will make you less effective as a manager in two ways.
Feb 23 2011
The Traits of Advanced Leaders
Welcome to the dawning era of social innovation, in which more people aspire to tackle old problems in new ways with new tools. Lacking confidence in established organizations and governments to do the trick, innovators think that it's time to reinvent institutions to make progress on social issues such as health, education, jobs, human rights, and the environment — and do it fast.
Feb 22 2011
Why Innovation Is So Hard in Health Care - and How to Do It Anyway
Supposedly, everyone working in health care wants the same thing: to help people get and stay healthy. "Everyone" includes primary care doctors, medical specialists, nurses, hospital administrators, health insurance providers, nutritionists, pharmaceutical companies, medical technology manufacturers, fitness gurus, paraprofessionals...
Feb 22 2011
The Most Important Management Trends of the (Still Young) Twenty-First Century
We've asked HBS Dean Nitin Nohria and a number of faculty to both remark on what they view as the most significant business management ideas of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and then to tell us what they hope will be the most fertile areas of business research between now and 2020.
Feb 22 2011
How to refocus US mortgage interest relief
The mortgage interest deduction is a huge budget item -" almost $100bn per year in federal taxes forgone -" with a weak link to its stated goal of promoting home ownership. In its most recent budget, the Obama administration proposed to eliminate the MID for all taxpayers with annual incomes of $250,000 and higher. But this proposal was rejected by Congress when the House was controlled by Democrats.
Feb 16 2011
Before You Can Get Buy-In, People Need to Feel the Problem
Picture this: you're in the middle of presenting your proposal and a person at the far end of the table raises her hand. "I'm not even sure the 'problem' you're describing exists, or is a big deal at all!" How do you deal with that?
Feb 16 2011
What to Ask Your Company's Auditors
Despite Sarbanes Oxley, corporate executives still seem awfully good at keeping their boards in the dark. I find it hard to blame board members, though. They're deluged with lengthy reports — not least because of Sarbanes Oxley — and it's hard to know what information they should be worrying about.
Feb 15 2011
If You Don't Want To Influence Others, You Can't Lead
The stereotypical bad boss is one who marches through the workplace barking orders left and right. But there's another type we've probably all experienced at one time or another: bosses who don't do what they need to do.
Feb 14 2011
Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing
When planning new products, companies often start by segmenting their markets and positioning their merchandise accordingly. This segmentation involves either dividing the market into product categories, such as function or price, or dividing the customer base into target demographics, such as age, gender, education, or income level.
Feb 14 2011
Egypt's Rebellion, U.S. Competitiveness, and National Service
Photos of the youthful protesters in Tahrir Square who brought down former Egyptian President Mubarak reminded me of the students I had met a few years ago at the American University in Cairo.
Feb 13 2011
Long live fixed-rate 30-year mortgages!
Remember your father's Oldsmobile — the passé model that drivers of this millennium dismissed? Our recent housing-market frenzy propelled the fixed-rate, long-term mortgage into a similar generational derision.
Jan 31 2011
Taking the Fear out of Diversity Policies
If you start a discussion about workplace diversity policies, don't be surprised if the hopeful topics of ethnic, racial, and gender heterogeneity lead to negative discussions about sexism, bigotry, and injustice.
Jan 31 2011
Laissez-Faire, Picking Winners, and Other Myths of National Competitiveness
In the wake of President Obama's State of the Union address and his appointment of Jeff Immelt of GE to chair his new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, there has been a heated debate in the United States about the role of government in improving the competitiveness of American businesses.
Jan 31 2011
Four Winning Lessons from the Super Bowl
Even if you don't love American football, you have to love the business brilliance behind the Super Bowl. The National Football League (NFL) championship game set a record for the most-watched TV program in history in 2010, at 106.5 million viewers. It is also a great American export, being one of the most-watched sports activities globally, perhaps number two in the world.
Jan 28 2011
Davos Diary: Day Three
The day dawned clear and cold in Davos, but most participants in the World Economic Forum here had little bandwidth for the weather. Typically, Thursday and Friday are the days when some of the most powerful leaders come to town.
Jan 27 2011
How to keep audit committees in the know
American and British regulators agreed recently to an information-sharing arrangement, which they believe would have helped detect an accounting scheme at Lehman Brothers called Repo 105. Near the end of each quarter, a UK subsidiary of Lehman would swap some of its assets for cash with a third party, which would sell these assets back to the Lehman subsidiary for cash just after the end of the same quarter.
Jan 27 2011
Davos Diary: Day Two
The observation that many individuals (and perhaps institutions) today were in danger of "global burnout," in which they are doing too much firefighting instead of actively addressing key issues. The risks of global burnout include inadequate attention to big, thorny problems and possibilities and growing disengagement on the part of leaders and Numerous signs that Russia is open for business.
Jan 26 2011
China, South Africa Advance Sustainability Efforts
On January 25, the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants held a press conference to call attention to a new framework for integrated reporting (reporting sustainability information alongside financial information in companies' filings). The framework was created in response to the King III report that mandates integrated reporting by all companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
Jan 26 2011
Davos Diary: Day One
Since its inception, Davos has pointed toward the future. Each year, individuals of great authority gather in this mountain village to discuss how to work together to help create a better, more stable, and productive world order. Throughout the conversations, participants are asking themselves and each other: "where is the world headed?
Jan 25 2011
The Leadership Learning Moment That Wasn't
More often than we might like, but less often than we probably need, an event at work throws up a mirror in which we catch a glimpse of ourselves. One of those moments occurred for me (Kent) in a meeting years ago. It was a gathering of senior managers to hear a presentation from an outside strategy consultant. When he finished, he opened a discussion about our firm's particular needs.
Jan 24 2011
What the President Should Say
Bill George, a Harvard business professor, argues that President Obama should spell out a program for investing in America when he delivers his State of the Union address.
Jan 18 2011
Why Blame Makes for Bad Business: Lessons from Arizona
The Arizona shootings stunned America. Even while the victims struggled with recovery or were memorialized for their loss by grieving families, a flurry of angry accusations and counter-accusations dominated the media. At first blush, this has nothing to do with business. But the lessons are profound, and they concern less extreme but more common responses to crises and problems.
Jan 15 2011
Revisiting the rights and responsibilities of business
Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman penned those fiery words back in 1970 in his influential article "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase its Profits." He continued to defend them until his death in 2006.
Jan 13 2011
Are You the Boss You Need To Be?
How are you doing as a boss? As a leader and manager, someone responsible for the results obtained by others, are you the boss you need to be? Are you getting the best from your people, and from those you need but don't control?
Jan 13 2011
Early ecocities
Two current trends have dramatic implications for the 21st century: the rapid rise in the number of people moving into and living in cities, and growing threats to the sustainability of the natural environment. The United Nations' 2007 urbanization report projected that 70% of the world's population would reside in cities by 2050; by 2025...
Jan 12 2011
To Groupon or Not To Groupon: New Research on Voucher Profitability
Hundreds of websites like Groupon, LivingSocial, Eversave, and BuyWithMe sell discount vouchers for services ranging from restaurant meals and museum visits to spa treatments and skydiving. Best known is Chicago-based Groupon: although only two years old, Groupon touts a ten-digit valuation and purportedly rejected a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google.
Jan 10 2011
Starbucks' Logo Debate Shows Customers' Engagement
Last Wednesday, Starbucks unveiled a new logo, and the world has not been the same since. I'm kidding, of course, but the change — a simpler, cleaner version of the mermaid (or, if you will, mythological "siren") minus the border and company name — launched a war of words on blogging sites all over the internet.
Jan 10 2011
Is Groupon Good for Retailers?
For retailers offering deals through the wildly popular online start-up Groupon, does the one-day publicity compensate for the deep hit to profit margins? A new working paper, "To Groupon or Not to Groupon," sets out to help small businesses decide. Harvard Business School professor Benjamin G. Edelman discusses the paper's findings.
Jan 10 2011
Verizon, the iPhone, and the Power of Second Chances
If you can't do it right the first time, then do it better the second time. That's one of my favorite guideposts for sustainable business success, and Verizon is my latest poster child for this truth of business strategy (and life).
Jan 03 2011
Leadership Lessons: Oprah's Journey to "OWN" Cableland
This past weekend ushered in a new year, a new cable channel and a new chapter in the fascinating, influential journey of Oprah Winfrey. The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) began broadcasting New Year's Day at noon with a range of offerings from "Kidnapped by the Kids," a program about children that claim...
Jan 03 2011
Are You a Good Boss—or a Great One?
These thoughts plagued Jason, an experienced manager, as he lay awake one night fretting about a new position he'd taken. For more than five years he had run a small team of developers in Boston. They produced two highly successful lines of engineering textbooks for the education publishing arm of a major media conglomerate.
Dec 30 2010
Advantage affordability
Octavio Paz, the Mexican ambassador to India and Nobel Prizewinning poet, referred in his 1995 collection of essays, Vislumbres de la India, to Hinduism as a large, "metaphysical boa," devouring all influences that came its way. He was referring to India's tendency to assimilate and absorb hordes of foreign cultural and societal influences over the centuries.
