Search results for ""Harvard Business Review Press""

Your boss plays an important role in your career. So how do you navigate this delicate, significant professional relationship without playing political games or compromising your character? Managing Up offers concise, expert tips on: Understanding your manager's priorities and pressuresSetting a positive tone for the relationshipManaging expectations--and egosEarning trust and respect Don't have much time? Get up to speed fast on the most essential business skills with HBR's 20-Minute Manager series. Whether you need a crash course or a brief refresher, each book in the series is a concise, practical primer that will help you brush up on a key management topic. Advice you can quickly read and apply, for ambitious professionals and aspiring executives--from the most trusted source in business. Also available as an ebook.

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Imagine, if you can, the world of business - without corporate strategy. Remarkably, fifty years ago that's the way it was. Businesses made plans, certainly, but without understanding the underlying dynamics of competition, costs, and customers. It was like trying to design a large-scale engineering project without knowing the laws of physics. But in the 1960s, four mavericks and their posses instigated a profound shift in thinking that turbocharged business as never before, with implications far beyond what even they imagined. In The Lords of Strategy, renowned business journalist and editor Walter Kiechel tells, for the first time, the story of the four men who invented corporate strategy as we know it and set in motion the modern, multibillion-dollar consulting industry: Bruce Henderson, founder of Boston Consulting Group Bill Bain, creator of Bain & Company Fred Gluck, longtime Managing Director of McKinsey & Company Michael Porter, Harvard Business School professor Providing a window into how to think about strategy today, Kiechel tells their story with novelistic flair. At times inspiring, at times nearly terrifying, this book is a revealing account of how these iconoclasts and the organizations they led revolutionized the way we think about business, changed the very soul of the corporation, and transformed the way we work.

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Does it seem you've formulated a rock-solid strategy, yet your firm still can't get ahead? If so, construct a solid foundation for business execution--an IT infrastructure and digitized business processes to automate your company's core capabilities. In Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution, authors Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David C. Robertson show you how. The key? Make tough decisions about which processes you must execute well, then implement the IT systems needed to digitize those processes. Citing numerous companies worldwide, the authors show how constructing the right enterprise architecture enhances profitability and time to market, improves strategy execution, and even lowers IT costs. Though clear, engaging explanation, they demonstrate how to define your operating model--your vision of how your firm will survive and grow--and implement it through your enterprise architecture. Their counterintuitive but vital message: when it comes to executing your strategy, your enterprise architecture may matter far more than your strategy itself.

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Effective communication is a vital skill for everyone in business today. Great communicators have a distinct advantage in building influence and jumpstarting their careers. This practical guide offers readers a clear and comprehensive overview on how to communicate effectively for every business situation, from sensitive feedback to employees to persuasive communications for customers. It offers advice for improving writing skills, oral presentations, and one-on-one dealings with others. Contents include: Understanding the optimal "medium" to present information Learning the best timing to deliver a message Delivering an effective presentation Drafting proposals Writing effective e-mails Improving self-editing skills Plus, readers can access free interactive tools on the Harvard Business Essentials companion web site. Series Adviser: Mary Munter Professor Mary Munter has taught management communication for over twenty-five years, for seven years at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and since 1983 at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Professor Munter is considered one of the leaders in the management communication field. Among her publications is Guide to Managerial Communication-recently published in its sixth edition and named "one of the five best business books" by the Wall Street Journal. She has also published many other articles and books and consulted with over ninety corporate and not-for-profit clients. Harvard Business Essentials The Reliable Source for Busy Managers The Harvard Business Essentials series is designed to provide comprehensive advice, personal coaching, background information, and guidance on the most relevant topics in business. Drawing on rich content from Harvard Business School Publishing and other sources, these concise guides are carefully crafted to provide a highly practical resource for readers with all levels of experience. To assure quality and accuracy, each volume is closely reviewed by a specialized content adviser from a world class business school. Whether you are a new manager interested in expanding your skills or an experienced executive looking for a personal resource, these solution-oriented books offer reliable answers at your fingertips.

