Potential - Publications - Faculty & Research

12 Feb 2021
News

How Dunkin’ Donuts Took Over the World

Philippines, you saw that the wives of some of the Dunkin’ Donuts owners were selling donuts off site, which sort of troubled you at first because of issues of quality control and branding. But then you saw the potential in that, and it... View Details

Keywords: brands; leadership; management; strategy; operations; career; Food and Beverage Stores; Retail Trade

22 Feb 2022
News

Breaking News

after the company, the fact that the public learns about potential misconduct can have a very disciplining effect on companies,” Heese says. “When the Local Newspaper Leaves Town: The Effects of Local Newspaper Closures on Corporate... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; illustration by Dana Smith; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information

Web

Recent Alumni - Alumni

your city. MBA Admissions Partner with the Admissions team to support efforts with potential applicants, applicants, and admitted students, so that prospective students may experience firsthand the strength and warmth of our alumni... View Details

01 Mar 2023
News

Step Change

bank accounts. She left her talking points and went on a tear: “I said, guys, if you don’t move now, the fintechs will take you over.” The bankers complained about the difficulty of gaining customers in rural markets with high rates of illiteracy. “I told them those... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; photographed by Abdelrahman Gabr – Koree; entrepreneurship; women; venture capital; Egypt; developing economies; Finance

28 Apr 2022
Blog Post

Harvard Team Wins Second Place in MIINT Impact Investing Competition

students’ due diligence. The Kumulus team was ultimately selected as runner-up in the competition and won a $25,000 investment in Kumulus. Students chose to participate in MIINT to gain hands-on experience in impact investing, strengthen their skills and explore it as... View Details

10 Jul 2007
What Do You Think?

How Much of Leadership Is About Control, Delegation, or Theater?

"So is leadership about control, delegation, or theatre? It could be all three, or none of them. The answer lies in the projections of the potential followers." Ken Hedberg said, "You can tell who the leaders are by... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

01 Jul 2015
Research & Ideas

A Bank That Takes Parmesan as Collateral: The Cheese Stands a Loan

used his soybean oil inventory as collateral for huge loans from several Wall Street banks. Inspectors regularly conducted inventory checks, but the tanks contained mostly water, with just enough oil floating on top to fool them. "There are View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Banking; Food & Beverage

13 Oct 2009
Research & Ideas

7 Lessons for Navigating the Storm

encourages similar candidness and humility in others. By taking the first step in revealing their vulnerabilities, leaders encourage an atmosphere where concerns and doubts are voiced. Potentially unforeseen problems can be addressed... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

20 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

Rocket-tunity: Can Private Firms Turn a Profit in Space?

is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and studies tax policy and the economics of the commercial space sector. Many potential problems can still sidetrack our trek to the stars: An accident above the... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Wallask; Aerospace; Tourism; Transportation

04 Nov 2013
Research & Ideas

The Real Cost of Bribery

payment, how it was detected, and the way the firm responded to the bribe after it was uncovered. To test the hypothesis, Serafeim evaluated data from the forensic services practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers, which provides global consulting services to companies... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

2012
Chapter

Schumpeterian Competition and Diseconomies of Scope: Illustrations from the Histories of Microsoft and IBM

By: Timothy F. Bresnahan, Shane Greenstein and Rebecca M. Henderson

We address a longstanding question about the causes of creative destruction. Dominant incumbent firms, long successful in an existing technology, are often much less successful in new technological eras. This is puzzling, since a cursory analysis would suggest that... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Opportunities; Competition; Information Technology; Innovation and Management; Organizations; Relationships; Information Technology Industry

Citation

Find at Harvard

2008
Working Paper

Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test of the Mirroring Hypothesis

By: Alan D. MacCormack, John Rusnak and Carliss Y. Baldwin

A variety of academic studies argue that a relationship exists between the structure of an organization and the design of the products that this organization produces. Specifically, products tend to "mirror" the architectures of the organizations in which they are... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Product Design; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Performance Effectiveness; Information Technology Industry

Citation

Read Now

November 2007
Article

Solve the Succession Crisis by Growing Inside-Outside Leaders

By: Joseph L. Bower

This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. In his interviews and data analysis, Harvard Business School professor Bower found... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Leadership Development; Management Practices and Processes; Management Succession; Planning

Citation

Find at Harvard

06 Jun 2008
What Do You Think?

Why Don’t Managers Think Deeply?

short-term performance is at stake, (2) the fear of disruption resulting from "thinking differently and deeply," (3) the potential psychological cost of changing one's mind resulting from deep thinking, and (4) the lack of... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

13 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

Why Your Company Wants to be a 'Cognitive Referent' (Hint: SpaceX)

investing, some of the firms were dubbed the “Facebook of investing.” “In some cases those words end up doing a very good job of describing it. In other cases they did not,” McDonald says. And that’s a potential trap. In his study,... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Aerospace; Food & Beverage; Retail

25 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

The Economic Cost of Physician Burnout

a spreadsheet tool they developed that any organization can use to plug in their own figures and calculate their own potential costs of not dealing with burnout. “In every other management decision, you try to have as complete a picture... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

23 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

COVID Was Supposed to Increase Bankruptcies. Instead, They've Gone Down.

potentially shuts out consumers and small businesses when they need debt relief the most. Another could be difficulty in accessing the court system itself as the pandemic worsened and most courts moved proceedings online as a public... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne