Publications

08 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

The Strategic Way To Hire a Sales Team

Cespedes explains a strategic process for hiring and managing an effective salesforce: book excerpt Build your Team: Recruitment And Selection From Aligning Strategy and Sales By Frank Cespedes Putting the right team on the field is... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

24 Mar 2022
Research & Ideas

Rituals at Work: Teams That Play Together Stay Together

to a rite of passage like a wedding. Group rituals abound in the world of sports; for example, Notre Dame’s football team always walks the same route to the stadium. Many group activities involve food, from community potlucks to global... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

September 2019
Case

Teaming Up to Win the Rail Deal at GE (A)

By: Amy Edmondson, Ranjay Gulati and Rachna Tahilyani

In 2012, Nalin Jain, then head of GE aviation for South Asia, was given the added responsibility for GE’s transportation business in India, including bidding for a $2.5 billion contract to manufacture, service and maintain 1,000 diesel locomotives for state owned... View Details

Keywords: Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Human Capital; Groups and Teams; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Industrial Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Rail Industry; Transportation Industry; United States; India

26 Apr 2024
HBS Case

Deion Sanders' Prime Lessons for Leading a Team to Victory

Leaders intent on boosting team performance could learn from the old-school, military-style approach of Deion Sanders, a former star athlete and now the unorthodox coach behind the revival of two college football teams. “When I’m teaching... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman; Sports

25 Jun 2024
Research & Ideas

Rapport: The Hidden Advantage That Women Managers Bring to Teams

novel.” When it comes to building good rapport, the gender makeup of managers and their teams matters, Tamayo’s research shows. Overall, cisgender men manage other men well, and cisgender women manage other women well. When the gender of... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Food & Beverage

Article

Designing Social Networks: Joint Tasks and the Formation and Endurance of Network Ties

By: Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning

Can managers influence the formation of organizational networks? In this article, we evaluate the effect of joint tasks on the creation of network ties with data from a novel field experiment with 112 aspiring entrepreneurs. During the study, we randomized individuals... View Details

Keywords: Accelerators; Entrepreneur; Social Networks; Field Experiment; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Design; Networks; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Media; Information Technology Industry; India

March 2023
Case

Woven Planet - Designing Software for the Car of the Future

By: Gary P. Pisano and Catherine Piner

Founded in 2021, Woven Planet Holdings—a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation—was developing Arene, an automotive software platform consisting of an operating system, development and simulation tools, and a cloud-based service that could store and analyze vehicle... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Automated Driving; Innovation; Organizational Culture; Applications and Software; Safety; Product Launch; Product; Auto Industry; Technology Industry

February 2014 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Go Mobile: Aligning District Managers and Store Teams

By: Tatiana Sandino

Indian cell phone retailer Go Mobile had implemented high-powered incentives to motivate its store employees to behave as owners and provide exceptional service. As the company scaled up, it faced multiple challenges in building a layer of district managers that were... View Details

Keywords: Employee Relationship Management; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Growth Management; Organizational Design; Salesforce Management; Motivation and Incentives; Management Practices and Processes; Telecommunications Industry; India

20 Jul 2016
Research & Ideas

Airplane Design Brings Out the Class Warfare in Us All

The study results also have broader implications, providing important insight into what sparks antisocial behavior that a variety of businesses can consider when they embark on designing everything from stadium seating to office layouts.... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Air Transportation; Sports; Travel

Forthcoming
Chapter

Organizational Sustainability: Organization Design and Senior Leadership to Enable Strategic Paradox

By: Wendy K. Smith, Marianne W. Lewis and Michael L. Tushman

Keywords: Organizational Design; Management Teams; Strategy; Performance

Find at Harvard

2025
Working Paper

Crossing the Design-Use Divide: How Process Manipulation Shapes the Design and Use of AI

By: Rebecca Karp

Existing literature often separates research on the design of innovations from their implementation and use, neglecting the role of selection—how organizations choose which innovations to implement. Although scholars suggest scientific approaches for selecting novel... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Technology Adoption; Groups and Teams; Prejudice and Bias

January 2025
Supplement

Go Mobile: Aligning District Managers and Store Teams (B)

By: Tatiana Sandino and Samuel Grad

In January 2025, Modi reflects on the past decade of Go Mobile and looks ahead to new growth strategies. View Details

Keywords: Employee Relationship Management; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Growth Management; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Salesforce Management; Motivation and Incentives; Management Practices and Processes; Telecommunications Industry; India

March 2024
Article

Differences in Care Team Response to Patient Portal Messages by Patient Race and Ethnicity

By: Mitchell Tang, Rebecca Mishuris, Lily Payvandi and Ariel Dora Stern

Importance: The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with substantial growth in patient portal messaging. Higher message volumes have largely persisted, reflecting a new normal. Prior work has documented lower message use by patients who belong to minoritized racial... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Technology Adoption; Prejudice and Bias; Equality and Inequality; Communication Technology; Race; Ethnicity; Health Industry

December 1998 (Revised May 1999)
Exercise

Negotiating Peace Accords in Bellicoso for UN Negotiating Team Representatives: General Instructions and Confidential Information

Bellicoso is a multi-party conflict resolution simulation based loosely on the bitter civil war in El Salvador. It is designed to explore issues in: 1) the management of interactions between external negotiations between sides and internal negotiations within them, 2)... View Details

Keywords: War; Negotiation Tactics; Negotiation Participants; Government and Politics; Conflict and Resolution; El Salvador

Research Summary

Overview

By: Roberto Verganti

Roberto’s research focuses on how to create innovations that are meaningful for people, for society, and for their creators. He explores how leaders and organizations generate radically new visions, and make those visions come real. His studies lie at the intersection... View Details

Keywords: Integrated Design; Strategy; Design Thinking; Innovation; Artificial Intelligence; Design; Technology; Leadership; Innovation Strategy

October 2012 (Revised February 2019)
Case

Whaling Ventures

By: Tom Nicholas and Jonas Peter Akins

Whaling was a prominent global industry in the nineteenth century and the United States was dominant. By 1850 there were about 900 whaling ships in the world and 700 of these were American. Rates of return on capital were high compared to benchmark investments, at... View Details

Keywords: Whaling; Organization Design; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Finance; Organizational Design; Industry Growth; History; United States

2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 9 Organizing to Rationalize

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The purpose of this chapter is to explain what the technologies of flow production with stochastic bottlenecks require and reward in organizations. I argue that organizations successfully implementing these technologies are likely to have unified governance and... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Organizational Design; Management Teams; Business History

December 1994 (Revised February 1995)
Case

Anne Livingston and Power Max Systems (A): Interviewing with the PowerPlayer Software Engineering Team

Follows the entry and early experiences of engineer Anne Livingston, an African American woman, as she joins Power Max Systems in 1991 as software engineering manager for the new product development group. Power Max is facing stiff competition and wants to be first to... View Details

Keywords: Race; Personal Development and Career; Organizational Culture; Gender; Information Technology Industry

Find at Harvard

October 2018
Case

Booking.com

By: Stefan Thomke and Daniela Beyersdorfer

The case reveals how Booking.com has become the world's leading travel accommodation platform. The company has put online experimentation at the heart of how it designs digital experiences for its customers and partners. To unlock the potential of large-scale testing,... View Details

Keywords: Travel; Product Innovation; Experimentation; A/B Testing; User Experience Design; Product Development; Product Design; Innovation and Management; Transformation; Information Technology; Digital Transformation; Travel Industry