Business Failures - Publications - Faculty & Research

01 Oct 2013
First Look

First Look: October 1

http://www.people.hbs.edu/liyer/BCCI_JEBO_Final_Sept2013.pdf August 2013 Contemporary Accounting Research The Role of Performance Measures in the Intertemporal Decisions of Business Unit Managers By: Bouwens, Jan, Margaret A. Abernethy,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

Breakthroughs and the 'Long Tail' of Innovation

The largely erroneous perception that breakthroughs are impossible to predict arises from the tendency to focus on just the breakthroughs while ignoring the iterative process of invention and its distribution of outcomes. When all inventions are considered, they... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Independent Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Business Processes; Performance Capacity; Performance Improvement

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19 Nov 2013
First Look

First Look: November 19

transparency is customarily trained on elected officials as a means of ethical oversight, our research documents the benefits of increased transparency into the delivery of government services. Download working paper: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2349801 Cases &... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

02 Mar 2007
What Do You Think?

What Is the Government’s Role in US Health Care?

Original Article Healthcare will grab more and more headlines in the U.S. in the coming months. Any service that is on track to consume 40 percent of the gross national product of the world's largest economy by the year 2050 will be hard to ignore. View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Health

13 Feb 2020
Book

Open Your Organization to Honest Conversations

underlying reason why: Leaders often get stuck in echo chambers that merely reinforce their own ideas, says Harvard Business School Professor Michael Beer. Meanwhile, lower-level employees are often fully aware of the problems that plague... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

12 May 2021
Book

The Hard Truth About Being a CEO

Fubini, a senior lecturer in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School, poured that knowledge, along with a list of lessons learned from researching leaders past and present into the book Hidden Truths: What Leaders Need... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

How To Make Restructuring Work for Your Company

restructuring process be managed and the many barriers to restructuring overcome so that as much value is created as possible? 3. Marketing. How should the restructuring be explained and portrayed to investors so that value created inside the company is fully credited... View Details

Keywords: by Stuart C. Gilson

21 Feb 2018
Research & Ideas

When a Competitor Abandons the Market, Should You Advance or Retreat?

themselves. Furthermore, that decision to abandon ship is often the wrong decision. “There is potentially a great market opportunity when a competitor drops out,” says Joshua Lev Krieger, an assistant professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Pharmaceutical; Health

05 Dec 2022
What Do You Think?

How Would Jack Welch’s Leadership Style Fare in Today’s World?

doubt about what they think of Welch as a leader, although Cohan's is a more careful, balanced appraisal. For the Gen Zers and Millennials among us who don’t even recognize the name, this is a guy who, when he retired, was called “the CEO of the 20th century” by many... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Industrial Products; Media & Broadcasting; Medical Devices & Supplies; Manufacturing

September 2001 (Revised May 2006)
Case

Webvan

Examines Webvan's operations and the processes by which it delivers groceries that were ordered from the Internet to customers' homes. Recounts Webvan's history from founding through early 2001 and concentrates on the unique approaches to warehousing, delivery,... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Failure; Business Startups; Consumer Products Industry; Service Industry

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26 Apr 2011
Op-Ed

HBS Faculty Comment on Environmental Issues for Earth Day

Earth Day focuses the world's attention on the both the dangers and opportunities facing the planet. But sustainability and the intersection between business and the environment are issues that need to be addressed all the time, as cities... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Energy; Utilities

November – December 2009
Article

Learning by Design: Developing an Engine for Transforming Your Company

By: Michael Beer and Magnus Finnstrom

Traditional leadership development programs often fail to achieve the desired results because they don't focus on learning linked to the company's business strategy and the real day-to-day challenges facing managers. The experience of Sweden-based industrial... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development; Programs; Learning; Failure; Business Strategy; Organizations; Transformation; Problems and Challenges; Design; Sweden

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June 2, 2013
Article

Corporate Sustainability Is Not Sustainable

By: Auden Schendler and Michael W. Toffel

Despite perceptions that sustainable business efforts are progressing, the environment reminds us we're failing to deal with the problem sufficiently. Here's what business leaders must do next. View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Environmental Sustainability; Failure

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27 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

Hard Work Isn't Enough: How to Find Your Edge

Passion Works Against You 6 Traits That Set Top Business Leaders Apart Why Managers Should Reveal Their Failures Related reading from the Working Knowledge Archives Looking Up and Looking Out: Career... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

June 2020 (Revised October 2020)
Case

What Went Wrong with Boeing's 737 Max?

By: William W. George and Amram Migdal

This case describes the development of the Boeing 737 Max airplane model and the events leading up to two tragic plane crashes, in which a total of 346 people died: the crash of Lion Air flight 610 on October 29, 2018, in Indonesia, and the crash of Ethiopian Airlines... View Details

Keywords: Communication; Communication Intention and Meaning; Communication Strategy; Forms of Communication; Announcements; Decision Making; Decision Choices and Conditions; Judgments; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Globalization; Global Strategy; Governance; Corporate Accountability; Governance Controls; Human Resources; Resignation and Termination; Leadership; Leadership Style; Management; Business or Company Management; Crisis Management; Management Practices and Processes; Management Skills; Management Style; Management Systems; Risk Management; Time Management; Markets; Demand and Consumers; Digital Platforms; Supply and Industry; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Industry Structures; Operations; Product Development; Organizations; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Outcome or Result; Failure; Success; Planning; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Relationships; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Safety; Strategy; Transportation; Air Transportation; Aerospace Industry; Air Transportation Industry; Africa; Ethiopia; Asia; Indonesia; North and Central America; United States; Seattle; Chicago

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31 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

The New CEO’s Wrong Message

more power you have, the harder it is to use. While several of the challenges may appear familiar, we have discovered that nothing in a leader's background, even running a large business within his company, fully prepares him to be CEO.... View Details

Keywords: by Michael E. Porter, Jay W. Lorsch & Nitin Nohria

30 Dec 2013
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Articles of 2013

Most Popular Articles 2013 How to Spot a Liar Key linguistic cues can help reveal dishonesty during business negotiations, whether it's a flat-out lie or a deliberate omission of key information, according to research by Lyn M. Van Swol,... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

09 Feb 2004
Research & Ideas

Got a New Strategy? Now Make it Happen

Despite widespread rhetoric about the need for organizational agility, an astonishing number of businesses stay stuck in neutral when they need to implement a new strategy. Consider the situation that Lynne Camp faced in July 2000. Camp,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Beer & Russell A. Eisenstat

19 Oct 2022
Op-Ed

Cofounder Courtship: How to Find the Right Mate—for Your Startup

you likely did not have when you were colleagues at a business where someone else was accountable for the overall successes and failures and, likely, making more strategic decisions than you were privy to.... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

December 1997 (Revised October 2008)
Case

Wolfgang Keller at Konigsbrau-TAK (A)

By: John J. Gabarro

Wolfgang Keller, manager of the Ukrainian subsidiary of a German beer company, faces a managerial dilemma. His subordinate, Dmitri Brodsky, is a talented and experienced commercial director who is not meeting his goals expediently and often requires considerable... View Details