Leaning In - Publications - Faculty & Research

07 Jul 2022
HBS Case

How a Multimillion-Dollar Ice Cream Startup Melted Down (and Bounced Back)

Hills was running out of money and may not make it through the lean winter months, Smith and Cuscuna were surprised. Sales had been brisk. “They built a giant factory costing almost $7 million that required sales that were beyond their... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

31 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

Where Can Digital Transformation Take You? Insights from 1,700 Leaders

launch new products or programs, experiment with them, refine them, and even drop them. Digitally mature organizations leverage design thinking, lean start-up, and agile methodologies to power innovation. They conduct rigorous, relevant... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

11 Jan 2021
Research & Ideas

Is A/B Testing Effective? Evidence from 35,000 Startups

inexperience in how to apply the methodologies. Another possibility? Their ideas just weren’t that good. “I think one of the coolest findings in our paper is that experimentation doesn’t necessarily drive... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

12 Aug 2019
Research & Ideas

How Scale Changes a Manager's Responsibilities

but at this stage, if you don’t have the confidence and the right people to do things without you, it will be a rough ride. In fact, when founding CEOs don’t learn to step up into their roles and empower their leaders, investors and board... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

14 Jun 2023
Op-Ed

Every Company Should Have These Leaders—or Develop Them if They Don't

each With a broad range of experience to lean on, BTLs understand their specific function and know where and when to integrate their expertise. They sit in the senior vice president role, the chief of staff... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson

09 Mar 2015
Research & Ideas

Why Entrepreneurs Should Go Work for Government

lean startup practices needed to be successful in entrepreneurial projects. "In government we announce something and wait to get it perfect. By using more experimental approaches, some public leaders... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

20 Apr 2021
Book

A Simple Question That Can Guide Companies to Epic Success

New Video: Books@Baker Interview with Felix Oberholzer-Gee Click to watch. Some companies gain advantage by commanding premium prices. Others lean on their world-class talent. But, a small slice of companies manages to do both—and... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

07 Dec 2021
Op-Ed

Want to Build Better Leaders? Focus on Mindset, Skills, Knowledge

Middle management used to be the place where careers stalled, but the COVID-19 pandemic has turned that notion on its head. In fact, mid-level leaders possess more agency now than at any other time in recent... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson and Shawnette Rochelle

22 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

Pulling Campbell’s Out of the Soup

responsibility efforts, including investing in solar energy and environmentally friendly farming with his sights set on reducing the company's carbon footprint. "The more we leaned into development... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Food & Beverage

11 Apr 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Teaching a ‘Lean Startup’ Strategy

entrepreneur and Stanford/UC Berkeley lecturer Steve Blank. The "lean" in lean startup has its roots in the Toyota Production System; hence, the View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Technology; Computer

11 May 2009
Research & Ideas

The IT Leader’s Hero Quest

sacrificing organizational agility, the company would institute more formal systems and controls. IT was, of course, key to achieving this. An expression Williams and Barton had begun to use in conversation to describe where they were... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

19 Oct 2022
Op-Ed

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

Recently, I was listening to the Huberman Lab podcast where Dr. Andrew Huberman interviewed Dr. David Buss, a founding member in the field of evolutionary psychology and professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, whose... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

28 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Supply Chain Risk: Deal With It

Back in the early 1990s, managers of U.S. companies were justifiably proud of the well-oiled machines they'd made of their supply chains. Over the previous fifteen to twenty years, they'd wrung costs from the mechanisms and processes by... View Details

Keywords: by David Stauffer

13 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

Why Your Company Wants to be a 'Cognitive Referent' (Hint: SpaceX)

When Rory M. McDonald was working on his PhD at Stanford University in 2007, it was the heyday of the lean startup in Silicon Valley. “It seemed like pretty much every week... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Aerospace; Food & Beverage; Retail

25 Jul 2016
Research & Ideas

Who is to Blame for 'The Great Training Robbery'?

the push toward lean manufacturing. Beer cites a manufacturing company whose CEO was committed to improving quality and launched a lean training program in multiple plants. The... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Education

20 Nov 2019
Research & Ideas

It's No Joke: AI Beats Humans at Making You Laugh

which ones would fall flat. But, in rating recommendations they were told came from a computer versus a human, participants gave human recommenders higher scores, showing that people would rather receive suggestions from a person, even if... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

04 Mar 2014
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Innovation

Should managers lead innovation or get out of the way? It's not an either/or decision. Executives of some great innovative companies—Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg—are active participants in creation, getting their hands... View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty

26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

Toyota? With all the books and articles on Toyota, lean manufacturing, just-in-time, kanban systems, quality systems, etc. that came out in the 1980s and 90s, hasn't the topic been exhausted? Steven Spear:... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

02 Jan 2008
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Stories 2007

2.0" turned up on the online encyclopedia one day—and was recommended for deletion—McAfee and colleague Karim R. Lakhani knew they had the makings of an insightful case study on collaboration and governance in the digital world.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

22 Jul 2008
First Look

First Look: July 22, 2008

David M. Upton Abstract This paper examines how a company sets out to build an operations-based advantage. In particular, we investigate the implementation of a lean operating system at an Indian software... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Publications