Publications

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Organizational Structure

May 2007
Article

Silo Busting: Transcending Barriers to Build High Growth Organizations

Keywords: Growth and Development; Organizations

Article

Dynamic Silos: Modularity in Intra-organizational Communication Networks during the Covid-19 Pandemic

By: Jonathan Larson, Tiona Zuzul, Emily Cox Pahnke, Neha Parikh Shah, Patrick Bourke, Nicholas Caurvina, Fereshteh Amini, Youngser Park, Joshua Vogelstein, Jeffrey Weston, Christopher White and Carey E. Priebe

Workplace communications around the world were drastically altered by Covid-19, work-from-home orders, and the rise of remote work. We analyze aggregated, anonymized metadata from over 360 billion emails within over 4000 organizations worldwide to examine changes in... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Remote Work; Organizational Silos; Health Pandemics; Organizations; Communication; Networks

November 1, 2019
Article

Companies Think They Want New Ideas. But They Don’t Act Like It

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Leaders say that they want more innovation. But then they trap themselves and their associates inside the structures that keep them stuck–inside the building, so to speak, where ideas get stale fast. That’s dangerous in a world of disruption and change. View Details

Keywords: Silos; Community; Innovation and Invention; Leadership; Change; Perspective; Learning; Attitudes

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Spring 2021
Article

Building Cities' Collaborative Muscle

By: Jorrit De Jong, Amy C. Edmondson, Mark Moore, Hannah Riley-Bowles, Jan Rivkin, Eva Flavia Martínez Orbegozo and Santiago Pulido-Gomez

The most pressing social problems facing cities today require multiagency and cross-sector solutions. We offer tools and techniques to facilitate the process of diagnosing and solving problems by breaking down silos to build up cities. View Details

Keywords: Collaboration; Cross-sector Collaboration; City; Governance; Problems and Challenges; Cooperation

Article

One Obstacle to Curing Cancer: Patient Data Isn't Shared

By: Richard G. Hamermesh and Kathy Giusti

Precision Medicine requires large datasets to identify the mutations that lead to various cancers. Currently, genomic information is hoarded in fragmented silos within numerous academic medical centers, pharmaceutical companies, and some disease-based foundations. For... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Technological And Scientific Innovation; Cancer Care In The U.S.; Cancer Treatment; Precision Medicine; Personalized Medicine; Data Sharing; Technological Innovation; Analytics and Data Science; Health Disorders; Medical Specialties; Research and Development; Customization and Personalization; Health Industry; United States

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02 Feb 2010
First Look

First Look: Feb. 2

research in a variety of industries, and filled with examples from companies including Cisco Systems, La Farge, Starbucks, Best Buy, and Jones Lang LaSalle, Gulati explores the five levers of resilience: 1) Coordination: connect, eradicate, or restructure View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Forthcoming
Article

Dynamic Silos: Increased Modularity and Decreased Stability in Intra-organizational Communication Networks During the COVID-19 Pandemic

By: Tiona Zuzul, Emily Cox Pahnke, Jonathan Larson, Christopher White, Patrick Bourke, Nicholas Caurvina, Neha Parikh Shah, Fereshteh Amini, Youngser Park, Joshua Vogelstein, Jeffrey Weston and Carey E. Priebe

Workplace communications around the world were drastically altered by COVID-19, related work-from-home orders, and the rise of remote work. To understand these shifts, we analyzed aggregated, anonymized metadata from over 360 billion emails within 4,361 organizations... View Details

Keywords: Remote Work; COVID-19; Communication Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation

May–June 2019
Article

Cross-Silo Leadership

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Tiziana Casciaro and Sujin Jang

Today the most promising innovation and business opportunities require collaboration among functions, offices, and organizations. To realize them, companies must break down silos and get people working together across boundaries. But that’s a challenge for many... View Details

Keywords: Cross-functional Management; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Groups and Teams; Employees; Attitudes

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Teaching Interest

Risk Management for Corporate Leaders

As companies adapt to the aftershocks of the global recession, risk management is a top priority for their senior executives and boards—and for those of nonprofit and public-sector enterprises as well. The financial crisis revealed that risk management processes cannot... View Details

Summer 2013
Article

Strategic Management of Intellectual Property: An Integrated Approach

By: William W. Fisher III and Felix Oberholzer-Gee

In many organizations, the R&D, strategy, and legal functions are poorly integrated. As a consequence, firms miss opportunities to create and exploit the value of intellectual property. Functional silos are one reason for the lack of integration. More important,... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Management; Strategic Management; Legal Aspects Of Business; Licensing; Law; Innovation and Management; Knowledge Management; Intellectual Property; Business Strategy

Research Summary

Customer-Centricity as a Vehicle for Organic Growth

This body of work examines the mechanics of how firms grow profitably in commoditizing markets. Underlying the "customer-centricity" that many firms embrace today is a factor that will determine their success with this effort: enabling collaboration across... View Details

Teaching Interest

Risk Management for Corporate Leaders

By: Robert Simons

As companies adapt to the aftershocks of the global recession, senior executives and boards are discovering that risk management has never been more important. The financial crisis revealed that risk management structures break down just when... View Details

2006
Dissertation

Enterprise Risk Management in Action

By: Anette Mikes

The new Basel regulatory initiatives and a burgeoning risk management literature signify the rise of enterprise risk management (ERM) in the financial services sector. However, very little is known of the roles that risk management plays in organizations and how it... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Risk Management; Practice; Governance Controls; Value; Strategy; Financial Services Industry

27 Jan 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Discretion Within the Constraints of Opportunity: Gender Homophily and Structure in a Formal Organization

Keywords: by Adam M. Kleinbaum, Toby E. Stuart & Michael L. Tushman

May 2024
Article

Housing Policies and Energy Efficiency Spillovers in Low and Moderate Income Communities

By: Omar Isaac Asensio, Olga Churkina, Becky D. Rafter and Kira E O'Hare

Housing policies address the human dimensions of increasing urban density, but their energy and sustainability implications are hard to measure due to challenges with siloed civic data. This is especially critical when evaluating policies targeting low- and... View Details

Keywords: Energy Efficiency; Public Policy; Climate Change; Energy Conservation; Housing; Analytics and Data Science; Policy; Income; Environmental Sustainability; Real Estate Industry; United States

Article

Experiments in Open Innovation at Harvard Medical School

By: Eva C. Guinan, Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani

Harvard Medical School seems an unlikely organization to open up its innovation process. By most measures, the more than 20,000 faculty, research staff and graduate students affiliated with Harvard Medical School are already world class and at the top of the medical... View Details

Keywords: Health Disorders; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Boston

2009
Book

Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Organization

In an era of raging commoditization and eroding profit margins, survival depends on resilience: staying one step ahead of your customers. Sure, most companies say they're "customer focused," but they don't deliver solutions to customers' thorniest problems. Why?... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Customer Focus and Relationships; Profit; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Cooperation