Publications

1982
Article

When Self-Descriptions Contradict Behavior: Actions do Speak Louder than Words

By: T. M. Amabile and L. Kabat

Subjects viewed two videotapes, one depicting a stimulus person's self-description and the other depicting that person's behavior in a conversation, according to a four-way factorial design personality descriptor used in the self-description ("introvert" or... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Perception; Cognition and Thinking; Judgments

Find at Harvard

May 2024 (Revised February 2025)
Case

Choosing the Course of Passion: Brooke Boyarsky Pratt at knownwell

By: Jon M. Jachimowicz and Alexis Lefort

Brooke Boyarsky Pratt (HBS ’13) enjoyed considerable success in her early career, quickly climbing the ranks to associate partner at McKinsey, and later becoming an executive vice president at Berkadia, a Berkshire Hathaway portfolio company. Throughout these years,... View Details

Keywords: Passion; Career; Career Planning; Purpose; Personal Development and Career; Mission and Purpose; Identity; Business Startups; Health Care and Treatment; Health Disorders; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Health Industry; United States

September 2013
Case

Management Levels at Staples (A): Company and Organization (Abridged)

By: David A. Garvin

Abridged version of one of six cases that describe the roles and responsibilities of managers at each of the hierarchical levels of management within the U.S. Stores business unit of Staples, the world's largest office supply company. Together, the cases form a... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Managerial Roles; Organizational Design; Management Practices and Processes; Job Design and Levels; Business Processes; Consumer Products Industry; United States

2017
Working Paper

Business History, the Great Divergence and the Great Convergence

By: Geoffrey Jones

This working paper provides a business history perspective on debates about the Great Divergence, the rise of the income gap between the West and the Rest, and the more recent Great Convergence, which has seen a narrowing of that gap. The literature on the timing and... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Economics; History; Wealth and Poverty; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth

SSRN

Read Now

10 Jan 2007
HBS Case

The Challenge of Managing National Security

Advanced Competitive Strategy: Integrating the Enterprise. Rivkin's most recent case, coauthored with former HBS colleague Michael Roberto and published this year, is "Managing National Intelligence (A): Before 9/11." The case... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons; Service

16 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Delivering the Digital Goods: iTunes vs. Peer-to-Peer

differs. ITunes provides a unified interface that seamlessly integrates the location, purchase, and consumption of content. Users of p2p networks, on the other hand, must navigate a complex environment and endure varying levels of... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Music

March 2024
Module Note

Module Note on the Structuring of Collaborative Work

By: Ethan Bernstein

This module note for instructors describes the organizational structure module of the Managing Human Capital course that integrates insights from research on workplace connectivity (who gets to communicate with whom) and workplace transparency (who gets to observe... View Details

Keywords: Human Resources; Management; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Human Capital

25 Apr 2023
Op-Ed

How SHEIN and Temu Conquered Fast Fashion—and Forged a New Business Model

methods. “The success of Amazon, Shopify, and social commerce sites such as Instagram convinced consumers to move much of their purchasing power online. ” That the model was born in China is not surprising because China has long had the problem that SHEIN and Temu were... View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton; Fashion; Retail; Consumer Products

09 May 2014
Working Paper Summaries

‘My Bad!’ How Internal Attribution and Ambiguity of Responsibility Affect Learning from Failure

Keywords: by Christopher G. Myers, Bradley R. Staats & Francesca Gino

26 Jul 2011
First Look

First Look: July 26

designed an intervention in which senior managers worked with frontline staff to identify and solve safety-related problems over an 18-month period. On average, the 20 randomly selected treatment hospitals identified 17.3 problems per... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2021 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Seeding and Selling Asana

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie Ma and Amram Migdal

In December 2019, Oliver Jay, Asana’s Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), was reconsidering his go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Asana was cloud-based work management software that enabled users to break up projects into discrete tasks that could be assigned, scheduled, and... View Details

Keywords: SaaS; Customer Journey; Business Model; Business Organization; Change Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Marketing Channels; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Technology Industry; United States

22 Nov 2023
Research & Ideas

Humans vs. Machines: Untangling the Tasks AI Can (and Can't) Handle

each answer, McFowland notes. Where AI excels: Design a shoe The first half of the consultants tackled a series of 18 tasks selected to exist “inside the frontier” of what ChatGPT can do well. They were asked to imagine that they worked... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Information Technology; Technology

03 Mar 2009
First Look

First Look: March 3, 2009

Several conclusions arise than can help inform the design of care delivery platforms for HIV/AIDS. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-093.pdf Cases & Course MaterialsAccenture's War for Talent in India Harvard... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 2011
Case

MorphoSys AG: The Evolution of a Biotechnology Business Model

By: Gary P. Pisano, Ryan Johnson and Carin-Isabel Knoop

In the biotech world, the 18-year-old Munich-based company MorphoSys was a rarity: it was profitable. The company achieved this profitability not by developing and selling its own drugs, but by licensing access to its proprietary library of human antibodies. Recently,... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Profit; Intellectual Property; Rights; Risk Management; Digital Platforms; Product Development; Business and Shareholder Relations; Vertical Integration; Biotechnology Industry; Munich

2013
Working Paper

Entrepreneurs, Firms and Global Wealth since 1850

By: G. Jones

This working paper integrates the role of entrepreneurship and firms into debates on why Asia, Latin America and Africa were slow to catch up with the West following the Industrial Revolution and the advent of modern economic growth. It argues that the currently... View Details

SSRN

Read Now

29 Feb 2000
Research & Ideas

Whence IT Value?

question around which many IT vendors design and sell their products. Instead, functionality continues to be king. New releases of everything from ERP to office automation software tout the new functionality they provide — in other words,... View Details

Keywords: by Andrew McAfee

26 Apr 2024
HBS Case

Deion Sanders' Prime Lessons for Leading a Team to Victory

reviewing uniform, merchandise, and apparel designs. “No one questioned if he sat in on a meeting about pedestrian traffic for an upcoming football game, reviewed a working design of a commemorative poster to be handed out to fans, or... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman; Sports

20 Apr 2010
First Look

First Look: April 20

fundamental challenges of science-based businesses: 1) managing and rewarding long-term risk, 2) integrating across technical disciplines, and 3) learning. Whereas these challenges were once managed inside the boundaries of corporate... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

October 2012 (Revised August 2013)
Case

Global Unichip Corporation (A)

By: Willy Shih and Chen-Fu Chien

Global Unichip Corporation (GUC) is a design services company that acts as a front-end to TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor foundry. In so doing, it masked the complexity of the latest process technologies, and reduced the entry barriers for small firms to... View Details