Learning By Doing - Publications - Faculty & Research

02 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

A Rare Find in Health Care: A Simple Solution to Racial Inequity

George Floyd’s murder last year forced many people to recognize the systemic racism that pervades American institutions, from law enforcement to health care. Even so, identifying those inequities is different than fixing them. “I don’t believe we advance the debate... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

31 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

Bypass Marketing: Are Docs Influenced?

their patients. We focused on the following questions: How often and for what sorts of conditions do physicians prescribe advertised drugs requested by their patients? What other health care recommendations... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

23 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Brand Power from Wedgwood to Dell: Part Two

decades mixing and selling skin care formulas before she undertook to build a national market for her products. Howard Schultz did not grow up drinking specialty coffee, but as soon as he was introduced to the business, he learned as much... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

22 Nov 2010
Research & Ideas

Seven Strategy Questions: A Simple Approach for Better Execution

your primary customer will allow you to devote all possible resources to meeting their needs and minimize resources devoted to everything else. This is the path to competitive success. It's easy to try to duck the tough choice implied by... View Details

Keywords: by Robert Simons

01 Oct 2021
Research & Ideas

Dying to Lead: How Reaching the Top Can Kill You Sooner

other positions, such as physically demanding blue-collar jobs. “No one is saying CEOs have more dangerous jobs than loggers,” Nicholas says. "We need to do more work to find what mechanisms are causing health problems." Some studies... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

13 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

The Color of Private Equity: Quantifying the Bias Black Investors Face

they do it.” The color of money is mostly white The total share of assets managed by minority-owned firms in 2021 was 1.4 percent, according to Lerner, while minorities that year made up over 40 percent of... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds; Financial Services

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

18 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

Leading Innovation is the Art of Creating ‘Collective Genius’

of Leading Innovation, was written by Hill, the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration, with Greg Brandeau, former CTO of The Walt Disney Studios and current COO/president of Media Maker; Emily Truelove, a PhD candidate... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

04 Jan 2017
What Do You Think?

How Much Bureaucracy is a Good Thing in Government and Business?

Summing Up: Are Bureaucracies Worth Improving? Several messages emerge from responses to this month’s column on the worthiness of bureaucracies. In general, there is a wide range of thinking about the value of bureaucracies and work done View Details

Keywords: by James L. Heskett

08 Nov 2024
HBS Case

What Wartime Service Taught These Historic Leaders

“[These leaders] learned a tremendous amount from the mission focus and discipline that came from the military,” says Simons, a Baker Foundation Professor and Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus. “There is a... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman; Entertainment & Recreation

August 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Case

C3.ai—Driven to Succeed

By: Robert Simons and George Gonzalez

CEO Tom Siebel navigates his artificial intelligence (ai) startup through a series of pivots, market expansions, and even an elephant attack to become a leading platform ad service provider. The case describes his unusual management approach emphasizing employee... View Details

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04 Apr 2023
Book

Two Centuries of Business Leaders Who Took a Stand on Social Issues

While shareholders still reign supreme at many companies, a widespread shift toward more responsible business practices is driving more leaders to take a stand on social and environmental issues today, says Harvard Business School Professor Geoffrey Jones. Jones... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Consumer Products; Fashion; Retail; Green Technology

10 Jan 2023
Op-Ed

Time to Move On? Career Advice for Entrepreneurs Preparing for the Next Stage

book Transitions, by William and Susan Bridges, outlines three stages of transition—the ending, the neutral zone, and the new beginning—and encourages the reader to pause and understand each of these phases during their own transitions.... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

21 Mar 2018
Research & Ideas

Why Artificial Intelligence Isn't a Sure Thing to Increase Productivity

future, 50 percent of all tasks currently done by humans could be done by machine learning and artificial intelligence,” says Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, assistant professor at... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Technology; Information

06 Aug 2021
Book

Steve Jobs and the Rise of the Celebrity CEO

successively by John Sculley, who was kicked out in 1993, Michael Spindler, fired in 1996, and Gil Amelio, a member of the board who took over from Spindler and was fired five hundred days later, the company was failing. Without going... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

13 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

When Good Incentives Lead to Bad Decisions

Among the culprits contributing to the recent financial crisis were bank loan officers who approved mortgage loans that were doomed to fail. Many of these frontline workers were motivated by bonuses and other incentives to approve... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Banking

14 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Pay-for-Performance Doesn’t Always Pay Off

Ideal Laboratory In the early 90s, Hewlett-Packard seemed a perfect setting for innovations in pay. A so-called "built-to-last" company, it was highly decentralized and enjoyed a sense of mutual trust, high commitment, and wide use of management View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

27 Feb 2017
Research & Ideas

Reputation is Vital to Survival in Turbulent Markets

businesses over the long run: companies such as Tata Group, founded in India in 1868, or Mexican bakery Grupo Bimbo, started in 1945. What sets these firms apart? What can leaders in developed markets learn from them? In the recent... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

11 Jun 2012
Research & Ideas

When Business Competition Harms Society

Competition Corrupts Business Practices, suggests that many organizations in highly competitive markets are likely to bend the rules if doing so will keep their customers from leaving for a rival firm. "Competition is generally... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Auto

12 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

When Experts Play It Too Safe: Innovation Lessons from a NASA Experiment

colleagues studied how experts judged contest entries and found that the greater an evaluator’s expertise, the more likely they were to nix less feasible proposals in favor of safer bets. “Who we select to do our evaluations and to pick... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Aerospace

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