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Coca-Cola. Harley-Davidson. Nike. Budweiser. Valued by customers more for what they symbolize than for what they do, products like these are more than brands--they are cultural icons. How do managers create brands that resonate so powerfully with consumers? Based on extensive historical analyses of some of America's most successful iconic brands, including ESPN, Mountain Dew, Volkswagen, Budweiser, and Harley-Davidson, this book presents the first systematic model to explain how brands become icons. Douglas B. Holt shows how iconic brands create "identity myths" that, through powerful symbolism, soothe collective anxieties resulting from acute social change. Holt warns that icons can't be built through conventional branding strategies, which focus on benefits, brand personalities, and emotional relationships. Instead, he calls for a deeper cultural perspective on traditional marketing themes like targeting, positioning, brand equity, and brand loyalty--and outlines a distinctive set of "cultural branding" principles that will radically alter how companies approach everything from marketing strategy to market research to hiring and training managers. Until now, Holt shows, even the most successful iconic brands have emerged more by intuition and serendipity than by design. With How Brands Become Icons, managers can leverage the principles behind some of the most successful brands of the last half-century to build their own iconic brands. Douglas B. Holt is associate professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School.

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Why are there so many gaps between what firms know they should do and what they actually do? Why do so many companies fail to implement the experience and insight they've worked so hard to acquire? The Knowing-Doing Gap is the first book to confront the challenge of turning knowledge about how to improve performance into actions that produce measurable results. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, well-known authors and teachers, identify the causes of the knowing-doing gap and explain how to close it. The message is clear--firms that turn knowledge into action avoid the "smart talk trap." Executives must use plans, analysis, meetings, and presentations to inspire deeds, not as substitutes for action. Companies that act on their knowledge also eliminate fear, abolish destructive internal competition, measure what matters, and promote leaders who understand the work people do in their firms. The authors use examples from dozens of firms that show how some overcome the knowing-doing gap, why others try but fail, and how still others avoid the gap in the first place. The Knowing-Doing Gap is sure to resonate with executives everywhere who struggle daily to make their firms both know and do what they know. It is a refreshingly candid, useful, and realistic guide for improving performance in today's business.

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Businesses need a new type of problem solving. Why? Because they are getting people wrong. Traditional problem-solving methods taught in business schools serve us well for some of the everyday challenges of business, but they tend to be ineffective with problems involving a high degree of uncertainty. Why? Because, more often than not, these tools are based on a flawed model of human behavior. And that flawed model is the invisible scaffolding that supports our surveys, our focus groups, our R&D, and much of our long-term strategic planning. In The Moment of Clarity, Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel Rasmussen examine the business world's assumptions about human behavior and show how these assumptions can lead businesses off track. But the authors chart a way forward. Using theories and tools from the human sciences--anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and psychology--The Moment of Clarity introduces a practical framework called sensemaking. Sensemaking's nonlinear problem-solving approach gives executives a better way to understand business challenges involving shifts in human behavior. This new methodology, a fundamentally different way to think about strategy, is already taking off in Fortune 100 companies around the world. Through compelling case studies and their direct experience with LEGO, Samsung, Adidas, Coloplast, and Intel, Madsbjerg and Rasmussen will show you how to solve problems as diverse as setting company direction, driving growth, improving sales models, understanding the real culture of your organization, and finding your way in new markets. Over and over again, executives say the same thing after engaging in a process of sensemaking: "Now I see it ..." This experience--the moment of clarity--has the potential to drive the entire strategic future of your company. Isn't it time you and your firm started getting people right? Learn more about the innovation and strategy work of ReD Associates at: redassociates.com

