Publications

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August 2023
Case

Salma Qarnain: Spaceships to Broadway

By: Leslie Perlow, Mel Martin and Hannah Weisman

Salma Qarnain, daughter of Pakistani Muslim immigrants, is an engineer trained at Stanford and MIT. She began her career building spacecrafts but 30 years later finds herself pursuing her calling, acting on Broadway. The case explores Qarnain’s career path, family... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Job Search; Job Design and Levels; Happiness; Identity; Well-being; Work-Life Balance; Family and Family Relationships; Theater Entertainment; Film Entertainment; Talent and Talent Management; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Aerospace Industry; United States; New York (city, NY); Boston; California

March–April 2023
Article

Market Segmentation Trees

By: Ali Aouad, Adam Elmachtoub, Kris J. Ferreira and Ryan McNellis

Problem definition: We seek to provide an interpretable framework for segmenting users in a population for personalized decision making. Methodology/results: We propose a general methodology, market segmentation trees (MSTs), for learning market... View Details

Keywords: Decision Trees; Computational Advertising; Market Segmentation; Analytics and Data Science; E-commerce; Consumer Behavior; Marketplace Matching; Marketing Channels; Digital Marketing

December 8, 2023
Article

What Makes a Company Great at Producing Leaders?

By: Sarah Abbott, Robin Abrahams and Boris Groysberg

GE is well known as an “academy company”—a talent incubator that exports effective leaders to other organizations and even industries. To better understand which companies are top talent incubators today, the authors worked with the Official Board, a firm that provides... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Talent and Talent Management; Training; Organizational Culture

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October 2008 (Revised January 2011)
Case

Lawrence Trinh: Venturing to Vietnam

By: Joshua D. Margolis and Rachel Gordon

Should Lawrence Trinh pursue his aspiration of working in Vietnam—and if so, what set of principles and practices should he adopt if he encounters corruption? These are questions that reverberate for many students who wish to work in emerging markets and other contexts... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Ethics; Investment; Leadership Development; Emerging Markets; Personal Development and Career; Welfare; Financial Services Industry

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Career Coach

Deborah Resnick

consultant with McKinsey & Company, former Director of Professional Development for McKinsey's Midwest offices, and a current consultant and facilitator of leadership training at multiple tech companies, Deborah is a calibrated... View Details

Keywords: Consulting; Consumer Products; Retail

09 Jun 2016
Blog Post

Pursuing an Interest in Nonprofits at HBS

There are a number of ways to pursue an interest in nonprofit organizations while at HBS. I have personally explored this interest through joining the Board Fellows and Social Enterprise Consulting Club, undertaking an Independent... View Details

08 May 2006
Research & Ideas

The Cost of Cutting in Line

norm applies to unusual circumstances. Other research shows that individuals are more likely to help if the person in need bears no responsibility for his situation. But what I did is clearly different. Arriving late at a View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

August 2015 (Revised May 2017)
Case

TSG Hoffenheim: Football in the Age of Analytics

By: Feng Zhu, Karim R. Lakhani, Sascha L. Schmidt and Kerry Herman

In 2015, Dietmar Hopp, owner of Germany's Bundesliga football team TSG Hoffenheim and co-founder of the global enterprise software company SAP, was considering how to ensure long-term sustainability and competitiveness for TSG Hoffenheim. While historically a small... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Measurement and Metrics; Sports; Sports Industry

17 Apr 2025
Blog Post

From Tech to Coaching: Empowering Women and Minority Leaders with Yue Zhao (MBA 2013)

starting at Thumbtack, a Series A startup. My time at McKinsey and Cisco pre-MBA had given me a strong foundation in solving complex problems, but HBS helped me develop additional critical skills—finance, corporate governance, and markets. The case method View Details

Person Page

Positions

dollarDEX (1998-2007)

Retired chief executive, non-executive chairman

One of world's top 30 in online finance (Institutional Investor, March 2003). Wealth management firm in Asia, and has... View Details

June 2020
Case

Career Karma: Growth in a Time of Global Uncertainty (A)

By: Laura Huang, Elizabeth Jiang and Brandon Yu

Career Karma is a startup focused on helping individuals looking to transition careers into computer engineering roles or similar fields by preparing them for formal technical training programs, or “coding bootcamps,” that would lead to a successful career pivot upon... View Details

March 2008 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Lisa Sherman (A)

By: Bill George and Jens Audenaert

Lisa Sherman is a successful executive at Verizon who is struggling with the decision to reveal her sexual orientation. After attending a diversity training workshop in which participants expressed extremely negative views about people in her community, Sherman wonders... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Identity; Personal Development and Career; Decision Choices and Conditions; Leadership; Organizational Culture

March 2008 (Revised October 2008)
Supplement

Lisa Sherman (B)

By: Bill George and Jens Audenaert

The case of Lisa Sherman (B) describes a highly successful executive at Verizon, who decides to leave the company because of the negative views of gays and lesbians expressed at a diversity training workshop, and her final meeting with Verizon CEO Ray Smith to describe... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Personal Development and Career; Retention; Resignation and Termination; Diversity; Government and Politics

18 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

Looking in the Mirror: Questions Every Leader Must Ask

questions that will help them regroup, mobilize their team, formulate a plan of action, and move forward." In his new book, What to Ask the Person in the Mirror, Kaplan argues against the notion that great leadership is about having... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

2010
Chapter

Identity-Based Leader Development

By: Scott Snook, Herminia Ibarra and Laura Ramo

Despite the wealth of managerial and scholarly attention paid to leadership development, only recently has a new perspective emerged that explicitly links leadership and identity. Research and theorizing on leadership development have yet to specify the processes that... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development; Identity; Transition; Transformation; Perspective; Managerial Roles; Business Processes; Personal Development and Career

2017
Report

Room to Grow: Identifying New Frontiers for Apprenticeships

By: Joseph B. Fuller and Matthew Sigelman

In the United States, apprentices are employed in just 27 occupations, mostly in skilled, physical trades. An analysis of job postings data shows that extending apprenticeships to more occupations provides an opportunity to expand employment and close the middle skills... View Details

Keywords: Employment; Training; Competency and Skills; Personal Development and Career; United States