Dec 30 2010
A New Model for Corporate Boards
In 2002, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to prevent corporate governance debacles like Enron and WorldCom from happening again. But six years later, many of the largest U.S. institutions had to be rescued by massive federal assistance. All of these institutions were Sarbox-compliant: Most members of their boards were independent, and their auditors' reports showed no material weaknesses in internal controls.
Dec 29 2010
The Mistaken Attack on Outsourcing
President Obama concluded his recent meeting with leading corporate executives with a call for more ideas about how to create jobs at home. With this meeting, he has begun to work toward a sorely needed rapprochement with the business community. The continued degradation of the relationship between that community and the White House serves no one.
Dec 23 2010
How Social Networking Has Changed Business
Social networking is the most significant business development of 2010, topping the resurgence of the U.S. automobile industry. During the year, social networking morphed from a personal communications tool for young people into a new vehicle that business leaders are using to transform communications with their employees and customers, as it shifts from one-way transmission of information to two-way interaction.
Dec 22 2010
The Big Idea: Creating Shared Value
The capitalist system is under siege. In recent years business increasingly has been viewed as a major cause of social, environmental, and economic problems. Companies are widely perceived to be prospering at the expense of the broader community.
Dec 22 2010
Debt and the Future of the U.S.
From where I sit as an economist, it's still all about the economy and the long-term impact of the problems laid bare by the Great Recession. During the financial crisis, the world came to the apparently shocking realization that debt financing entails risks. Financial institutions, households, and governments all suffered because they had too much leverage.
Dec 16 2010
The Good Fight: How Conflict Can Help Your Idea
I confess, I don't much like conflict. And I have come to see how that can really get in my way. Some leaders value consensus so much that they feel they need complete agreement on everything. They stamp out disagreements over the issues because they fear their subordinates might get their feelings hurt, some teammates will harbor grudges, or the team could lose cohesiveness.
Dec 15 2010
Should sensitive events be used in ads?
The Hublot ad is in poor taste, is bad marketing, and creates the wrong kind of long-term consumer impression because it contravenes three principles of branding. First, advertising is judged not only in the market but in the court of public opinion.
Dec 12 2010
Myth busters
Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, co-chairmen of the Budget Commission, have unleashed a storm of criticism by their proposal to reform Social Security. However, many of these criticisms are based on myths about the current state of Social Security or their proposal to reform the benefit program.
Dec 10 2010
Tax U.S. companies to spur spending
Recent tax deal-making has relied on conventional instruments of fiscal stimulus. Yet, we live in unconventional times, and more novel approaches suited to the peculiarities of our current economy are required. In particular, the remarkable cash hoards that American corporations have amassed have been a saving grace in ensuring that the financial crisis did not cause further damage to the economy.
Dec 08 2010
Losing sight of Lincoln: A mid-course resurrection to save Obama's presidency
Remember, back in 2008, when everyone compared Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln? After he was elected president, Obama himself talked about what he was learning from the 16th president. Fast forward to today: no one is talking about those parallels.
Dec 06 2010
To Make a Strong Case, Don't Be a Data Dumper
My work leading to my latest book, Buy-In, indicates that this approach is not, and should not be, universal. In fact, I've found that in most cases, people should argue with less data. When you're defending an idea, my research of what works in the real world suggests that you should respond in ways that are simple, straightforward, and honest.
Dec 04 2010
Gregg Steinhafel has faced up to many challenges as Target CEO
It isn't easy being CEO of a public company. The glamour days of CEO rock stars and high-flying stock prices are gone. Companies are under constant scrutiny by activist investors, aggressive regulators, aggrieved customers and aggravated employees.
Nov 30 2010
The Foreclosure Pileup: More Bad News for the US Economy
Imagine a million-car pileup on the highway. Nobody moves. That's the housing foreclosure breakdown: houses stalled, waiting on the housing market highway.
Nov 29 2010
On Creative Accounting: Two Creativity Myths
"Creative accounting" is really bad. Except when it's good. Say that in a roomful of managers, and you get nervous laughter. For me, it evokes a wonderful old New Yorker cartoon by Robert Weber, where a small, meek accountant stands before the desk of an overfed chief executive exhorting the accountant to rescue the company:
Nov 22 2010
How to Give Away Your Money More Effectively
FORTUNE magazine's July 5, 2010, cover article describes how Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates are recruiting billionaires to take the Giving Pledge, a promise to give away at least half their net worth. If, however, too many of these donations are directed so that the donors and their family members can join prestigious Boards of Trustees or if the...
Nov 22 2010
Why Cathie Black Should Go Back to School (and Maybe You Should, Too)
Mayor Michael Bloomberg's surprise appointment of Cathie Black, chairman of Hearst Magazines, as the next New York City school department head, met with immediate protest. Some teachers, parents, and education professionals questioned whether a business executive skilled...
Nov 22 2010
Seven Strategy Questions: A Simple Approach for Better Execution
Business leaders can't develop and execute effective strategy without first gathering the right information, says Harvard Business School professor Robert Simons. In his new book, Seven Strategy Questions: A Simple Approach for Better Execution, Simons explains how managers can identify holes in their planning processes and make smart choices. Here's an excerpt outlining the seven questions every manager should ask.
Nov 19 2010
In China's Orbit
You could not ask for smarter people with whom to discuss the two most interesting questions in economic history today: Why did the West come to dominate not only China but the rest of the world in the five centuries after the Forbidden City was built? And is that period of Western dominance now finally coming to an end?
Nov 17 2010
The Three Threats to Creativity
Creativity is under threat. It happens whenever and wherever there's a squeeze on the ingredients of creativity, and it's happening in many businesses today. According to the Labor Department's most recent stats, productivity is up. But stretching fewer employees to cover ever more work in our job-starved recovery is no way to run the future.
Nov 15 2010
Connecting Goals and Go-To-Market Initiatives
In some respects, developing strategy is the easy part. Executing that strategy in alignment with strategic priorities is where real mastery of management takes place. We asked Harvard Business School senior lecturer Frank V. Cespedes, who is faculty chair of a new HBS Executive Education program, Aligning Strategy and Sales, to give us a glimpse into how it's done.
Nov 11 2010
What Darwin Can Teach Us About Leadership
"What are the fundamental roots of our behavior as human beings," asks Harvard Business School professor Paul Lawrence. This is a huge question to be sure, but Lawrence has a new theory that seeks to answer just that. Called Renewed Darwinian Theory, it draws from largely forgotten theories from the father of evolution.
Nov 10 2010
Ask Not What Your Company Can Do for You...
The Boston Globe recently listed the 30 highest-paid CEOs in Massachusetts, a list filled with six- and seven-figure salaries, with some apparently paid more than their companies showed in earnings last year and many pocketing substantial bonuses despite dismal or at least declining performance.
Nov 10 2010
Capitalizing on the Underdog Effect
Everyone loves a scrappy underdog. J.K. Rowling created an appealing underdog character in Harry Potter. In the 2010 World Cup, teams such as New Zealand and Uruguay, and the two finalists—Spain and Netherlands—who had never won before, inspired fans around the world. And both Barack Obama and John McCain positioned themselves as underdogs in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
Nov 10 2010
A New Era for Raiders
Companies are stockpiling cash, stock market valuations are down, and private equity investors are sitting on piles of uninvested capital. Clearly, the economic conditions are right for a new era of corporate takeovers. This time, though, target companies' boards may have a tougher time fending off corporate raiders.
Nov 08 2010
Asian and American Leadership Styles: How Are They Unique?
The rapid economic development of Asia in recent decades is one of the most important events in history. This development continues today and there is every reason to anticipate that it will continue indefinitely unless derailed by possible but unlikely international conflicts.
Nov 08 2010
How to Fix a Broken Marketplace
An economic handyman of sorts, Alvin E. Roth fixes broken markets. As a pioneer in the field of market design, the Harvard Business School professor cofounded a kidney donation matching system for New England, corrected public school choice programs in New York and Boston, and tackled the market for new medical residents, economists, and lawyers.
Nov 08 2010
Spreading the wealth
We recently asked a representative sample of more than 5,000 Americans (young and old, men and women, rich and poor, liberal and conservative) to answer two questions. They first were asked to estimate the current level of wealth inequality in the United States, and then they were asked about what they saw as an ideal level of wealth inequality.
Nov 01 2010
Mark Zuckerberg and Misery as Motivation
Did Mark Zuckerberg start Facebook friending because he was unable to make friends? That's the main theme of the hit film The Social Network. Zuckerberg didn't care about money, several say; he was compensating for a lack of friends.
Nov 01 2010
Foreclosure Crisis Provides Opportunity for Bankruptcy Reform
It is tempting to look on the current foreclosure procedural moratorium as a reprieve for desperate homeowners, giving them more time in their homes. But a sustained backlog not only undermines any housing recovery, it threatens the entire economy, putting the country at risk for another recession — the dreaded double dip.
Nov 01 2010
How IT Shapes Top-Down and Bottom-Up Decision Making
Information-based systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, will push decision-making toward the bottom of the corporate ladder. Communication systems, such as e-mail and instant messaging applications, will push the decision-making process toward the top. And that means developing an IT strategy isn't all about deploying the best technology, says Raffaella Sadun, an assistant professor of strategy at Harvard Business School.