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NEW from the bestselling HBR's 10 Must Reads series. To innovate profitably, you need more than just creativity. Do you have what it takes? If you read nothing else on inspiring and executing innovation, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you innovate effectively. Leading experts such as Clayton Christensen, Peter Drucker, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter provide the insights and advice you need to: * Decide which ideas are worth pursuing * Innovate through the front lines--not just from the top * Adapt innovations from the developing world to wealthier markets * Tweak new ventures along the way using discovery-driven planning * Tailor your efforts to meet customers' most pressing needs * Avoid classic pitfalls such as stifling innovation with rigid processes Looking for more Must Read articles from Harvard Business Review? Check out these titles in the popular series: HBR's 10 Must Reads: The Essentials HBR's 10 Must Reads on Communication HBR's 10 Must Reads on Collaboration HBR's 10 Must Reads on Leadership HBR's 10 Must Reads on Making Smart Decisions HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing HBR's 10 Must Reads on Teams

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DON'T LET YOUR WRITING HOLD YOU BACK. When you're fumbling for words and pressed for time, you might be tempted to dismiss good business writing as a luxury. But it's a skill you must cultivate to succeed: You'll lose time, money, and influence if your e-mails, proposals, and other important documents fail to win people over. The HBR Guide to Better Business Writing, by writing expert Bryan A. Garner, gives you the tools you need to express your ideas clearly and persuasively so clients, colleagues, stakeholders, and partners will get behind them. This book will help you: * Push past writer's block * Grab--and keep--readers' attention * Earn credibility with tough audiences * Trim the fat from your writing * Strike the right tone * Brush up on grammar, punctuation, and usage

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Most people feel at odds with their organizations at one time or another: Managers with families struggle to balance professional and personal responsibilities in often unsympathetic firms. Members of minority groups strive to make their organizations better for others like themselves without limiting their career paths. Socially or environmentally conscious workers seek to act on their values at firms more concerned with profits than global poverty or pollution. Yet many firms leave little room for differences, and people who don't "fit in" conclude that their only option is to assimilate or leave. In Rocking the Boat, Debra E. Meyerson presents an inspiring alternative: building diverse, adaptive, family-friendly, and socially responsible workplaces not through revolution but through walking the tightrope between conformity and rebellion. Meyerson shows how these "tempered radicals" work toward transformational ends through incremental means--sticking to their values, asserting their agendas, and provoking change without jeopardizing their hard-won careers. Whether it's by resisting quietly, leveraging "small wins," or mobilizing others in legitimate but powerful ways, tempered radicals turn threats to their identities into opportunities to make a positive difference in their companies--and in the world. Timely and provocative, Rocking the Boat puts self-realization and change within everyone's reach--whether your difference stems from race, gender, sexual orientation, values, beliefs, or social perspective.

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The author argues that the roles of human resource professionals must be redefined to meet the competitive challenges organizations face today and into the future. He provides a framework that identifies four distinct roles of human resource professionals: strategic player, administrative expert, employee champion, and change agent. He includes many examples to demonstrate that human resource professionals must operate in all four areas simultaneously in order to contribute fully. He urges a shift of these professionals' mentality from "what I do" to "what I deliver" and makes specific recommendations for how individuals in human resources can partner with line managers to make organizations more competitive.

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Based on a ten-year examination of control systems in over 50 U.S. businesses, this book broadens the definition of control and establishes a critical bridge between the disciplines of strategy and accounting and control. In addition to the more traditional diagnostic control systems, Simons identifies three new control systems that allow strategic change: belief systems that communicate core values and provide inspiration and direction, boundary systems that frame the strategic domain and define the limits of freedom, and interactive systems that provide flexibility in adapting to competitive environments and encourage organizational learning. These four control systems, according to Simons, will provide managers with the basic levers for pursuing strategic objectives.

