Business Failures - Publications - Faculty & Research

19 Oct 2022
Op-Ed

Cofounder Courtship: How to Find the Right Mate—for Your Startup

you likely did not have when you were colleagues at a business where someone else was accountable for the overall successes and failures and, likely, making more strategic decisions than you were privy to.... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

31 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

The New CEO’s Wrong Message

more power you have, the harder it is to use. While several of the challenges may appear familiar, we have discovered that nothing in a leader's background, even running a large business within his company, fully prepares him to be CEO.... View Details

Keywords: by Michael E. Porter, Jay W. Lorsch & Nitin Nohria

24 Feb 2021
Lessons from the Classroom

What History's Biggest Wars Teach Us About Leading in Peace

for corporate leaders and entrepreneurs. After all, leadership challenges, strategic choices, and high-stakes negotiations are constants not only in conflicts among nations, but in the business world, too, he points out. So View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

Web

Topics - HBS Working Knowledge

Plants (2) Failure (19) Fairness (9) Family Business (26) Family Ownership (6) Family and Family Relationships (10) Film Entertainment (1) Finance (604) Financial Condition (18) Financial Crisis (19)... View Details

01 Sep 2023
News

Startup Success Beyond Silicon Valley

Professor Paul Gompers visited Endeavor Saudi Arabia, a nonprofit that promotes startups in emerging markets. Pictured are Alpana Thapar and Fares Khrais (both of the Middle East and North Africa Research Center), Gompers, Lateefa Alwaalan (Endeavor Saudi Arabia), and... View Details

Keywords: Jennifer Mele

29 Jan 2018
Book

How 'Teaming' Saved 33 Lives in the Chilean Mining Disaster

is in process. Teaming, she says, is essential to organizational learning. In her new book Extreme Teaming: Lessons in Complex, Cross-Sector Leadership, Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: by Amy C. Edmondson; Mining

10 May 2021
Research & Ideas

Who Has Potential? For Many White Men, It’s Often Other White Men

the partners worried the high turnover was damaging the firm’s competitive edge, according to research by Robin Ely, the Diane Doerge Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School,... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Web

Human Behavior & Decision-Making - Faculty & Research

Human Behavior & Decision-Making Human Behavior & Decision-Making 2014 Book The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leaders See By: Max Bazerman This book will examine the common failure to notice critical information due to bounded... View Details

08 Sep 2022
Book

Gen Xers and Millennials, It’s Time To Lead. Are You Ready?

for Boomers to step aside, and for the new generation to step up,” says George, now an executive fellow at Harvard Business School. “They are the leaders we need.” Many Baby Boomers in the US are rejecting the idea of a quiet Florida... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

10 Mar 2002
Research & Ideas

Breakthrough Negotiation: Don’t Leave It On the Table

In a new book, Breakthrough International Negotiation: How Great Negotiators Transformed the World's Toughest Post-Cold War Conflicts, Harvard Business School professor Michael Watkins dissects the art of give-and-take. This excerpt... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Watkins

29 Dec 2014
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Articles and Research Papers of 2014

work prestige. And in Venture Investors Prefer Funding Handsome Men, we discover, with regret, that VC prefers to give money to men—and good looking men at that. But sometimes business glory goes to those who succeed the old-fashioned... View Details

31 Oct 2018
What Do You Think?

What is the Function of Fear in Leadership?

high standards, commanded great respect, and the fear he created was entirely purposeful and positive.” John Hudson stated, “(It is) hard to find a business without fear of something in its bag of incentives, be it fear of failure, fear... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

13 Feb 2020
Book

Open Your Organization to Honest Conversations

underlying reason why: Leaders often get stuck in echo chambers that merely reinforce their own ideas, says Harvard Business School Professor Michael Beer. Meanwhile, lower-level employees are often fully aware of the problems that plague... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

11 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Cheap, Fast, and In Control: How Tech Aids Innovation

What are some of the new "star" technologies and how can the average business integrate them in order to conduct low-cost, rapid testing? We need to appreciate that new knowledge comes as much from View Details

Keywords: by Wendy Guild

02 Apr 2020
What Do You Think?

What Are Lessons for Leaders from This Black Swan Crisis?

years The greatest COVID-19 failure was clearly the failure to adapt in time to an emerging threat.” Bill Wallace said, “I’m calling the COVID-19 pandemic a White Swan: inevitable through global mobility and... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

October 2003 (Revised April 2005)
Case

Innovation Corrupted: The Rise and Fall of Enron

By: Malcolm S. Salter

Presents an historical overview of Enron's rise and fall and summarizes what is currently known about (1) the evolution of Enron's business model, (2) the organizational processes Enron officials relied on to drive and monitor the business, (3) emergent behavior... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Behavior; Governing and Advisory Boards; Success; Transformation; Failure; Business Processes; Energy Industry; United States

Citation

Find at Harvard

12 Aug 2019
Research & Ideas

How Scale Changes a Manager's Responsibilities

I've experienced first-hand the excitement and pain that come as companies with a few founders scale to hundreds or thousands of employees. At somewhere around 75 to 100 employees, running a business becomes more complicated, demanding... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

08 Mar 2019
Research & Ideas

Seven Negotiation Lessons from Amazon's HQ Disaster in Queens

As Amazon’s stunning pullout from New York fades into the news archives, its potent lessons for business negotiators risk being lost. Highly promising deals in diffuse multiparty settings with many potential spoilers, like Amazon’s... View Details

Keywords: by James K. Sebenius; Real Estate; Construction

January 2000 (Revised March 2000)
Case

Cachet Technologies

By: Paul A. Gompers and Howard Reitz

Describes the decision facing Danny Lewin, Jonathan Seelig, and Tom Leighton, the founders of Cachet Technologies, an MIT spin-out. The firm has done poorly in the annual MIT business plan competition and the founders have to decide whether to continue. View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Business Startups; Business Plan; Failure; Cooperative Ownership; Business Strategy; Financial Services Industry