Publications

November 2022
Case

Goonj: Growing in the Face of a Pandemic

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Priyank Narayan

Founded by the husband and wife team of Anshu and Meenakshi Gupta in 1999, Goonj had quickly emerged as one of the leading disaster relief and rural development organizations in India. Their main mode of development was through providing a clothing kit to the village... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Management; Family Business; Natural Disasters; Social Issues; Entrepreneurship; Operations; Business and Community Relations; Strategy; India

18 Jun 2024
Research & Ideas

What Your Non-Binary Employees Need to Do Their Best Work

beyond.” You Might Also Like: Breaking Through the Self-Doubt That Keeps Talented Women from Leading Want to Make Diversity Stick? Break the Cycle of Sameness Career Advice for Minorities and Women: Sharing Your Identity Can Open Doors... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

November 2013 (Revised January 2014)
Supplement

Man Jit Singh at Sony Entertainment Television (B)

By: Linda A. Hill, Dana M. Teppert and Allison J. Wigen

Supplement to (A) case: Explores the role of CEO Man Jit Singh and his senior management committee in leading Multi Screen Media Pvt. Ltd. (formerly SET Pvt. Ltd.), a leading television broadcaster in India. Describes Singh's decision to evaluate employees based on... View Details

Keywords: Performance Appraisals; Performance Management; Performance Evaluation; Leadership Style; Managerial Roles; Organizational Culture; Groups and Teams; Management Teams; Change Management; Decision Making; Emerging Markets; Media and Broadcasting Industry; India

February 2025
Case

Luca de Meo at Renault Group (A) (Abridged)

By: Emily Truelove, Linda A. Hill and Lydia Begag

When Luca de Meo became CEO of Renault Group in 2020, the 122-year-old French automaker faced financial challenges and the double technological disruption of the automotive industry: the shift to electric vehicles (EVs) and the rise of software-defined vehicles (SDVs).... View Details

In January 2012, H-E-B Grocery Co., a private retail chain with stores located in Texas and Mexico, was introducing its Healthy at H-E-B program to its customers. The program, which started with the company's employees a few years earlier, was an effort to... View Details

02 Jun 2022
Research & Ideas

Blissful Thinking: When It Comes to Finding Happiness, 'Your Dreams Are Liars'

success, which leads you to burnout. And it’s based on the mistaken idea that you can actually find ultimate satisfaction through success. Happiness science helps people break that cycle because it helps them to understand the nature of... View Details

Keywords: by Dan Morrell

November 2021 (Revised January 2022)
Case

Nicole M. Jones and The Hangar℠: Delta Air Lines' Global Innovation Center

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2016, Nicole M. Jones was hired to lead The Hangar, Delta Air Lines’ new innovation center in Atlanta, Georgia. Delta’s leadership had intended for The Hangar to catalyze a new approach to innovation at the company. After conducting three months of research on... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Lab; Breakthrough Innovation; Biometric Technology; Innovation and Invention; Leadership; Innovation and Management; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Georgia (state, US)

06 Feb 2025
Video

What Makes Deion Sanders an Effective Leader?

Research Summary

Microwedges: Challenging power one small opening at a time [Dissertation, job market paper]

Based on a 31-month qualitative inductive study of multidisciplinary change teams, I introduce the concept of the “microwedge”—a small action or series of actions by team members that allows the team to examine their own assumptions so that they can begin to engage... View Details

20 Dec 2019
Blog Post

Aspa Lekka (MBA 2020) Talks Dreams of Becoming a CEO, Handball, and Her Hometown in Greece

Aspa Lekka (MBA 2020) was a member of the Greek National Team for handball. Upon realizing she had global ambitions of competing in a larger world, she ventured out to Berlin to join a startup as a business analyst despite her lack of... View Details

December 2017
Supplement

Bega Cheese: Bidding to Bring Vegemite Back Home

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Lauren G. Pickle

In January 2017, the leadership team of Bega Cheese—the Australian dairy company—was considering a bid for Mondelēz International’s Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) grocery business which included several leading consumer brands (Vegemite—the iconic Australian spread,... View Details

Article

Why Leadership Training Fails—and What to Do about It

By: Michael Beer, Magnus Finnström and Derek Schrader

U.S. corporations spend enormous amounts of money—some $456 billion globally in 2015 alone—on employee training and education, but they aren't getting a good return on their investment. People soon revert to old ways of doing things, and company performance doesn't... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership Development; Organizational Design; Employees; Business Processes; United States

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2013
Working Paper

J. Richard Hackman (1940-2013)

By: Ruth Wageman and Teresa M. Amabile

When J. Richard Hackman died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 8, 2013, psychology lost a giant. Six and a half feet tall, with an outsize personality to match, Richard was the leading scholar in two distinct areas: work design and team effectiveness. In both... View Details

Keywords: Social Psychology; Organizational Design; Groups and Teams; Personal Development and Career; Education Industry; Cambridge

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Kristin Mugford is the Melvin Tukman Senior Lecturer of Business Administration in the Finance Unit at the Harvard Business School and the Senior Associate Dean for Culture and Community. She previously served as Faculty Chair for field-based learning and... View Details

November 1993 (Revised November 1994)
Case

Molding the Impossible: the NYPRO/Vistakon Disposable Contact Lens Project

By: Clayton M. Christensen

NYPRO, Inc., one of the world's leading manufacturers of plastic injection-molded products, is asked by the Vistakon Division of Johnson & Johnson to manufacture molds that Vistakon will use to produce disposable contact lenses. The required dimensional tolerances for... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Engineering; Management Practices and Processes; Product Development; Production; Groups and Teams; Manufacturing Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

July 2013
Case

Slicing Pie with a Razor: Ockham Technologies' Founding Agreement

By: Noam Wasserman and Yael Braid

Ockham Technologies' three founders are about to craft their founding agreement and split the equity among themselves. Uncertainty lingers over each member's future contributions, though—how is the team to devise a durable and effective split? Jim Triandiflou and Ken... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Conflict Management; Governing and Advisory Boards; Employees; Management Teams; Product Development; Technology Industry

March 2017 (Revised July 2019)
Case

Interline Brands: Don't Stop Believing

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Ricardo Andrade

Interline Brands, a leading distributor of residential housing maintenance and repair parts and equipment in the U.S., had just held its November 2014 board meeting. The meeting had been productive but not without some soul searching for both the company’s management... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity Exit; Consumer Goods; IPO; Private Equity; Initial Public Offering; Decision Choices and Conditions

March 2023
Supplement

Innovation at Google Ads: The Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL) (B)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2018, Ana Owczarzak was appointed to lead Google Ads' new innovation and accelerator team - the Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL). The purpose of SAIL was to offer testing and incubation services for individuals within Google Ads who were developing new... View Details

Keywords: Innovation Leadership; Organizational Culture; Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Advertising Industry; United States