Learning By Doing - Publications - Faculty & Research

13 Dec 2004
Research & Ideas

Sharing News That Might Be Bad

day face this dilemma: How do you deal with developments that are utterly and wholly…ambiguous? Living Up To Your Standards When you get right down to it, what choice do you have? You've made a... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Michelman

13 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

The Power of Personal Connections: How Shared Experiences Boost Performance

referrals from primary care physicians to specialists using a medical licensing database to identify doctors who attended the same medical school or residency program. By doing so, the researchers could see... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Health

23 Jul 2001
Research & Ideas

Sam Walton: Great From the Start

entrepreneurs are, speaking generally, people of enormous, innate optimism… They believe that honest, intelligent effort will be greeted by appropriate reward. What they do not believe is that life is... View Details

Keywords: by Richard S. Tedlow; Retail

18 Jun 2007
Op-Ed

Leveling the Executive Options Playing Field

Harvard Business School professor Mihir A. Desai argues that investors and regulators are served poorly by the U.S. corporate financial reporting system, which allows companies to declare different profit figures to the IRS than they... View Details

Keywords: by Mihir Desai

09 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Industry Self-Regulation: What’s Working (and What’s Not)?

workers do which activities? What is a living wage, and how does that vary by country and by urban or rural setting? These are questions for which we just don't have good... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

16 Apr 2018
Research & Ideas

Can Consumers Be Saved From Their Misguided Decisions?

iStock Consumers make regretable decisions every day, even though easily available information should convince them to do otherwise: Twenty-six percent of consumers choose Advil or other branded headache remedies when they walk into a... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Consulting; Retail

28 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

The FDA’s Speedy Drug Approvals Are Safe: A Win-Win for Patients and Pharma Innovation

and effective in preventing severe disease, and their accelerated review will go down in history as having saved millions of lives. But COVID vaccines weren’t the first medical products to be brought to market through an expedited process. So how View Details

Keywords: by Kasandra Brabaw; Pharmaceutical

05 Nov 2009
Research & Ideas

A Market for Human Cadavers in All but Name?

students learn their craft. Like corn, wheat, and civilian aircrafts, cadavers sent abroad can be seen as another U.S. export product, although one dwarfed by these other export categories. The notion of... View Details

Keywords: by Michel Anteby; Health

18 Nov 2013
Op-Ed

Twitter IPO: Overvalued or the Start of Something Big?

focusing on disruptive technologies, offers his analysis of the Twitter IPO phenomenon. In our second-year MBA elective Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise (a course developed by my colleague Clay Christensen), one of the... View Details

Keywords: by Chet Huber; Technology

01 Feb 2022
What Do You Think?

Is Concierge Management an Answer to the “Big Quit”?

the same true for employees today, many of whom are performing their work remotely, outside the traditional office setting? We’ve previously discussed here the need for greater “voice” among “officed” employees as part of the effort to foster inclusion. The problem is... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

30 Mar 2015
Research & Ideas

Managing the Family Business: Preparing to Sell

companies, and those that do sell generally part with them very reluctantly, given all that selling represents. We sympathize with a family's emotional attachment to its company. But given how fast industries are changing and other... View Details

Keywords: by Jonathan Pellegrin; Food & Beverage; Retail

09 Jun 2022
HBS Case

From Truck Driver to Manager: US Foods’ Novel Approach to Staff Shortages

more money to do the job or you make the job easier to do.” Given the critical nature of the crisis, the company opted to do both. In addition to raising wages, it also sought to ease the burden and lower... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

06 Oct 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

18 Tips Managers Can Use to Lead Through COVID's Rising Waters

strenuously projecting an image of pre-2020 normalcy and “business as usual” can be daunting and lead employees to hide their own struggles. To learn more, read What Leaders Can Do to Fight the COVID Fog... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

23 May 2016
Research & Ideas

A Little Understanding Motivates Copyright Abusers to Pay Up

holders, but also applicable to many disputes involving small amounts. The customary approach When a digital image infringement by businesses is identified, the typical approach used by copyright owners is... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Media & Broadcasting; Publishing

17 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Blue Skies, Distractions Arise: How Weather Affects Productivity

lives. "We were commenting, looking at our own experiences, that it seems to feel different to do your job, whatever that is, if you have a very sunny day outside versus a very rainy day, because your mind seems to be distracted View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

23 May 2012
Research & Ideas

Five Ways to Make Your Company More Innovative

need to get out there and create data." Collectively, these five discovery skills constitute what we call the innovator's DNA, the code for creating innovative business ideas. By mastering these discovery skills, you can View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons, Julia Hanna & Roger Thompson

12 Nov 2018
Research & Ideas

'Always On' Isn't Always Best for Team Decision-Making

collaboration encouraged by today’s communication tools like Slack and Skype good or bad for finding the best answer? “I don’t want there to be zero communication, but I do think that transparency and... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland

21 Jun 2022
HBS Case

Free Isn’t Always Better: How Slack Holds Its Own Against Microsoft Teams

we do work?" Even with Salesforce’s extra muscle, Slack’s executives have puzzled over how to compete with a free rival, a new Harvard Business School case study illustrates. Now, a David-and-Goliath contest is underway, and the outcome... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Information Technology; Technology

13 Jul 2015
Research & Ideas

‘Humblebragging’ is a Bad Strategy, Especially in a Job Interview

humblebraggers. The takeaway: Seriously, stop humblebragging! "Not only do we like humblebraggers less that braggers, but we're less likely to be generous to them," Gino says. Next Steps And Lessons Learned... View Details