Hard Power - Publications - Faculty & Research

14 Nov 2007
Research & Ideas

Growing CEOs from the Inside

Succession planning is hard work: It must be embraced by the organization and driven by the CEO. In the book, Bower identifies best practices companies can follow to identify, groom, and train internal candidates for the C-suite. We asked... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Employment

13 Nov 2006
Research & Ideas

Science Business: What Happened to Biotech?

property" has been a powerful shaping force in biotech. The idea behind monetization of IP is that you don't need to actually develop a product; you can just develop a piece of IP, and then capture financial returns through licensing... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Biotechnology

23 Jul 2018
Research & Ideas

The Open Office Revolution Has Gone Too Far

only work hard to avoid distraction (by, for example, putting on big headphones) but—because you have an audience at all times—also feel pressure to look really busy. Indeed, all of the cues in open offices that we give off to get focused... View Details

Keywords: Re: Ethan S. Bernstein

13 Feb 2017
Research & Ideas

Paid Search Ads Pay Off for Lesser-Known Restaurants

York, which is great for customers but also means that even some businesses with solid reputations on Yelp can be hard for people to discover,” Luca says. Dai adds: “Going into the project, we weren’t sure exactly what to expect, but our... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Food & Beverage

07 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

How the U.S. Army Develops Leaders

ourselves from our experiences. Second, we progress through a finite series of universal and progressively more complex stages in how we construct our understanding. These two ideas in combination make Kegan's approach to identity development a View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

29 Feb 2016
HBS Case

Bigbelly's Big Bet on the Digital Trash Can

Weiss, a former chief of staff for the mayor of Boston, who now teaches a course at HBS on public entrepreneurship. Hard sell Weiss initially approached Bigbelly looking for a non-technology case about how companies selling to government... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Energy

09 Jul 2013
Research & Ideas

Catching Up With Boards--Jay Lorsch

interested in it. It's easy to see why some people think it's a good idea, because you have another powerful and influential person involved. But there's also a downside. Too often the separate chairman can begin to be more active and try... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner

23 Jul 2001
Research & Ideas

How the Giants of Enterprise Seized the Future

price of success; and, more generally, 3. The American business tradition. 1. Lord Acton taught the world that power corrupts. These giants of enterprise teach us also that power deranges. Think of the word... View Details

Keywords: by Richard S. Tedlow

04 Apr 2019
Cold Call Podcast

Can Mark Zuckerberg Rebuild Trust in Facebook?

else is watching the store, as it were? George: Mark has absolute power. He has over 50 percent of the voting shares and you remember Lord Acton said, "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." And I think he has... View Details

05 Feb 2008
First Look

First Look: February 5, 2008

countries in 1900 and 1913. The evidence presented does not yield robust results that can sustain the hypothesis of persistence effects of legal origin, but it is not powerful enough to reject it either. Then the paper examines if there... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

04 Sep 2007
Research & Ideas

Jumpstarting Innovation: Using Disruption to Your Advantage

or adding new products? Industry Dynamics: Are there fragmented industries where significant value can be delivered through consolidation? Are there shifts in power (e.g., entry or exit of a key player or consolidation of several players)... View Details

Keywords: by Lynda M. Applegate

08 Mar 2004
Research & Ideas

Secret to Success: Go for “Just Enough”

resemble the Brady Bunch. It is hard to understand how other people find the time. And yet these models also raise doubts. You may wonder whether it is ever possible for a Bill Gates to be a "regular guy" at his scale of wealth... View Details

Keywords: by Laura Nash & Howard Stevenson

13 Dec 2010
Research & Ideas

Managing the Support Staff Identity Crisis

initiatives, new equipment, or anything novel that would require significant expenditures. This, of course, brings about hard feelings among employees in other departments that do consider themselves as business results drivers. They... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

24 Oct 2017
Research & Ideas

Tax Reform is on the Front Burner Again. Here’s Why You Should Care

expand the reach of the EITC and using that as a lever for achieving redistribution would potentially be more powerful and popular. It's not something that's [happening], at least from what we've got so far. I find that a little... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

24 Jun 2014
First Look

First Look: June 24

where people are both willing and able to do the hard work that innovative problem solving requires. Collective Genius will not only inspire you; it will give you the concrete, practical guidance you need to build innovation into the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

23 Feb 2009
Research & Ideas

Creative Entrepreneurship in a Downturn

citing the examples of Motorola, Southwest Airlines, Revlon cosmetics, Hewlett-Packard, and MTV. Good ideas are not hard to come by. The more complicated part is to harness the diminishing supply of capital. But capital can still find its... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

01 Mar 2004
Lessons from the Classroom

Mission to Mars: It Really Is Rocket Science

one in which your product had to operate 100 million miles from Earth and perform under a range of conditions which were hard to predict in advance), it was impossible to know up front exactly what form a faster, better, cheaper approach... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

12 Sep 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, September 12, 2017

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53182 September–October 2017 Harvard Business Review The Surprising Power of Online Experiments: Getting the Most Out of A/B and Other Controlled Tests By: Kohavi, Ron, and Stefan H. Thomke... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

20 Dec 2004
Research & Ideas

How an Order Views Your Company

marketing project. Kash Rangan had a strong interest in supply/demand chains, and thought the project presented some interesting opportunities. John Sviokla, with a powerful background in management information systems, joined the team.... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston

06 Jun 2005
Research & Ideas

Microsoft vs. Open Source: Who Will Win?

cost-related reasons, governments back Linux because having access to the source code allows them to verify that sensitive data is treated securely. Binary code makes it hard to figure out who has access to information flowing in a... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

Publications