Nov 01 2010
The Mental Game of Breast Cancer: Part Two
There is an "underground railroad" of support fueling the fight against breast cancer. In the spirit of this vital "railroad" and the amazing community of women that sustains it discussed in my last posting, here are a few insights from having had breast cancer twice in three years.
Oct 31 2010
Leveraging Admissions Tests to Increase Financial Savvy
Most Americans cannot perform basic financial calculations. The ignorance is costly. Research shows that people who are not "debt literate" use high-cost credit and are overindebted. That is a particular concern for young adults, who have no experience managing debt yet make major borrowing decisions.
Oct 29 2010
The Mental Game of Breast Cancer
October is drawing to a close and with it, much of the large-scale, public activity surrounding Breast Cancer Awareness month. Ah, if only the disease at hand would pack up and leave the national scene when the pink billboards and PSAs come down early next week.
Oct 28 2010
The Fall Of Corporate Leadership
The United States has been wracked by a series of corporate and financial horror shows, from the fall of Enron to the mortgage-backed security frenzy. The man on Main Street looks at these fiascos and says, with some justice, that here were a bunch of greedy crooks who were powerful enough to take thousands of innocent employees, customers,...
Oct 18 2010
Venture Capital's Disconnect with Clean Tech
Those business school students and young venture capitalists frequently share a common misconception about start-ups in the heavily publicized clean-technology field, according to Lassiter, who teaches courses in both entrepreneurial finance and building green businesses.
Oct 18 2010
What Not to Spend Your Time On
Top executives usually say they set their priorities and then figure out how to implement them. But in this process many executives make a critical mistake. I've noticed this when I've mentored new CEOs
Oct 11 2010
It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won't
Employing women who are excluded by their own countries' labor markets is a growing trend for firms with international branch offices, says Harvard Business School professor Jordan Siegel. He discusses the issue in a new study titled "Multinational Firms, Labor Market Discrimination, and the Capture of Competitive Advantage by Exploiting the Social Divide"...
Oct 08 2010
Another View: It's Time for Obama 2.0
In boardroom discussions and individual talks with numerous chief executives in recent days, I have heard repeatedly just how wide the gulf of distrust is between leading business executives and the Obama administration. Chief executives lack clarity about where the White House's policies are headed and are deeply concerned they will have a long-term negative impact on the private sector.
Oct 06 2010
Zuckerberg's expensive lesson
Developing a good "outside game" is an expensive lesson for many leaders. It usually demands opening the curtains on one's motivations, commitment and other aspects of one's path that fall outside delivering on the metrics of the business model and the latest strategic plan.
Oct 04 2010
Introverts: The Best Leaders for Proactive Employees
An introverted leader, on the other hand, is more likely to listen to and process the ideas of an eager team. But if an introverted leader is managing a bunch of passive followers, then a staff meeting may start to resemble a Quaker meeting: lots of contemplation, but hardly any talk. To that end, a team of passive followers benefits from an extraverted leader.
Oct 04 2010
Why Wal-Mart Went Shopping in Africa
Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, made a $4.6 billion (32 billion rand) offer on September 27th to acquire the South African retail chain, Massmart Holdings. If it goes through, the acquisition will represent the American retailer's biggest acquisition in an emerging market and the first by a global retail chain in South Africa.
Sep 28 2010
Hey Big Spenders: The Trickle-Down Argument
This season, voters are demanding a fiscal policy that both spurs the recovery and reins in the national debt. President Obama's proposal to retain his predecessor's tax cuts for all but the highest income brackets is an elegant solution to addressing those two conflicting goals.
Sep 27 2010
Will It Be Cheerios or Life This Morning?
Every night I look over a schedule of exactly what I'm going to do the next day. I might have a call at 8:30 a.m., a meeting at 9 a.m., and so on. For each event on my schedule, I'll write down a few words about what I want to get accomplished.
Sep 27 2010
Under Pressure, Teams Ignore Experts
The problem is common—and avoidable, says HBS professor Heidi K. Gardner, who has developed and tested a theory of pressure on teams that she describes in the working paper "Feeling the Heat: The Effects of Performance Pressure on Teams' Knowledge Use and Performance". Her research on more than seventy audit and consulting teams—combining survey data, hundreds of interviews, and direct observation at meetings—reveals insights into the hows and whys of dysfunctional team dynamics as well as ways to improve them.
Sep 27 2010
Est-il rentable de bien agir ?
L'engouement suscité par l'entrepreneuriat social, défini au sens large comme l'ensemble des activités entrepreneuriales à finalité sociale, n'a cessé de croître depuis le début des années 1990.
Sep 22 2010
Give US companies certainty on taxes
In trying to ignite its economic recovery, the US should look to its companies since they have record levels of cash. For example, UPS has increased its cash from $2bn to $4bn over the last six months. By contrast, the American consumer is largely tapped out, with substantial debts held by most and unemployment faced by many.
Sep 20 2010
Power Posing: Fake It Until You Make It
"Our research has broad implications for people who suffer from feelings of powerlessness and low self-esteem due to their hierarchical rank or lack of resources," says HBS assistant professor Amy J.C. Cuddy, one of the researchers on the study.
Sep 19 2010
How stop-and-go science funding puts the brakes on progress
In light of the latest developments of the on-again, off-again, on-again government funding of human embryonic stem-cell research, it is time to consider the devastating implications of this chaotic funding environment. And to do that, one needs to understand how a modern research lab operates.
Sep 13 2010
Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness
Does money buy happiness? We certainly behave as though it does, spending most of our waking hours pursuing it. If only we got that raise, owned that second home, third car or 3G iPad, things would be better, we tell ourselves. We would finally be happy.
Sep 13 2010
The Consumer Appeal of Underdog Branding
As HBS professor Anat Keinan explains, "Today, underdog brand biographies are being used by both large and small companies and across categories, including food and beverages, technology, airlines, and automobiles. Even large corporations, such as Apple and Google, are careful to retain their underdog roots in their brand biographies."
Sep 13 2010
Basel needs a firm hand and fewer delays
This weekend top central bankers announced agreement on Basel III, the new rules to enhance global capital standards for banks. The agreement, which will now be presented to the Group of 20 leading nations summit in Seoul this November, represents a significant and welcome increase in the capital that banks will be required to hold.
Sep 10 2010
The Strengths and Many Weaknesses of State Capitalism
One way Winning in Emerging Markets relates to this is in explaining how one moves between the socialism and the free-market parts of the spectrum. That is, we are concerned with a subset of the broader societal moves that you discuss.
Sep 10 2010
How to Handle CEO Pay Before Dodd-Frank Hits
With 26 million people unable to find full-time jobs, Americans are outraged by disparities in pay between executives and average workers as real incomes continue to decline. Multimillion-dollar bonuses at American International Group (AIG) and Merrill Lynch (BAC) certainly didn't help. Two consecutive years of declining CEO pay, on the other hand, haven't either.
Sep 07 2010
Mindful Leadership: When East Meets West
William George, an expert on leadership development, recently teamed with Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche to present a conference on "mindful leadership," a secular process to explore the roles of self-awareness and self-compassion in developing strong and effective leaders.
Sep 07 2010
Jobs 2.0: Nice Work If You Can Get It
Mom was stuck in the mindset of Jobs 1.0. She had been in the work force when the knowledge economy was just emerging, entrepreneurs were considered a little strange, the only "real" professions were law and medicine, labor meant industrial and trade unions, seniority reigned, and careers involved step-by-predictable-step up the rungs of a tall ladder.
Sep 07 2010
China: Looking beyond the boom
In an eerie echo of the U.S. boom, the Chinese economy is depending more and more on real estate. Housing complexes for as many as 10,000 people are rising from agricultural fields on the outskirts of cities. Housing has fueled personal wealth, and property sales are a key driver of cities' revenues. But real estate offers a shaky foundation for a boom. Today, 20 percent of office space is vacant in Beijing; 16 percent in Shanghai. Housing price increases are outpacing income growth. Critics are warning of a "bubble" as investors buy up new apartments.
Aug 30 2010
Turning Employees Into Problem Solvers
"Hospitals are enormously complex," Toffel observes. "Imagine a factory where every part has to be custom-built and can require any number of 100 or 200 services and subprocesses. On top of that, the most knowledgeable people about those subprocesses-the doctors-come and go from the factory and are not employed by it."
Aug 27 2010
Management mantras from the Mahatma and leadership lessons from Lincoln?
But as Koehn — a historian at Harvard Business School where she holds the James E. Robison chair of Business Administration — explains, given the economic and social turbulence during which Lincoln governed, and those in which we now live, the book is a way of using history in a redemptive sense, putting it to good purpose.
Aug 23 2010
Seven Truths about Change to Lead By and Live By
I call these the Change Agent Bumper Stickers. Here are seven universal sayings that can comfort and guide anyone engaged in the effort of setting a new direction, orchestrating innovation, establishing a culture, or changing behavior.
Aug 23 2010
The Drive to Acquire's Impact on Globalization
"Humans have evolved a leadership brain," says HBS professor emeritus Paul R. Lawrence. "Good leaders are people with a conscience who respect and reward all the four drives of other stakeholders the drive to acquire, to defend, to bond, and to comprehend, even as they respect and reward their own drives."
