Publications

This book chronicles the remarkable metamorphosis of the American salesman from itinerant amateur to trained expert. From the mid-nineteenth century to the eve of World War II, the development of sales management transformed an economy populated by peddlers and... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Employees; Transformation; United States

16 Aug 2004
Research & Ideas

Luxury Isn’t What It Used to Be

Cashing in on the $60 billion global luxury goods market has never been tougher—or more rewarding. Competition is keen. And consumer preferences are constantly shifting, causing the concept of luxury itself to change over time. As a result, the market's most... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Consumer Products

11 Dec 2007
First Look

First Look: December 11, 2007

Working PapersThe Seer of Wellesley Hills: Roger Babson and the Babson Statistical Organization Author:Walter A. Friedman Abstract Roger Babson was a pioneer of the business-forecasting industry in the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

12 Jul 2020
Book

The Harvard Business School Faculty Summer Reader 2020

Laura Morgan Roberts, and David A. Thomas . Race, Work, and Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience, To support black employees, business leaders must challenge biases and help employees be themselves, according to a book... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

30 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

New Paths to Success in Asia

(Nolan will document management lessons from the recent experience of dot-com companies in a forthcoming book, dot vertigo.) An interest in the concept of mentor capitalism brought HBS Professor Dorothy A. Leonard and Professor View Details

Keywords: by Alejandro Reyes & Deborah Blagg

20 Nov 2012
First Look

First Look: November 20

equilibria that give lower utility to the users; and reduce the severity of the coordination problem faced by users. Download the paper: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1677624 Preparatory Power Posing Affects Performance and Outcomes in Social... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2010
Chapter

Leadership and History

Historians have written a lot about business leaders, especially successful ones. In fact, rags-to-riches stories have come to embody the philosophy of America itself, yet the term "business leadership" was rarely used until the early twentieth century. This chapter... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; History; Leadership

2020
Book

American Business History: A Very Short Introduction

By: Walter Friedman

By the early twentieth century, it became common to describe the United States as a "business civilization." President Coolidge in 1925 said, "The chief business of the American people is business." More recently, historian Sven Beckert characterized Henry Ford's... View Details

Keywords: American Economy; Democratic Capitalism; Business History; Economy; Entrepreneurship; United States

2016
Working Paper

Junior Achievement: Training Teenagers for Business Careers after World War II

This article traces the growing popularity of Junior Achievement's "Company Program" in the two decades after World War II. The program provided high school students with the opportunity to form teams and start mini-corporations that would last for most of the school... View Details

Keywords: Management; Human Capital; Age; Training; United States

2007
Working Paper

The Seer of Wellesley Hills: Roger Babson and the Babson Statistical Organization

Roger Babson was a pioneer of the business-forecasting industry in the United States in the early twentieth century. He built the largest private economic forecasting agency in the period and published a great range of economic statistics in his weekly newsletters. As... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Economics; Business History; Newsletters; Personal Development and Career; United States

2013
Book

Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters

The period leading up to the Great Depression witnessed the rise of the economic forecasters, pioneers who sought to use the tools of science to predict the future, with the aim of profiting from their forecasts. This book chronicles the lives and careers of the men... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting And Prediction; Economic History; Economics; History; Risk and Uncertainty; United States

January 2008 (Revised July 2009)
Case

Forecasting the Great Depression

What is proper role of professional economic forecasting in financial decision making? The case presents excerpts from three leading economic forecasters on the eve of, and just after, the stock market crash of October 1929. The first set of excerpts is from Roger... View Details

Keywords: History; Mathematical Methods; Personal Development and Career; Forecasting and Prediction; Financial Crisis

Educators

2014
Book

Business History

By: Walter A. Friedman and Geoffrey Jones

This volume contains a selection of 42 foundational articles on the discipline of business history written between 1934 and the present day by scholars based in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. A wide-ranging editorial introduction describes the... View Details

Keywords: Economic History; Business History; History

January 2019 (Revised December 2020)
Case

Angola Starts Now

By: Jeremy Friedman and Sophus A. Reinert

After five centuries of colonialism, four decades of civil war, an extended experiment with Marxism-Leninism, and nearly four decades of rule by a single man, José Eduardo Dos Santos, Angola finally has a chance to realize its enormous economic potential. A country... View Details

Keywords: Development Economics; Government and Politics; History; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Social Issues; Angola

Educators

23 Feb 2010
First Look

First Look: Feb. 23

http://hbr.org/product/handbook-of-leadership-theory-and-practice/an/12326-HBK-ENG Leadership and History Author:Walter A. Friedman Publication:Chap. 11 in Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice, edited... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

07 Aug 2007
First Look

First Look: August 7, 2007

commencing approximately two years down the road. In the new hiring regime for federal judicial law clerks, by contrast, judges are exhorted to follow a set of start dates for considering and hiring applicants during the fall of the third... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

25 Jul 2006
First Look

First Look: July 25, 2006

Psychological Links to Micro and Macro Organizational Behaviour Authors:M. A. Neale, A. E. Tenbrunsel, T. Galvin, and M. H. Bazerman Publication:In The SAGE Handbook of Organization Studies, 2nd ed. Edited... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2007
Working Paper

Irving Fisher, Economic Forecasting, and the Myth of the Business Cycle

A premier economist of the twentieth century and a founder of neoclassical thought, Irving Fisher was also an active participant in the field of economic forecasting. Fisher made theoretical contributions to the understanding of economic fluctuations, popularized the... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Economics; Business Cycles; Business History; Newspapers; Personal Development and Career