New Categories - Publications - Faculty & Research

15 Feb 2000
Research & Ideas

The Right Connections

From genome research to e-commerce, new ventures are popping up everywhere, competing for the cash needed to turn them into successful enterprises. But when vying against others in industries where high uncertainty, long development... View Details

Keywords: by Judith A. Ross

14 Dec 2007
Op-Ed

When Your Product Becomes a Commodity

offshoring are all squeezing margins, increasing customer price sensitivity, and making it harder to sustain inter-brand differentiation. The product life cycle suggests that, as product categories mature, they become more susceptible to... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

11 Feb 2002
Research & Ideas

The Quiet Leader—and How to Be One

It sounds almost paradoxical. A quiet leader? Yet quiet leaders—managers who apply modesty, restraint, and tenacity to solve particularly difficult problems—are more common than we think, says Harvard Business School professor Joseph L. Badaracco. In his View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

06 Sep 2005
Research & Ideas

When Product Variety Backfires

adding more and more variety to your cereal offerings. Finally, there may be tremendous competitive pressure to expand your assortment. If your competition comes out with new sizes or flavors, you feel you have to keep pace. The end... View Details

Keywords: by Poping Lin; Consumer Products

07 Jan 2013
Lessons from the Classroom

Culture Changers: Managing High-Impact Entrepreneurs

get inspired by people like Robert Redford, like Allen Lane, like James Beard, all of whom are true category creators," Khaire says. "They created new categories in... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Beauty & Cosmetics; Food & Beverage; Entertainment & Recreation; Information; Publishing

06 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

Does Hybrid Work Actually Work? Insights from 30,000 Emails

environment. At the other extreme: Companies like 3M, SAP, and Twitter are letting many employees work from anywhere. Stuck in between: Employees quitting inflexible jobs as part of the “Great Resignation” and new hires feeling adrift... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

22 Mar 2011
First Look

First Look: March 22

management, specialization of financial intermediation, and marketing methods. The contributors—leaders in business, government, academia, and the nonprofit sector—discuss new research and ideas about the future of credit markets,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

13 Nov 2000
Research & Ideas

Managing to Learn: How Companies Can Turn Knowledge into Action

concept of a learning organization is one that is "skilled at creating, acquiring, interpreting, transferring, and retaining knowledge and at purposefully modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights." Although... View Details

Keywords: by Laurie Joan Aron

10 Aug 2016
Research & Ideas

Prospective Students Steer Clear of Schools Rocked by Scandal

Colleges and universities are learning what companies have known for a long time—when scandal breaks, business can take a significant hit. New research from Harvard Business School concludes that high-profile scandals on college... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Education

26 Oct 2021
Research & Ideas

What Companies Want Most in a CEO: A Good Listener

For a better shot at landing the top job at today’s companies, aspiring CEOs should set aside their slide presentations and work on their listening skills instead, new research suggests. Companies are increasingly seeking socially adept... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

07 Aug 2000
Research & Ideas

Rocket Science Retailing

high at that outlet, while the Boston store might stock relatively few items in this category because demand is lower there. Why don't more retailers customize their inventories? The answer, as we explain later on, lies in slow supply... View Details

Keywords: by Marshall L. Fisher, Ananth Raman & Anna Sheen McClelland; Retail

09 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 9

Journal (forthcoming) Abstract Stable category meanings act as institutions that facilitate market exchange by providing bases for comparison and valuation. Yet little is known about meaning construction in View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

15 Apr 2008
First Look

First Look: April 15, 2008

Montague Corporation: Unfolding the Future in Cycling Harvard Business School Case 808-087 Montague has developed a major innovation that creates a new sub-category in the bicycle industry: a full-sized, high-quality bicycle that folds.... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

08 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

The Strategic Way To Hire a Sales Team

by relevant "experience," which is the most frequently used criterion by sales managers. In his new book, Aligning Strategy and Sales, Cespedes discusses why the gap is so common—and outlines effective steps to bridge it. This... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

18 Jun 2024
Research & Ideas

Central Banks Missed Inflation Red Flags. This Pricing Model Could Help.

environments.” If central banks had used economic models that account for variations in the speed of firm’s pricing decisions rather than their traditional forecasting tools, policymakers might have detected rising inflation sooner, suggests View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services; Banking

30 Jan 2018
First Look

January 30, 2018

flash sales industry was created using this idea as a cornerstone of its business strategy. In this paper, we identify and investigate a new reason why frequent assortment rotations can be valuable to a retailer, particularly for products... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

12 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

When Experts Play It Too Safe: Innovation Lessons from a NASA Experiment

When evaluating whether to invest in a new idea, senior executives often rely on experts. But these advisers often favor ideas that are easy to execute over tough-to-pull-off but potentially groundbreaking plans. The risk for companies:... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Aerospace

04 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Why Most Leaders (Even Thomas Jefferson) Are Replaceable

Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Gautam Mukunda leads off his new book, Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter, with the results of social science research that executives may wish not to consider: individual leaders rarely... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

20 Dec 2011
First Look

First Look: December 20

categories were set by a strict rotation scheme, thereby mitigating the potentially confounding effect that they targeted only "hot" technology sectors. Prizes encouraged competition and medals were more important than monetary... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

23 May 2018
Research & Ideas

How to Know If Your Neighborhood Is Being Gentrified

that are widely seen as measures of gentrification are accompanied by growth in the number of businesses in every category we examined.” Creating better public policy Gentrification has swept through some of America’s largest cities,... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

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