Idea Generation - Publications - Faculty & Research

02 Apr 2024
Research & Ideas

Employees Out Sick? Inside One Company's Creative Approach to Staying Productive

Conquered Fast Fashion—and Forged a New Business Model Have We Seen the Peak of Just-in-Time Inventory Management? Feedback or ideas to share? Email the Working Knowledge team at hbswk@hbs.edu. Image: Illustration created using images... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Fashion

07 Jun 2023
HBS Case

3 Ways to Gain a Competitive Advantage Now: Lessons from Amazon, Chipotle, and Facebook

capital.” What is a competitive advantage? Some industries, such as airlines, may have low profit margins, while others, such as pharmaceuticals, have higher ones—but within each of those industries, some firms are better at generating... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

06 Jul 2016
Research & Ideas

The Truth About Authentic Leaders

also challenged older models of leadership, including the “great man theory” and competency-based leadership models. Previous generations of business people spent more time trying to “market” themselves as leaders, rather than undertaking... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George

26 Sep 2023
Research & Ideas

Unpacking That Icky Feeling of 'Shopping' for Diverse Job Candidates

the more community-oriented platforms generally attracted more junior-level professionals. “In hiring junior-level talent, you're overly reliant on your own internal labor markets to develop and promote those people,” Jackson advises.... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

14 Feb 2023
HBS Case

Is Sweden Still 'Sweden'? A Liberal Utopia Grapples with an Identity Crisis

Sweden has long seemed like a social-welfare capitalist dream come true, where companies and labor unions collaborate in harmony with government support. Swedish citizens are among the wealthiest in the world, and they enjoy publicly provided health insurance and other... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

04 Oct 2010
Research & Ideas

Introverts: The Best Leaders for Proactive Employees

We often expect corporate executives to conform to certain extroverted CEO stereotypes: C for charismatic, E for effusive, and O for outgoing. To wit: Virgin Group chairman Richard Branson, who very publicly flew around the world in a hot air balloon; former View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

07 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Digital Transformation: A New Roadmap for Success

different generations in the workforce: digital natives, who grew up with digital tools; digital immigrants, who are open to learning and changing; and digital refugees, who avoid digital tools they view as unsettling and scary. While not... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

01 Nov 2017
What Do You Think?

What Are the Real Lessons of the Wells Fargo Case?

would then benchmark the company against those “which have truly acted in accordance with their vision and values over 10+ years to get ideas for what might work at Wells Fargo.” As if that were not enough, he then proposed a question... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Banking

26 Jun 2007
First Look

First Look: June 26, 2007

the idea that trading patterns are associated with short-run excess comovement of stock returns. Our findings suggest that multi-factor risk models could be enhanced by adding factors capturing correlated demand. The Invariant Proportion... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

01 Jun 2023
HBS Case

A Nike Executive Hid His Criminal Past to Turn His Life Around. What If He Didn't Have To?

lives and make people choose a completely different path.” Yet incarcerated people typically have low levels of education. About 40 percent lack high school diplomas, more than twice the general population—and the cost of college feels... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Apparel & Accessories

02 Sep 2015
What Do You Think?

What's Wrong With Amazon’s Low-Retention HR Strategy?

(Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2015), especially Chapter 4. Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld, Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace, The New York Times, August 16, 2015, pp. A1 and A20-22. ... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Web Services; Retail; Apparel & Accessories; Consumer Products; Fashion

21 Apr 2023
Research & Ideas

The $15 Billion Question: Have Loot Boxes Turned Video Gaming into Gambling?

and Andrey Simonov, associate professor at Columbia Business School, analyzes the loot box business using data from millions of players. Loot boxes generate $15 billion a year revenue for gaming companies. But 90 percent of that money... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis; Video Game; Media & Broadcasting

13 Oct 2010
Research & Ideas

How Government can Discourage Private Sector Reliance on Short-Term Debt

"gap-filling" idea comes in--the government can dissuade firms from issuing short-term debt by simply making it less attractive to do so. It can accomplish this by issuing more short-term debt (T-bills), raising the yields on... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Financial Services

06 Jun 2011
Research & Ideas

Why Leaders Lose Their Way

politicians, and the general public frequently characterize these leaders as bad people, even calling them evil. Simplistic notions of good and bad only cloud our understanding of why good leaders lose their way, and how this could happen... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George

31 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

How Ben Franklin’s ‘Way to Wealth’ Introduced American Capitalism to the World

of wisdom and many others were made famous by Benjamin Franklin in his 1758 essay known as The Way to Wealth, first published as a sermon delivered by “Father Abraham” in Poor Richard’s Almanack. “I’m interested in how ideas reflect but... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

11 Apr 2024
In Practice

Why Progress on Immigration Might Soften Labor Pains

up the bulk of the US system. In this case, the migrant is the lead actor in their efforts to come to the US, and a firm is not involved. Upon migration, the individual enters into a general population of workers from which firms draw... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

30 Jun 2022
HBS Case

Peloton Changed the Exercise Game. Can the Company Push Through the Pain?

incredible user base,” he says, with 3 million subscribers—four times the number in 2019, despite the problems of 2021. The monthly customer churn rate of lost customers is less than 1 percent, and the videos the company produces are more popular than ever: They now... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Media & Broadcasting; Health; Bicycle

25 Jan 2021
Book

In a Nutshell, Why American Capitalism Succeeded

many US firms in the 20th century and was then exported to corporations in other countries. Its owners helped form General Motors and placed Alfred Sloan at the helm of that firm—which for many years was the nation’s largest enterprise.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Manufacturing

20 Mar 2007
First Look

First Look: March 20, 2007

sales, inventory, and gross margin. We show that our model can be used to benchmark retailers' performance in sales, inventory, and gross margin simultaneously. Finally, we show that our model can be used to generate sales forecasts even... View Details