Encouragement Design - Publications - Faculty & Research

22 Jul 2019
Book

How to Be a Digital Platform Leader

create even within a very traditional, industrial business. We think the basic design of Predix was heading in the right direction, but the challenges in execution have been severe. Lagace: A central concern of The Business of Platforms... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

21 Apr 2015
First Look

First Look: April 21

Murat Ülker, the chairman of Yildiz, decides to change the management structure and encourage rethinking brand positioning, channels, and communications in the U.S. market. How was the Godiva brand affected by the execution problems of... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel & Sean Silverthorne

08 Oct 2010
What Do You Think?

Will Transparency in CEO Compensation Have Unintended Consequences?

constant reminder of the enormity of the leak that it hastened actions that would otherwise have taken longer and been much less effective in stopping the leak and dealing with the cleanup. Now comes a little-publicized provision of the Dodd-Frank legislation View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

04 Apr 2005
What Do You Think?

Can an Organization’s “Deep Smarts” Be Preserved?

organizational leaders should insist on and practice greater transparency in management decision making." In a U.K. bank, David Physick relates that "we encouraged knowledge sharing through "lunch 'n' learn' sessions."... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

27 Feb 2006
Research & Ideas

Take Responsibility for Rising Stars

redundant activities?" and "How should we encourage burgeoning leaders to take risks and innovate while maintaining our focus on short-term operations and profit goals?" (Firms shouldn't have to forgo their quarterly... View Details

Keywords: by Jeffrey M. Cohn, Rakesh Khurana & Laura Reeves

06 Aug 2018
Research & Ideas

Supersmart Manufacturing Tools are Lowering Prices on TVs, Bulbs, and Solar Panels

who they can convince to enter the business. So, the capability to make that complex tool-dependent product becomes accessible to everybody who has the money. Many such cases have been worsened by government subsidies designed to View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Manufacturing; Electronics

30 Oct 2005
Research & Ideas

Tuning Jobs to Fit Your Company

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, professor Robert Simons wrote about how organizations can design jobs for maximum performance. In this excerpt, Simons discusses what he terms the four basic "spans" of a job—control,... View Details

Keywords: by Robert Simons

31 Oct 2006
HBS Case

Governing Sumida Corporation

goal of listing the company on the Tokyo Stock Exchange was realized in 1998. Changes to the company's retirement policy encouraged a more performance-oriented culture, and in 2000, Yawata made English the company's official language,... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Electronics

07 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

How the U.S. Army Develops Leaders

pair of two wars in the same country, fought against the same foe, but taking place just over ten years apart. If you wanted to study leader development, or even organizational development, it would be hard to design a more ideal natural... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

13 Nov 2000
Research & Ideas

Managing to Learn: How Companies Can Turn Knowledge into Action

In his book, Learning in Action: A Guide to Putting the Learning Organization to Work (Harvard Business School Press), HBS professor David Garvin argues that Nike left open a critical gap between encouraging innovative thinking and... View Details

Keywords: by Laurie Joan Aron

14 May 2001
Research & Ideas

Are You Managing To a ‘T’? Time To Break With Tradition

conditions, it also can lead to competition between units, which may hoard, rather than share, expertise. By encouraging collaboration, a T-shaped management system can be a powerful counterbalance to such negative behavior. Our research... View Details

Keywords: by Morten T. Hansen & Bolko Von Oetinger

06 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

Curbing an Unlikely Culprit of Rising Drug Prices: Pharmaceutical Donations

counterintuitive driver: the fact that in the US, pharmaceutical companies subsidize the purchase of their drugs. Medicare, the government insurer for elderly or disabled people in the US, encourages patients who can’t afford their drug... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Insurance; Health; Pharmaceutical

16 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Can Applied Economics Save Homeless Puppies?

In 2012, two seasoned scholars shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their research on designing markets. Lloyd Shapley had developed theoretical methods to create stable matches in unstable markets. Alvin Roth had... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail

10 Nov 2008
What Do You Think?

How Much Can You Ask of Your Customers?

Summing Up Is customer volunteerism combined with "ownership" a double-edged sword? It's seems okay to involve customers in providing ideas for new products and processes. Encourage them to refer new business. But beware the... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

05 Jul 2004
What Do You Think?

Work-Life: Is Productivity in the Balance?

initiatives address real employee needs, how much they cost, and how much quantifiable long-term benefit they create for the firm. An irony in all of this is that many organizations have made the workplace so much more attractive that they have View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

19 Jul 2004
Research & Ideas

Why Innovations Sit on the Shelf

wasn't the issue—the division still had the superior technology overall. Nor was talent a problem—Becton Dickinson continued to retain the skilled engineers that had made it the leader in its field. The organization's design didn't seem... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Beer, Russell Eisenstat & Derek Schrader

27 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

Employee-Suggestion Programs That Work

in hospitals. One condition of funding was that she also create a tool to improve the safety climate and encourage senior managers to become more engaged in hospital safety initiatives. “It was not that senior leaders were solving... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Guttry

24 Oct 2007
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Innovation

encourage innovative thinking about a challenge is to deconstruct the problem, such as when a musical director makes the orchestra practice a madrigal at a snail's pace. When trying to create something new you have to do something... View Details

08 Sep 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

Capitalism Works Better When I Can See What You're Doing

knew the salaries of your peers, would you feel happier in a more equitable workplace? The answer to all these questions is often yes. But sometimes too much transparency can be a bad thing. Open-office designs can make workers less... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

18 Dec 2007
First Look

First Look: December 18, 2007

affects emotions. Finally, work in economics on the design of monetary policy makes several assumptions (e.g., a representative agent, a summary measure of emotions akin to utility exists and that individuals only care about income and... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Publications