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March 22, 2022
Article

The Great Resignation or the Great Rethink?

By: Ranjay Gulati

Unsettled by the pandemic, most people are considering our jobs with fresh perspective. Some are quitting, in what has been dubbed the Great Resignation. But, for many, it’s more of a Great Rethink. Do we really like our employers’ culture? Do we feel that we’re fairly... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Personal Development and Career

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February 2018
Teaching Note

Still Leading Series—Issues in Transitioning to New Forms of Service Later in Life

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Rakesh Khurana, James Honan and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

The Still Leading case series includes an introductory note, “Still Leading (A): Issues in Transitioning to New Forms of Service Later in Life” and 10 supplementary cases that cover the transition of highly accomplished and prolific leaders (Hon. Robert McDonald, Hon.... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Personal Development and Career; Transition

Program

Competing in the Age of Digital Platforms

platform, if you are a traditional product or service business Reinvigorate a struggling platform Explore options for responding to platform competitors Know the steps to take to "buy" a platform to accelerate time to market Expand your View Details

May 2023 (Revised June 2023)
Case

Novartis (A): Reimagining Medicine

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Claudio Feser, Karolin Frankenberger and David Redaschi

This case unfolds around the first-ever approved personalized cancer treatment, how Novartis wrapped it into a new business model design, and how Novartis scaled it. Novartis — one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world — is, among other ventures,... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Business Model; Leadership; Pharmaceutical Industry; Switzerland

03 Oct 2023
Research Event

Build the Life You Want: Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey Share Happiness Tips

were saying, so why did this take you down so? And I said because I just wanted everybody to feel about that movie the way I felt about it. I wanted people to understand that you could be an enslaved person, come through that, and still have love. And the View Details

Keywords: by HBS Staff

May 2017
Case

Promontory, Inc.

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amy Handlin

Promontory, Inc. is a small, privately owned firm in the promotional products (specialty advertising) industry. After starting the firm two years ago with the intention of pursuing a high-quality/high-price strategy, the CEO is seeking methods of increasing sales... View Details

Keywords: Salesforce Management; Marketing Strategy; Customization and Personalization; Business Model; Sales; Advertising Industry

22 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

How to Make AI 'Forget' All the Private Data It Shouldn't Have

and then realize after the fact that some of these documents that we used to train ChatGPT contain a lot of racist content or misinformation. A more mundane example would be if during training the year was 2019 and one person was... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Technology; Information Technology

16 May 2007
Working Paper Summaries

On The General Relativity of Fiscal Language

Keywords: by Jerry Green & Laurence J. Kotlikoff

January 2025
Case

Cyber Oversight: SolarWinds Board of Directors

By: Lynn S. Paine

In 2020, just two years after its IPO, information technology company SolarWinds discovered that it was the victim of an attack on its information systems by Russian hackers. The incident, known as the Sunburst attack, was costly for the company, and certain... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Corporate Accountability; Governing and Advisory Boards; Cybersecurity; Lawsuits and Litigation; Legal Liability; Business and Shareholder Relations; Risk Management; Information Technology Industry; United States; Texas; Delaware

July 2024 (Revised July 2024)
Case

Gates Ventures: Making Alzheimer's a Forgotten Past

By: Satish Tadikonda, William Marks, Shardule Shah and Calvin Marambo

After a personal journey and interest in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) by Bill Gates, Gates Ventures set out to find the best way to accelerate innovation in the field of AD. In partnership with the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation, Gates Ventures created the... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Entrepreneurial Finance; Health Disorders; Mission and Purpose

July 15, 2022
Article

Does Elon Musk Have a Strategy?

By: Andy Wu and Goran Calic

Does Elon Musk have a strategy? Or is he just out there winging it? Looking at Musk’s many companies, common themes stand out across three areas: what fits into his vision for problems to solve, how he designs an organization as a solution to those problems, and why he... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Strategy; Vision; Resources; Organization; Platform; Closed Systems; Leadership; Complexity; Organizational Design; Vertical Integration; Problems and Challenges; Success; Auto Industry; Aerospace Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Energy Industry

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February 2004 (Revised April 2005)
Exercise

Necessary Evils: A Diagnostic Exercise

By: Joshua D. Margolis and Andrew Molinsky

Central to the work of leaders and professionals are tasks that entail harming one party to deliver benefits or advance valued and worthy goals. Sometimes a person must, as part of his or her job, perform an act that causes emotional, material, or physical harm to... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Leadership; Problems and Challenges; Ethics; Management Skills

15 Mar 2022
News

How a Ukrainian Economist Is Fighting the Russians

Expertise Dissensus: A Multi-level Model of Teams' Differing Perceptions about Member Expertise

Why are some teams more effective than others at using their members' expertise to achieve short-term performance and longer term developmental benefits? We propose that a critical factor is expertise dissensus-members' differing perceptions of each other's level of... View Details

2020
Book

Teaching by Heart: One Professor's Journey to Inspire

By: Thomas J. DeLong

The best teachers are leaders, and the best leaders are teachers. Teaching by Heart summarizes the author's key insights gained from more than 40 years of teaching and managing. It illustrates how teachers can both lift people up and let them down. It proposes... View Details

Keywords: Teaching; Leadership; Attitudes; Management; Business Education