Goals and Objectives - Publications - Faculty & Research

22 Nov 2019
Blog Post

Avant Ski Makes Turns in Ski Media Objectivity

It seems like a former life: Investment banking at Goldman Sachs. Healthcare equity research at Citi. Boutique leadership consulting for aspiring CEOs. While Morristown, New Jersey, native Alli Widman (MBA 2009) cut her teeth in finance View Details

01 Feb 2001
News

Advisory Boards Help HBS Assess and Attain Its Goals

bimonthly status reports in the Bulletin keep alumni informed about the board's ongoing work. The Board of the Directors of the Associates The Associates of Harvard Business School are individuals that have close personal and strategic... View Details

Keywords: Elena N. Berg; boards; alumni; planning; leadership; advice; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools

November 2017
Case

Passion and Strategy: Novozymes' Embrace of the UN Sustainable Development Goals

By: Andy Zelleke and Emilie Billaud

This case explores the sustainability efforts at Novozymes, the world's largest and oldest producer of industrial enzymes. In 2015, the Danish company became the world’s first company known to have crafted a new corporate strategy based on the United Nations... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Transformation; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business Strategy; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Biotechnology Industry; Europe; Denmark

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July 9, 2019
Article

Setting Better Sales Goals with Analytics

By: Doug J. Chung, Isabel Huber, Vinay Murthy, Varun Sunku and Marije Weber

Sales compensation is a critical lever in motivating a salesforce and driving growth in the business-to-business sector: Studies show that revising compensation in line with market trends can have a 50% greater impact on sales than advertisements have, for instance. A... View Details

Keywords: Analytics; Salesforce Management; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives

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04 Jan 2019
News

How Companies Can Balance Social Impact and Financial Goals

2002
Book

Low-Income Homeownership: Examining the Unexamined Goal

By: Nicolas P. Retsinas and Eric S. Belsky

Keywords: Poverty; Housing; Goals and Objectives

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05 Mar 2021
Blog Post

Intensive Bootcamp Kicked my Entrepreneurship Goals Into Gear

When I started at HBS in the fall of 2020, I had one goal in mind: to challenge myself. I previously worked in communications at Cloudflare, a security, performance and reliability company founded in 2009 by... View Details

20 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

How CEOs Sustain Higher-Ambition Goals

At a recent Harvard Business School conference, dozens of CEOs committed to the idea of working toward "higher-ambition" goals that go beyond just short-term shareholder value. Inspired by the book Higher Ambition: How Great Leaders... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Jul 09 2015
Testimonial

Many Journeys, a Single Goal

09 Jul 2019
News

Setting Better Sales Goals with Analytics

2003
Book

Connecting the Dots: Aligning Projects with Objectives in Unpredictable Times

By: Cathleen Benko and F. Warren McFarlan

Keywords: Projects; Goals and Objectives

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April 2023
Article

A Field Experiment on Subgoal Framing to Boost Volunteering: The Trade-off Between Goal Granularity and Flexibility

By: Aneesh Rai, Marissa A. Sharif, Edward H. Chang, Katherine L. Milkman and Angela L. Duckworth

Research suggests that breaking overarching goals into more granular subgoals is beneficial for goal progress. However, making goals more granular often involves reducing the flexibility provided to complete them, and recent work shows that flexibility can also be... View Details

Keywords: Goals and Objectives; Outcome or Result; Performance Improvement

13 Jun 2025
News

Set Goals That Are Meaningful and Will Keep You Motivated

01 Jul 2019
What Do You Think?

Are Super Stretch Goals Only for the Very Young?

sense of co-creation and ensure engagement.” Do asrarqureshi and Jainn have something here? Do super stretch goals require more commitment than a large organization can muster?... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

02 Mar 2009
News

The pitfalls of goals gone wild

February 2024 (Revised June 2024)
Supplement

PerlAvance: Using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) at a Fintech Venture (C)

By: Brian K. Baik, Tatiana Sandino and Tricia Peralta

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February 2024 (Revised June 2024)
Supplement

PerlAvance: Using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) at a Fintech Venture (B)

By: Brian K. Baik, Tatiana Sandino and Tricia Peralta

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February 2024 (Revised June 2024)
Case

PerlAvance: Using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) at a Fintech Venture (A)

By: Brian K. Baik, Tatiana Sandino and Tricia Peralta

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2022
Article

The Ordinary Concept of a Meaningful Life: The Role of Subjective and Objective Factors in Third-Person Attributions of Meaning

By: Michael Prinzing, Julian De Freitas and Barbara L. Fredrickson

The desire for a meaningful life is ubiquitous, yet the ordinary concept of a meaningful life is poorly understood. Across six experiments (total N = 2,539), we investigated whether third-person attributions of meaning depend on the psychological states an agent... View Details

Keywords: Experimental Philosophy; Folk Theories; Meaning In Life; Moral Psychology; Positive Psychology; Moral Sensibility; Satisfaction