big business - Publications - Faculty & Research

07 Dec 2009
Research & Ideas

Government’s Positive Role in Kick-Starting Entrepreneurship

a business in which there are increasing returns. To put the point another way, it is far easier to found a start-up if there are 10 other entrepreneurs nearby. In many respects, founders and venture capitalists benefit from their peers.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

11 Aug 2009
First Look

First Look: August 11, 2009

expert and Harvard Business School Professor Michael Beer outlines what the high-commitment, high-performance organization looks like and provides practitioners with the transformation process to help them get there. Starting with leaders... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

28 May 2013
Research & Ideas

Can LEGO Snap Together a Future in Asia?

a factory in a low-cost location in Asia? Such a move over the next five to seven years would be full of risk, especially considering LEGO has had a checkered history of expansion—one such effort almost led to bankruptcy. So Harvard View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Entertainment & Recreation

17 Jun 2002
Research & Ideas

A Litmus Test for Entrepreneurs

afford to pass on any opportunity, no matter how small. They see business much like a game of PacMan—you can bag big fish only by learning to swallow small ones. The best entrepreneurs also recognize that... View Details

Keywords: by Walter Kuemmerle

02 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 2

Company Authors:Michael Beer and Magnus Finnstrom Publication:Leadership in Action, November-December 2009 Abstract Traditional leadership development programs often fail to achieve the desired results because they don't focus on learning linked to the company's View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

08 Aug 2023
Research & Ideas

The Rise of Employee Analytics: Productivity Dream or Micromanagement Nightmare?

hiring and productivity, says Jeffrey T. Polzer, the UPS Foundation Professor of Human Resource Management at Harvard Business School. His recent paper probes how organizational researchers should study people analytics practices, which... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

20 Feb 2001
Research & Ideas

What’s Next for Japan

Government: Yes Or No? Shin Yasunobe, a former director within various departments of Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), and now executive director of Stanford's Japan Center for Research, warned against policymakers' reliance on strong ties... View Details

Keywords: by Hilah Geer

04 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

Is Health Care Making You Better—or Dead?

book, Who Killed Health Care? We asked Herzlinger, the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration Chair at the Harvard Business School, to discuss her latest work and her more than 30 years of... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Health

26 Mar 2008
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Disaster!

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 does disaster change leadership goals? What signals should leaders send... View Details

27 Sep 2010
Research & Ideas

Customer Experts Lose Influence When Teams are Pressured

high-status people who have gained a wide-ranging knowledge of the business based on long, varied experience across clients and even industries, as well as their formal training and education. Customer-specific experts know their client... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert

26 Jul 2016
Research & Ideas

Where will Pokémon Go with Your Personal Information?

Instead of taking big screens across the country by storm, this summer’s blockbuster has people glued to much smaller ones. Launched at the beginning of July by San Francisco-based software development company Niantic, Inc., Pokémon Go... View Details

Keywords: Re: Willy C. Shih; Video Game; Entertainment & Recreation

01 May 2000
What Do You Think?

Can You Hard-Wire Performance?

Can you design processes to reflect the promises implicit in hard-wiring?; (4) Do you have the people, incentives, and technology to deliver on the promise?; (5) Are you big enough?; (6) Do you have the financial capability to protect... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

21 Feb 2005
Research & Ideas

The VC Quandary: Too Much Money

stages is because smart people are looking at the same data. "You've got big companies that are addressing wide markets and there are gaps in the product portfolio," he said. "Engineers and product developers leave those... View Details

Keywords: by Julie Jette; Financial Services

21 Mar 2004
Research & Ideas

Loyalty: Don’t Give Away the Store

25 percent of your sales, you have a big problem. By using rewards programs, retailers give away things for free that their best customers would have bought anyway. With such a large volume of customers purchasing off the card, you have... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls; Consumer Products; Retail

04 Jun 2014
What Do You Think?

Does Internet Technology Threaten Brand Loyalty?

technologies have brought us into a new age of international relations, but they have profound implications for the way we do business as well. For example, a question has arisen about how information both about us and available to us... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Advertising; Consumer Products; Technology

29 Jun 2016
Op-Ed

What Hath the United Kingdom Wrought?

accommodating in finding a compromise that does not look like punishment but may encourage others to seek their own deal. This is a big wake-up call for Europe. It is clear that it must reboot. There are many places to find closer... View Details

Keywords: by Dante Roscini

10 Sep 2008
Research & Ideas

Long-Tail Economics? Give Me Blockbusters!

Editor's Note: Harvard Business School professor John Quelch writes a blog on marketing issues, called Marketing Know: How, for Harvard Business Online. It is reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge. The... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Entertainment & Recreation; Pharmaceutical

01 Mar 2004
Lessons from the Classroom

Mission to Mars: It Really Is Rocket Science

substantially, NASA would have to place much greater emphasis on technology re-use, developing designs that were expected to fulfill multiple missions. In this respect, borrowing some ideas from business could help. For example, NASA... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

30 May 2005
Research & Ideas

Germany’s Pioneering Corporate Managers

irrelevant which country developed this form (or another product or whatever) first. All three of these countries' big businesses began independently arriving at rough versions of the same structure as they... View Details