Aug 22 2010
Cut Benefits, but Do It Fairly
How do we maintain Social Security in the fairest way? Consider progressive indexing, which would preserve benefits for the bottom third of wage earners who rely on the program for almost all of their retirement income, but recalculate the benefits of higher-paid workers who have other sources of retirement income...
Aug 20 2010
Bashing Beijing Will Not Help Our Trade Deficit
Pressured by the U.S. and other countries, China announced in June that it would adopt a "flexible" exchange rate for the yuan. Yet to date there has been minimal appreciation against the dollar, so the pressure is back.
Aug 17 2010
China's Ascent Signals a Return to Historical Norms
The news that China has overtaken Japan is the world's second-largest economy has prompted a great deal of discussion. It is stressed that, now no. 2, China is on its way to be the world's largest economy by 2030. Who can now doubt that China's growth is now "for real" or that China has become a "new economic superpower"?
Aug 16 2010
Workplace Rage
"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" In the Oscar-winning film Network, the deranged fictional newscaster Howard Beale stands up in the middle of a national broadcast to shout this unforgettable phrase — which is #19 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 most memorable movie quotes of all time.
Aug 10 2010
A bitter health care pill
To contain ever-rising health care costs, a commission established by the state recommended a year ago that Massachusetts replace the traditional payment model in which each doctor is paid for delivering each medical service, with the "capitation'' approach in which a group of doctors is paid an annual fee for providing a patient with all healthcare.
Aug 09 2010
How to Speed Up Energy Innovation
In a forthcoming book to be published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in association with the University of Chicago Press, Accelerating Innovation in Energy: Insights from Multiple Sectors, Henderson and coauthor Richard G. Newell explore the histories of innovation in four sectors of the U.S. economy that have experienced enormous change and growth: agriculture, chemicals, life sciences, and information technology.
Aug 09 2010
Another View: It's Time to Invest in America
You don't have to be an economist to recognize America's economy is in trouble. Ten years ago, America's economy was booming. American business was the envy of the world. Stock prices were soaring. Dozens of new companies were created every day.
Aug 05 2010
Google Wave Decision Shows Strong Innovation Management
Even a company like Google, recognized for its wealth of intellectual talent in its employees, was not able to figure out before hand if there would be a market for Wave. Some types of uncertainties are simply not resolvable before the fact, and the only true way to find out is to make the investment and launch an innovative product in the market place.
Aug 05 2010
Will the US be a global securities policeman?
Will the US courts become the policemen for securities transactions throughout the rest of the world? The US courts have recently pulled back from that role, but they may be overruled by the recent financial reform legislation.
Aug 02 2010
Four Things Groups Want that Leaders Can't Give — and One They Can
Emerging group experiences have predictable dynamics, whether they are new project teams, training and development programs, wilderness experiences, or just people learning new jobs.
Aug 02 2010
It's Time to Standardize Integrated Reporting of Financial and Sustainability Performance
Two groups dedicated to sustainability — the London-based Prince's Accounting for Sustainability Project (A4S) and the Amsterdam-based Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) — today announced (pdf) the formation of an organization to develop and promote global standards for companies to report both their financial performance and their performance in the areas of environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and governance in an integrated fashion.
Aug 01 2010
A Call to Fix the Fundamentals
In 2005, Raghuram G. Rajan told a meeting of the world's top central bankers, Alan Greenspan included, that the global financial system was threatened from within and might well be facing a full-blown crisis.
Jul 26 2010
Leadership Tips from Tony Hayward (or Not)
Tony Hayward's expected departure as CEO of BP today won't be the biggest surprise; the surprise is that it's taken so long. (I called publicly for his resignation some time ago.) The Case of Tony Hayward and the Gulf Oil Spill will be fodder for business school discussions for years to come, as a how-not-to-do-it guide for leadership when disaster strikes.
Jul 22 2010
A Bold New Model for Sustainable Cities
If you say "sustainable urbanization," most people think of emerging markets like China and India where there is a desperate need to build new cities to accommodate hundreds of millions of people moving in from rural areas. Some may also think about the need to make the world's existing cities more sustainable — certainly in environmental terms but also in social and economic terms.
Jul 21 2010
Help Increase Transparency in Private Company Executive Compensation
A decade ago, investors and chief executive officers were largely flying blind when it came to compensation in early-stage, privately held companies. They had little more than anecdotal information and their gut to judge how much it would take to land a new head of sales or whether it was worthwhile to retain a chief financial officer who had a lucrative competing offer.
Jul 20 2010
Dodd-Frank Financial Commentary from HBS Faculty
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act slated to be signed this week by U.S. President Barack Obama has been called the most sweeping set of rules for banks and Wall Street since the Great Depression. Four Harvard Business School faculty experts weigh in here with their thoughts on the act.
Jul 19 2010
A Massive Generational Change In Leadership
He talked about how leadership in business is going through a huge and dramatic transformation as the baby boom gives way to younger executives with very different ways of seeing the world, connecting and working. He also talked about what it takes to be a strong leader in a challenging time.
Jul 19 2010
How Mercadona Fixes Retail's 'Last 10 Yards' Problem
Sounds like a recipe for retail suicide, especially in industries with razor-thin margins. Yet in the new case study "Mercadona," HBS assistant professor Zeynep Ton and research assistant Simon Harrow describe a Spanish supermarket chain that has done all this while achieving steady profits and double-digit growth for more than a decade.
Jul 16 2010
Health Insurance Rate Wars - Are We Focused on the Right Fight?
On opposite ends of the country, differing results in battles with health insurers lead us to the same conclusion: we need to attack rising costs of health care delivery which will not be fixed, as many had hoped, by the recent health care legislation or by periodic regulatory tweaks.
Jul 12 2010
Education As We Know It Is Finished
School is out, and for most students enjoying their midsummer pleasures, class time is a distant memory. Changes are underway that make it likely to stay that way. The schools students return to in the fall will look quite different from those they left behind.
Jul 09 2010
The World Cup Brand Winner: Adidas or Nike?
With approximately 2.6 billion people worldwide following the 2010 World Cup, the spectacle has been a field day for marketers, each trying to connect their brand with the strong emotions fans have for their favorite teams. But the stakes are particularly high for those brands that actually sell football gear. Two contenders, Adidas and Nike, each have a shot at becoming undisputed market leader when the whistle blows on July 11 and the final game concludes.
Jul 05 2010
Marketing strategies for growth in China
As China's economy recovers from the global downturn, the most recent retail sales figures show strong and steady growth over the last year. It's clear that higher incomes continue to fuel consumer thirst in China for a wide range of goods and services - from basics to luxury products.
Jul 05 2010
To do 'God's work', bankers need morals
When Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein claimed that he and his fellow bankers were "doing God's work", there was near-universal incredulity. Banking has never looked less like a divine calling. Indeed, in the public mind bankers have achieved what would once have been thought impossible: they have managed to sink lower than journalists.
Jul 01 2010
How Will You Measure Your Life?
Before I published The Innovator's Dilemma, I got a call from Andrew Grove, then the chairman of Intel. He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel.
Jul 01 2010
Beyond Disengagement and Anger
Each day in this (still young) summer, it grows harder for many of us to read the front page of the newspaper, listen to the top stories on television or scroll through the links on an Internet news site.
Jun 30 2010
Powerlessness Corrupts
Power corrupts, as Lord Acton famously said, but so does powerlessness. Though powerlessness might not result in the egregious violations associated with arrogant officials who feel they are above the law, it is corrosive.
Jun 26 2010
The people's banker
"For me the greatest interest and enjoyment were human relations," Siegmund Warburg observed in later life to the academic George Steiner. "It was the human side, in practice the negotiating side, which attracted me to banking." For most of the postwar period, from the foundation of SG Warburg & Co in 1946 until his death in 1982, Warburg was the most dynamic figure in the City of London. If anyone embodied the era of relationship banking, it was Warburg.
Jun 23 2010
$100,000 Is Plenty for Deposit Insurance
It looks as if Congress is about to permanently increase FDIC deposit insurance to $250,000 from $100,000 per bank account. What's more, it plans to make this increase retroactive to Jan. 1, 2008, in order to protect certain depositors at Indy Mac and other banks that became insolvent before the financial crisis reached its height. This move will substantially raise the cost of resolving troubled banks, and isn't necessary to protect small depositors.
Jun 18 2010
Caught in a bind over closing tax loopholes
At the end of May, the House of Representatives passed a bill to stimulate the US economy by extending spending programmes, to be paid for by closing tax loopholes. The American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010 may have an unwieldy title - but at least it does what it says on the tin.
Jun 17 2010
Today's "Mancession" will change everything
Three-quarters of the seven million jobs that have vanished in the recession belonged to men. The male unemployment rate is now 9.8%, vs. 8.1% for women. The trend got Larry Summers, the President's top economic adviser, speculating recently, "When the economy recovers five years from now, one in six men who are 25 to 54 will not be working."
Jun 16 2010
The Fine (And Risky) Line Of Leniency
A French court is finally hearing the case of Jérôme Kerviel, the trader whose actions in 2008 almost led to the fall of Société Générale, one of Europe's best-known banks. In the weeks to come, all parties involved will likely try to blame each other for one of the largest trading losses in financial history (4.9 billion euros, more than $7 billion).