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A year's worth of management wisdom, all in one place. We've reviewed the ideas, insights, and best practices from the past year of Harvard Business Review to keep you up-to-date on the most cutting-edge, influential thinking driving business today. With authors from Clayton M. Christensen to Adam Grant and company examples from Intel to Uber, this volume brings the most current and important management conversations to your fingertips. This book will inspire you to: * Rethink the way you work in the face of advancing automation * Transform your business using a platform strategy * Apply design thinking to create innovative products * Identify where too much collaboration may be holding your people back * See the theory of disruptive innovation in a brand new light * Recognize the signs that your cross-cultural negotiation may be falling apart This collection of articles includes "Collaborative Overload," by Rob Cross, Reb Rebele, and Adam Grant; "Algorithms Need Managers, Too," by Michael Luca, Jon Kleinberg, and Sendhil Mullainathan; "Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy," by Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Geoffrey G. Parker, and Sangeet Paul Choudary; "What Is Disruptive Innovation?," by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael Raynor, and Rory McDonald; "How Indra Nooyi Turned Design Thinking into Strategy," an interview with Indra Nooyi by Adi Ignatius; "Engineering Reverse Innovations," by Amos Winter and Vijay Govindarajan; "The Employer-Led Health Care Revolution," by Patricia A. McDonald, Robert S. Mecklenburg, and Lindsay A. Martin; "Getting to Si, Ja, Oui, Hai, and Da," by Erin Meyer; "The Limits of Empathy," by Adam Waytz; "People Before Strategy: A New Role for the CHRO," by Ram Charan, Dominic Barton, and Dennis Carey; and "Beyond Automation," by Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby.

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The best of Clayton Christensen's seminal work on disruptive innovation, all in one place. No business can afford to ignore the theory of disruptive innovation. But the nuances of Clayton Christensen's foundational thinking on the subject are often forgotten or misinterpreted. To achieve continuing growth in your business while defending against upstarts, you need to understand clearly what disruption is and how it works, and know how it applies to your industry and your company. In this collection of Christensen's most influential articles--carefully selected by Harvard Business Review's editors--his incisive arguments, clear theories, and readable stories give you the tools you need to understand disruption and what to do about it. The collection features Christensen's newest article looking back on 20 years of disruptive innovation: what it is, and what it isn't. Covering a broad spectrum of topics--business model innovation, mergers and acquisitions, value-chain shifts, financial incentives, product development--these articles illuminate the impact and implications of disruptive innovation as well as Christensen's broader thinking on management theory and its application in business and in life. This collection of best-selling articles includes: "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave," by Joseph L. Bower and Clayton M. Christensen, "Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change," by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael Overdorf, "Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure," by Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall, "Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things," by Clayton M. Christensen, Stephen P. Kaufman, and Willy C. Shih, "Reinventing Your Business Model," by Mark W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen, and Henning Kagermann, "The New M&A Playbook," by Clayton M. Christensen, Richard Alton, Curtis Rising, and Andrew Waldeck, "Skate to Where the Money Will Be," by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Matthew Verlinden, "Surviving Disruption," by Maxwell Wessel and Clayton M. Christensen, "What Is Disruptive Innovation?" by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Rory McDonald, "Why Hard-Nosed Executives Should Care About Management Theory," by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor, and "How Will You Measure Your Life?" by Clayton M. Christensen.

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In 1996, John P. Kotter's Leading Change became a runaway best seller, outlining an eight-step program for organizational change that was embraced by executives around the world. Then, Kotter and co-author Dan Cohen's The Heart of Change introduced the revolutionary "see-feel-change" approach, which helped executives understand the crucial role of emotion in successful change efforts. Now, The Heart of Change Field Guide provides leaders and managers tools, frameworks, and advice for bringing these breakthrough change methods to life within their own organizations. Written by Dan Cohen and with a foreword by John P. Kotter, the guide provides a practical framework for implementing each step in the change process, as well as a new three-phase approach to execution: creating a climate for change, engaging and enabling the whole organization, and implementing and sustaining change. Hands-on diagnostics--including a crucial "change readiness module"--reveal the dynamics that will help or hinder success at each phase of the change process. Both flexible and scaleable, the frameworks presented in this guide can be tailored for any size or type of change initiative. Filled with practical tools, checklists, and expert commentary, this must-have guide translates the most powerful approaches available for creating successful change into concrete, actionable steps for you and your organization. Dan Cohen is the co-author, with John P. Kotter, of The Heart of Change, and a principal with Deloitte Consulting, LLC.

