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- All HBS Web (217)
- 01 Apr 2014
- Research & Ideas
When Do Alliances Make Sense?
To answer one of the oldest business quandaries—is it better to partner or go solo on a project—John Beshears looked for answers in an unusual place: the oil and gas drilling industry in the Gulf of Mexico. But instead of mining for energy sources, Beshears dug for... View Details
- 12 Aug 2013
- Research & Ideas
‘Hybrid’ Organizations a Difficult Bet for Entrepreneurs
Consider two organizations with the same noble purpose: to solve the problem of poor eyesight in developing countries. The first, the Centre for Vision in the Developing World, follows a traditional nonprofit model, soliciting donations that fund the creation and... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 15 Apr 2013
- Research & Ideas
Solving the Search vs. Display Advertising Quandary
The dirty little secret of advertising agencies is that much of their work is pure guesswork. Companies spread out their advertising budgets across channels—a little bit of TV, some print media, a few billboards—and wait for customers to roll in. In very few cases,... View Details
- 16 Apr 2012
- Research & Ideas
The Inner Workings of Corporate Headquarters
Physicists tell us entropy is the natural state of the world, and that law seems especially true in today's multidivisional company. "When you create organizational subunits of any form, they'll have a tendency to focus internally on their own things," says... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 19 Dec 2011
- Research & Ideas
Climbing the Great Wall of Trust
In recent conversations with US executives doing business in China, Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Roy Y.J. Chua heard about a new trend. In an East Asian version of cutting deals on the golf course, Chinese executives often take partners to teahouses to... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 22 Aug 2012
- Research & Ideas
Advertising: It’s Not ‘Mad Men’ Anymore
Fans of the television show Mad Men are well acquainted with the mystique of the advertising business, circa 1960s, where relationships were consummated over martinis and campaigns fashioned through the wizardry of creative director Don Draper, swooping into the pitch... View Details
- 16 Jul 2024
- Research & Ideas
Weighing Digital Tradeoffs in Private Equity
When private equity (PE) firms buy a company, they typically follow a standard playbook to create value—streamlining operations, restructuring debt, changing management, and cutting costs. However, as digital technologies and artificial intelligence allow companies to... View Details
- 10 May 2017
- Research & Ideas
Amazon Web Services Changed the Way VCs Fund Startups
with Michael Ewens of the California Institute of Technology and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf of MIT Sloan School of Management. The researchers focus on one of the most important technological shifts in recent years—the introduction of Amazon... View Details
- 01 Mar 2017
- Research & Ideas
A Good Thing Happens When Doctors Start Talking to Their Patients
Kaplan, who has been working on a multiyear project with HBS Professor Michael E. Porter on improving value in health care, has found that often the most effective medical procedure is one that costs the least: talking. In a recent... View Details
- 16 Nov 2015
- Research & Ideas
Does Competition Make Us More Creative?
Competition can bring out the best in salespeople, athletes, and participants in hot dog eating contests—but can it make employees more creative? A recent working paper by Daniel P. Gross finds that competition can motivate creative types to produce radically novel,... View Details
- 23 Jun 2022
- Research & Ideas
All Those Zoom Meetings May Boost Connection and Curb Loneliness
Americans are lonelier than ever—a problem the COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated. Could interactions on platforms like Zoom and Twitch come close to replicating the real-life contact people crave? New research suggests that’s more likely to happen if the virtual... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 03 Jan 2019
- Research & Ideas
Everyone Knows Innovation is Essential to Business Success—Except Board Directors
Open the Wall Street Journal on any given day, and you are likely to find at least one story about how technology is disrupting yet another industry, and the pressures companies face to innovate. And yet, for board members of companies around the world, technology and... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 10 Jan 2018
- Research & Ideas
Working for a Shamed Company Can Hurt Your Future Compensation
iPhoto In the blink of an instant, a corporate brand can turn from sterling to tarnished. Just ask Volkswagen or Wells Fargo—two prestigious names that have become associated with scandal in recent years, and now become synonymous with shady corporate practices. What... View Details
- 13 Jun 2017
- Research & Ideas
Why Global Investments Are Still a Good Bet
Photo by iStock Investors in global equity markets have traditionally hedged their bets, casting their investments far and wide across the world. That way, if the market in one country or region stagnated (think Japan in the 1990s or Europe in the 2000s), they could... View Details
- 23 May 2016
- Research & Ideas
A Little Understanding Motivates Copyright Abusers to Pay Up
Obtaining an image from the Internet is as easy as right-clicking and downloading. We’ve all done it—or, ahem, know someone who has. We rarely think about who created these images or whether we have the rights to use them. This leaves the owners of those images with a... View Details
- 11 Jan 2016
- Research & Ideas
Is Group Loyalty a Force for Good or Evil?
Most ethical principles are pretty unambiguously good. Honesty, fairness, compassion—sure they have their downsides (being “honest to a fault”), but that’s more a by-product of something good than it is something evil in and of itself. Then there’s loyalty. While... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 13 Jan 2016
- Research & Ideas
The Problem with Productivity of Multi-Ethnic Teams
When Harvard Business School professor Vincent Pons went to Kenya to conduct research in advance of the 2013 national elections, he discovered surprising lessons about how the ethnic makeup of teams affects the work they do—now published in a new working paper,... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 05 Oct 2015
- Research & Ideas
What Companies Should Not Do in the Next Banking Crisis
When banks failed across the globe in 2008, the resulting financial crisis sent businesses into a tailspin. As lenders cut back dramatically, companies trying to recover had to scramble for financing required to generate new business and for capital expenditures.... View Details
- 02 Feb 2015
- Research & Ideas
Disruptors Sell What Customers Want and Let Competitors Sell What They Don’t
Over the past two decades, entire industries have been disrupted by Internet competitors who "unbundled" their content and delivered it to consumers in new ways. Newspapers lost out to Google and Craigslist, record companies to iTunes and Spotify, and travel agencies... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 23 Dec 2013
- Research & Ideas
Just How Independent are ‘Independent’ Directors?
In theory, a board of directors protects the rights of shareholders. Independent directors are supposed to be just that—independent—free to dissent from a decision of the majority. The reality is more complex. Directors are tied to one another by business and social... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding