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- Article
The C-Suite Skills That Matter Most
By: Raffaella Sadun, Joseph B. Fuller, Stephen Hansen and PJ Neal
Landing a job as a CEO today is no longer all about industry expertise and financial savvy. What companies are really seeking are leaders with strong social skills. That’s what the authors discovered after analyzing nearly 7,000 job descriptions for C-suite roles....
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- 2022
- Working Paper
Are Experts Blinded by Feasibility?: Experimental Evidence from a NASA Robotics Challenge
By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Zoe Szajnfarber, Jason Crusan, Michael Menietti and Karim R. Lakhani
Resource allocation decisions play a dominant role in shaping a firm’s technological trajectory and competitive advantage. Recent work indicates that innovative firms and scientific institutions tend to exhibit an anti-novelty bias when evaluating new projects and...
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- March 2022
- Case
Skills-First Hiring at IBM
By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah Mehta
This case reviews IBM’s efforts to widen its hiring funnel and broaden its talent pool.
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Keywords:
Competency and Skills;
Experience and Expertise;
Talent and Talent Management;
Human Resources;
Employees;
Recruitment;
Retention;
Selection and Staffing;
Jobs and Positions;
Job Design and Levels;
Job Interviews;
Society;
Social Issues;
Technology Industry;
United States;
New York (city, NY)
- February 2022
- Case
Sekisui House and the In-Home Early Detection Platform
By: John D. Macomber and Akiko Kanno
To address an aging population and sales declines, major Japanese homebuilder considers pivoting to provide and support an in-home health detection platform, in competition with tech companies. This case considers the point of view of major builders regarding how...
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- January–February 2022
- Article
Algorithm-Augmented Work and Domain Experience: The Countervailing Forces of Ability and Aversion
By: Ryan Allen and Prithwiraj Choudhury
How does a knowledge worker’s level of domain experience affect their algorithm-augmented work performance? We propose and test theoretical predictions that domain experience has countervailing effects on algorithm-augmented performance: on one hand, domain experience...
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- February 2022
- Article
How Global Leaders Gain Power Through Downward Deference and Reduction of Social Distance
By: Tsedal Neeley and Sebastian Reiche
We theorize about how people with positional power enact downward deference—a practice of lowering oneself to be equal to that of lower power workers—based on a study of 115 top global leaders at a large U.S. company. These leaders were charged with advancing...
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- Article
The Errors of Experts: When Expertise Hinders Effective Provision and Seeking of Advice and Feedback
By: Ting Zhang, Kelly Harrington and Elad Sherf
To be effective, experts need to simultaneously develop others (i.e. provide advice and feedback to novices) and advance their own learning (i.e. seek and incorporate advice and feedback from others). However, expertise, and the state of efficacy associated with it,...
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- December 2021
- Case
Burning Glass Technologies: From Data to Product
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Amy Klopfenstein
In May 2021, Matt Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass Technologies, a company that provided labor market analytics for a variety of markets, navigates his company’s transition from data company to product company. Burning Glass originated as a service that used artificial...
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Keywords:
Information Technology;
Applications and Software;
Digital Platforms;
Internet and the Web;
Strategy;
Expansion;
Business Strategy;
Labor;
Employment;
Human Capital;
Jobs and Positions;
Job Design and Levels;
Job Search;
Human Resources;
Selection and Staffing;
Recruitment;
Employees;
Retention;
Competency and Skills;
Experience and Expertise;
Talent and Talent Management;
Analytics and Data Science;
Business Model;
Technology Industry;
North and Central America;
United States
- December 2021
- Article
Entrepreneurial Learning and Strategic Foresight
By: Aticus Peterson and Andy Wu
We study how learning by experience across projects affects an entrepreneur's strategic foresight. In a quantitative study of 314 entrepreneurs across 722 crowdfunded projects supplemented with a program of qualitative interviews, we counterintuitively find that...
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- September 2021
- Case
On the Bubble: Startup Bootstrapping
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Tom Quinn and Annelena Lobb
Bubble was a software company in the low-code/no-code market, making tools that allowed users without traditional programming backgrounds or technical skills to build software. The case covers cofounder Joshua Haas’s engineering background, as he experienced a high...
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Keywords:
Business Startups;
Business Growth and Maturation;
Business Model;
Business Plan;
Disruption;
Transformation;
Trends;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Customer Relationship Management;
Decision Making;
Cost vs Benefits;
Decisions;
Entrepreneurship;
Venture Capital;
Equity;
Executive Compensation;
Recruitment;
Selection and Staffing;
Disruptive Innovation;
Technological Innovation;
Job Interviews;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Ownership Stake;
Opportunities;
Applications and Software;
Technology Adoption;
Technology Industry;
Web Services Industry;
New York (city, NY);
California;
France
- 2021
- Working Paper
Multi-location Workers in Multinational Firms? Tradeoffs in Contextual Specialization of Employees and Organizational Outcomes
We study how “contextual specialization,” the act of focusing workers’ organizational tasks within a particular locational context, and “contextual non-specialization,” the practice of diversifying workers’ organizational tasks among multiple locational contexts,...
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- May 2021
- Article
The Firm Next Door: Using Satellite Images to Study Local Information Advantage
By: Jung Koo Kang, Lorien Stice-Lawrence and Forester Wong
We use novel satellite data that track the number of cars in the parking lots of 92,668 stores for 71 publicly listed U.S. retailers to study the local information advantage of institutional investors. We establish car counts as a timely measure of store-level...
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- April 2021
- Case
Transforming BlackBerry: From Smartphones to Software
By: Ranjay Gulati and Nicole Tempest Keller
On the verge of failure, BlackBerry brought in John Chen as CEO in 2013 to orchestrate a bold turnaround of the company. Once an iconic leader in the smartphone market, BlackBerry was best known for its tactile QWERTY keyboard, strong security, and a focus on business...
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Keywords:
Pivot;
Managing Change;
Turnaround;
Smartphone;
Change Management;
Leading Change;
Transformation;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Digital Platforms;
Change;
Information Infrastructure;
Applications and Software;
Competitive Strategy;
Cybersecurity;
Technology Industry;
Transportation Industry;
Canada
- April 2021
- Case
Glass-Shattering Leaders: Michele Hooper
By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman
Michele Hooper joined the board of the Dayton-Hudson Corporation when she was in her late thirties, becoming the company’s youngest director as well as the only woman and the only person of color in the boardroom. Such “firsts” were not unusual for Hooper, who had been...
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- March 2021
- Case
Founders Factory
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and James Barnett
In January 2020, Founders Factory (FF) Executive Chairman Brent Hoberman and CEO Henry Lane Fox were considering FF’s expansion strategy. FF operated as a venture capital (VC) fund built around an accelerator and incubator, and organized around sectors within...
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Keywords:
Entrepreneurship;
Markets;
Planning;
Expansion;
Global Range;
Business Model;
Talent and Talent Management;
Experience and Expertise;
Corporate Entrepreneurship;
Global Strategy;
Innovation Strategy;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Management Teams;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Partners and Partnerships;
Internet and the Web;
Mobile and Wireless Technology;
Technology Industry;
Africa;
South Africa;
Johannesburg;
Europe;
France;
Paris;
United Kingdom;
England;
London;
United States;
New York (city, NY)
- March 2021
- Article
Increasing the Level of Abstraction as a Strategy for Accelerating the Adoption of Complex Technologies
By: Willy C. Shih
Many new technologies are complex and embody high levels of technical sophistication, and applying them should require significant knowledge and experience. Yet, the rapid adoption and incorporation of these technologies into other innovations seems inconsistent with...
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- March 2021 (Revised August 2021)
- Case
Nayana Mawilmada: Transforming Urban Development in Sri Lanka
By: Joshua D. Margolis and Mahima Rao-Kachroo
In February 2018, Nayana Mawilmada (Nayana), investment head for the Sri Lankan government’s ambitious $40 billion Megapolis project, must weigh an attractive job offer to move from the public sector to the private sector. A massive government project aimed at...
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Keywords:
Change Management;
Transformation;
Decision Making;
Public Sector;
Experience and Expertise;
Strategic Planning;
Work-Life Balance;
Transportation;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Power and Influence;
Personal Development and Career;
Real Estate Industry;
Rail Industry;
Transportation Industry;
South Asia;
Sri Lanka;
Boston;
Virginia;
United States
- February 2021
- Teaching Plan
Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Amy Klopfenstein
This teaching plan serves as a supplement to the case “Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?” HBS 820-098. The case explores the tension between two different financing and expansion plans for a startup, and explores issues related to business model pivots and industry...
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Keywords:
Business Ventures;
Business Model;
Business Plan;
Business Startups;
Entrepreneurship;
Decision Making;
Decisions;
Judgments;
Ethics;
Geography;
Geopolitical Units;
Finance;
Investment;
Markets;
Market Entry and Exit;
Demand and Consumers;
Media;
Society;
Urban Development;
Sustainable Cities;
Information Technology;
Information Infrastructure;
Digital Platforms;
Strategy;
Business Strategy;
Expansion;
Relationships;
Capital;
Venture Capital;
Advertising Industry;
Technology Industry;
Media and Broadcasting Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
Massachusetts;
Cambridge
- 2020
- Working Paper
Algorithm-Augmented Work and Domain Experience: The Countervailing Forces of Ability and Aversion
By: Ryan Allen and Prithwiraj Choudhury
Past research offers mixed perspectives on whether domain experience helps or hurts algorithm-augmented work performance. To reconcile these perspectives, we theorize that domain experience affects algorithm-augmented performance via two distinct countervailing...
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- Article
Incorporating Interpretable Output Constraints in Bayesian Neural Networks
By: Wanqian Yang, Lars Lorch, Moritz Graule, Himabindu Lakkaraju and Finale Doshi-Velez
Domains where supervised models are deployed often come with task-specific constraints, such as prior expert knowledge on the ground-truth function, or desiderata like safety and fairness. We introduce a novel probabilistic framework for reasoning with such constraints...
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