Publications

11 Feb 2002
Research & Ideas

Secrets of the Successful Businesswoman

as the appointment that you have with the CEO." Striking a balance between work and personal life was one of the five traits of leadership success that McGovern emphasized in her talk at Harvard... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

September 2013
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Laurent Adamowicz and Bon'App

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Juliane Calingo Schwetz and Patricia Bissett Higgins

After a successful career as Chairman and CEO of Paris-based luxury food company Fauchon, Laurent Adamowicz sought to reduce obesity and improve health outcomes. Adamowicz created a mobile application to provide consumers with more accessible and interpretable... View Details

Article

A Head Start on Succession

By: Joseph L. Bower

Our studies of CEO succession over the past several years have shown some improvements in the trends in CEO turnover, often resulting from outside pressures for improved oversight and better corporate governance. The next step in improving CEO succession—and ultimately... View Details

Keywords: Investment Return; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Leadership Development; Management Practices and Processes; Management Succession; Management Teams; Business and Shareholder Relations

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06 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

Skills and Behaviors that Make Entrepreneurs Successful

serial entrepreneurs versus first-time founders. “We’ve always had a hard time being able to identify the skills and behaviors of entrepreneurial leaders,” says HBS Professor Lynda Applegate, who has spent 20 years studying leadership... View Details

Keywords: by HBS Working Knowledge

May 2016
Article

'Both/And' Leadership

By: Wendy K. Smith, Marianne Lewis and Michael Tushman

Leaders face a multitude of strategic paradoxes—contradictory pressures that are too often viewed as "either/or" choices. There are innovation paradoxes, in which the pursuit of new offerings and processes conflicts with the mandate to sustain the tried and... View Details

Keywords: Conflict of Interests; Goals and Objectives; Business Processes

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November 2015 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Cisco Systems: In Search of the Next CEO

By: Boris Groysberg, Sarah L. Abbott, Olivia Hull and J. Yo-Jud Cheng

It’s August 2014 and John Chambers is expected to announce his retirement after 17 years as CEO of global technology giant Cisco Systems. Under Chambers’s leadership, Cisco has grown from $2.2 billion in annual revenues and under 4,000 employees to revenues of $46... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Succession Planning; CEO Succession; Managing Change; Person-organization Fit; Management Succession; Transition; Talent and Talent Management; Change Management; Retirement; Innovation Leadership; Recruitment; Corporate Governance; Experience and Expertise; Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States; San Jose; California

February 2011
Case

Rebecca S. Halstead: Steadfast Leadership

By: Boris Groysberg and Deborah Bell

Reviews Rebecca Halstead's career history, detailing how, through her personal attributes, skills, experiences, challenges, and organizational practices she developed into a successful leader and commander in the U.S. Army. The case profiles her leadership style and... View Details

Keywords: Working Conditions; Groups and Teams; Competitive Strategy; Personal Development and Career; Organizational Culture; Personal Characteristics; Leadership Style; Gender; Power and Influence

03 Oct 2023
What Do You Think?

Do Leaders Learn More From Success or Failure?

led us to a useful conclusion: that a strong culture logically could lead to either success or failure. It was, instead, the presence of values and behaviors—components of its culture—that encouraged openness and adaptability that was... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Research Summary

Transition Leadership

Michael Watkins is developing frameworks, programs, and e-performance tools for helping leaders to take charge in new senior management roles. New leaders' actions during their first few months on the job have a disproportionate impact on their ultimate success or... View Details

July 2023
Case

Schuberg Philis: From Success to Significance

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Daniela Beyersdorfer

The founders of Dutch professional services firm Schuberg Philis, and the new leadership team entrusted with the day-to-day management, must set the path forward in 2019. The company has grown into a €70 million revenue strong IT provider with top ranks in the... View Details

Keywords: Management Succession; Growth Management; Change Management; Transformation; Mission and Purpose; Leadership; Leading Change; Information Technology Industry; Consulting Industry; Europe; Netherlands

April 2011
Article

Why Leaders Don't Learn from Success

By: Francesca Gino and Gary P. Pisano

We argue that for a variety of psychological reasons, it is often much harder for leaders and organizations to learn from success than to learn from failure. Success creates three kinds of traps that often impede deep learning. The first is attribution error or the... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Innovation and Management; Leadership; Failure; Success; Performance Evaluation; Prejudice and Bias

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05 Nov 2007
What Do You Think?

Why Is Succession So Badly Managed?

Summing Up Should CEO succession processes be certified? Respondents to this month's column agree that CEO succession is badly managed, perhaps accounting in large part for the fact that few "inside... View Details

Keywords: Re: James L. Heskett

June 2016
Article

Wicked Problem Solvers: Lessons from Successful Cross-industry Teams

By: Amy C. Edmondson

Companies today increasingly rely on teams that span many industries for radical innovation, especially to solve “wicked problems.” So leaders have to understand how to promote collaboration when roles are uncertain, goals are shifting, expertise and organizational... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Leadership Style; Collaborative Innovation and Invention

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07 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

4+2 = Sustained Business Success

winning companies saw their money multiply nearly tenfold, with total returns to shareholders of 945 percent. By contrast, the average loser produced only 62 percent in total returns to shareholders over the decade. Implementing our formula for View Details

Keywords: by Nitin Nohria, William Joyce & Bruce Roberson

September 2020 (Revised September 2021)
Case

Student Success at Georgia State University (A)

By: Michael W. Toffel, Robin Mendelson and Julia Kelley

Georgia State University had developed a reputation for driving student success by nearly doubling its graduation rate for students of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. It did so while growing its student body and the proportion of Black/African... View Details

2016
Teaching Note

Advanced Leadership Pathways: General Gale Pollock and Services for the Vision Impaired

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Tessa Natanay Hamilton and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Teaching note for case 314029. Following a successful military career as an Army Nurse, achieving rank as Major General, becoming the first female Acting Surgeon General of the Army, and the 22nd Chief of the Army Nurse Corps, Pollock developed a vested interest in... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Education; Insurance Companies; Military; Leadership Skills; Health Care and Treatment; Education; Insurance; Business Startups; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Change Management; Health Industry; Information Technology Industry

February 2016
Teaching Note

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Raymond Jetson's MetroMorphosis and the Effort to Transform Baton Rouge

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Tessa Natanay Hamilton and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Building on his successes as a politician and preacher in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Rev. Raymond Jetson sought to empower Baton Rouge citizens to innovate solutions for their community challenges. After stepping down as the head of the Louisiana Family Recovery Corps,... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Health ＆ Wellness; Communities; Community Impact; Farm; Agriculture; Leading Change; Change Management; Social Entrepreneurship; Business and Community Relations; Louisiana

October 2022 (Revised December 2022)
Case

Reimagining Enel: Enabling Sustainable Progress

By: Michael L. Tushman and Kerry Herman

CEO Francesco Starace is considering what is next for Enel SpA, one of world's largest energy companies. From 2014 to 2022, he has wrought a dramatic transformation at Enel, restructuring the company's business units; redeploying senior talent across functions and... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Leadership And Change Management; Leadership Style; Leadership Succession; Renewables; Energy; Transformation; Renewable Energy; Business Divisions; Digital Transformation; Restructuring; Organizational Structure; Energy Industry; Europe; Latin America; North America; Spain; Italy