Jun 09 2010
The BP Brand's Avoidable Fall
Can BP rebuild its fractured reputation? Or is the company doomed to long-term reputational distress? In a year laden with highly visible reputation problems, BP has gained the 2010 "category leader" distinction among troubled brands such as Toyota, Tylenol, and Tiger Woods.
Jun 04 2010
Another View: Can Biotech Survive Icahn?
The activist investor Carl C. Icahn continues to challenge the biotechnology industry. His latest target is Genzyme, one of the most successful companies in this innovative field, where he is seeking four seats on its board.
Jun 01 2010
Do inefficient stock markets drive bad governance?
Why do minority shareholders continue to hold stock despite the risk of expropriation by controlling shareholders? This column provides two decades of evidence from Japan suggesting that many investors do not foresee these conflicts of interest, even when there is plenty of disclosure. Inefficient stock markets allow majority shareholders - often parent companies - to sell overpriced stock only to buy it back at a later date.
May 26 2010
The Greek Crisis and the Limits of Arbitrage
What made both the Greek fiscal crisis and the US subprime crisis possible? Not overconfident or overleveraged financial institutions, not underregulated or underpriced risk, not irrational or irresponsible investors. The problem was the limits of arbitrage. Until we understand that, we won't prevent the next crisis.
May 24 2010
Raise Your Prices!
By now, we're all aware of the slash-your-prices scenario many companies take as a given these days: Your customers demand more and have online access to product comparisons from multiple sellers; you face global competition from rivals that have labor-cost advantages; and the financial crisis has accelerated the commoditization of more and more markets.
May 24 2010
A New Damascus
Might the future of capitalism lie in its roots from the seventh millennium BC? Damascus is said to be the birthplace of capitalism--with scores of famous empires taking advantage of its proximity to the Barada River to build a system of canals and tunnels still in use today. Although these empires were often feuding for control, their ingenuity is a true testament to entrepreneurship, and a shining example of the positive effects of people coming together for a common cause.
May 24 2010
A Message to the West from Palestinian and Israeli Students
"What message should we bring back home?" we asked the young Palestinian college students we met in Hebron on the West Bank. "The West thinks we are all uneducated, uncivilized...a bunch of terrorists. We are not. We want peace. Tell everyone what the real situation is here."
May 19 2010
Attracting the Next Generation
America finds itself confronting a host of problems - from environmental crises to reform on Wall Street, Congress has no shortage of pressing issues to tackle. One issue stands out to me, however, as particularly important in the effort to attract America's next generation of global leaders: America needs immigration reform for legal immigrants.
May 18 2010
Brands and the Dark Side of Social Media
Sarah Palin can turn a phrase. Hers is not the style of Churchill or JFK; in fact, it's quite the opposite. And that's the point. Once we thought of political oratory as speech used to build community, unite people, and inflate the spirit, as in "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Instead, Palin has shown us how it can be used to deflate if not the spirit, then at least the opponent.
May 17 2010
The End of the Euro
Crisis-from the Greek "krisis," for a turning point in a disease-is one of many English words we owe to the ancient Athenians. Now their modern descendants are reminding us what it really means.Just when it seemed safe to start using the word "recovery," a Greek crisis is threatening the world economy, and the very existence of the world's second-biggest currency.
May 13 2010
How to keep politics out of rating agency reform
Since credit rating agencies did not anticipate the Greek financial crisis, they are again in the hot seat. Michel Barnier, the European commissioner for financial services, has declared that the European Union needs its own rating agency for sovereign debt. However, if such a rating agency were created or sponsored by the European Union, it would be very vulnerable to political influence. Imagine the political backlash if that agency tried to lower the bond rating for France or Germany.
May 12 2010
Venture Financing and Entrepreneurial Success
Evaluating the importance of venture investors for start-up success is a tricky problem. Most importantly, there is a great deal of assortative matching in these markets — that is, great business plans get paired with great investors, and not-so-great with not-so-great.
May 11 2010
Bono at 50: The leader we need
Today, Bono, the U2 singer, global activist and one of the most powerful leaders on the world stage, turns 50. At this important milestone, it is worth briefly taking stock of his journey thus far--a journey of purpose, impact, passion, and humor. It is a path with lessons for leaders from all walks of life.
May 10 2010
The unappealing choices after an inconclusive election
It has been a generation since the British electorate delivered such an inconclusive result at a general election. Not since Edward Heath posed the question "Who Governs Britain?" in February 1974 - the answer, of course, was "Not you" - has one of the two major parties failed to secure a majority in the House of Commons.
May 04 2010
Leadership yoga: Innovation advantages from seeing disadvantage
Have you noticed the tectonic plates starting to shift? Values and social purpose are creeping back into the business strategy conversation. Big societal problems are the next innovation frontier, and the best companies are practicing what I call "leadership yoga"-flipping the organization upside down to have their eyes to the ground to see the grass roots, where the next opportunities are starting to grow.
May 03 2010
Leaders and Fiduciaries
There is a war of words waging about Goldman Sachs and its role in the larger financial crisis of 2008. The emerging battle lines concern what the bank's leadership did or did not do in betting against mortgage-backed securities - bets that in 2007 alone yielded $4 billion in profit - while at the same time marketing these securities to institutional investors.
Apr 30 2010
Microfinance Goes Public
India's largest microfinance institution, SKS, recently filed a draft prospectus to sell shares on the India stock exchange in an initial public offering. This IPO will be an historic milestone for the poor in India and beyond, opening the door to assisting them on a scale never seen before in this region.
Apr 26 2010
Pharma's Future Depends on These Three Trends
Pharmaceutical companies have managed their business in much the same way for decades. But significant changes in government regulations, market conditions, and technology will force the industry to look for new business models and practices.
Apr 26 2010
The Pay Problem
Concerns about the compensation of chief executive officers and other top executives of American public companies have reached fever pitch since the financial crisis and the economic meltdown of 2009. Some observers blame the recent recession in part on the flawed compensation arrangements for the top management of major financial institutions. Nor are such concerns new.
Apr 23 2010
Back to Basics on Financial Reform
A "trilemma" is like a dilemma, only there are three things to choose from and you can have just two. The current debate over post-crisis financial regulation suggests we face such a trilemma: We can choose any two of the following, but not all three: 1) efficient capital markets 2) no bailouts to big banks and 3) a depression-free economy.
Apr 21 2010
A better fail-safe than CoCo bonds
Several academics have suggested that large banks be required to sell bonds that convert into common stock if the bank gets into trouble. Although creative, this is not a workable proposal. Contingent convertibles, or CoCo bonds, are untested in the US market and would probably carry an exorbitant interest rate.
Apr 19 2010
The Annual Report as Sustainability's Secret Weapon
So how can shareholders and other stakeholders know if a company's commitment to a sustainable society is contributing to a sustainable strategy that will create value for shareholders over the long term? The answer lies in combining the annual and CSR/sustainability reports into something I call "One Report," which provides the essential information on a company's financial, environmental, social, and governance performance and shows the relationships between them.
Apr 14 2010
Straight Talk: Oprah's Leadership Lessons
A small tempest is raging now about Kitty Kelley's just-released (and unauthorized) biography of Oprah Winfrey. Pick up a newspaper. Log onto the Internet. Turn on the radio or television. In all these outlets, the eye of the storm is the same: what secrets does Ms. Kelley have to tell about one of the most powerful people in the world? The author's chosen "disclosures" range from Oprah's interest in her biological father, to her relationship with longtime friend Gayle King.
Apr 12 2010
Inside Best Buy's Customer-Centric Strategy
Becoming customer-centric means looking at an enterprise from the outside-in rather than the inside-out — that is, through the lens of the customer rather than the producer.
Apr 08 2010
Toyota Was in Denial. How About You?
In the past weeks we have learned two things about Toyota. First, when it comes to crisis management, the company stinks. Second, when it comes to manufacturing automobiles, Toyota isn't what it was cracked up to be.
Mar 24 2010
How to design a fair bank tax
To recoup expected losses from the federal bail-out of the US financial system, Congress is considering a bank tax called the Federal Crisis Responsibility Fee. This would be levied on all banks and financial institutions with $50bn or more in assets and would raise about $90bn during the next decade.
Mar 23 2010
Robert Huckman on the Passage of U.S. Healthcare Reform Legislation
This legislation is by no means perfect, but the question we need to ask is whether significant reform of the American health care system can be better achieved by "passing and fixing" this bill than by "keeping and fixing" the current system. The prospects for the former strike me as better than those for the latter, but I must admit that the jury is still out.
Mar 23 2010
Regina Herzlinger on the Passage of U.S. Healthcare Reform Legislation
But don't break out the champagne-the costs of this legislation, more than $900 billion, will put another nail in the coffin of the U.S. economy and open the door to a government-controlled health care system that gravely injures the sick and the entrepreneurs who could help them, along the way.
Mar 23 2010
Richard Bohmer on the Passage of U.S. Healthcare Reform Legislation
Several factors are pushing us to change how we deliver care. Perhaps the most important of these is changing expectations. Patients are used to good service from other industries, and they expect higher performance than they see in the health care sector.
