Imagination - Publications - Faculty & Research

02 Dec 2010
What Do You Think?

Making Right Choices: Art or Science?

this way: Decisions on personal matters carry a greater weight of art; those that relate to work have more of science. Frances Pratt commented, "It is often the art that allows us to imagine that we are indeed making a controlled,... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

25 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Why IT Does Matter

people when a part or system is about to fail. Often, only the senior management team's imagination limits new IT-based opportunities. Our research suggests the following: New technologies will continue to give companies the chance to... View Details

Keywords: by F. Warren McFarlan & Richard L. Nolan

10 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

The COVID Two-Step for Leaders: Protect and Pivot

Saenz and O’Keeffe claim, “Bold leadership teams are beginning to imagine this [post-pandemic] new world now and already adjusting their strategies and operating models. At this moment, teams want to hear four messages: our people are... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden

04 Feb 2013
Research & Ideas

Are the Big Four Audit Firms Too Big to Fail?

“There are important implications for the quality of accounting information in corporations and in capital markets” "We could imagine that as the audit industry becomes more concentrated, the big auditors would become increasingly... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Accounting

08 Sep 2008
HBS Case

The Value of Environmental Activists

There are many methods, most financial, to measure the success of companies in meeting goals. But the question becomes a lot harder at Harvard Business School when MBAs are challenged to measure the efforts of environmental organizations like Greenpeace and the World... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

04 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

When Founders Recruit Friends and Family as Investors

potential investors. To the extent that founders tend to be very confident in their startup's prospects, they may even be more inclined to take money from friends and family, happily imagining those close to them sharing in the startup's... View Details

Keywords: by Noam Wasserman

24 May 2022
Research & Ideas

Career Advice for Minorities and Women: Sharing Your Identity Can Open Doors

say, 'This is who I am, and this is the identity that I'm going to be bringing to the workplace.'" In a third study, 1,500 adults were asked to imagine being a computer science instructor tasked with choosing one out of four former... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

26 Jun 2017
Research & Ideas

How Cellophane Changed the Way We Shop for Food

senses deprived by cellophane—i.e., while a store’s customers could no longer touch, smell, or taste a product before buying it, cellophane let you imagine how a product smelled, felt, or tasted. One ad in 1930 made the claim that “your... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Food & Beverage; Retail; Advertising

19 Sep 2016
Research & Ideas

Why Isn't Business Research More Relevant to Business Practitioners?

for the course,” she says. Edelman provides straightforward summaries of his research on his personal website. “I can’t imagine being excited about writing articles read only by other academics,” he says. “I think I could do it. But it... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

Research Summary

Research Thrust

By: Rakesh Khurana

I am trained in organizational sociology and my main areas of interest lie in macro-organizational theory and the dynamics of executive labor markets. To date, my research has focused on two themes. The first revolves around understanding the forces that govern the... View Details

14 May 2012
Research & Ideas

Breaking the Smartphone Addiction

Rather, it is about incremental changes that promise to improve your work-life and your work in ways that make them notably better. Creating Change Where No One Could Even Imagine It I chose to conduct the original experiment at The... View Details

Keywords: by Leslie A. Perlow

07 Mar 2005
What Do You Think?

Should Business Management Be Regarded as a Profession?

this way: "It is hard for me to imagine that certification by itself would have a significant impact on a CEO's ethics...The real problem is the ability of CEOs to be CEOs." John Anderson commented that "Let's not assume... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

19 Aug 2013
Research & Ideas

Studying How Income Inequality Shapes Behavior

with Anant Thaker (HBS MBA 2011) of the Boston Consulting Group and Howard Rudnick of the Tobin Project, Moss offers an alternative perspective: Perhaps we've been looking at the question the wrong way. Inequality And Making Decisions In Inequality and Decision Making:... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

20 Dec 2006
Op-Ed

Investors Hurt by Dual-Track Tax Reporting

developments. Imagine if you were allowed to represent your income on your tax forms and on your mortgage application differently. In a moment of weakness, you might portray your economic situation in two distinct ways. Unlike... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai

02 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

Excerpt: ‘A Social Strategy’

imagine a scenario in which a firm asks its customers to tell their friends about a particular product in exchange for giving these people monetary benefits. Although such a scheme will probably benefit the company, it will also probably... View Details

05 Aug 2002
Research & Ideas

Understanding the Process of Innovation

feedback on every idea, his reputation for deep knowledge, and the impressive industry contacts he's acquired have earned him a loyal following: his idea-generation process yields 200 interesting concepts a month. The Winnowing Phase The large toy manufacturers say... View Details

Keywords: by Loren Gray

13 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

The Inner Life of Leaders

energizes and draws on imaginative thinking. Managers tend instinctively to delegate; leaders like to get involved in working toward solutions to substantive problems. The picture in business today (along with government) is bleak. The... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

19 Dec 2005
Research & Ideas

The Regional Slice of Your Global Strategy

geographic region, one can imagine being even more creative and redefining distance—and regions—according to nongeographic dimensions: cultural, administrative and political, and economic. Aggregation along nongeographic dimensions will... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat

12 Oct 2016
Research & Ideas

Break the Rules of How Business is Done

of our team. I imagine neither the window extension or transparency tactics were very time consuming or distracting to implement (well, perhaps the former took some selling to their investors!), but they certainly make this company stand... View Details

Keywords: by Julia B. Austin

15 Mar 2010
HBS Case

Developing Asia’s Largest Slum

of voters in slums such as Dharavi. And with the daunting prospect of determining which residents would receive 300 square feet of free housing (limited to families in residence before January 2000), it's easy to imagine a nightmarish... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Construction; Real Estate

Publications