Publications

October 1995 (Revised March 1996)
Case

Booz.Allen & Hamilton: Vision 2000

In 1993, Booz.Allen & Hamilton forsook its previous, highly local organizational structure. It was motivated by a desire to serve multinational clients more effectively and to provide greater value to clients with more localized business by collecting best practices... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Organizational Structure; Global Strategy; Service Industry

Educators

06 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

Strategic Intelligence: Adapt or Die

Sometimes when John R. Wells, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, meets a senior manager from a successful company, he likes to ask the provocative question, "Is your company already dead?" In his more... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

May 2025
Background Note

Skills-First Talent Management: The Importance of Managers

By: Boris Groysberg, Nicole Zelazko, Tom Quinn, Robin Abrahams, Izzy Yeoh and Colleen Ammerman

This note supplements a 2025 series on skills-first talent management in organizations, comprising “Skills-First Talent Management: Hiring” (HBS No. 425-019), “Skills-First Talent Management: Onboarding, Development, and Performance Management” (HBS No. 425-020), and... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Talent and Talent Management; Experience and Expertise; Job Design and Levels; Employment; Human Capital; Management Practices and Processes; United States

Educators

Research Summary

Non-Monetary Compensation as a Source of Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Non-monetary compensation consists of things individuals get from their work that cannot be converted into currency in any way (e.g. duty, meaning and joy). Through an in-depth, case-based, examination of a number of organizations relying on non-monetary... View Details

September 2018
Article

Assembling the Sales Team

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Data and analytical tasks have lengthened productivity ramp-up times in many sales contexts, making each hire a bigger sunk cost for a longer time. Most companies adopt two common practices: They hire on the basis of “experience” and/or look at their best reps and try... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Selection and Staffing

2020
Book

The Power of Experiments: Decision-Making in a Data-Driven World

By: Michael Luca and Max H. Bazerman

Have you logged into Facebook recently? Searched for something on Google? Chosen a movie on Netflix? If so, you've probably been an unwitting participant in a variety of experiments—also known as randomized controlled trials—designed to test the impact of changes to an... View Details

Keywords: Experiments; Randomized Controlled Trials; Organizations; Decision Making; Analytics and Data Science; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

February 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Case

HubSpot and Motion AI: Chatbot-Enabled CRM

By: Jill Avery and Thomas Steenburgh

HubSpot, an inbound marketing, sales, and customer relationship management (CRM) software provider, announced that it had acquired Motion AI, a software platform that enabled companies to easily build and deploy chatbots, fueled by artificial intelligence, to interact... View Details

Educators

20 May 2016
Other Presentation

Competing to Change the World: Creating Shared Value

By: Michael E. Porter

The principle of shared value involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges. Shared value is becoming an integral part of strategy and is defining a whole new set of best practices that companies... View Details

Keywords: Society; Shared Value; Value Creation; Strategy; Civil Society or Community

Read Now

18 May 2016
Other Presentation

Competing to Change the World: Creating Shared Value

By: Michael E. Porter

The principle of shared value involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges. Shared value is becoming an integral part of strategy and is defining a whole new set of best practices that companies... View Details

Keywords: Society; Shared Value; Value Creation; Strategy; Civil Society or Community; United States

Read Now

2010
Book

Winning in Emerging Markets: A Road Map for Strategy and Execution

By: Tarun Khanna, Krishna G. Palepu and Richard Bullock

The best way to select emerging markets to exploit is to evaluate their size or growth potential, right? Not according to Krishna Palepu and Tarun Khanna. In 'Winning in Emerging Markets,' these leading scholars on the subject present a decidedly different framework... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Emerging Markets; Organizations; Opportunities; Business Strategy

2013
Chapter

Effective Teamwork and Collaboration

By: Heidi K. Gardner

Book Abstract: The ability to attract, develop, and retain talent has become one of the biggest competitive issues for law firms. But although talent management is now recognized as a business issue of prime importance, law firms often lack the experience, vision, and... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Legal Services Industry

10 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 10

approaches to address the increasing demand from society for a deeper understanding of what causes even good people to cross ethical boundaries. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-054.pdf Management Practices Across... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

12 Feb 2020
Blog Post

Trying Out New Career Options with SIPs (Short Intensive Programs)

Short Intensive Programs (SIPs) offer students an excellent opportunity to think about career choices, gain practical skills, and explore topics they might otherwise never get to study. View Video SIPs are no fee, no credit courses, and... View Details

Article

Drive Innovation with Better Decision-Making

By: Linda A. Hill, Emily Tedards and Taran Swan

Despite their embrace of agile methods, many firms striving to innovate are struggling to produce breakthrough ideas. A key culprit, according to the authors, is an outdated, inefficient approach to decision-making. Today’s discovery-driven innovation processes involve... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Decision Making; Decision Choices and Conditions; Organizational Change and Adaptation

Register to Read

2013
Book

The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World

By: Michael Wheeler

A member of the world-renowned Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School introduces the powerful next-generation approach to negotiation. For many years, two approaches to negotiation have prevailed: the "win-win" method exemplified in Getting to Yes by Roger... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation

25 Oct 2006
Op-Ed

Fixing Executive Options: The Veil of Ignorance

option practices remains unknown, this most recent scandal has deepened the sense in many quarters that option contracts given to managers distort behavior in destructive ways. The ability to play with, and respond to, the many variables... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai & Joshua Margolis

June 2010 (Revised December 2013)
Supplement

Hang Lung Properties and the Chengdu Decision (B)

By: John D. Macomber, Michael Shih-Ta Chen and Keith Chi-Ho Wong

Second phase of auction for a prime retail development parcel in Chengdu, China. Competition forces the firm to revisit all of its land purchase criteria. Hang Lung Properties is known for rigorous due diligence, for discipline in buying property, and for good... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Infrastructure; Competitive Strategy; Valuation; Real Estate Industry; Chengdu

December 2010
Article

Organising Response to Extreme Emergencies: The Victorian Bushfires of 2009

By: Dutch Leonard and Arnold M. Howitt

How can people and organisations best respond to emergency events that are significantly beyond the boundaries of what they had generally anticipated, expected, prepared for-or even imagined? What forms of organisations are likely to be best able to cope with such... View Details

Keywords: Organizations; Management Practices and Processes; Natural Disasters; Crisis Management; Boundaries; United States