life experience - Publications - Faculty & Research

Career Coach

Eileen Stephan

Eileen offers over 20 years of professional experience in recruiting, career management and career coaching in both the corporate and academic worlds. Her most recent position as Global Head of Graduate Recruitment and Program Management... View Details

Keywords: Education; Commercial Banking; Financial Services (All); Investment Management; Financial Services (All); Investment Banking; Financial Services (All); Private Equity; Financial Services (All); Venture Capital; Financial Services (All); Hospitality; Retail; Social Enterprise

23 May 2016
Blog Post

Advice for Prospective Students from Africa

family in the U.S. at the time. After graduating from college I had a technical background, experience as a management consultant, and a keen passion to become an entrepreneur and a change-maker in Africa. But I didn’t have any business... View Details

10 Jun 2019
Blog Post

What I Did Differently Before Reapplying to HBS

I first applied to HBS through the 2+2 program when I was a senior in college. I had good grades, did well on my GMAT, and had two great mentors to write references letters for me. I worked hard on the application, and was disappointed when I didn't get in. HBS was the... View Details

November 2006 (Revised March 2007)
Case

Liz Claiborne and the New Working Woman

By: Anthony Mayo and Mark Benson

At age 47, with two decades of experience as a lead designer for a Fortune 500 fashion company, Liz Claiborne put her life savings on the line to form Liz Claiborne, Inc., a partnership that included her husband. A decade later, in 1986, Claiborne was CEO of her own... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Entrepreneurship; Business History; Leadership; Gender; Brands and Branding; Personal Development and Career; Apparel and Accessories Industry

Educators

Purchase

Strategic Brew simulates real life challenges facing the strategist. It allows users to experience and internalize the process of strategy formulation, execution, and communication in a simulated context and to see how these processes interplay with other... View Details

Career Coach

Michele Chambliss

Michele’s over 20 years of experience as an engineer, management consultant, and strategic advisor bring a unique perspective to her work in student and alumni career coaching. Ranging from the strategic (who am I and what do I want to be... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Technology

2025
Working Paper

Too Much, Too Soon? Early Funding, Technological Unconventionality, and Innovation Capabilities

By: Harsh Ketkar and Maria Roche

The availability of financial resources significantly shapes firm innovation outcomes, especially for early-stage, innovation-focused technology firms. However, prior research has provided conflicting findings about this relationship: On the one hand, resource... View Details

Keywords: Startups; Technology Strategy; Novelty; Unconventionality; Resource Constraints; Early Stage Firms; Business Startups; Technological Innovation; Entrepreneurial Finance

Citation

SSRN

Read Now

Career Coach

Michele Biamonte

Michele (HGSE, Adult Development '05) combines her professional experience in finance, talent management and higher ed admin to help students and alumni optimize their self-assessment, career exploration and personal branding process. She... View Details

Keywords: Education; Commercial Banking; Financial Services (All); Investment Banking; Financial Services (All); Investment Management; Financial Services (All)

30 Jun 2023
Blog Post

Finding Pride

their names: My friends Jeff Eisberg (MBA 1979), one of our founding members; Bart Rubenstein (MBA 1979); Raul Companioni (MBA 1980); Bob Anderson (MBA 1982); Jim Savage (MBA 1977); Paul Williamson (MBA 1983); and Phil Kanner, life... View Details

21 Jul 2016
Blog Post

Coming Out and Finding Acceptance at HBS

members of our section could sign up for 30-minute slots to tell us about themselves. Bravely, she kicked off the sessions by talking about her own experience with weight loss. Another section mate used the forum to talk about how her... View Details

04 Jan 2010
Research & Ideas

Best of HBS Working Knowledge 2009

organization, join the club. Despite the mantra that goals are good, the process of setting beneficial goals is harder than it looks. New research by HBS professor Max H. Bazerman and colleagues explores the hidden cost when stretch goals are misguided. Q&A.... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

05 Oct 2021
Blog Post

First-Gen Voices: Eric Westphal on Tapping into the Global Alumni Network & Making a Difference Across Borders

alumni-founded e-commerce startup for his HBS internship. Yet what might seem like a direct entrepreneurial path was anything but. Westphal’s life and career have crossed country lines, cultures, and industries, and continue to lead him... View Details

15 Sep 2020
Blog Post

One Month into the New MS/MBA Biotech

Harvard’s new MS/MBA Biotechnology: Life Sciences joint degree program confers an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Master of Science from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Medical School in the Harvard Department... View Details

04 Mar 2022
Blog Post

Advice from My HBS Career Journey in Renewable Energy

our wind, solar, and battery storage development efforts in a few different regions. I got a lot of really amazing experience from an operator perspective, and I learned about how renewable energy projects are built and all of the... View Details

14 Apr 2016
Blog Post

What I Learned at SVMP

The Summer Venture in Management Program (SVMP) at HBS is a one week management training program for rising college seniors. It’s designed to increase diversity and opportunity in business education, and give college students a sneak peek into View Details

Article

Technology, Identity, and Inertia: Through the Lens of 'The Digital Photography Company'

By: Mary Tripsas

Organizations often experience difficulty when pursuing new technology. Large bodies of research have examined the behavioral, social, and cognitive forces that underlie this phenomenon; however, the role of an organization's identity remains relatively unexplored.... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Disruptive Innovation; Organizational Culture; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Identity; Perception; Technology Adoption

Citation

Find at Harvard

Read Now

Stefan Thomke (sthomke@hbs.edu), an authority on the management of innovation, is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He has worked with firms on product, process, and... View Details

Research Summary

The Exercise and Development of Leadership

My research in this stream contributes to three recent trends in leadership scholarship. The first is the resurgence of a perspective less preoccupied with leaders' impact on organizational performance and more with their function as sources and symbols of the... View Details

26 Oct 2016
Blog Post

From Product Development to Business School

stopped pursuing the technology and set out on developing our own solution, a move that—I’m sure—crushed the team at the laboratory: watching what they thought was a sure partner and lucrative contract slip through their fingers. This is why I decided to come to... View Details

10 Jul 2018
Blog Post

Embracing Entrepreneurship & the Asian American Community

How I incorporated my experience in the Asian American community at HBS into co-founding Fish Sauce. Wilson Kyi (MBA '18) graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering and worked... View Details

Publications