Publications

Article

Beacon and Warning: Sherman Kent, Scientific Hubris, and the CIA's Office of National Estimates

By: J. Peter Scoblic

Would-be forecasters have increasingly extolled the predictive potential of Big Data and artificial intelligence. This essay reviews the career of Sherman Kent, the Yale historian who directed the CIA’s Office of National Estimates from 1952 to 1967, with an eye toward... View Details

Keywords: National Security; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Forecasting and Prediction; History

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05 Aug 2015
What Do You Think?

What Happened to the ‘Innovation, Disruption, Technology’ Dividend?

How Patient Should We Be In Waiting for the Tech Productivity Dividend? Respondents to this month’s column cited a number of factors accounting for the fact that there is no discernable increase in the rate of improvement in human... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology; Technology

September 2020
Article

Creativity, Artificial Intelligence, and a World of Surprises

By: Teresa M. Amabile

In recent years, progress has been made toward AI Creativity, which I define as the production of highly novel, yet appropriate, ideas, problem solutions, or other outputs by autonomous machines. I argue that organizational researchers of creativity and innovation... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; AI Creativity; Computer Science; Organizational Behavior; Psychology; Creativity; Technological Innovation; AI and Machine Learning

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January 2013 (Revised March 2017)
Case

CloudFlare, Inc.: Running Hot?

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alex Godden

In July 2012, the cofounders of CloudFlare, a Silicon Valley startup that protects websites and accelerates their traffic, are considering the implications of five employees' resignations over the prior three months. Was this natural attrition for a high-tech venture... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Structure; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Growth Management; Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Resignation and Termination; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; California

2008
Chapter

Knowledge Work, Craft Work, and Calling

Social critics have often complained that industrial revolution management transfers control of a job away from workers, encourages human exploitation in pursuit of cost minimization, and alienates workers from their labor. But the arrangements of work that have been... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Working Conditions; Production; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Management Practices and Processes; Employees

October 2023
Case

Making Progress at Progress Software (A)

By: Katherine Coffman, Hannah Riley Bowles and Alexis Lefort

In this case, the Human Capital team at Progress Software has identified that some employees have a hard time understanding how to advance within Progress. This realization leads the team to develop several major people-process innovations: the introduction of... View Details

Keywords: Leading Change; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Prejudice and Bias; Personal Development and Career; Human Capital; Employee Relationship Management; Technology Industry; Bulgaria

August 2022
Case

In-Q-Tel: Innovation On A Mission

By: Joshua Lev Krieger and Josh Lerner

In 2022, the leaders of In-Q-Tel (IQT) considered what was next for the unique mission-driven organization. Since 1999, IQT had one mission: to be the most sophisticated source of strategic technical knowledge and capabilities to the U.S. government and its allies. IQT... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; National Security; Technological Innovation; Research; Geopolitical Units; Risk Management; Recruitment; Growth and Development Strategy; Venture Capital; Knowledge Management; Information Industry; Banking Industry

28 Sep 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Digital Interactivity: Unanticipated Consequences for Markets, Marketing, and Consumers

Keywords: by John A. Deighton & Leora Kornfeld

Dafna Bearson

Dafna Bearson is a doctoral candidate in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. Her research interests lie at the intersection of strategy and innovation. Specifically, her research focuses on intellectual property commercialization strategy in startups... View Details

Keywords: high technology; high technology; high technology

Trends and Predictors of Biomedical Research Quality, 1990-2015

This work leverages the strengths of expert human assessments of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) included in Cochrane reviews with data science techniques to build a comprehensive database on biomedical research quality. The data links the full-text and... View Details

2022
Working Paper

An Anatomy of Performance Monitoring

By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo

Performance monitoring is a mainstay management tool in most organizations. Yet we still know little about whether—and why—better monitoring yields better performance in practice. To shed light on these questions, we study the introduction of a performance monitoring... View Details

Keywords: Performance Monitoring; Worker Skills; Skill Depreciation; Managerial Inattention; On-the-job Training; Productivity; Multitasking; Quick Serve Restaurants; Performance Evaluation; Employees; Competency and Skills; Training; Performance Productivity; Management; Information Technology; Food and Beverage Industry; Puerto Rico

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In this episode, host Gautam Mukunda is joined by President Biden's nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, and Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and award-winning author, Tsedal Neeley to discuss how humans will thrive in... View Details

August 2018
Background Note

Note on Hackathons

By: Ethan Bernstein

Organizations have often sought to meet the pressures of rapid change through novel ways of managing human capital to boost innovation and productivity. Hackathons have emerged as one of the latest approaches to do just that. How can those responsible for managing... View Details

Keywords: Hackathon; Crowdsourcing; Hack; Innovation; Productivity; Minimum Viable Product; Time; Transparency; Bootcamp; Design; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Management; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Technology; Technology Industry

21 Feb 2019
Blog Post

Machine Learning and Behavioral Economics

“We have a lot of interesting emerging technologies,” he says, “but maybe, too often, we overlook human behavior.” Upon graduation, Bracaglia’s internship at Google segued into a full-time position working within YouTube. “Google is the... View Details

14 Mar 2019
News

You Might Be a Robot. This Is Not a Joke.

October 2023
Case

Vida Health: Transforming Chronic Disease Treatment

By: William Sahlman and Nicole Tempest Keller

San Francisco based Vida Health, founded by Stephanie Tilenius, former vice president of Commerce and Payments at Google, was a B2B digital health startup focused on the treatment of cardiometabolic conditions, such as diabetes and obesity. Its innovative digital... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Health Care and Treatment; Product Marketing; Risk and Uncertainty; Technological Innovation; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States; California; San Francisco

April 1985 (Revised November 1987)
Case

Sun Hydraulics Corp. (A)

Involves the design and creation of a company with no formally-defined hierarchy. Describes the steps the founder takes to avoid the organizational politics he perceives as crushing the human contributions they were designed to harness. View Details

Keywords: Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Engineering; Business Startups; Technology Industry

January–February 2025
Article

Why People Resist Embracing AI

By: Julian De Freitas

The success of AI depends not only on its capabilities, which are becoming more advanced each day, but on people’s willingness to harness them. Unfortunately, many people view AI negatively, fearing it will cause job losses, increase the likelihood that their personal... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Technology Adoption; Perception