Mar 22 2010
Today's leadership style: collaborative
A revolution is reshaping America's best-led companies. Authentic leaders focused on customers are replacing the old guard of hierarchical leaders who concentrated on serving short-term shareholders. The old "command-and-control" style is being replaced with an empowering, collaborative style.
Mar 05 2010
Health Care: The Simple Solution
I have spent much of my professional life studying innovation. Twelve years ago some friends suggested that the struggles of our health-care system were essentially problems of managing innovation. Instead of studying health care to reach conclusions about health care, as others have done, they suggested examining the industry through the lens of innovation.
Mar 02 2010
America's budget deficit needs bipartisan action
President Barack Obama is appointing a special commission to limit the explosive growth of US budget deficits. The Budget Commission is going to include six members appointed by the president, six Congressional Democrats and six Congressional Republicans. All recommendations of the commission must be approved by 14 members.
Feb 28 2010
America, the fragile empire
For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public have tended to think about the political process in seasonal, cyclical terms. From Polybius to Paul Kennedy, from ancient Rome to imperial Britain, we discern a rhythm to history. Great powers, like great men, are born, rise, reign and then gradually wane. No matter whether civilizations decline culturally, economically or ecologically, their downfalls are protracted.
Feb 26 2010
Admit it: You're in denial
If any business leader could stare facts squarely in the face, it would seem to have been Henry Ford. His hard-headed analysis of mechanics, manufacturing, and marketing produced the legendary Model T, which put America on wheels and made Ford a business titan. More than 15 million Model T's were sold in the two decades after its introduction in 1908.
Feb 23 2010
The US public debt hits its tipping point
Congress raised the federal debt limit this month by $1.9 trillion to a record level of $14.3 trillion. Given the projected budget deficit for the next year, the gross public debt of the US government will probably hit that $14.3 trillion limit by the end of 2010. This huge expansion of public debt is not just an abstract concern of economists; it is likely to hurt the practical situation of most American families and firms.
Feb 22 2010
Lowering The Boom On Financial Leverage
The struggle for financial regulatory reform in Washington will fail if the debate continues to focus mainly on the bookends of the crisis - the original subprime shock and the eventual federal bailout. Although both were very serious problems, even more serious was the near collapse of the American financial system that came in between.
Feb 17 2010
Cut Costs and Improve Care? That's True Reform
It's the great American health-care paradox. Yes, we have excellent doctors, hospitals, and technology, but the cost of our care vastly outstrips that of countries that provide universal coverage, and we leave millions uninsured. Although we clearly lead the world in many areas, such as advances in transformational personalized medicine, in other ways our health-care quality is not obviously better than that of other countries.
Feb 10 2010
Super Bowl Commercials: What the Other Big Game is All About
What generates as much excitement as the big game? Is more at stake on Super Bowl Sunday than the NFL championship? Where and when do many consumers actually seek out and pay attention to commercials?
Feb 10 2010
A Greek crisis is coming to America
It began in Athens. It is spreading to Lisbon and Madrid. But it would be a grave mistake to assume that the sovereign debt crisis that is unfolding will remain confined to the weaker eurozone economies. For this is more than just a Mediterranean problem with a farmyard acronym. It is a fiscal crisis of the western world. Its ramifications are far more profound than most investors currently appreciate.
Feb 09 2010
How to get Americans saving for retirement
In his recent State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama asked the US Congress to establish the Automatic Individual Retirement Account. If enacted, this legislation would be the single most effective vehicle to increase retirement savings in the US.
Feb 04 2010
U.S. Military Leaders Advocate Shift to Authenticity and Tolerance
Kudos to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for advocating repeal of the 1993 "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law. This hypocritical act forces honorable military men and women to be inauthentic by hiding their sexual identity or be forced out of the U.S. armed forces.
Feb 03 2010
Leadership's Lost Decade
The grim news on jobs confirms the reality that many economists are unwilling to face: American jobs continue on a steady downward slide, with no tangible signs of recovery. As if to epitomize this trend, UPS - that bellwether of the American economy - raised its 2010 earnings projections as it announced layoffs of 1,800 more of its 405,000 employees.
Jan 29 2010
Rebooting Households: The View From Davos
The World Economic Forum is in full throttle in Davos, Switzerland this week. There are the usual list of heavy-hitters and loads of conversations about the world's most pressing challenges and the importance of global cooperation and cross-national creativity in meeting them.
Jan 27 2010
Harvard Business School Faculty on the New Apple Tablet
Excitement mounts as Apple CEO Steve Jobs prepares to unveil the company's newest product - its version of the tablet. Four Harvard Business School professors offer their thoughts on this long-awaited and buzz-filled debut.
Jan 26 2010
Lessons for the American housing market
While the US housing market has crashed over the last few years, the Canadian housing market has remained relatively strong. On a trip to Toronto last week, I learnt about three important features of that market that have helped Canada avoid the boom-and-bust cycle in residential housing.
Jan 26 2010
An Agenda Disrupted: Obama After Year One
"The best laid plans of mice and men go oft astray"-John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men The election of Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown to the late Ted Kennedy's seat caps a difficult first year for President Barack Obama. This unexpected outcome has almost certainly doomed the President's long-desired health-insurance bill.
Jan 19 2010
Dizzying fall from grace
This week marks the one-year anniversary of Barack Obama's inauguration as the country's 44th president. Remember that day? The palpable sense of hope and possibility that seemed everywhere: in the crowds massed on the Mall, in Yo Yo Ma's hands as he held his cello in the frigid air, in Obama's opening lines to his inaugural speech about a "new era of responsibility." We all knew the problems facing the country were grave and the stakes very, very high. But many of us--from across the political spectrum and in other nations as well--thought that the man elected as president was a strong bet to lead the country along the higher road as it faced great, pressing challenges at home and abroad.
Jan 18 2010
Lessons from the Credit Crisis: Governing Financial Institutions
In the many commentaries about the credit crisis, blame has been placed squarely on the management of the failed financial institutions. While these leaders certainly bear some responsibility, the boards of directors to whom they report should not be let off the hook so easily. After all, boards are ultimately responsible for the performance of their companies.
Jan 12 2010
A mistake that will make banks riskier
Republican senator John McCain and Democratic senator Maria Cantwell agree on the solution to preventing the next financial crisis - reinstate the Glass-Steagall restrictions on the activities of commercial banks. Most importantly, they would prohibit commercial banks from underwriting offerings of stocks and corporate bonds.
Jan 08 2010
Multinational firms, agglomeration, and global networks
Recent decades have witnessed an explosion in the activities of multinational corporations. Sharp declines in trade and telecommunication costs have led to increasing separation of management and production facilities within individual firms. The rise of multinational firms represents a particularly extreme example of expanding geographic distance between firm leadership and production. Firms that agglomerated in Silicon Valley and Detroit now have subsidiaries clustering in Bangalore (termed the Silicon Valley of India) and Slovakia (nicknamed Detroit of the East).
Jan 01 2010
Best Practices: Leading in Crisis
In The Defining Moment, Jonathan Alter describes the defining moment in the life of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Taking office on March 5, 1933, Roosevelt inherited a collapsing economy, 25% unemployment, banks closed in 34 states, and business investment down 90%. He eventually rose to the challenge, leading the country out of the Great Depression and later victoriously guiding the Allied forces through World War II.
Dec 27 2009
China manifesto
Spurred on by government incentives and higher incomes, Chinese consumers are hungry for all kinds of goods ranging from cars, home appliances and mobile phones, to luxury cosmetics, basic foods and homecare products. Just like most western consumers, they focus on good value, based on price, perceived quality and benefits. They are eager to learn about new products, and view brands as vouchsafing both reliability and status.
Dec 22 2009
When home isn't where the heart is
In the housing boom, Americans transformed home ownership into an uber-investment. In the subsequent bust, they reevaluated the return on that investment. The result has been a psychic change in American values about owning a home. The rise of "strategic defaulters'' reflects that change.
Dec 16 2009
How to restore confidence in loan securitisation
On Monday, President Barack Obama pressed 12 large US banks - all recipients of federal assistance - to increase their lending to businesses and consumers. In fact, during the third quarter of 2009, total loans at US banks fell by $210bn (€144bn, £129bn), or 3 per cent, the biggest quarterly decline since 1984.
Dec 16 2009
Risks and rewards of celebrity endorsements
The announcement that Accenture has decided to end its marketing relationship with Tiger Woods -- now that the superstar is making headlines for his infidelity and sudden break from the sport of golf -- is raising larger doubts about the strategy of relying on celebrity endorsers.
Dec 09 2009
The Star System
It's so prevalent in our society that people think they become stars because of who they are. We downplay the role of institutions in creating those stars. If you look at what happens when these people leave a firm or organization, they often do not become stars elsewhere.
Dec 08 2009
A shirked responsibility
We live in an age when the whole nine yards of leadership are being redefined. Not only what constitutes effective, worthy leadership but also who, in actual fact, wears this mantle. Titles, job descriptions, compensation numbers and reporting relationships are out. Right action, consistency, a palpable sense of stewardship and responsibility are in. These are the emerging signposts to real leadership and the higher road that all worthy leaders take their constituents on.
