Cognition - Publications - Faculty & Research

18 May 2016
Research & Ideas

Unethical Amnesia: Why We Tend to Forget Our Own Bad Behavior

have a weaker memory of their own unethical rather than ethical experience,” the researchers write. “But when taking a third-person perspective (which is less threatening to their own moral self-image), type of behavior doesn’t impact their memory.” Does View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

23 Mar 2022
Blog Post

Learning Curve: The Brother-and-Sister Team Behind a New Edtech Nonprofit

poverty,” Gupta says. What they lack are the awareness, the information, and the tools required to take a more active role in supporting their children’s early cognitive development—all of which are gaps that Rocket Learning aims to fill.... View Details

Dorothy A. Leonard

Dorothy Leonard*, the William J. Abernathy Professor of Business Administration Emerita, joined the Harvard faculty in 1983 after teaching for three years at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has taught MBA courses in... View Details

Keywords: computer; consulting; education industry; electronics; federal government; high technology; information technology industry; software; venture capital industry

13 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

Why Your Company Wants to be a 'Cognitive Referent' (Hint: SpaceX)

bigger than just creating the market. They need to epitomize the market. “If they become the cognitive referent, they gain an unequal share of the gains from doing so” “The goal is not only to make sure that the product category takes... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Aerospace; Food & Beverage; Retail

23 Oct 2019
Blog Post

How to Talk Gooder in Business and Life

cognitive demands on your brain—we suffer from egocentrism because our minds are too busy monitoring our own behavior and the behavior of those around us to fully understand what others are thinking. What does egocentrism trip us up on... View Details

08 Apr 2019
Sharpening Your Skills

The Life of Luxury and How to Sell It

maker better off emphasizing performance over luxury? Are luxury and sustainability mutually exclusive? And just what is the “new aspirational lifestyle?” Here is what they found. A Good Place to Start The ‘Luxury Prime’: How Luxury Changes People What effect does... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Auto; Retail; Fashion

Blog

Is AI Coming for Your Job?

cognitive work. Many people in such roles have been insulated from automation and globalization. That is about to change. The change is likely to follow a path similar to one a character in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises used to... View Details

01 Oct 2014
What Do You Think?

Is Too Much Focus a Problem?

Summing Up What Are the Antidotes to Too Much Focus? Individuals and organizations suffer from too much focus much of the time. That was the sense of the majority of responses to this month's column. Respondents didn't stop there. They described why it happens and what... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

05 May 2008
Research & Ideas

Connecting with Consumers Using Deep Metaphors

Think of famous brands you know: Hallmark cards and Coca-Cola soft drinks, for example. What do these products have in common for consumers? An emotional meaning that taps into thoughts and feelings related to the positive aspects of transformation, according to Gerald... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Consumer Products

1996
Book

Creativity in Context

By: T. M. Amabile

Keywords: Creativity; Theory; Research; Motivation and Incentives; Situation or Environment; Organizational Culture; Measurement and Metrics; Personal Characteristics; Cognition and Thinking; Performance; Performance Evaluation; Social Psychology

Citation

Find at Harvard

29 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

The $1 Trillion Link Between Mental Health and Economic Productivity

depression exacerbate poverty because it’s hard to work let alone land a job when you’re depressed. At 2:25 she talks about some of the more successful mental health interventions in third-world countries, such as a cognitive behavioral... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

07 Aug 2013
What Do You Think?

Is There Still a Role for Judgment in Decision-Making?

Summing Up What is the Proper Role of Judgment in Decision-Making? There is a seemingly universal (and currently popular) quest for rational processes—what Hamilton Carvalho terms "cognitive repairs"—to counter the foibles of human judgment. Nevertheless, the... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

25 Jul 2013
Research & Ideas

Why Unqualified Candidates Get Hired Anyway

People make snap judgments all the time. That woman in the sharp business suit must be intelligent and successful; the driver who just cut me off is a rude jerk. These instant assessments, when we attribute a person's behavior to innate characteristics rather than... View Details

Keywords: by Anna Secino; Education; Employment

01 Dec 2023
News

Alumni and Faculty Books and Podcasts

Edited by Margie Kelley Alumni Books The World’s Littlest Book on Climate: Ten Facts in Ten Minutes About CO2 By Mike Nelson, Pieter Tans, and Michael Banks (MBA 1983) Independently Published In this updated edition of the world’s smallest book on the world’s biggest... View Details

Keywords: podcasts

26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

focus, setup minimization, etc. The products and services characteristic of our modern economy are far too complex for any one person to understand how they work. It is cognitively overwhelming. Therefore, organizations must have some... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

06 Jun 2008
What Do You Think?

Why Don’t Managers Think Deeply?

Summing Up A since deceased, highly-regarded fellow faculty member, Anthony (Tony) Athos, occasionally sat on a bench on a nice day at the Harvard Business School, apparently staring off into space. When asked what he was doing, ever the iconoclast, he would say,... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

03 Jan 2011
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Articles of 2010

customers on social networks such as Facebook. Professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski provides a fresh look into the interpersonal dynamics of these sites and offers guidance for approaching these tantalizing markets The 'Luxury Prime': How Luxury Changes People What effect... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

01 Mar 2008
News

THE 6 MYTHS OF CREATIVITY

that they’ll make a cognitive association that incubates overnight and shows up as a creative idea the next day. One day’s happiness often predicts the next day’s creativity. Competition Beats Collaboration. The most creative teams are... View Details

Keywords: Arts, Sports, Language, Driving, and Other Schools; Educational Services; Management

02 Oct 2006
Research & Ideas

Negotiating in Three Dimensions

approach essentially joins two initially separated intellectual traditions, the descriptive and the prescriptive. For many years, cognitive and social scientists performed careful laboratory experiments to determine what subjects actually... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Article

Learning by Thinking: The Role of Reflection in Individual Learning

By: Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary P. Pisano and Bradley R. Staats

It is common wisdom that practice makes perfect. And, in fact, we find evidence that when given a choice between practicing a task and reflecting on their previously accumulated practice, most people opt for the former. We argue in this paper that this preference is... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Cognition and Thinking; Practice; Experience and Expertise