Publications

15 Oct 2008
First Look

First Look: October 15, 2008

of Maine by Colgate—to ascertain what is distinctive about the merger process and to analyze the elements critical to success. We develop suggestions about how other companies considering similar arrangements might best manage the View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

September 2012
Article

Bringing Science to the Art of Strategy

By: A. G. Lafley, Roger L. Martin, Jan W. Rivkin and Nicolaj Siggelkow

For all its emphasis on data and number crunching, conventional strategic planning is not actually scientific. It lacks the hypothesis generation and testing that's at the heart of the scientific method. To produce novel and successful strategies, teams need to adopt a... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Science

September 2006 (Revised September 2007)
Case

Bang & Olufsen: Design Driven Innovation

By: Robert D. Austin and Daniela Beyersdorfer

A successful company, recognized worldwide for exquisite design of consumer electronics products, strives to better integrate software design into its traditional physical product design processes to meet the demands of a post-iPod world. Details the Bang & Olufsen... View Details

Keywords: Diversification; Production; Applications and Software; Product Design; Innovation and Invention; Product Development; Electronics Industry

Michael Wheeler's The Art of Negotiation offers a distinctive, creative approach to negotiation. The process cannot be scripted. Other parties will have their own agendas and ideas about how the interaction should unfold. As a result, negotiation must be improvised on... View Details

07 Jan 2013
Lessons from the Classroom

Culture Changers: Managing High-Impact Entrepreneurs

Professor Mukti Khaire's challenge to management students is lofty, even by Harvard MBA standards. Don't just change the way people live, change the way they think. Change culture. In her new elective course, Creative High-Impact... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Beauty & Cosmetics; Food & Beverage; Entertainment & Recreation; Information; Publishing

Research Summary

Science-Based Business and the Business of Science

By: H. Kent Bowen

Science and technology can provide strategic advantage to companies' through differentiated products and processes. The focus of our research is on unusually productive and creative labs that are the sources of breakthroughs that create platforms for sustained... View Details

April 2009 (Revised January 2011)
Case

Gucci Group: Freedom within the Framework

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez, Elena Corsi and Vincent Marie Dessain

Gucci Group's CEO had to decide if his decentralized management style was the most effective philosophy in an economic downturn. The sharing of customer information across units and its use in the creative process are key initiatives analyzed in the case. CEO Robert... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Globalized Firms and Management; Knowledge Sharing; Leadership; Management Style; Management Systems; Brands and Branding; Apparel and Accessories Industry

June 1994 (Revised September 1994)
Background Note

Commercializing Technology: Imaginative Understanding of User Needs

By: Dorothy A. Leonard

The transformation of technology into commercially successful products is a process fraught with risk and uncertainty, and increasing pressure on time to market is exacerbating the difficulties. This note first describes a study conducted by Hewlett-Packard to improve... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Communication Strategy; Customers; Design; Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Product Development; Research; Risk and Uncertainty; Commercialization; Technology Adoption

January–February 2021
Other Article

Stand-up Meetings Inhibit Innovation

By: Andy Wu and Dagny Dukach

An interview with Harvard Business School professor Andy Wu is presented. Wu discusses the usefulness of stand-up meetings, their role in agile management practices, and their impact on innovations and creativity by the participants. View Details

Keywords: Agile Practices; Meetings; Management Practices and Processes; Creativity; Innovation and Invention

Register to Read

15 Sep 2009
First Look

First Look: September 15

generation moving up the corporate ranks. Stimulate Creativity by Fueling Passion Authors:Teresa Amabile and Colin M. Fisher Publication:In The Blackwell Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior. 2nd ed. London: Wiley-Blackwell,... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

04 Feb 2010
What Do You Think?

What’s the Best Way to Make Careful Decisions?

to help predict the future, it may be a good idea to refer to it. But in most cases, the decision maker is posed with a unique challenge." Vanitha Rangganathan, arguing for the role of intuition in the creative process, commented... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

September 2014
Case

Victors & Spoils: 'Born Open'

By: Karim R. Lakhani and Michael L. Tushman

Victors & Spoils (V&S), located in Boulder, Colorado, was the first advertising agency built on open innovation and crowdsourcing principles from the ground-up. V&S was co-founded in 2009 by John Winsor, Claudia Batten and Evan Fry, all former members of the... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Agency; Marketing; Crowdsourcing; Open Innovation; Growth; Acquisitions; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Digital Marketing; Acquisition; Innovation and Invention; Advertising Industry; United States

March 2006
Case

The Whitesides Lab

By: H. Kent Bowen and Francesca Gino

A significant part of the long-term economic growth in developed economies depends on the translation of scientific research into new products and processes. Focuses on the front end of this value creation stream. The laboratory of George Whitesides has a 30-year... View Details

Keywords: Research; Performance Productivity; Economic Growth; Infrastructure; Creativity; Groups and Teams; Value Creation; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Leadership; Resource Allocation

Article

Stop the Meeting Madness: How to Free Up Time for Meaningful Work

By: Leslie Perlow, Constance Noonan Hadley and Eunice Eun

Many executives feel overwhelmed by meetings, and no wonder: On average, they spend nearly 23 hours a week in them, up from less than 10 hours in the 1960s. What’s more, the meetings are often poorly timed, badly run, or both. We can all joke about how painful they... View Details

Keywords: Time Management; Performance Efficiency; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Improvement

Register to Read

Dorothy Leonard*, the William J. Abernathy Professor of Business Administration Emerita, joined the Harvard faculty in 1983 after teaching for three years at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has taught MBA courses in... View Details

Keywords: computer; consulting; education industry; electronics; federal government; high technology; information technology industry; software; venture capital industry

23 Jul 2001
Research & Ideas

How One Center of Innovation Lost its Spark

tacit knowledge flows. These knowledge flows, in turn, contribute to cumulative incremental innovations in both product and process technology among firms embedded in the cluster. I use the term 'active inertia' to describe the tendency... View Details

Keywords: by Donald Sull; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

2013
Book

The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World

By: Michael Wheeler

A member of the world-renowned Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School introduces the powerful next-generation approach to negotiation. For many years, two approaches to negotiation have prevailed: the "win-win" method exemplified in Getting to Yes by Roger... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation

December 2014
Other Article

Private Equity, Jobs, and Productivity—Online Appendix

By: Steven J. Davis, John Haltiwanger, Kyle Handley, Ron Jarmin, Josh Lerner and Javier Miranda

Private equity critics claim that leveraged buyouts bring huge job losses. To investigate this claim, we construct and analyze a new dataset that covers U.S. private equity transactions from 1980 to 2005. We track 3,200 target firms and their 150,000 establishments... View Details

Keywords: Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Private Equity; Performance Productivity