Reaching Your Potential - Publications - Faculty & Research

Winter 2013
Article

How to Identify the Best Customers for Your Business

By: Frank V. Cespedes, James P. Dougherty and Ben S. Skinner III

How can businesses achieve profitable growth so that their costs don’t grow faster than sales? This article focuses on scaling a venture’s sales process and provides a methodology for identifying core customers and some implications for governance criteria and... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Growth Management; Sales

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12 May 2020
Research & Ideas

It’s Time To Relaunch Your Remote Team

start is to revisit the team’s sense of shared purpose. Revisit your shared purpose. A relaunch ensures that every team member understands and buys into the clear and specific goals that the team has been mobilized to accomplish. It is an... View Details

Keywords: by Tsedal Neeley

30 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

How Your Employees and Customers Drive a New Value Profit Chain

It may be time to think about who really creates value in your organization, starting with customers and employees. Harvard Business School professors W. Earl Sasser and James L. Heskett discuss their book, The Value Profit Chain.... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Mahoney

24 Nov 2015
Research & Ideas

Developing Your Next CEO for the Family Business

your next CEO. These internal candidates with some outsider views have a more objective and independent view about how your company needs to change and adapt. Executives with the right mix of Insider and... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Auto

30 Mar 2021
Research & Ideas

Commuting Hurts Productivity and Your Best Talent Suffers Most

Many of us have been there: mired in rush-hour traffic, listening to music or news to take our minds off the grind, wishing we didn’t feel so stressed before we’ve even reached the office. A late-night conversation with a fellow... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

04 Sep 2007
Research & Ideas

Jumpstarting Innovation: Using Disruption to Your Advantage

potential revolutionary shifts in customer behavior. Look for new business models and technologies that can radically transform product, market, and industry economics and power. Benchmark inside and outside View Details

Keywords: by Lynda M. Applegate

06 Oct 2023
Book

Yes, You Can Radically Change Your Organization in One Week

real problem Turn what you think is the problem into a question and then ask people who have a direct stake in it what they think. Ask yourself: Might you have a role in creating the problem? “We’ve found that when you dig into the problem, the learning plateaus when... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

28 May 2007
Research & Ideas

How Property Ownership Changes Your World View

What happens when a person owns property? Aside from the well-established financial benefits of equity and potential access to credit, there is the equally strong pull of the American Dream and everything it suggests—the idea that through... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

How To Make Restructuring Work for Your Company

also matters in how its disclosures are received. Many restructurings try to improve company profitability two ways, by both reducing costs and raising revenues. Scott Paper Company's restructuring was also designed to increase the firm's revenue growth View Details

Keywords: by Stuart C. Gilson

21 Jan 2013
Research & Ideas

Altruistic Capital: Harnessing Your Employees’ Intrinsic Goodwill

like a tragic situation that potentially could be solved with a bit more insight into how people actually make decisions, the structure of their constraints, and what really affects their behavior." Thus launched an academic career in... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

18 Apr 2023
Research & Ideas

The Best Person to Lead Your Company Doesn't Work There—Yet

they're going to want to hire the best horse for the race.” What should aspiring executives do? For executives looking to reach the top spot, a private equity move can be lucrative—and career-boosting. Researchers were able to estimate... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services

06 May 2002
Research & Ideas

Profits for Nonprofits: Earning Your Own Way

session was devoted to the topic "Profits for Nonprofits: Challenges of Earning Your Own Way." (Starbuck's CEO Orin Smith addressed a related theme—can for-profit companies integrate non-profit values—in his keynote speech... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

21 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Are Crummy Products Your Next Growth Opportunity?

a lower-cost business model. This strategy has worked well for Wal-Mart, for example, but you still remain vulnerable to competitors disrupting your success from below. The third model Christensen termed new-market disruption, whereby you... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

01 May 2017
Research & Ideas

Bad At Your Job? Maybe It's the Job’s Fault

expect when reaching out to others for help? A job is bound to fail if the people who control resources refuse to help. “In some organizations, it’s every man or woman for themselves,” Simons says. “You eat what you kill, and no one is... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

19 Jul 2004
Research & Ideas

Your Customers: Use Them or Lose Them

you get customers to act in the best interests of the firm? Of my mantras, number one is: Your customer is probably your most powerful asset." To explain how certain companies jump to the head of the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

19 Jan 2010
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing the Economic Crisis

Sharpening Your Skills dives into the HBS Working Knowledge archives to bring together articles on ways to improve your business skills. Questions To Be Answered: How do I lead in a crisis? What roles does... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

19 Oct 2022
Op-Ed

Cofounder Courtship: How to Find the Right Mate—for Your Startup

particular field your venture intends to address, you may need a cofounder with domain specific expertise. Having domain expertise will not only inform the product strategy, but will also help the venture gain credibility in the market... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

06 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

Motivate Your High Performers to Share Their Knowledge

co-workers can help those employees improve. “When you are exposed to different ideas or a different way of working, it can change your own behavior,” says Christopher Stanton, the Marvin Bower Associate Professor of Business... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

05 Sep 2023
Book

Thriving After Failing: How to Turn Your Setbacks Into Triumphs

they do stumble, their instinct is to hide their mistakes, rather than openly acknowledge them. Yet to unlock potential success, Edmondson says, people need to be honest about failures, so they can learn from them. Likewise, at a time... View Details