Publications

SSRN

October 2001 (Revised November 2001)
Background Note

Running and Growing the Small Company: Course Overview

Addresses challenges facing managers, presidents, and owners in generating and sustaining superior performance, especially as a company broadens its mix of goods and services, increases the volume of its sales, and enlarges the size of its workforce. The critical... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Talent and Talent Management

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25 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Should You Sell Your Digital Privacy?

the medium through which a manufacturer can communicate directly to its customers, or, more importantly, to the customers who use competing products. By making a market in this... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls & Sean Silverthorne; Advertising

June 10, 2025
Article

Research: When Help Isn’t Helpful

By: Colin M. Fisher, Julianna Pillemer and Teresa M. Amabile

Asking for and receiving help at work can boost employees’ creativity, help them learn new skills, and strengthen their interpersonal ties. Yet a years-long study at a global design consultancy found that even in organizations with strong helping cultures, a... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Employees; Talent and Talent Management

Article

Fluid Tasks and Fluid Teams: The Impact of Diversity in Experience and Team Familiarity on Team Performance

By: Robert S. Huckman and Bradley R. Staats

In this paper, we consider how the structures of tasks and teams interact to affect team performance. We study the effects of diversity in experience on a team's ability to respond to task changes by separately examining interpersonal team diversity (i.e., differences... View Details

Keywords: Management; Groups and Teams; Performance; Problems and Challenges; Projects; Experience and Expertise; Change; Diversity; Information Technology Industry; India

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2011
Working Paper

Entrepreneurship and the Discipline of External Finance

By: Ramana Nanda

I confirm the finding that the propensity to start a new firm rises sharply among those in the top five percentiles of personal wealth. This pattern is more pronounced for entrants in less capital intensive sectors. Prior to entry, founders in this group earn about 6%... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Competency and Skills; Entrepreneurship; Financing and Loans; Personal Finance; Wealth

March 2015 (Revised May 2018)
Case

JPMorgan Chase: Tapping an Overlooked Talent Pool

By: Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly

By the spring of 2014, the pilot had come to an end for JPMorgan Chase's ReEntry Program, a program designed for women coming back to the workforce after a period of time away. Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO of Asset Management, and her team had to evaluate whether or not... View Details

Keywords: Women; Training; Leadership; Motherhood; Talent and Talent Management; Experience and Expertise; Diversity; Gender; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Human Capital; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Culture; Programs; Financial Services Industry; United States

06 Aug 2020
Research & Ideas

Who Will Give You the Best Professional Guidance?

What’s the difference between having an adviser, external coach, internal coach, and therapist? Should I join a peer support group? I’m often asked these questions. With so many options these days it’s hard to know which View Details

Keywords: by Julia B. Austin

11 Jun 2012
Research & Ideas

When Business Competition Harms Society

my vehicle' rather than 'the inspector accurately measured my vehicle's emissions,'" says Toffel, an associate professor and Marvin Bower Fellow in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at HBS. "This results in facilities View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Auto

Fall 2016
Article

Global Talent Flows

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr, Çağlar Özden and Christopher Parsons

The global distribution of talent is highly skewed and the resources available to countries to develop and utilize their best and brightest vary substantially. The migration of skilled workers across countries tilts the deck even further. Using newly available data, we... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Human Capital; Entrepreneurship; Global Range; Competency and Skills; Immigration

March 2025
Article

Global Talent and Economic Success

By: William R. Kerr

Access to top performers sets an upper bound on a country’s aspirations. View Details

Keywords: Immigration; Talent and Talent Management

April 2010
Article

Performance Persistence in Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital

By: Paul A. Gompers, Josh Lerner, David Scharfstein and Anna Kovner

This paper presents evidence of performance persistence in entrepreneurship. We show that entrepreneurs with a track record of success are much more likely to succeed than first-time entrepreneurs and those who have previously failed. In particular, they exhibit... View Details

Keywords: Performance; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Private Equity; Market Timing; Competency and Skills; Success; Business Startups

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July 10, 2024
Article

Designing a Successful Reskilling Program

By: Jorge Tamayo, Leila Doumi, Sagar Goel, Orsolya Kovács-Ondrejkovic and Raffaella Sadun

In this article, written as a follow up to the award-winning “Reskilling in the Age of AI”, the authors report the results of a reskilling survey that they conducted with chief human resource officers from approximately 1,200 organizations in the U.S., along with... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Training; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Employees

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March 2023 (Revised May 2023)
Case

Akamai Technologies: Expanding the Talent Pipeline

By: Christopher Stanton, Lynda M. Applegate, Allison Ciechanover, Emily Grandjean and Sophie Beck

In 2022, senior executives of Cambridge, MA-based Akamai Technologies met to consider whether and how to scale a successful technical training program. The program, Akamai Technical Academy (ATA), was launched in 2016 to address a key challenge at Akamai and in the... View Details

Keywords: Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Diversity; Talent and Talent Management; Technology Industry; United States; Boston

19 Feb 2025
Blog Post

Meet the HBS African American Student Union Leadership

club to honor industry leaders — many of whom are AASU alumni. Part of the conference also includes the Black New Venture Competition, an annual pitch competition for Black founders to View Details

12 Oct 2006
First Look

First Look: October 12, 2006

portion of their award winning investor relations program, and had previously been used only to enhance communications. The case allows a discussion of the relative merit of more formally including this... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2020 (Revised May 2020)
Case

Board Director Dilemmas—Sharing Expertise

By: David G. Fubini, Suraj Srinivasan and Amram Migdal

This case focuses on a new director who was invited to the board specifically due to her expertise in a technical area. The case allows for discussion of the board director’s appropriate role: to advise and direct management or to ask thoughtful questions about... View Details

Keywords: Board Of Directors; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Experience and Expertise

September 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Supplement

Transferring Knowledge Between Projects at NASA JPL (B)

By: Dorothy Leonard and Christopher Myers

At the conclusion of the (A) case, Jennifer Trosper needed to decide whether or not to throw her support behind the training and outreach represented by the ROV-E program to build small rovers like the ones used on the surface of Mars by NASA JPL. The (B) case... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Management; Employees; Experience and Expertise; Decision Making; Aerospace Industry; United States

January 2018
Case

Tomer Zvulun and The Atlanta Opera: At Crossroads (A)

By: Michael L. Tushman and Kerry Herman

In 2017, Tomer Zvulun, the CEO and artistic director of The Atlanta Opera, was considering next steps. Zvulun had adapted quickly to the new, dual role of chief executive and artistic director, although there had been a steep learning curve. As he gained traction, the... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Explore/Exploit; Ambidexterity; Zvulun; Opera; Strategy; Talent; Talent Management; Non-profit; Leadership Transition; Organizational Behavior; Leadership; Innovation and Invention; Talent and Talent Management; Arts; Strategic Planning; Fine Arts Industry