Failure - Publications - Faculty & Research

April 2009 (Revised December 2015)
Case

Dot.com: Online Pet Retailing

By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen

From 1995 to 1999, the U.S. experienced a period of tremendous growth in its information technology (IT) sector. The IT industry, although it accounted for less than 10% of the U.S. economy's total output, contributed disproportionately to economic growth. One market... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Price Bubble; Growth and Development Strategy; Failure; Competitive Strategy; Online Technology; Retail Industry

Citation

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01 Sep 2020
News

Ink: The Habit of Innovation

seminal research into product failure notes, “knowledge gained from failures [is] often instrumental in achieving subsequent successes.” So capture knowledge to maximize the return on your investments in... View Details

Keywords: Management of Companies and Enterprises; Management

01 Feb 1999
News

New Releases

in its battle with Microsoft. (It is these interviews that Microsoft's attorneys contend show the real reasons behind Netscape's failure to secure dominance on the Internet.) Describing what they term Netscape's "judo strategy," Yoffie... View Details

Keywords: Nancy O. Perry

07 Jul 2023
Blog Post

Fostering Candor in Teams and Organizations

for employees to openly discuss issues around diversity and inclusion can connect back to goals of effective collaboration that produce exceptional products and services. Furthermore, setting the stage is also about reframing failure. When leaders reframe View Details

Keywords: All Industries

Mar 2012
Report

A Jobs Compact for America's Future

What's good for individual U.S. companies is no longer automatically good for business nationwide, for U.S. workers, or for the economy. That, coupled with the failure of business, government, and other institutions to engage in... View Details

Portrait Project

Valerie Galinskaya

instead of hopeful. I want to use my love of language to articulate the big questions — about economic freedom, happiness, motivation, resilience, triumph, and failure — and develop a meaningful dialogue. I want to help others expand the... View Details

Portrait Project

Andrew Levine

I want to fail. Not have a setback or a misstep. I want a failure so bad that future HBS students will unanimously agree that I’m a blockhead when they read the case about my actions. Growing up, I wanted to be an actor. Along the way,... View Details

June 2011 (Revised January 2013)
Case

Home Essentials: Building a Global Service Business with Local Operations

By: Lynda M. Applegate, William R. Kerr and David Lane

Chris Exline founded Home Essentials, a furniture rental business targeted toward expatriates, in Singapore but rapidly moved the base of operations to Hong Kong. The company was highly successful in Singapore and Hong Kong and then pursued rapid global expansion.... View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Renting or Rental; Corporate Governance; Global Strategy; Failure; Singapore; Hong Kong

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Portrait Project

Tomiwa Igun

eyesight worsened from the faint beams of flashlight hitting my textbooks as I studied at night. When Nigeria finally won Olympic Gold, I watched the television flicker to darkness due to power failure — I had missed a monumental moment... View Details

Portrait Project

Omar A. Abou-Sayed

an appointment. Hell, I am flat out CRAZY! Okay, perhaps that is not entirely true. In fact, it is not really true at all, except for the part about my inane comments. No, when I really think about it, I realize how many fears I actually have: The fear of View Details

01 Jun 2002
News

Faculty Debates Lessons from Enron's Collapse

spectacular corporate failure in modern capitalism. Was this an aberration?” he questioned. “Can we draw lessons that can be applied to other corporations? What are the implications for our research and teaching?” Dean Kim B. Clark also... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg; Enron; faculty; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

01 Mar 2010
News

What Happened to Leadership?

IMMELT: A prescription to fix failures at the top. Sgt. Vincent Fusco/Usma For a speech on “Reviving American Leadership,” General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt (MBA ’82) chose a discerning audience: the corps of cadets at the U.S. Military... View Details

Keywords: Management; Electrical Equipment, Appliance, and Component Manufacturing; Manufacturing

16 Oct 2013
Op-Ed

Response to Readers: Combating Climate Change with Nuclear Power and Fracking

risks. My concern with nuclear—even "new" nuclear—is the issue of catastrophic core failures, à la Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Historically, those core failures have been "Hindenburg disaster" events with immediate loss... View Details

Keywords: by Joe Lassiter; Energy; Utilities

13 Jun 2018
News

The First Five Years: Momchil Filev and Ben Faw (both MBA 2014)

can help a lot, and yet these are not sufficient. Entrepreneurship is a skill you learn out in the wild, through failure after failure and through persistence when everything seems to be going against you.”... View Details

09 Dec 2020
Blog Post

How to Create a Psychologically Safe Workplace

diversity and inclusion can connect back to goals of effective collaboration that produces exceptional products and services. Furthermore, setting the stage is also about reframing failure. Organizations that are afraid to admit failure... View Details

May 2000 (Revised July 2000)
Case

World Trade Organization, The: After the Seattle Protests

By: Louis T. Wells Jr.

Representatives of the World Trade Organization (WTO) met in Seattle to plan the next round of trade negotiations, only to face protestors and fail to reach agreement on an agenda. This case discusses the evolution of the WTO, its rules, and some of the controversy... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Agreements and Arrangements; Failure; Northwestern United States

Citation

Educators

01 Feb 2002
News

HBS Press Books in Brief

evidence that links organizational success or failure to “primal leadership.” They argue that a leader’s emotions are contagious and must resonate energy and enthusiasm if an organization is to thrive. Cultivating Communities of Practice:... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

September 2009
Case

Intel NBI: Image Components Organization

By: Willy C. Shih and Thomas Thurston

The Image Components Organization (ICO) was an internal venture that was part of Intel's New Business Initiatives. It sought to initially develop and sell a high performance integrated CMOS image sensor module for cellular phones. ICO's opening assumptions were that it... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Product Development; Production; Failure; Diversification; Semiconductor Industry

Citation

Find at Harvard

01 Jun 2009
News

Too Big To Fail

moral hazard in the financial system to an entirely new level,” he warns. But Moss has a fix: The federal government should slap tough new regulations on all firms that pose “systemic risk” — the risk that a failure of one institution... View Details

Keywords: Roger Thompson; federal bailouts; Credit Intermediation and Related Activities; Finance