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Effective managers know that timely coaching can dramatically enhance their teams' performance. Coaching and Mentoring offers managers comprehensive advice on how to help employees grow professionally and achieve their goals. This volume covers the full spectrum of effective mentoring and the nuts and bolts of coaching. Managers learn how to master special mentoring challenges, improve listening skills, and provide ongoing support to their employees. The Harvard Business Essentials series is designed to provide comprehensive advice, personal coaching, background information, and guidance on the most relevant topics in business. Drawing on rich content from Harvard Business School Publishing and other sources, these concise guides are carefully crafted to provide a highly practical resource for readers with all levels of experience and are especially valuable for the new manager. To assure quality and accuracy, a specialized content adviser from a world-class business school closely reviews each volume. Whether you are a new manager seeking to expand your skills or a seasoned professional looking to broaden your knowledge base, these solution-oriented books put reliable answers at your fingertips.

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We're living in the Age of Persuasion. Leaders and organizations of all kinds--public and private, large and small--fulfill their missions only by competing in the marketplace of images and messages. To win in that marketplace, they need advertising. This has been true since the advent of mass media, from mass-circulation magazines and radio through the age of television and the Internet. Yet even as they use advertising to capture consumers' imaginations and build their brands, few people know of the ingenious and tormented man who built the modern advertising industry and shaped a new consumer sensibility as the twentieth century unfolded: Albert D. Lasker. Drawing on a recently uncovered trove of Lasker's papers, Jeffrey Cruikshank and Arthur Schultz have written a fascinating biography of one of the past century's most influential, intriguing, troubled, and instructive figures. Lasker's creative and powerful use of "reason-why" advertising to inject ideas and arguments into ad campaigns had a profound impact on modern advertising, foreshadowing the consumer-centered "unique selling proposition" approach that dominates the industry today. His tactics helped launch or revitalize companies and brands that remain household names--including Palmolive, Goodyear, and Quaker Oats. As Lasker rose in prominence, he went beyond consumer products to apply his brilliance to presidential politics, government service, and professional sports, changing the game wherever he went, and building a vast fortune along the way. But his intensity had a price--he was felled by mental breakdowns throughout his life. This book also tells the story of how he fought back with determination and with support from family and friends in an age when lack of effective treatment doomed most mentally ill people. The Man Who Sold America is a riveting account of a man larger than life, who shaped not only an industry but also a century.

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CEOs are more than frustrated by marketing's inability to deliver results. Has the profession lost its relevance? Nirmalya Kumar argues that, although the function of marketing has lost ground, the importance of marketing as a mind-set--geared toward customer focus and market orientation--has gained momentum across the entire organization. This book challenges marketers to change their role from implementers of traditional marketing functions to strategic coordinators of organization-wide initiatives aimed at profitably delivering value to customers. Kumar outlines seven cross-functional and bottom-line-oriented initiatives that can put marketing back on the CEO's agenda--and elevate its role in shaping the destiny of the firm.

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Most managers today understand the value of building a learning organization. Their goal is to leverage knowledge and make it a key corporate asset, yet they remain uncertain about how best to get started. What they lack are guidelines and tools that transform abstract theory--the learning organization as an ideal--into hands-on implementation. For the first time in Learning in Action, David Garvin helps managers make the leap from theory to proven practice. Garvin argues that at the heart of organizational learning lies a set of processes that can be designed, deployed, and led. He starts by describing the basic steps in every learning process--acquiring, interpreting, and applying knowledge--then examines the critical challenges facing managers at each of these stages and the various ways the challenges can be met. Drawing on decades of scholarship and a wealth of examples from a wide range of fields, Garvin next introduces three modes of learning--intelligence gathering, experience, and experimentation--and shows how each mode is most effectively deployed. These approaches are brought to life in complete, richly detailed case studies of learning in action at organizations such as Xerox, L. L. Bean, the U. S. Army, and GE. The book concludes with a discussion of the leadership role that senior executives must play to make learning a day-to-day reality in their organizations.

