Big Five - Publications - Faculty & Research

13 Apr 2009
Research & Ideas

Kind of Blue: Pushing Boundaries with Miles Davis

out the next big thing as they flatten out at the top. Often companies that have become so geared around success from a particular innovation have trouble getting a new S-curve going. Artists do, too. People want to stay with the thing... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Music

07 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

The Better Way to Forecast the Future

for prediction and for forecasting something that is unknown.” The rise of big data and machine learning offers infinitely more fuel to churn out probability forecasts, which can serve as an entry point for businesses looking to harness... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Air Transportation; Transportation

03 May 2022
Research & Ideas

Desperate for Talent? Consider Advancing Your Own Employees First

Job openings in the United States continue to hover at record high levels, exacerbated by the Great Resignation and a sputtering emergence from the pandemic. Competition remains fierce among companies struggling to find qualified workers. Yet many employers,... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

30 Oct 2019
Research & Ideas

How to Recover Gracefully After Shutting Down Your Startup

worries, their personal finances may be in shambles. Most entrepreneurs cut their own salaries as their venture goes into decline, and many have invested their life savings in the startup—along with funds from friends and family. If entrepreneurs reach the acceptance... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

27 Oct 2020
Research & Ideas

Can Being the ‘Token’ Give Women and Minorities a Competitive Edge?

choice,” Chang says. “People do seem to think there are strategic benefits to doing this, but there's also plenty of research showing the negative effects.” Chang, who joined HBS in July, has spent the past five years studying how... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

15 Mar 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

More Than 900 Examples of How Climate Change Affects Business

This word cloud is composed of blog posts by more than 900 students describing how individual organizations are likely to be affected by climate change. Image by Patrick Clapp Last fall, first-year MBA students at Harvard Business School received a new assignment in... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Green Technology

26 Sep 2011
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Lady Gaga

Celebrated for both her outré style and musical prowess, the recording artist known as Lady Gaga is not only one of the world's biggest pop stars, but also one of the most recognized brands. She's garnered five Grammys, holds two spots in... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Entertainment & Recreation; Music

20 Sep 2019
Research & Ideas

Solving the Riddle of How Companies Grow Over Time

Administration at Harvard Business School. “If you look at the academic literature, what we actually know about growth is shockingly little. It’s amazing this topic is so important to management, yet gets such little attention from scholars.” In fact, when Pisano began... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Manufacturing

26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

American Big Three and many other auto companies had done major benchmarking studies, and they and other companies had tried to implement their own forms of the Toyota Production System. There is the Ford Production System, the Chrysler... View Details

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

06 Jun 2008
What Do You Think?

Why Don’t Managers Think Deeply?

deeply—entrepreneurs Big companies are no place for big thinkers." Providing time to reflect, particularly in an era of multi-tasking and the tyranny of technology, was most frequently suggested as an... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

13 Jan 2021
Research & Ideas

How 'Small C' Change Can Beat Large-Scale Rebuilding

to generate fresh momentum and bring in independent perspectives. It is easy to decipher the purpose. The team in action, after all, is the team portraying the downturn. But how effective is Big C change in reality? The answer may lie in... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg, Sascha L. Schmidt, and Sebastian Flegr; Sports

31 Jul 2017
HBS Case

It’s Hard to Fix the Family Business Without Offending the Family

“It’s focused on a segment—and not an insignificant one—that is a big driver of the economy.” Related Reading: Managing the Family Business: Entrepreneurs Needed for Long-Run Success Five Steps to Better... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Food & Beverage

03 Dec 2014
What Do You Think?

Can the Brilliant Jerk Be Managed Effectively?

"make sure he is upsetting things for the wrong reason rather than for the right reason." Joseph Seiler recalled that in growing companies where he worked, "I came across a few of these Type 4 people. What seemed to help was to load them up with View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

27 May 2015
Research & Ideas

Build 'Scaffolds' to Improve Performance of Temporary Teams

efficiency on a temporary team. What they call a team scaffold is fixed while individual team members flow through the structure. “The big 'aha' was how very little structure this is” The paper, published in the March-April 2015 edition... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Health

28 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Supply Chain Risk: Deal With It

but maybe not the cumulative cost of deliveries that are frequently late only by a week or so." What's the harm? Small disruptions can cause a big hurt if they result in a temporary stock-out and a frustrated customer. Outlier events... 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 there was some new market category being touted as the next big... View Details

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

30 Jun 2021
In Practice

The Harvard Business School Faculty Summer Reader 2021

Barack Obama narrating A Promised Land. There truly is no other way to absorb this massive tale of his life, family, marriage, and political journey. I'm five hours into the 29-hour tale and plan to listen to Michelle's version of the... View Details

Keywords: by Kathryn Haviland

23 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

COVID Was Supposed to Increase Bankruptcies. Instead, They've Gone Down.

used by consumers and small businesses to discharge debts; Chapter 11, used for reorganization generally by larger corporations to pay creditors over time; and Chapter 13, which allows the filer to keep property and repay debts over three to View Details