Professional Service Firms - Publications - Faculty & Research

22 May 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

A Luxury Industry Veteran Teaches the Importance of Aesthetics to Budding Business Leaders

including the potential to transform a business sector. The top-rated teams have the chance to present their ideas in front of a panel of judges, each of whom has achieved aesthetic star power in their own professional domain. This year’s... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Beauty & Cosmetics; Apparel & Accessories; Auto; Tourism

13 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

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

bigger than just creating the market. They need to epitomize the market. “If they become the cognitive referent, they gain an unequal share of the gains from doing so” “The goal is not only to make sure that the product category takes off, but to become the View Details

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

01 Dec 2004
News

Marquis Jet Takes Off

ownership, or charter. The first two came with seven-figure price tags, and charter posed uncertainties about planes and pilots. From outside the private-jet business looking in, Allard — who at the time was president and COO of SFX Sports Group, a leading... View Details

Keywords: Roger Thompson; Air Transportation; Transportation

01 Oct 2002
News

Michael F. Cronin

young Michael and his four siblings. Cronin soon went to work, too, as a Boston Herald paperboy, the first of innumerable jobs on a résumé that would eventually top out with his current position: cofounder and managing partner of Weston Presidio, a late-stage,... View Details

14 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Understaffed and Overworked: What Now?

accomplish," he says. The toughest thing for most people is initiating this type of discussion, DeLong continues. In his work with professional service firms, he's found that many people would rather... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Michelman

04 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

When Founders Recruit Friends and Family as Investors

becoming one, you should read this book," Shah wrote.) Jeff Bussgang, a general partner at the early-stage venture capital firm Flybridge Capital Partners, blogged, "Rather than having [founding] decisions happen by chance,... View Details

Keywords: by Noam Wasserman

20 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Getting the Marketing Mix Right

they studied the three primary ways these drugs were marketed by Pfizer, Merk, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and AstraZeneca: "detailing," in which drug firm representatives personally visit physicians to sell the drug; at View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

14 Mar 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, March 14

March–April 2017 Harvard Business Review Hiring an Entrepreneurial Leader: What to Look For By: Butler, Timothy Abstract—Aspiring to be innovative and agile, companies of all shapes and sizes want to recruit entrepreneurial managers. But most View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Web

John H. McArthur | About

Springs Industries, Inc., Telsat Canada, Bell Canada, and Teradyne Inc. He was a founding board member of the Canada Development Investment Corporation and a member of the Task Force on the Future of the Canadian Financial Services... View Details

14 Feb 2022
Blog Post

Celebrating Love @ HBS in 2022

home-made steak dinner. As nervous as I was about searing the meat just right, I was far more fascinated by Weston’s tales of service and dreams for the future. Here was a man of charisma and compassion; of commitment and creativity. One... View Details

06 May 2021
HBS Case

How Four Women Made Miami More Equitable for Startups

her hometown of New Orleans before moving to Miami. Gibson shifted her focus to cultivating higher-wage jobs in marginalized communities and drew on her background in environmental sciences to form EcoTech Visions, a company providing View Details

Keywords: by Carolyn DiPaolo

12 Nov 2021
News

Alumni Business Leaders on Confronting the Climate Change Challenge

Taking a Stand. Patagonia pulled its advertising from Facebook and has recently renewed its call on other firms to boycott the platform until Facebook can make sure its products do no harm. What would taking a stand look like for your... View Details

10 Jul 2007
What Do You Think?

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

that environment ." Ann Brown asks, "How long would it take for the results of consistent leadership actions and 'action messages' to show in the bottom line?" Steve Mosley suggested that the value of 10 percent shouldn't be underestimated in pointing... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

04 Sep 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, September 4, 2018

challenge for firms based in suburban industrial parks. To stay relevant, they need to tap into urban hotbeds, but setting up operations there can be extremely expensive. In his work on global talent flows, Harvard Business School’s Kerr... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

13 Apr 2021
Book

How Inclusive Managers Create Glass-Shattering Organizations

also attempting to raise awareness about gender inequality for early- and mid-career professionals as well as women at the senior executive level. Although significant progress has been made over the past 50 years, women still hold only a... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

14 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Restarting Under Uncertainty: Managerial Experiences from Around the World

on intangible capabilities, such as the ability to assess the value of the knowledge and skills that are already present within the firm and in some instances within its broader ecosystem; to rapidly understand how to redeploy them in new... View Details

Keywords: by Raffaella Sadun, Andrea Bertoni, Alexia Delfino, Giovanni Fassio, and Mariapaola Testa

2018
Working Paper

Show or Tell? Improving Agent Decision Making in a Tanzanian Mobile Money Field Experiment

By: Jason Acimovic, Chris Parker, David F. Drake and Karthik Balasubramanian

When workers make operational decisions, the firm's global knowledge and the workers’ domain-specific knowledge complement each other. Oftentimes workers have the final decision-making power. Two key decisions a firm makes when designing systems to support these... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Decision Making; Training; Performance Improvement; Money; Mobile Technology; Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Services Industry

Citation

SSRN

15 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

Remembering Alfred Chandler

hagiographies. Alfred Chandler Jr. Chandler developed for business history a coherent theoretical framework built around his "3-pronged investment" in manufacturing, marketing, and management, and the notion of "organizational capabilities." The... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

15 May 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, May 15, 2018

negotiation. Yet unlike professionals such as litigators, journalists, and doctors, who are taught how to ask questions as an essential part of their training, few executives think of questioning as a skill that can be honed—or consider... View Details