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A Wall Street Journal Bestseller "For nearly thirty years, my life's work has been to help people like you find ways to bring the often warring aspects of life into greater harmony." -- Stew Friedman, from Leading the Life You Want You're busy trying to lead a "full" life. But does it really feel full--or are you stretched too thin? Enter Stew Friedman, Wharton professor, adviser to leaders across the globe, and passionate advocate of replacing the misguided metaphor of "work/life balance" with something more realistic and sustainable. If you're seeking "balance" you'll never achieve it, argues Friedman. The idea that "work" competes with "life" ignores the more nuanced reality of our humanity--the interaction of four domains: work, home, community, and the private self. The goal is to create harmony among them instead of thinking only in terms of trade-offs. It can be done. Building on his national bestseller, Total Leadership, and on decades of research, teaching, and practice as both consultant and senior executive, Friedman identifies the critical skills for integrating work and the rest of life. He illustrates them through compelling original stories of these remarkable people: * former Bain & Company CEO and Bridgespan co-founder Tom Tierney * Facebook COO and bestselling author Sheryl Sandberg * nonprofit leader and US Navy SEAL Eric Greitens * US First Lady Michelle Obama * soccer champion-turned-broadcaster Julie Foudy * renowned artist Bruce Springsteen Each of these admirable (though surely imperfect) people exemplifies a set of skills--for being real, being whole, and being innovative--that produce a sense of purpose, coherence, and optimism. Based on interviews and research, their stories paint a vivid picture of how six very different leaders use these skills to act with authenticity, integrity, and creativity--and they prove that significant public success is accomplished not at the expense of the rest of life, but as the result of meaningful engagement in all its parts. With dozens of practical exercises for strengthening these skills, curated from the latest research in organizational psychology and related fields, this book will inspire you, inform you, and instruct you on how to take realistic steps now toward leading the life you truly want.

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Shift your strategy downstream. Why do your customers buy from you rather than from your competitors? If you think the answer is your superior products, think again. Products are important, of course. For decades, businesses sought competitive advantage almost exclusively in activities related to new product creation. They won by building bigger factories, by finding cheaper raw materials or labor, or by coming up with more efficient ways to move and store inventory--and by inventing exciting new products that competitors could not replicate. But these sources of competitive advantage are being irreversibly leveled by globalization and technology. Today, competitors can rapidly decipher and deploy the recipe for your product's secret sauce and use it against you. "Upstream," product-related advantages are rapidly eroding. This does not mean that competitive advantage is a thing of the past. Rather, its center has shifted. As marketing professor Niraj Dawar compellingly argues, advantage is now found "downstream," where companies interact with customers in the marketplace. Tilt will help you grasp the global nature of this downstream shift and its profound implications for your strategy and your organization. With vivid examples from around the world, ranging across industries and sectors, Dawar shows how companies are reorienting their strategies around customer interactions to create and capture unique value. And he demonstrates how, unlike product-related advantage, this value is cumulative, continuously building over time. In an increasingly customer-centered world marketplace, let Tilt serve as your guide to shifting your strategy downstream--and achieving enduring competitive advantage.

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In The Discipline of Teams, Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith explore the often counter-intuitive features that make up high-performing teams--such as selecting team members for skill, not compatibility--and explain how managers can set specific goals to foster team development. The result is improved productivity and teams that can be counted on to deliver more than just the sum of their parts. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.

