Publications

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September 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Supplement

Transferring Knowledge Between Projects at NASA JPL (B)

By: Dorothy Leonard and Christopher Myers

At the conclusion of the (A) case, Jennifer Trosper needed to decide whether or not to throw her support behind the training and outreach represented by the ROV-E program to build small rovers like the ones used on the surface of Mars by NASA JPL. The (B) case... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Management; Employees; Experience and Expertise; Decision Making; Aerospace Industry; United States

01 Feb 2022
What Do You Think?

Is Concierge Management an Answer to the “Big Quit”?

needed an advocate in case of a serious health problem. In a sense, we needed inclusion and “voice” just as much as the employees Amy Edmondson wrote about in her book, The Fearless Organization. We needed access to the medical system and... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

March–April 2019
Article

The Future of Leadership Development

By: Das Narayandas and Mihnea Moldoveanu

The need for leadership development has never been more urgent. Companies of all sorts realize that to survive in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, they need different leadership skills and organizational capabilities from those that... View Details

Keywords: Talent Management; Executive Education; Leadership Development; Business Education; Management Skills; Learning; Online Technology

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February 2000 (Revised August 2000)
Case

Boston.com

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Jon K Rust

How aggressively should an incumbent move when developing an online business that threatens its core product? With Internet competitors taking direct aim at the traditional print newspaper business model, the Boston Globe fought back with its own web initiative,... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Change Management; Internet and the Web; Customer Relationship Management; Competitive Strategy; Publishing Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States

27 Nov 2012
Working Paper Summaries

No Margin, No Mission? A Field Experiment on Incentives for Pro-Social Tasks

Keywords: by Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera & Kelsey Jack

January 2022 (Revised November 2023)
Case

Expanding the Culture of Learning at Kraft Heinz

By: Ashley V. Whillans and Carolyn Watson

The Kraft Heinz Company (KHC) was an American food company formed in 2015 by the merger of Kraft Foods Group, Inc and the H.J. Heinz Company. The company sold food products like Heinz Ketchup, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Kool-Aid, and Philadelphia cream cheese to supermarkets,... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Culture; Work Culture; Workplace Practices; Mergers; Mergers and Acquisitions; Competitive Advantage; Human Capital; Training; Performance Evaluation; Growth and Development; Personal Development and Career; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Food and Beverage Industry

July 2019 (Revised May 2020)
Case

AT&T, Retraining, and the Workforce of Tomorrow

By: William R. Kerr, Joseph B. Fuller and Carl Kreitzberg

By the late 2000s, rapid changes in the telecommunications industry forced AT&T’s management team to take on a task that CEO Randall Stephenson called the “biggest logistical challenge” they had ever seen: retraining 100,000 workers by 2020. In 2012, internal company... View Details

19 Sep 2024
Research & Ideas

Global Talent, Local Obstacles: Why Time Zones Matter in Remote Work

where distant employees work sequentially around the clock, can work well for highly routine, simple, or administrative tasks that require little real-time communication. But opposite schedules are less effective for complex, team-based... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

06 Mar 2013
What Do You Think?

Who Should Manage Our Work Time?

time management is a shared responsibility." Frode Hvaring suggested that " in order to enable employees to mange their output in terms of priorities, quality, resources available and best work flows, the company needs to View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

September–October 2023
Article

Reskilling in the Age of AI

By: Jorge Tamayo, Leila Doumi, Sagar Goel, Orsolya Kovács-Ondrejkovic and Raffaella Sadun

In the coming decades, as the pace of technological change continues to increase, millions of workers may need to be not just upskilled but reskilled—a profoundly complex societal challenge that will sometimes require workers to both acquire new skills and... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; AI and Machine Learning; Training; Adaptation; Employees; Digital Transformation

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2023
Working Paper

Organizational Responses to Product Cycles

By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Vittorio Bassi, Anant Nyshadham, Jorge Tamayo and Nicolas Torres

Product cycles entail the mass production of new—and often increasingly complex—products on a regular basis. How do firms manage these changes? We use granular daily data from a leading automobile manufacturer to study the organizational impacts of introducing new... View Details

Keywords: Training; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Knowledge Management; Production; Product; Organizational Structure; Auto Industry; Argentina

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22 Aug 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, August 23

patterns. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53100 June 12, 2017 Harvard Business Review Your Sales Training Is Probably Lackluster. Here's How to Fix It By: Cespedes, Frank V., and Yuchun Lee Abstract— U.S.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

23 Mar 2021
Cold Call Podcast

Managing Future Growth at an Innovative Workforce Education Startup

Keywords: Re: William A. Sahlman

19 Jul 2010
Research & Ideas

How Mercadona Fixes Retail’s ’Last 10 Yards’ Problem

Imagine a retail chain that offers customers not only the lowest prices but also personalized customer service. Employees receive above-average wages and 20 times more training than the average American... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail; Food & Beverage

09 Feb 2009
Research & Ideas

Uncompromising Leadership in Tough Times

started the turnaround of the company by first working on values—redefining them and communicating them widely. First, they do not merely focus on cost cutting and layoffs when a crisis arrives. While they may lay off employees (though... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

22 May 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, May 22, 2018

performance, even after controlling for current performance, and that this relation is driven by the perceptions of middle management and professional staff rather than senior executives, hourly, or commissioned workers. Taken together, these results suggest that firms... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

December 2017 (Revised January 2018)
Case

NatureSweet

By: Jose Alvarez, Forest Reinhardt and Natalie Kindred

This case describes the business model and workplace philosophy of NatureSweet, a privately owned, vertically integrated greenhouse grower and marketer of fresh tomatoes with sales across the United States and $329 million in 2016 revenues. CEO Bryant Ambelang treated... View Details

02 May 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: May 2, 2017

April 14, 2017 Harvard Business Review Companies Like United Need to Cultivate Good Judgment, and Free Their Employees to Use It By: Deighton, John A. Abstract—United Airlines has pledged to improve its View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

August 31, 2017
Article

CEOs Should Get Personally Involved in Talent Development

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Jay Galeota and Michael Wong

Estimates indicate that, globally, human capital has a value about 2.3 times that of physical capital. This difference is likely to widen in increasingly service-driven economies. Yet, most companies maintain their equipment better than their people. The issue is not... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Employees; Training