Small Business - Publications - Faculty & Research

15 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

High Ambition Leadership

What is welcome and all too rare? Leaders who care about building great institutions, not just profits. What sets these leaders apart in their practice and outlook? Harvard Business School's Michael Beer in his new book, Higher Ambition:... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

01 Jan 2012
News

Hiroshi Mikitani, MBA 1993

owners of small businesses, as well as Japanese society as a whole, Mikitani began working on a web-based shopping mall. “At the time, the Internet was at an early stage,” he notes. “No one was buying things online in Japan.” Working with... View Details

08 Apr 2013
Research & Ideas

Women’s Summit Celebrates ‘Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuit’

Fifty years ago, when America was unquestionably a man's world, one small but influential part of it officially opened its doors to women: the MBA program at Harvard Business School. On Thursday, about 800... View Details

Keywords: by Katie Koch & Harvard Gazette

22 Nov 2022
Blog Post

Leading in Tough Times: HBS Faculty member Amy C. Edmondson on Psychological Safety

Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, has long studied the performance of teams in the workplace. Her latest book is The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the... View Details

01 Sep 2021
What Do You Think?

Can We Train for Trust?

academics call transactional “friction.” As a result, decisions are made and implemented faster and at lower cost, something critical in an age where speed takes on greater and greater value. At a 2019 business conference, Brian Chesky,... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

14 May 2013
Blog Post

The Self-Discovery Process

After spending two very busy but very productive months in my career search process, I am amazed at the evolution I have experienced. I have done several exercises to define my career vision. I have attended many company presentations to... View Details

Keywords: Consulting

29 Sep 2023
Blog Post

HBS Latino Student Association Spotlight: Reyna Pacheco Rios (MBA 2025)

time to be our mother too. When I visit home, she makes my favorite meals that take hours and there is no saying “no” to her to extra servings. Her courage, perseverance, and strength are traits I never take for granted. My brother, a View Details

February 2009 (Revised July 2012)
Case

Jieliang Phone Home! (A)

By: Willy Shih, Ethan Bernstein and Nina Bilimoria

At Precision Electro-Tek's mobile phone manufacturing facility in southern China, thousands of operators—bright and capable young men and (mostly) women like Jieliang Hao—are motivated to improve line productivity through small innovations for faster assembly and have... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Job Design and Levels; Business Processes; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Manufacturing Industry; China

Citation

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07 Jun 2021
Blog Post

The Value of the HBS Case Method – Lessons from an SVMP Participant

admission to a school like Harvard was a pursuit far above my head, something I had seen on television but not so much in my neighborhood. I have always envisioned myself as a leader in the business world, with hopes of not just leading... View Details

02 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

Coronavirus Careers: Cloud Kitchens Are Now Serving

The restaurant industry is one of those most devastated by COVID-19, and social distancing will continue to make many small restaurants unviable. Reduced revenue flows will never cover the rent. But not all is lost. In our research, one... View Details

Keywords: by Lena Ye and Geoffrey Jones; Food & Beverage

12 Sep 2023
Blog Post

Harvard Climate Entrepreneurs Circle: Taking Climate Solutions from Idea to Action, Faster

and sales advice. He changed the structure of his company and figured out the manufacturing challenges (all in the midst of the pandemic – no small feat). Now Harvard is looking to install one of his chargers on the HBS campus. Here’s how... View Details

25 Apr 2024
News

Origin Stories

Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on Spotify More Skydeck episodes Dan Morrell: Hi, this is Dan Morrell, host of Skydeck. Where we come from and how we were raised has a profound effect on who we become. The recipients of this year’s Alumni Achievement Award grew up... View Details

16 Aug 2011
First Look

First Look: August 16

Abstract This paper documents that ventures that are funded by two successful angel groups experience superior outcomes to rejected ventures: they have improved survival, exits, employment, patenting, web traffic, and financing. We use strong discontinuities in angel... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 1990 (Revised November 1991)
Case

Frost, Inc. (A)

In many ways Frost is an archetypal, small, dying manufacturing firm. With profits gone in a no-growth business and unable to diversify, Charles Frost bets the company on computer numerically controlled (CNC) equipment to replace the existing 1940s era screw machines.... View Details

Keywords: Small Business; Diversification; Business Exit or Shutdown; Manufacturing Industry

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14 Mar 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, March 14

March–April 2017 Harvard Business Review Hiring an Entrepreneurial Leader: What to Look For By: Butler, Timothy Abstract—Aspiring to be innovative and agile, companies of all shapes and sizes want to recruit entrepreneurial managers. But... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

30 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

Measuring the Efficacy of the World’s Managers

organizational management practices all over the world. The project was borne of a widely perceived gap in economic research. In business academia, there is an optimistic tendency to assume that managers generally make decisions in the... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

07 Dec 2022
Blog Post

2022 Climate Symposium: Tackling Climate Together

production is incredibly resource intensive and that even a small shift in consumption and production can have a massive impact on greenhouse gas emissions. From there, Karen Skelton, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy at the... View Details

11 Sep 2007
First Look

First Look: September 11, 2007

imperial business. These companies only had a small head office in the metropolitan country, often in major port cities or the capital, which supervised the operations in another, normally less developed, country, where all View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

01 Apr 2008
First Look

First Look: April 1, 2008

Working PapersMental Accounting and Small Windfalls: Evidence from an Online Grocer Authors:Katherine L. Milkman, John Beshears, Todd Rogers, and Max H. Bazerman (revised March 2008) Abstract We study the effect of View Details