Publications

September 2006 (Revised April 2007)
Case

Tim Keller at Katzenbach Partners LLC (A)

By: Boris Groysberg, Christopher Marquis and Ayesha Kanji

Tracks of the first 6 months of a recent MBA grad, Tim Keller, at Katzenbach Partners, a boutique consulting firm focused on organizational change and strategy. Covers how Keller initially struggles with his assignment and ends with a question of whether or not he... View Details

Keywords: Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Personal Development and Career; Work-Life Balance; Projects; Situation or Environment; Strategy

16 Feb 2010
Research & Ideas

The Outside-In Approach to Customer Service

reconfigured its internal units around customers and markets. Q: Obviously, this process involves substantial changes in the way companies do business. What can executives and... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Consumer Products

2011
Other Unpublished Work

Height Taken but Worth Unknown: Valuation as an Institutional Process

By: R. Daniel Wadhwani and Mukti Khaire

Drawing on research from organizational studies, sociology, history, and anthropology, we develop a framework for understanding valuation as an institutional process in markets. We posit that three institutional elements—categories, criteria, and standards—are integral... View Details

Keywords: Interactive Communication; Markets; Standards; Situation or Environment; Perception; Valuation

June 2020
Article

Start-up Inertia versus Flexibility: The Role of Founder Identity in a Nascent Industry

By: Tiona Zuzul and Mary Tripsas

Through an inductive, comparative study of four early entrants in the nascent air taxi market, we examine why start-ups, generally characterized as flexible, malleable entities, might instead exhibit inertial behavior. While two of the firms engaged in ongoing... View Details

Keywords: Founder Identity; Nascent Industries; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Identity

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22 Feb 2022
News

New Urban Order

By 2050, nearly 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities, according to a 2018 UN report, up from 55 percent today. That means making room for and creating the infrastructure for another 2.5 billion people to live, work,... View Details

01 Sep 2023
News

That Was Then, This Is Now

It started with a question. But before that, it started in the classroom. Tony Deifell (MBA 2002) loved the discussions in his LEAD course, taught by Professor (and now former Dean) Nitin Nohria; wanting to make them more tangible, Deifell adapted the idea of... View Details

Keywords: Photographed by Tony Deifell (MBA 2002); edited by Julia Hanna. Above: Heidi Brooks, photographed in 2003 and 2023.; life experience; family; leadership

07 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

How Teams Work: Lessons from the Pandemic

post-COVID collaboration in organizational cultures reshaped by remote work. Research by Leslie Perlow, the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at HBS, and colleagues sheds light on the interactions... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

Career Coach

Troy Peterson

Troy (HBS’19, West Point ‘08) has 15+ years of experience in technical program management, organizational leadership, and product development & operations. Troy has worked in roles across the tech... View Details

June 2016
Article

Wicked Problem Solvers: Lessons from Successful Cross-industry Teams

By: Amy C. Edmondson

Companies today increasingly rely on teams that span many industries for radical innovation, especially to solve “wicked problems.” So leaders have to understand how to promote collaboration when roles are uncertain, goals are shifting, expertise and organizational... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Leadership Style; Collaborative Innovation and Invention

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November 1990 (Revised June 1991)
Case

Final Voyage of the Challenger

Provides a summary of technical and organizational details that led to the decision to launch the Challenger Space Shuttle, and to the ensuing accident. Details of design and testing milestones of the Space Shuttle, with a focus on the Solid Rocket Booster, offer... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Risk Management; Ethics; Decision Choices and Conditions; Business Processes; Aerospace Industry; United States

06 Nov 2012
Op-Ed

Stop Talking About the Weather and Do Something: Three Ways to Finance Sustainable Cities

waiting for the government. It's time to stop spending a lot of money on cleanup after the fact. Rather, it's time for the private sector to take action around adaptation and prevention. My work in... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Construction; Real Estate; Energy; Utilities

01 Apr 2001
News

New Ventures New Gains

company, Ventro, which provides services for online exchanges. While the gold rush days of the late 1990s may be over, there is still a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for entrepreneurship among HBS students, faculty, and alumni. “The... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna and Susan Young; Martin Dubilier (MBA 1952); Business Schools & Computer & Management Training; Educational Services

22 Jul 2008
First Look

First Look: July 22, 2008

approach is the assumption that teams are stable in their membership and internal organization. In practice, however, such stability is rare, as the composition and structure of teams often View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

November 2015 (Revised August 2016)
Case

Unilever's New Global Strategy: Competing through Sustainability

By: Christopher A. Bartlett

In January 2009, when Paul Polman was appointed CEO of Unilever, he inherited a company in long-term decline at the beginning of a major global financial crisis. As the first outsider ever recruited to lead the company, Polman lost little time in challenging the... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Competitive Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Consumer Products Industry