Word Of Mouth - Publications - Faculty & Research

30 May 2024
News

How to Have Effective Conversations

Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on Spotify More Skydeck episodes Dan Morrell: Hi, this is Dan Morrell, host of Skydeck. Charles Duhigg (MBA 2003) is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and author of the bestselling books The Power of... View Details

06 Feb 2020
Research & Ideas

What We Learned from Reading Jeff Bezos’ Patents

previously in our analysis of his Amazon shareholder letters. 4. Jeff Bezos’ patents are customer-centric For a more granular look at Bezos’ inventions, we performed a word frequency analysis using the... View Details

Keywords: by Tricia Gregg and Boris Groysberg; Retail

01 Jun 2011
News

Who Was George F. Baker?

whose $5 million gift funded construction of Harvard Business School, continued to jealously guard his near anonymity. In a rare 1923 interview, he told a reporter, “Business men of America should reduce... View Details

Keywords: Finance

22 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

When Agreeing to Disagree Is a Good Beginning

certain types of words and phrases stood out. In particular, people responded to negation (“no”) and reasoning language ( “the reason is ” or “because”) negatively, while viewing acknowledgment (which Minson... View Details

Keywords: by Clea Simon, Harvard Gazette

20 Oct 2015
Blog Post

What to Expect Your First Year at HBS

management. Both of those expectations have turned out to be completely wrong. Now that I am entering my second year at HBS, I hope I can impart some of my knowledge and share what you can and can’t expect... View Details

Profile

Ted Obi

joy by simply manipulating their words is no small feat. The ability to transform moods, minds, and hearts is an aspirational goal of mine. What is your favorite childhood memory? My father has 8 siblings,... View Details

05 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

Six Ways to Build Trust in Negotiations

everyone was throwing around the word lifts. Feeling lost, they nominated one of their members to raise his hand and ask for a definition. Almost everyone in the room, including the airline execs they were... View Details

Keywords: by Deepak Malhotra

18 May 2016
Research & Ideas

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

word “taguan.” The researchers banked on the notion that most people have never heard of a taguan, which, FYI, is a type of East Indian flying squirrel. If participants claimed... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

20 May 2024
Blog Post

Get to Know Class Day Student Speaker Erik Roberts

had a stint at an autonomous vehicle infrastructure startup. An MBA, he said, was an opportunity to learn a new problem-solving language. “I’ve thought about each step of my life as learning a new language—a dialect and a set View Details

19 Jan 2015
Research & Ideas

Is Wikipedia More Biased Than Encyclopædia Britannica?

For more than a century, the long, stately rows of Encyclopædia Britannica have been a fixture on the shelves of many an educated person's home—the smooshed-together diphthong in the first View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Publishing

01 Apr 2022
Blog Post

The Africa Business Conference at HBS: Reimagining the Road Ahead

"Alone, I am nothing, I have nothing. We have power, but we will never see it work, unless we come together to make it work." - Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born Ayi's exquisite words summarize my reflections from the... View Details

06 Oct 2010
Research & Ideas

John Kotter: Four Ways to Kill a Good Idea

time they tried a big change (in their case, the "customer centric" initiative), they were unsuccessful, and some of the consequences (impossible workloads for a while, a few good people's careers derailed) were very unpleasant.... View Details

Keywords: by John Kotter & Lorne A. Whitehead

30 May 2005
Research & Ideas

Six Steps for Making Your Threat Credible

In the classic game of Chicken, two drivers on a crash course speed toward each other. The rules are simple: Whoever swerves first and avoids collision loses, and whoever is brave enough to stay the course wins. View Details

Keywords: by Deepak Malhotra

21 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

Are You Sabotaging Your Own Company?

Attempt to make the committees as large as possible—never less than five.” “Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.” “Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.”... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Web

Aldrich Hall | About

of this support the School created the Class of 1971 Courtyard which includes a wall inscribed with the words “Excellence, Integrity, Leadership” and lists the leadership... View Details

17 Jan 2011
Research & Ideas

Being the Boss

of words that's belittling only invite minimal compliance or subtle disobedience. As someone told us, "I fixed my boss. I did exactly what he said to do." Be aware that some people are especially... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

Web

Our Values | About

learning, and can incite violence. Some protestors at Wednesday’s demonstration held banners and chanted words widely understood to call for the end of Israel—inciting the eradication View Details

13 Jun 2011
HBS Case

Mobile Banking for the Unbanked

for "mobile," and "pesa" is the Swahili word for "money.") But soon after launching the service in 2007, they realized their mistake and quickly repositioned the service with the slogan, "Send Money... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Banking; Communications; Telecommunications

Blog

Eight Steps to Board Success for Female Executives

working, avoid using the word "retired." Instead, explain how you are transitioning into a new phase of your career. If you're still in a full-time corporate role, be sure to carefully tailor how you... View Details

04 May 2021
Blog Post

Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month at HBS

special or amiss in reading Shakespeare and writing Chinese poems in school, eating Indian and Malay food at school canteens, and watching the English Premier League at Irish pubs. Most of my friends spoke another language apart from... View Details

Publications