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Moving beyond mere tolerance Us-versus-them is the costly mind-set in which organizations, communities, and whole nations too often find themselves trapped. In fact, recognizing difference as a positive force can bring astonishing value to even the most diverse organizations. In Us Plus Them, leadership scholar Todd Pittinsky introduces a groundbreaking new science of diversity that: * Debunks the assumption that wherever there is difference there will be inherent tension and animosity * Challenges the effectiveness of our standard attempts to fight prejudice and combat hate in our schools and workplaces, our civic and religious lives * Reveals how we benefit from the mixing of different ethnic, racial, national, social, and religious groups in a globalized world Through a wide range of examples--from Maine and Michigan to Rwanda and Bhutan, and from small-town classrooms to corporate boardrooms--Pittinsky opens our eyes to misunderstood yet useful aspects of us-and-them relations, including many of the neglected positive dimensions of difference. He provides a bold new assessment of the popular and scientific approaches to the issue, proving that it's time to move beyond mere tolerance to build communities in which the two sides of the us-and-them equation engage each other because they both want to. Much as Martin Seligman and positive psychology have shifted the focus from mental illness to mental healthiness, this book shifts our mind-set to diversity as a positive force. Understanding the science and practical use of that energy will help us build the schools, neighborhoods, companies, and nations we want, and not simply avoid the ugliest problems of the past. Pittinsky shows us that our great diversity experiment hasn't failed--it hasn't even begun.

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In this age of hypercompetition, the Internet constitutes a powerful tool for inventing radical new business models that will leave your rivals scrambling. But as brain scientist and entrepreneur Jeffrey Stibel explains in Wired for Thought, you have to understand its true nature. The Internet is more than just a series of interconnected computer networks: it's the first real replication of the human brain outside the human body. To leverage its power, you first need to understand how the Internet has evolved to take on similarities to the brain. This engaging and provocative book provides the answer. Stibel lays out: - How networks have changed and what that implies for how people connect and form communities - What the Internet-and online business opportunities-will look like in the future - What the next stage of artificial intelligence will be and what opportunities it will present for businesses Stibel shows how exceptional companies are using their understanding of the Internet's brainlike powers to create competitive advantage-such as building more effective Web sites, predicting consumer behavior, leveraging social media, and creating a collective consciousness.

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Managers, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists all seek to maximize the financial returns from innovation, and profits are driven largely by the quality of the opportunities they pursue. Based on a structured and process-driven approach this book demonstrates how to systematically identify exceptional opportunities for innovation. An innovation tournament, just like its counterpart in sports, starts with a large number of candidates, with opportunities as the players. These opportunities are pitted against each other until only the exceptional survive. This book provides a principled approach for the effective management of innovation tournaments - identifying a wealth of promising opportunities and then evaluating and filtering them intelligently for greatest profitability. With a set of practical tools for creating and identifying new opportunities, it guides the reader in evaluating and screening opportunities. The book demonstrates how to construct an innovation portfolio and how to align the innovation process with an organization's competitive strategy. Innovation Tournaments employs quirky, fresh examples ranging from movies to medical devices. The authors' tool kit is built on their extensive research, their entrepreneurial backgrounds, and their teaching and consulting work with many highly innovative organizations.

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Find the right innovation modelInnovation is a much-used buzzword these days, but when it comes to creating and implementing a new idea, many companies miss the mark—plans backfire, consumer preferences shift, or tried-and-true practices fail to work in a new context. So is innovation just a low-odds crapshoot?In The Architecture of Innovation, Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner—one of the foremost experts on how innovation works—says innovation can be understood and managed. The key to success? Incentives.Fortunately, new research has shed light on the role incentives can play in promoting new ideas, but these findings have been absent from innovation literature—until now. By using the principles of organizational economics, Lerner explains how companies can set the right incentives and time horizons for investments and create a robust innovation infrastructure in the process.Drawing from years of experience studying and advising companies, venture capital firms, and an assortment of governments around the globe, Lerner looks to corporate labs and start-ups, and argues that the best elements of both can be found in hybrid models for innovation. While doing so, he uses a wide range of industry-rich examples to show how these models work and how you can put them into practice in your own organization.Practical and thought-provoking, The Architecture of Innovation is the missing blueprint for any company looking to strengthen its innovation competence.

