532 Posts found for Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge

Organizations spend a lot of money enabling employees to solve problems collectively. But inducing more collaboration may actually hinder the most important part of problem-solving: actually solving the problem. Research by Jesse Shore, Ethan Bernstein, and David Lazer.

Content: Article | Author: Carmen Nobel | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Organizational Behavior

David Yoffie and Michael Cusumano find common leadership lessons from the tech titans of Microsoft, Intel, and Apple in the new book, Strategy Rules.

Content: Article | Author: Michael Blanding | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Strategy

Most negotiation training focuses on what happens before and during the talks. Michael Wheeler’s new app helps users improve their skills after the deal is completed.

Content: Article | Authors: Michael Blanding, Michael Wheeler | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Negotiation

Brand managers entered the social media landscape with the same approach they used for television and radio advertising. With both of those media, we have an understood contract with consumers: In order for you to get free programming, you agree to be interrupted by commercial messages. Social media did not have that contract, so that when customers were interrupted by brands in social media, it … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jill Avery | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

Experts could be our most powerful teachers—but often they’ve lost the ability to connect with novices. Research by Ting Zhang reveals how experts can rediscover the experience of inexperience.

Content: Article | Author: Carmen Nobel | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Career, Knowledge Management, Personal Development

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Bank of America’s stringent onboarding process for new execs ensures they understand role expectations, quickly develop networks, and learn from other leaders what it takes to succeed. From the new book by Dorothy Leonard and colleagues, Critical Knowledge Transfer.

Content: Article | Author: Dorothy Leonard | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Best Practices, Human Resources, Knowledge Management, Management

Professor Sandra Sucher wants to change the way business thinks about workforce reductions. “We want people to learn about the forces they unleash in the firm when they institute layoffs.”

Content: Article | Author: Carmen Nobel | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

In an update to his popular A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics, David Moss explains how the state of the macro economy affects managers, executives, students—and all the rest of us. In this excerpt, Moss illuminates David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage.

Content: Article | Author: Sean Silverthorne | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Economics

What do Porsche fanatics, a video game hater, and a person who cooked two weeks’ worth of meals in a rice cooker have in common? They are all “extreme consumers”—those whose tastes are so out there that mainstream market researchers tend to dismiss them as “noise” when trying to figure out how typical consumers think.

That’s fine if you only want to keep making incremental improvements … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Jill Avery, Michael I. Norton | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Customer Related, Market Research, Marketing / Sales

Why are people so drawn to social media? The question long haunted Mikolaj “Misiek” Piskorski and eventually led to his new book, A Social Strategy: How We Profit from Social Media. Drawing from years of research dating back to before Facebook, the book offers an in-depth analysis exploring why some social media platforms soar while others fizzle, and how business can use them to generate … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Carmen Nobel | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Marketing / Sales

When your intent is to move people to action, to help them understand and deepen their appreciation and gain more insight and more passion about their work, you have got to have […] facts, emotion, and symbols.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Communication, Leadership, Persuasion

The only way to do the right thing well is to do it poorly first.

Content: Quotation | Author: Thomas J. DeLong | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Ability, Experience, Skills

Managers should think about three levels of human behavior in organizations. The first is technical skills, be they in marketing, operations, or the legal department. The second is hierarchy, based on the concept of social relativity, when individuals wonder how they compare to their peers. Even satisfied people get antsy when they see their peers moving forward. The third level, the “inclusionary dimension,” is the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Thomas J. DeLong | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

If you want to threaten a really smart person who is task driven, question his or her competency. That’s the very soul of who they are.

Content: Quotation | Author: Thomas J. DeLong | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Competence, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

New research by Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano, and colleagues shows that taking time to reflect on our work improves job performance in the long run.

Content: Article | Authors: Carmen Nobel, Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

In the fast-paced modern economy, businesses can no longer rely on just one organizational design, argues John Kotter in a new book, Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World. Why we need two “operating systems.” PLUS Book excerpt.

Content: Article | Authors: John P. Kotter, Kim Girard | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Research by Christopher Marquis shows that a company’s degree of social responsibility is affected by a surprising factor—the language it uses to communicate.

Content: Article | Author: Michael Blanding | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: International, Organizational Behavior, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Social media platforms have taken some of the marketing power away from companies and given it to consumers. Jill Avery discusses the landscape of “open source branding,” wherein consumers not only discuss and disseminate branded content, they also create it.

Content: Article | Authors: Carmen Nobel, Jill Avery | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Marketing / Sales

It is not centralization that drives scale; it’s specialization. And that doesn’t have to be central at all. Specialization is about where you create centers of excellence—and that may or may not be at the corporate center. Now, creating this integrated network of specialized operations does increase the coordination needs. So when we wrote about centralization versus coordination, we emphasized the challenges of coordinating operations … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Christopher A. Bartlett | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Management, Operations, Organizational Behavior