Consultants - Publications - Faculty & Research

07 Nov 2005
What Do You Think?

Is Less Becoming More?

phenomenon benefits producers and consumers alike. But a recent Harvard Business Review article by consultants Mark Gottfredson and Keith Aspinall questions whether there are benefits for producers, particularly those producing... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Consumer Products

29 Apr 2002
Research & Ideas

Star Power! How to Win in Professional Services

office. An executive search professional refuses the headaches associated with leading a practice area. Information technology consultants resist management assignments, for fear they'll become "administrators." Aggressive... View Details

Keywords: by Jay W. Lorsch & Thomas J. Tierney

13 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

3 Ways Firms Can Profit From Environmental Investments

2014 report from Boston Consulting Group, some two-thirds of total growth in the grocery sector has come from "responsible consumption" products. For example, organic grocer Whole Foods' annual revenues have increased steadily in the past... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Energy; Utilities

05 Jan 2010
First Look

First Look: January 5

graduate from HBS in Spring 2009. He must decide whether to join his father's company, Toronto-based AME Learning, as president working alongside his father who will be CEO. AME has been in business for 12 years, mostly as a small View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

09 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

What Really Drives Your Strategy?

strategy (and some consultants who advise on strategy) is that they assume that once you design strategy it gets executed. They don't look inside the process and realize that it's much more complicated. Bower: It's almost as if they think... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

09 Sep 2024
HBS Case

McDonald’s and the Post #MeToo Rules of Sex in the Workplace

all, he’s someone we can all trust to always do the right thing.” However, romantic entanglements were part of Easterbrook’s story from the start. When the board appointed him CEO, they knew he had a relationship with a third-party View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman; Food & Beverage

17 Nov 2011
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Organizational Design

enables lower-level managers to make more decisions without consulting their superiors. By the same token, Computer-Assisted Design and Computer-Assisted Manufacturing software creates a situation in which the plant worker needs less... View Details

Keywords: Re: Ranjay Gulati & Raffaella Sadun

April 2025
Case

Giving Up on a Passion: Elizabeth Rowe at the Boston Symphony Orchestra

By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Maisie Wiltshire-Gordon and Alexis Lefort

For 20 years, Elizabeth Rowe was a world-renowned principal flutist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. But in 2024, Rowe decided to leave her position to pursue a new full-time career as a leadership coach. At 50, Rowe was well under the typical retirement age, and,... View Details

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March 1, 2021
Article

Transitioning to Clean Energy Transportation Services: Life-cycle Cost Analysis for Vehicle Fleets

By: Stephen Comello, Gunther Glenk and Stefan Reichelstein

Comprehensive global decarbonization requires that transportation services cease to rely on fossil fuels for power generation. This paper develops a generic, time-driven life-cycle cost model for mobility services to address two closely related questions central to the... View Details

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15 May 2020
Research & Ideas

Find Your Pragmatic Path through Radical Uncertainty

visiting scholar at Harvard Law School. Shirley Spence is a writer, educator and former partner at Oliver Wyman, a global management consulting firm. [Image: FG Trade] View Details

Keywords: by Howard Stevenson, Eugene B. Kogan, and Shirley Spence

28 Feb 2005
Research & Ideas

How to Harness Auction Fever

sunk cost and some related business theories. What are the implications for decision making in other business contexts? A: The obvious implications are with regards to the many types of auctions in which businesses participate. For example, companies bid for View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls; Web Services; Technology

10 Jan 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: January 10, 2017

negative outcomes, or as a rejuvenating experience, with positive post-break consequences. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52074 Harvard Business School Case 316-134 HourlyNerd HourlyNerd, a two-sided marketplace platform for... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

28 Sep 2009
Research & Ideas

Improving Accountability at the World Bank

Thank you for inviting me to testify before you. My name is Alnoor Ebrahim, and I am an Associate Professor at Harvard Business School and a Principal of the Hauser Center For Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University. I have worked as a View Details

Keywords: by Alnoor Ebrahim

03 Nov 2003
What Do You Think?

Can Investors Have Too Much Accounting Transparency?

auditing and particularly large amounts of consulting services from the same supplier. And now, by means of Section 404, it will: (1 require senior executives to certify that their companies have financial controls that work, and (2 give... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

30 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

Measuring the Efficacy of the World’s Managers

consultancy firm that broadly rated management practices in three areas: monitoring—how well managers keep track of what's happening in a firm and make good use of that information; targets—how well organizations set appropriate goals and... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

07 Feb 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Creating the Founders’ Dilemmas Course

of whether to launch a start-up with a classmate or accept a cushy offer from a top-tier consulting firm. Next, they look at Barry Nalls, who describes lessons learned from starting his own telecommunications start-up, MASERGY, after... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

12 May 2003
Research & Ideas

How Hot is the “Hot Spot” Business?

IBM Business Consulting Services, and CNBC Ventures—ranged from the humble to the almost-conceivably futuristic. By 2008, every person at a similar conference would be enjoying a device with a continuous wireless connection, offered Eric... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne & Martha Lagace; Technology; Communications; Telecommunications

24 Nov 2008
Research & Ideas

Harvard Business School Discusses Future of the MBA

with valuable, current business and management knowledge. If companies wanted new hires with cutting-edge insights, they'd hire an MBA. According to several deans, that's no longer true. Financial services and consulting firms, which hire... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson & HBS Bulletin; Education

03 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

Everyone Knows Innovation is Essential to Business Success—Except Board Directors

investing the time or recruiting people to improve those processes.” The researchers conducted the survey over nine months between October 2015 and June 2016, in partnership with the membership organization WomenCorporateDirectors Foundation, then led by Susan... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

09 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

Who Sways the USDA on GMO Approvals?

Other Agencies Influence Approvals In the case of procedural legitimacy, the researchers found a strong influence from an unlikely source—the USDA's sister agency, the Food and Drug Administration. In the process of approving GMOs, companies have the option of View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage; Biotechnology; Agriculture & Agribusiness

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