Familiarity - Publications - Faculty & Research

06 Feb 2020
Research & Ideas

What We Learned from Reading Jeff Bezos’ Patents

familiar with Amazon, what is surprising is that two of these patents involve unmanned aerial vehicles, a technology that Amazon has yet to exploit to its full potential commercially. Bezos’ involvement in these patents suggests that he... View Details

Keywords: by Tricia Gregg and Boris Groysberg; Retail

04 Mar 2019
What Do You Think?

What’s the Antidote to Surveillance Capitalism?

natural world in the nineteenth and twentieth,” and “an expropriation of human rights.” The book is both a cri de coeur and a call to arms in the context of a rich, well-documented history of the development of capitalism. We know who you are Surveillance capitalists... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Advertising; Consumer Products

28 Jan 2020
Book

Advanced Leadership Requires More Than Outside-The-Box Thinking

University, where senior and retired executives learn to develop leadership skills in the service of solving large social problems. Many of the examples in the book come from her experience leading that program. Sean Silverthorne: We’re all View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

Teaching Interest

Managing the Future of Work (MBA Education—Elective Curriculum)

By: Christopher T. Stanton

The nature and scope of work is changing rapidly, creating massive business challenges in the shadow of broader political and social shifts. HBS launched a major initiative in 2017 on Managing the Future of Work to define these workplace issues and... View Details

14 Jun 2021
Op-Ed

When Your Nerves Get the Best of You, Change the Narrative

mention the executives in my class. "Here’s some good news: We can engage with that anxiety productively." Many of us are familiar with this kind of anxiety. I’ve interviewed and studied many leaders whose confidence has faltered before a... View Details

Keywords: by Francesca Gino

11 Apr 2022
Research & Ideas

A World of Difference: What Keeps Companies from Becoming More Inclusive

pushes us in the wrong direction toward something that is fundamentally familiar and comfortable." Frei: I grew up in a house where judgment was a delicacy, so I instinctively go straight to judgment. It’s the trait I like least in... View Details

Keywords: by Jen McFarland Flint

23 May 2018
Research & Ideas

How to Know If Your Neighborhood Is Being Gentrified

familiar arguments both for and against. Private developers and other supporters argue that new restaurants and retail shops, high-rise housing, and other spruce-ups revitalize communities by attracting outside investment and luring new... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

02 Oct 2006
Research & Ideas

Negotiating in Three Dimensions

experienced negotiators make mistakes in all three dimensions. Let us start with the least familiar kind of mistake. Flaws in our third dimension, the set-up of a negotiation, can take many forms: wrong parties, wrong issues, wrong... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

04 Apr 2011
HBS Case

Reinventing the National Geographic Society

Teaching a case study on the National Geographic Society for the first time, HBS professor David A. Garvin walks out to the middle of the horseshoe-shaped classroom and asks his students, "How many of you have familiarity with... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Publishing

22 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Bringing ‘Lean’ Principles to Service Industries

the more familiar lean technique of value stream mapping (VSM) to identify and decrease wasted time and effort throughout the software development process. Improving From The Bottom Up While most organizations struggle with implementing a... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Computer

28 Nov 2005
Research & Ideas

Unilever: Transformation and Tradition

1980s was that it lacked familiarity and networks within that country. Finally, and most important, Unilever had distinctive strengths in management. Unilever invested heavily in its management. It recruited some of the best available... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones; Consumer Products

27 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

IPO or M&A? How Venture Capital Shapes a Startup's Future

company to a larger one. In contrast, startups funded by a VC syndicate with less familiar co-investors are most likely to exit through a potentially splashy IPO that could let founders retain more control, says Harvard Business School... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

17 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

Why a Blended Workforce May Be Key to Lasting Competitive Advantage

In recent years, companies have been anxious about the lack of skilled workers to fill pivotal jobs. But then came COVID-19 and a subsequent recession. The ensuing business turmoil and record-high unemployment may have temporarily distracted companies from their... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph B. Fuller

25 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Feeling Stuck? Getting Past Impasse

pressures? A: Impasse is a familiar experience for them. Business professionals, particularly if they are working in dynamic markets, will be, perhaps at a rate more frequent than most people, exposed to situations where their jobs are... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

15 Mar 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

More Than 900 Examples of How Climate Change Affects Business

This word cloud is composed of blog posts by more than 900 students describing how individual organizations are likely to be affected by climate change. Image by Patrick Clapp Last fall, first-year MBA students at Harvard Business School received a new assignment in... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Green Technology

25 Jan 2010
Research & Ideas

A Macroeconomic View of the Current Economy

a lot of information out there—particularly in the business press. If these aren't familiar terms, and if one doesn't have a way of putting it all together, then you can't process all of this information as effectively as possible. I... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

25 Jul 2005
Research & Ideas

Fool vs. Jerk: Whom Would You Hire?

that we like people who are similar to us; people we are familiar with; people who have reciprocal positive feelings about us; and people who are inherently attractive, either in their appearance or their personality—that is, they are... View Details

Keywords: by Tiziana Casciaro & Miguel Sousa Lobo

27 Jun 2019
Research & Ideas

Rituals Strengthen Couples. Here’s Why They’re Good for Business, Too

Our daily lives are dictated by familiar routines that go something like this: Wake at 6 a.m., shower, go to work, prepare and eat dinner, tidy up the house, head to bed at 10 p.m. Then, set the alarm to repeat it all over again the next... View Details