Dec 03 2009
How to take moral hazard out of banking
As Dubai World's default shows, the financial crisis is far from over. Surprise, surprise, among the creditors with the biggest exposure is Royal Bank of Scotland - a reminder that reckless lending by supersized banks was a global phenomenon. Taxpayers are entitled to ask for a radical reform of banking regulation to ensure they will never again have to foot huge bills for financial folly. So far, there is only one credible proposal.
Dec 01 2009
An Empire at Risk
Call it the fractal geometry of fiscal crisis. If you fly across the Atlantic on a clear day, you can look down and see the same phenomenon but on four entirely different scales. At one extreme there is tiny Iceland. Then there is little Ireland, followed by medium-size Britain. They're all a good deal smaller than the mighty United States. But in each case the economic crisis has taken the same form: a massive banking crisis, followed by an equally massive fiscal crisis as the government stepped in to bail out the private financial system.
Nov 29 2009
When Names Change to Protect the Future
Apple dropped the word "computer" from its name in January 2007, soon after it introduced the iPhone. Likewise, Fuji Photo Film shortened its name to Fujifilm in 2006, when sales of its photography products slipped to less than one-third of total revenue.
Nov 29 2009
To spur prosperity, nurture innovation
Even as recent economic indicators begin to move in a positive direction, the US economy continues to struggle. Unemployment has crossed the worrisome 10 percent mark and is likely to recede slowly. It will take many years to regain the $14 trillion of wealth lost by American households. Our faith and finances have been shaken to the core.
Nov 24 2009
Homebuyer Tax Credits Threaten the FHA
A few weeks ago, President Barack Obama signed legislation extending an $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers. The refundable tax credit, available even if a family has no taxable income, will enable many more buyers to close on a home. But it also could bankrupt the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and, by doing so, damage an already weak housing market.
Nov 17 2009
Inventing a Better Patent System
Gary Locke, the secretary of commerce, has urged Congress to overhaul the nation's patent law by the end of the year. Although a bill has been circulating since 2005, a fierce fight involving the high-tech and drug industries on a technical issue - how to measure damages when a company violates a patent applying to one component of a larger product - has kept it from reaching a vote.
Nov 17 2009
Harvard Business School Faculty Share Perspectives On Holiday Consumer Spending
As the holiday retail season approaches, Harvard Business School professors Nancy F. Koehn and Rajiv Lal share their outlooks for consumer spending.
Nov 16 2009
The Great Wallop
A few years ago we came up with the term "Chimerica" to describe the combination of the Chinese and American economies, which together had become the key driver of the global economy. With a combined 13 percent of the world's land surface and around a quarter of its population, Chimerica nevertheless accounted for a third of global economic output and two-fifths of worldwide growth from 1998 to 2007.
Nov 10 2009
Give Employees Cash to Buy Care
Two unavoidable facts stand in the way as Democrats continue to rework their health-care reform bills. First, these bills deliver only half a loaf - they expand health insurance coverage, but do virtually nothing to control the health care costs. Second, expanding health insurance coverage requires nearly a trillion dollars in new funding sources.
Nov 09 2009
The Year the World Really Changed
What exactly was the historical significance of Nov. 9, 1989? Having spent much of the summer of that year in Berlin, I have long bitterly regretted that I was not there to join in the party the night the wall came down. I mean, what kind of an aspirant historian misses history being made?
Nov 05 2009
Steve Jobs's legacy
First and foremost, Steve Jobs is an entrepreneur. And that is how history will long remember him. Not primarily as a fiduciary or an institution builder or an administrator (though he has worn all those hats), but rather as an individual who relentlessly pursued new opportunities.
Nov 03 2009
Give credit to create jobs - but only where it's due
The US unemployment rate is now close to 10 per cent and likely to stay that high all through 2010. Even if the economy begins to recover, job growth tends to be a lagging indicator. This is why the Obama administration is considering a tax credit for employers adding new jobs next year.
Oct 31 2009
Everybody in the Pool of Green Innovation
A popular children's song has a refrain - "the more we get together the happier we'll be" - that may sound like a simplistic formula for solving the complex challenges of climate change and sustainability. But if any area is ripe for sharing and collaboration among organizations, it's green innovation.
Oct 26 2009
There is enough room for optimism
One of the tasks of leadership is to defy the status quo and spell out why the defiance is productive and in society's best interests. Let me consider three spheres where leadership has a role - economic, civil society, and politics. The first is by far the most heartening in India's case. There has been a flowering of productive entrepreneurship over the past couple of decades.
Oct 20 2009
On healthcare reform, carrots work better than sticks
The U.S. Congress is an assembly of scolds when it comes to raising money for healthcare reform, wanting, for example, to hike the health insurance premiums of people behaving badly - such those who smoke, don't exercise regularly, or eat too much - and tax those who spend what the Congress considers to be "too much" for health insurance or who consume bad foods like sugary drinks.
Oct 10 2009
Making the 'public option' a simple one
When the Senate Finance Committee voted down the "public option'' for health care reform last week, the ideological and economic strands of this debate were fused. For certain politicians, the main objective behind the public option is to move toward nationalized health care. For others, it is to move toward a one-payer system in which the federal government disburses payments to private doctors and hospitals. However, neither of those concepts will probably garner enough votes to pass the Senate, and the ideological debate is not likely to be resolved.
Oct 09 2009
A Better Health Care Alternative
Health care reform is stuck on the public health insurance plan. But a better, less controversial alternative exists in the consumer-driven health insurance system of Switzerland. The many Americans who do not trust private health insurance companies grouse that if they were forced to buy health insurance, they would not want to choose solely from these companies. They want a public insurance option instead. But turning to a health insurance plan run by the U.S .government as an alternative can ruin the economic future of this country--and, likely, the medical care of the sick.
Oct 08 2009
Where were the doctors?
As the 2009 baseball playoffs begin, the game continues to recover from disclosures earlier this year that some of its biggest stars were among 104 players who tested positive in 2003 for anabolic steroid use. Major League Baseball formally banned steroids in 1991. At the heart of the steroid controversy is how an epidemic of such scale went without notice or response for so long. The players' union, the commissioner's office, owners and management, and the media have all shared blame for their silence and inaction. But that shouldn't be the end of it.
Oct 07 2009
Microfinancing China
China's economy may lead the region in many ways, but in one surprising area it is lagging behind: microfinance. The concept of distributing small loans to the poor has flourished across Asia since its introduction in Bangladesh three decades ago. Yet it has a notably minimal footprint in China.
Oct 05 2009
The World Bank must fix its business model
In the wake of the global financial crisis, the need to deliver aid effectively is more urgent than ever. A new United Nations report finds that the working poor in developing countries have been hardest hit. Yet the World Bank is falling short of its potential. At the heart of the matter is a tension between its mission and its business model. Reconciling this tension, one of the most challenging in its 65-year history, is the critical task for its leaders who will gather in Istanbul on Tuesday.
Oct 04 2009
It's Brand New, but Make It Sound Familiar
Glance through a photo album of early automobiles and you'll find an eclectic assortment of vehicles, including three-wheeled machines and bicycle-like contraptions. You'd be hard-pressed to identify many as cars.
Sep 20 2009
Why We Need Universal, Consumer-Driven Health Care
Health care reform has two goals: to control our gargantuan health care costs and to enable people, especially sick ones, to buy health insurance at an affordable price. The two goals are related -- the better we control health care costs, the more people can afford to buy health insurance.
Sep 17 2009
Putting America Back to Work
Fifty years ago the Soviet launch of Sputnik led to a national commitment to strengthen U.S. science and technology and put a man on the moon. That shift in priorities and the impressive results inspired a new generation of innovators-people such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Arthur Levinson-to create Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), and Genentech. The companies they built created tens of thousands of jobs and revolutionized American industry.
Sep 16 2009
Wall Street's New Gilded Age
Since its birth, the United States has grappled with the problem of an over-mighty financial sector. With the exception of Alexander Hamilton, the Founders' vision was of a republic of self-reliant farmers and small-town tradesmen. The last thing they wanted was for New York to become the London of the New World-a mammon-worshiping metropolis in which financial capital and political capital were rolled into one.
Sep 16 2009
Stop Pining for Glass-Steagall
At the depth of the Depression in 1933, Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act to separate commercial banking from the securities business: JPMorgan here, Morgan Stanley ( MS - news - people ) there. In 1999 the banks persuaded Congress to tear down the wall. Glass-Steagall was repealed. Banks could merge with brokers.
Sep 15 2009
Insurance supermarket risks
Breathing a sigh of relief after President Obama seemed to waffle about the public plan? Not so fast. In the shadows lurks another potential doorway for federal takeover of your health care. Disingenuously labeled as an "exchange" -- countless people wonder what the heck it represents -- it is Uncle Sam's Monopoly Health Insurance Supermarket: the only market open for those who want federal subsidies for health insurance.
