Publications

April 2002 (Revised June 2003)
Case

News Corporation

By: Bharat N. Anand and Kate Attea

In 2001, News Corp. is the smallest of the major media and entertainment conglomerates, but it has the broadest global presence. In an effort to establish a major distribution presence in the United States, News Corp. had looked to acquire DirecTV, the largest U.S.... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Business Conglomerates; Globalization; Distribution; Organizational Culture; Family Ownership; Competition; Consolidation; Corporate Strategy; Journalism and News Industry; Journalism and News Industry; United States; Australia

November 2022 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Martine Rothblatt and United Therapeutics: A Series of Implausible Dreams

By: Debora L. Spar and Julia M. Comeau

In 1990, satellite expert and Sirius XM founder Martine Rothblatt was determined to save the life of her seven-year-old daughter, Jenesis, who was diagnosed with a terminal illness called Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH). At the time, there was little medication... View Details

Keywords: Pharmaceutical Companies; Technological And Scientific Innovation; Organ Donation; Health Care and Treatment; Health Disorders; Innovation and Invention; Pharmaceutical Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; United States; District of Columbia

14 Jul 2014
News

Act Like an Entrepreneur Inside Your Organization

March 2017 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Facebook Fake News in the Post-Truth World

By: John R. Wells and Carole A. Winkler

In January 2017, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, was surrounded by controversy. The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States in November 2016 had triggered a national storm of protests, and many attributed Trump’s victory to... View Details

03 Feb 2020
What Do You Think?

Can an Organization Have Too Much 'Rebel Talent'?

box gets us new ideas. On the other hand, I cringe at the thought of effectively managing a ‘herd of cats.’” Santosh Patil added that “as much as I like the rebels in my team,... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

01 Dec 2017
News

Pencils Up: Taking Note of New Courses

When MBA students returned to Soldiers Field in the fall, they had nine new second-year courses to choose from, four with an emphasis on fieldwork. For faculty, developing a course affords the opportunity to draw on research and address... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna

04 Jan 2021
What Do You Think?

How Do We Sustain Organization Diversity?

wavebreakmedia Last month, the venerable organization Coca-Cola publicly announced that a project to hire more Black employees that stemmed from the settlement of a 2000 discrimination lawsuit had failed to... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2012
Book

Talk, Inc. : How Trusted Leaders Use Conversation to Power Their Organizations

By: Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind

How can leaders make their big or growing companies feel small again? How can they recapture the "magic"--the tight strategic alignment, the high level of employee engagement--that drove and animated their organization when it was a start-up? As more and more... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Interpersonal Communication; Organizational Culture; Social and Collaborative Networks; Spoken Communication

19 Jul 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Helping You Help Me: The Role of Diagnostic (In)Congruence in the Helping Process within Organizations

Keywords: by Colin M. Fisher, Julianna Pillemer & Teresa M. Amabile

19 Oct 2017
Research & Ideas

How Charitable Organizations Can Thwart Excuses for Not Giving

describes in a new working paper, The Better Is the Enemy of the Good. In fact, Exley argues that based on her research, people look for any excuse to avoid giving a donation and then rationalize their... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

2007
Working Paper

Innovation through Global Collaboration: A New Source of Competitive Advantage

By: Alan MacCormack, Theodore Forbath, Peter Brooks and Patrick Kalaher

Many recent studies highlight the need to rethink the way we manage innovation. Traditional approaches, based on the assumption that the creation and pursuit of new ideas is best accomplished by a centralized and collocated R&D team, are rapidly becoming outdated.... View Details

Keywords: Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Groups and Teams; Research and Development; Performance Improvement; Management Practices and Processes; Partners and Partnerships; Competency and Skills; Framework; Competitive Advantage; Global Strategy; Opportunities; Cost

Read Now

26 Feb 2018
News

Teaching Farmers New Tricks of the Trade

Erik Malmstrom (MBA 2012) is general manager of crop marketing for the Farmers Business Network in California. In this video, he describes how the organization is helping transform the agriculture space... View Details

09 Nov 2022
Blog Post

Building Community: Meet the HBS Latino Student Organization Leadership

The Latino Student Organization (LASO) proudly promotes and supports Harvard Business School’s Latino students and works alongside the Latino Alumni Association (HBSLAA). Representing a wide range of... View Details

March 1991 (Revised July 1996)
Background Note

Sources of Financing for New Nonprofit Ventures

Designed to help nonprofit entrepreneurs design fund-raising strategies that are appropriate for their specific organizations. Discusses the major fund-raising alternatives, including foundations, corporations, government sources, wealthy individuals, and the public,... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Financing and Loans

14 Jan 2019
Op-Ed

These 4 CEOs Created a New Standard of Leadership

Four titans who defined a new era in business during the past decade recently concluded their terms: PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi, Unilever’s Paul Polman, Mayo Clinic’s John Noseworthy, and US Bancorp’s Richard Davis. When they became CEOs, the... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George; Health; Banking; Food & Beverage; Consumer Products

2008
Chapter

The Evidence Does Not Speak for Itself: Expert Witnesses and the Organization of DNA-Typing Companies

By: Arthur A. Daemmrich

During the past 15 years, new biotechnology companies have promoted DNA typing as a sophisticated criminal and paternity identification technique. Private testing laboratories produce results that link individuals with crime scenes and fathers to their children.... View Details

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Courts and Trials; Organizational Structure; Practice; Genetics; Science-Based Business; Trust; Commercialization; Vertical Integration