Imagination - Publications - Faculty & Research

27 Oct 2020
Research & Ideas

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

professionals. In the first experiment, an online simulation, Kirgios, Chang, and Milkman asked 491 women to imagine that they were interns who needed to choose a department to join at a theoretical company. Participants browsed the... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

18 Sep 2017
Research & Ideas

'Likes' Lead to Nothing—and Other Hard-Learned Lessons of Social Media Marketing

brands to it. If you’re just tacking your brand onto a current event that has no relationship to your brand or consumer, it’s dangerous because it can feel false, opportunistic, and inappropriate.” Imagine Cheerios sending this to you... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Advertising; Technology

22 May 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

A Luxury Industry Veteran Teaches the Importance of Aesthetics to Budding Business Leaders

experiential selfies on Instagram and Snapchat. THE VERDICT: While none of the fashionista judges could imagine themselves renting a wardrobe from Hilton, they all admired the idea of creating an immersive, personalized, almost fantastic... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Beauty & Cosmetics; Apparel & Accessories; Auto; Tourism

21 Aug 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

Companies Love Big Data But Lack the Strategy To Use It Effectively

industry? How will better data collection transform the ways in which we do clinical trials for new cancer drugs? It is both staggering and exciting to imagine how data and analytic capabilities will transform entire industries and it was... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

25 Jan 2010
Research & Ideas

A Macroeconomic View of the Current Economy

how do you think about this? A: It's worth putting yourself in the shoes of Ben Bernanke and trying to imagine how he thinks about it. That's going to be helpful in assessing what he might do. As a central banker, Mr. Bernanke has to... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

11 May 2009
Research & Ideas

The IT Leader’s Hero Quest

calling to tell me?" Ruben's area had no operational responsibilities, thus would be involved in an outage only peripherally. Barton imagined his team voting on who the bearer of bad news would be. "Because everybody else is... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

24 Jul 2017
Research & Ideas

People Have an Irrational Need to Complete 'Sets' of Things

the idea of completing a set, even if it means working harder or spending more money—with no additional reward other than the satisfaction of completion and the relief of avoiding an incomplete set. Imagine arriving at your boss’s summer... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

04 Feb 2014
What Do You Think?

Has Listening Become a Lost Art?

in the first place. Am I imagining that this is a growing problem, or have I just been picking up the wrong books lately? Has it always been like this? Are we forgetting how to listen? If so, what are the reasons? What do you think? To... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

01 May 2017
Research & Ideas

Bad At Your Job? Maybe It's the Job’s Fault

in that job control to accomplish a task? This list of resources may include people, budgets, and balance sheets. “Just imagine you are looking to take a job somewhere and they want you to drive $100 million in revenue,” Simons explains.... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

22 Mar 2013
Research & Ideas

Pulling Campbell’s Out of the Soup

to imagine that we could inspire high performance with no employee engagement." Conant decided to grow the soup business, and he championed the idea of "winning" on two fronts--in the workplace and in the marketplace. To... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Food & Beverage

13 Nov 2019
Research & Ideas

Don't Turn Your Marketing Function Over to AI Just Yet

Imagine a future in which a smart marketing machine can predict the needs and habits of individual consumers and the dynamics of competitors across industries and markets. This device would collect data to answer strategic questions,... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

25 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Feeling Stuck? Getting Past Impasse

"get" phase 4, perhaps because it calls for a more intuitive and imaginative way of addressing a problem, but those who are less intuitive have to work harder. For phase 5, some people are more psychologically minded than others... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

20 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

Rocket-tunity: Can Private Firms Turn a Profit in Space?

to launch the first private mission to land on the moon, using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The mission will use a lander to study the moon’s magnetic field. “One could imagine a trip like this becoming not exactly a rite of passage, but a... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Wallask; Aerospace; Tourism; Transportation

21 Aug 2000
Research & Ideas

From Emerging Economies to the Global Market: The Case of Embraer

this is the positive of globalization—the ability to try and transcend the difficulties of your domestic context in order to improve your competitiveness," Ghemawat said, "then one of the downsides, or at least one of the managerial challenges, is that it's... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Manufacturing

30 Jun 2021
In Practice

The Harvard Business School Faculty Summer Reader 2021

First, HBS alumnae Kim Scott's book Just Work offers practical ways to serve as an upstander and deal with injustice at work. Second, my dear friend Laurie David and her co-author Heather Reisman's book Imagine It! not only unpacks how... View Details

Keywords: by Kathryn Haviland

29 Sep 2021
Research & Ideas

For Entrepreneurs, Blown Deadlines Can Crush Big Ideas

cases starting, it was hard for us to imagine exactly just how quickly cases would blow up,” Peterson says. “It's not a straight line. It's a geometrically increasing curve. But instead we expect—we want to expect—things to be linear.... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

10 Nov 2003
Research & Ideas

Globalization: The Strategy of Differences

economies will remain with us for the foreseeable future. That spells opportunity for those companies that have the imagination to see the full range of possibilities. View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat

02 Dec 2010
What Do You Think?

Making Right Choices: Art or Science?

this way: Decisions on personal matters carry a greater weight of art; those that relate to work have more of science. Frances Pratt commented, "It is often the art that allows us to imagine that we are indeed making a controlled,... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

25 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Why IT Does Matter

people when a part or system is about to fail. Often, only the senior management team's imagination limits new IT-based opportunities. Our research suggests the following: New technologies will continue to give companies the chance to... View Details

Keywords: by F. Warren McFarlan & Richard L. Nolan

06 Aug 2019
Cold Call Podcast

Super Bowl Ads Sell Products, but Do They Sell Brands?

what you're actually trying to accomplish. Kenny: What do you think about the strategy of leaking them out? I could imagine that you want to build up suspense, you want to have that “a-ha” moment when the ad comes on [for the first time].... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Sports; Entertainment & Recreation; Media & Broadcasting

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