Sep 15 2009
Why a Lehman deal would not have saved us
If only. Lawrence McDonald begins his insider's account of the fall of Lehman Brothers with seven "what if" scenarios, speculating on how different decisions might have saved his former employer. If only Dick Fuld, Lehman's chief executive, had listened to those who warned of impending losses on the bank's property portfolio. If only Mr Fuld had not antagonised Hank Paulson, the then Treasury secretary. And so on.*
Sep 14 2009
Moving Beyond the Conventional Wisdom of Whole-District Reform
Faced with dismal international comparisons and federal 'Race to the Top' Fund pressures, school districts must take on two difficult tasks at once: raising the outcomes of top-performing students, while accelerating the learning of students who are behind. And they must find ways to do this in every school, not just in a few exemplars.
Sep 10 2009
We Don't Need a Public Option
Health-care reformers who want a public health-insurance option to keep private health insurers competitive have a point: If there were ferocious competition in the private health-insurance markets, prices would be better controlled. In Switzerland, for example, competition among that country's 85 private health insurers resulted in negative price increases since 2005 and considerable public support. In the U.S., by contrast, health-insurance prices rose by 16.5 percent and Americans hold insurers in low regard.
Aug 25 2009
An Ounce of Prevention
The magnitude of the current financial crisis reflects the failure of an economic and regulatory philosophy that proved increasingly influential in policy circles during the past three decades. This philosophy, guided more by theory than historical experience, held that private financial institutions not insured by the government could be largely trusted to manage their own risks-to regulate themselves. The crisis has suggested otherwise, particularly since several of the least regulated parts of the system (including non-bank mortgage originators and the major broker-dealer Bear Stearns) were among the first to run into trouble. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan acknowledged in October 2008, "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief."
Aug 19 2009
Government should get back to the basics on health care
Those who worry about a growing role for government in health care reform have reason for concern: the government already plays a surprisingly large role in our health care system. Like Thomas Jefferson, the father of the Democratic Party, they may feel that: 'Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we shall soon want bread.'
Aug 18 2009
Disclose the fair value of complex securities
Banks and other financial institutions are lobbying against fair-value accounting for their asset holdings. They claim many of their assets are not impaired, that they intend to hold them to maturity anyway and that recent transaction prices reflect distressed sales into an illiquid market, not what the assets are actually worth. Legislatures and regulators support these arguments, preferring to conceal depressed asset prices rather than deal with the consequences of insolvent banks.
Aug 18 2009
The 2009 Health-Care Reform Debacle
Health-care reform-version 2009-is heading for a train wreck. The debate in Congress is generating more heat than light. While senators and congressmen are on August recess, they are getting an earful from worried constituents, who sense the flaws in proposed plans. The Obama Administration would be well advised to take its own recess to develop a sound, workable policy proposal that can be reintroduced in the fall.
Aug 13 2009
Practicing Medicine in the Age of Facebook
In my second week of medical internship, I received a "friend request" on Facebook, the popular social-networking Web site. The name of the requester was familiar: Erica Baxter. Three years earlier, as a medical student, I had participated in the delivery of Ms. Baxter's baby. Now, apparently, she wanted to be back in touch.
Aug 12 2009
Health Care's Taxing Problem
Mainstream economists generally agree that current U.S. tax policy for health insurance is fundamentally irrational, regressive, and ultimately destructive. Fixing this system should be one of Congress's top priorities when it comes to health reform. Sadly, the current Congressional health-reform proposals would leave the worst feature of the current system in place and make a bad situation worse.
Aug 11 2009
A runaway deficit may soon test Obama's luck
President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky. And that pretty much sums up the 44th president of the US as he takes a well-earned summer break after just over six months in the world's biggest and toughest job.
Aug 09 2009
Staving Off a Spiral Toward Oblivion
Driven by the pressure to innovate, companies facing major technological change have wholeheartedly embraced management gurus' advice on how to develop creative, breakthrough products. As a result, corporate America is flush with incubators, skunk works and innovation silos.
Aug 05 2009
The Shifting Mission of Health Care Delivery Organizations
An important transition has begun in payment for health care delivery in the United States: organizations that have long been paid for transactions, such as visits or procedures, are beginning - at least in some markets - to be paid instead for producing outcomes. As physicians and hospital leaders contemplate the implications of new payment models, they realize that the transition will be long, difficult, and messy, with major ramifications for providers.
Jul 31 2009
India's pockets of prosperity?
Imagine that the US government designated Long Island a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Firms could operate there with tax exemptions, minimal red tape, no tariffs on imported inputs, and superior infrastructure. Many firms would want to locate there, boosting industrial activity, exports, and jobs. But would Long Islanders benefit? Would they be willing to sell their land to firms? What if the government acquired the land on behalf of the firms?
Jul 30 2009
Chatter about a new global currency is overblown
At the US-China summit this week, Chinese officials raised concerns that the surging US budget deficit could undermine the value of China's huge dollar holdings. These same concerns motivated the governor of the People's Bank of China to suggest replacing the US dollar as the world's reserve currency with special drawing rights issued by the International Monetary Fund. To be specific, he proposed that central banks be allowed to swap their dollar reserves for SDRs held in a substitution account by the IMF. SDRs represent a basket of four currencies - comprising 44 per cent US dollars, 34 per cent euros, 11 per cent yen and 11 per cent pound sterling.
Jul 25 2009
Some Inconvenient Truths About Medicare and the New 'Public Plan'
The fundamental problem with health care reform is the absence of realistic plans to reduce unit costs. Without cost controls , tens of millions of newly-insured people will further cripple U.S. global competitiveness, which is already grievously injured because the U.S. spends roughly 70 percent more on health care, as a percentage of GDP, than other developed nations, yet cannot point to commensurate 70 percent increases in value.
Jul 10 2009
Sears' Edifice Complex
The Sears Tower is disappearing. Not the building, but the name. This month, the 110-story Chicago landmark, the tallest building in the country, will be renamed the Willis Tower, after the London-based insurance broker that is a major new tenant.
Jul 09 2009
Limited Choices
Virtually all current health-care-reform plans feature a monopoly health-insurance store, operated by federal or state governments, for those who lack employer- or government-sponsored insurance and want to qualify for government subsidies. Advocates claim these monopoly markets will control costs through their purchasing power and enhance price competition by simplifying comparison shopping. When insurers are forced to compete on price, they will prod health-service providers for increased efficiency.
Jul 09 2009
Systemic Risk and the Fed
Congress is currently debating how to cope with the widespread ripple effects when a large financial institution fails or a risky financial product blows up. The U.S. Treasury has proposed that a council of eight regulatory agencies be appointed to monitor the so-called problem of systemic risk. Treasury also wants the Federal Reserve to become the exclusive regulator of all financial institutions deemed systemically risky.
Jul 06 2009
HBS Faculty Comment on the Health Care Reform Bill
A collection of opinions by Harvard Business School faculty on the Health Care Reform Bill
Jul 03 2009
Anatomy Of A Coup
Tiny Honduras has managed to grab the world's attention for the past five days. An internal squabble over a non-binding referendum has quickly escalated into an international dispute that has drawn in all of the governments of the Western Hemisphere, as well as the European Union. What is going on in Honduras?
Jun 23 2009
How Boomers Can Change the World (Again)
World, get ready! The Baby Boomers are becoming the Senior Boomers, and they want to change you again. The generation that marched in Washington in the 1960s is marching into elementary schools, high schools, hospitals, and homeless shelters seeking opportunities to serve. Activists in civil rights and women's movements four decades ago now want to eradicate diseases, transform education, reform health care, or alleviate global poverty.
Jun 12 2009
Do you really want to tax ability?
In a famous interchange between candidate Barack Obama and voter "Joe the Plumber," the soon-to-be President said he wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy to "spread the wealth around." Obama's position may not have persuaded Joe, but it did hearken back to a long tradition in political philosophy and economics.
Jun 03 2009
GM and the world we have lost
The bankruptcy of General Motors Corp. is one tree falling in the forest that every American ought to hear. With GM's collapse, we are losing a lot. The impact that GM's failure may have on the economy has been much discussed. But to understand the full significance and magnitude of GM's decline, one must appreciate the extent to which this now-crippled company once dominated the nation's economic landscape. GM occupies a unique place in modern American history. For that reason, its downfall is genuinely historic.
Jun 02 2009
Don't prop up failing schools
Historically the federal government has been a small investor in the nation's education system. With the recent economic stimulus bill, however, this changed virtually overnight. There is great danger in the sudden and massive amount of funding -- nearly $100 billion -- that the federal government is throwing at the nation's schools. District by district, the budgetary crises into which all schools were plunging created the impetus for long-needed changes.
May 29 2009
How economists can misunderstand the crisis
On Wednesday last week, yields on 10-year US Treasuries - generally seen as the benchmark for long-term interest rates - rose above 3.73 per cent. Once upon a time that would have been considered rather low. But the financial crisis has changed all that: at the end of last year, the yield on the 10-year fell to 2.06 per cent. In other words, long-term rates have risen by 167 basis points in the space of five months. In relative terms, that represents an 81 per cent jump.
May 26 2009
Charlie Bolden and the Boomers, Still Flying High
President Obama's choice of General Charles F. Bolden, Jr. as the next head of NASA is a big win not just for astronauts (he'd be the second to head NASA) and African-Americans (he'd be the first) but also for all members of the Baby Boomer generation.
