Filter Results:
(217)
Show Results For
- All HBS Web (217)
Show Results For
- All HBS Web (217)
- 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
- 02 Jul 2012
- Research & Ideas
Why Good Deeds Invite Bad Publicity
Do companies with reputations for acting in socially responsible ways receive public goodwill when unpleasant news hits? The question of how much (or even if) corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies benefit companies beyond the knowledge that they are good... View Details
- 09 Apr 2012
- Research & Ideas
Who Sways the USDA on GMO Approvals?
Many corporations have gotten good at pulling the levers of government to tilt the odds in their favor, weakening regulations or securing perks, justified or not, to further their business interests. Economists use the term "regulatory capture" to describe... View Details
- 25 Jan 2012
- Research & Ideas
A Few Firms Have Outsized Influence in D.C.
It's a truism for many that in American politics money buys influence. In one recent poll, 75 percent of respondents said they believed "money buys results in Congress." But the question of whose money and what results is not so easy to answer. There's hardly... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 05 Feb 2014
- Research & Ideas
Can Putin Score Olympic Gold?
public's interest and reminded people of the multiple platforms available to see the competition," says Greyser. The biggest boon to NBC, however, was the Games themselves. Winning performances by American athletes such as swimmer Michael... View Details
- 29 Jan 2019
- Research & Ideas
'Green Bonds' May Be Our Best Bet for Environmental Damage Control
Municipalities have been selling bonds to pay for public works projects—fire stations, parking garages,sewage treatment systems—for 200 years. It’s only in the past decade or so, however, that they’ve been selling them with an extra perk: helping the environment. In... View Details
- 25 Oct 2017
- Research & Ideas
Will Machine Learning Make You a Better Manager?
Credit: PhonlamaiPhoto Thirty years ago, the idea of a machine learning on its own would have stoked the worst kind of sci-fi nightmares about robots taking over the planet. These days, machine learning is so commonplace, we barely notice it. Computers routinely learn... View Details
- 16 Aug 2017
- Research & Ideas
Researchers Use Google Street View to See the Future of Cities
You can see the subtle changes when a neighborhood is on its way up—streets get cleaner, building facades improve, new businesses start moving in. Across an entire city, however, it’s harder to track such changes, to understand in real time which neighborhoods are... View Details
- 07 Dec 2016
- HBS Case
Why Millennials Flock to Fintech for Personal Investing
Millennials are disruptive bunch. The first generation to grow up with the internet, consumers born after 1980 are used to relying on technology and engineering to do almost everything—including shopping (Amazon), listening to music (Spotify), communicating with... View Details
- 21 Nov 2016
- Research & Ideas
It Matters That Your CEO Doesn't Know Much About Sales
CEOs need to roll up their sleeves and learn more about the customer-facing sides of their businesses, like sales. Source: AlexBrylov Let’s face it: To most C-suite executives, sales processes are often an afterthought or a somewhat mysterious black box—essential for... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 31 Aug 2016
- Research & Ideas
One Quarter of Entrepreneurs in the United States Are Immigrants
Debates over the pluses and minuses of immigrant entrepreneurs on the American economy are white hot, but one thing seems stubbornly lacking from them: facts. The arguments are familiar by now. Immigrants take jobs from native-born Americans, claims one side in... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 15 Jun 2016
- Research & Ideas
These VC Partners May Make Your Firm Less Innovative
You don’t know what you don’t know—and almost by definition new entrepreneurial ventures need a helping hand from established partners if they hope to succeed. “Startups suffer from what researchers call ‘liability of newness,’” says Harvard Business School Assistant... View Details
- 02 May 2016
- Research & Ideas
Why People Don’t Vote--and How a Good Ground Game Helps
Democracy has a dirty little secret. Despite the fever pitch over presidential primaries this year, the truth is there are few people actually voting. Before the most recent round of voting, only some 11 percent of eligible Democrats voted in the primaries, and the... View Details
- 17 Aug 2015
- Research & Ideas
Who is Boss in the Sharing Economy?
When is a company not a company? A modern-day Zen koan, maybe, but the evidence is all around us—Airbnb, Elance-oDesk, Handy, HourlyNerd, TaskRabbit, Uber. These businesses seem much more like conglomerations of independent professionals that connect to customers... View Details
- 20 Aug 2014
- Research & Ideas
Dragging Patent Trolls Into the Light
The Texas town of Marshall has a population of 25,000 people, 2,000 of whom are students attending one of the four colleges that have earned Marshall the nickname "Athens of Texas." Marshall is also home to a historic pottery industry and one of the country's... View Details
- 16 Jun 2014
- Research & Ideas
The Unfulfilled Promise of Educational Technology
Not only has technology entered nearly every area of our personal life, it's the rare industry that isn't computerized, networked, and advertised on Facebook. Except one: education. Outside of the occasional computer lab, basic webpage, or iPad in the classroom,... View Details
- 12 Jan 2015
- Research & Ideas
Regulators Ease Up on Companies Generating Political Benefits
We all know how political influence works: company X donates money to politician Y, and then that pol leans on regulator Z to go easy on his new best friend. In economic parlance, that circle of back-scratching is known as "regulatory capture." Economists... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 24 Mar 2014
- Research & Ideas
The Surprising Link Between Language and Corporate Responsibility
We've heard that Eskimos have 100 words for snow—a common way of expressing how language affects the way we see the world. Whether or not that particular example is true, cultural linguists have long theorized that the words a particular group of people have at their... View Details
Keywords: by Michael Blanding
- 23 Apr 2014
- HBS Case
Are Electronic Cigarettes a Public Good or Health Hazard?
When electronic cigarettes first appeared a little over a decade ago, they were hailed by many as a godsend: a tool to help smokers quit while mitigating the most harmful effects of tobacco. "The [e-cigarette] market is producing, at no cost to the taxpayer, an... View Details