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In this McKinsey Award-winning article, first published in May 1989, Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad explain that Western companies have wasted too much time and energy replicating the cost and quality advantages their global competitors already experience. Canon and other world-class competitors have taken a different approach to strategy: one of strategic intent. They begin with a goal that exceeds the company's present grasp and existing resources: "Beat Xerox"; "encircle Caterpillar." Then they rally the organization to close the gap by setting challenges that focus employees' efforts in the near to medium term: "Build a personal copier to sell for $1,000"; "cut product development time by 75%." Year after year, they emphasize competitive innovation--building a portfolio of competitive advantages; searching markets for "loose bricks" that rivals have left underdefended; changing the terms of competitive engagement to avoid playing by the leader's rules. The result is a global leadership position and an approach to competition that has reduced larger, stronger Western rivals to playing an endless game of catch-up.

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Most business leaders can take only so much pressure before their performance slides. Yet some CEOs deliver their greatest successes when times get toughest--when customers' preferences are shifting away from a company's products, when new regulations are shrinking profit margins, when political unrest is destroying supply lines. In Better Under Pressure, Justin Menkes reveals the common traits that make these leaders successful. Drawing on in-depth interviews with sixty CEOs from an array of industries and performance data from two hundred other leaders, Menkes shows that great executives strive relentlessly to maximize their own potential--as well as stoke their people's innate thirst for their own triumphs. To do so, they draw on a set of three essential and rare attributes: * Realistic optimism: They recognize the risks threatening their organization's survival--and their own failings--while remaining confident in their ability to have an impact. * Subservience to purpose: They dedicate themselves to pursuing a noble cause and win their team's commitment to that cause. * Finding order in chaos: They find clarity amid the many variables affecting their business by culling data and forming the conclusions that matter most to the company. The good news: these three capabilities can be learned. Drawing on a broad range of examples from real companies--including Avon, Yum Brands, Southwest, Procter & Gamble, and Ryerson Steel, to name just a few--Menkes demonstrates how each psychological attribute manifests itself in real life and enables top performance under extreme duress. He also shows you how to develop and deploy those attributes--so you can transform yourself into a leader who only shines brighter as the pressure intensifies. Deeply personal, brimming with compelling stories from real-life CEOs, and packed with powerful insights, tools, and practices, this book is a potent resource for aspiring, emerging, and seasoned business leaders alike.

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It used to be only dotcom start-ups lacked workable business models. But now the ubiquity of cheap communications and computing is deeply wounding business models across the board. Combined with rapidly changing customer expectations, the rules for how value is delivered, and what, when, and how much customers will pay are in flux. What can you do to ensure that you have a business model that will work today and in the future? Create new revenue models, advises Saul J. Berman in Not for Free. The most important strategy now is wringing new income streams from existing assets, physical and digital, by exploiting new segments, new uses and new value additions. Using the media industry, the canary in the coalmine for business model disruption, as a starting point, Berman explores the revenue strategies that are working, and the ones that are failing, in this new world. Drawing on examples from a variety of industries like Progressive Insurance, Rent the Runway, Castrol, Redbox, Mint and many others, Berman guides you through the opportunities and pitfalls of new revenue strategies. Timely and practical, Not for Free tackles a problem plaguing all companies: growing revenue organically in the near term.

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Only 30 percent of strategic initiatives are successfully executed. Of those that are, most CEOs view the process as too slow. What's going on? And how can you accelerate execution in your company? In Strategic Speed, the authors provide the answers. Start by understanding the barriers to execution: Employees don't grasp where an initiative is going. They don't adopt new behaviors. They're not committed to working together to achieve results. Most leaders try to speed things up by changing processes or installing new technologies. But better processes and systems won't remove the barriers. Instead, you need to unleash three people factors--clarity (understanding the goal), unity (collaborating across work groups), and agility (adapting quickly). The authors explain how to unleash these factors by exercising four leadership abilities: * Affirming strategies: Ensuring everyone knows the destination and wants to go there * Driving initiatives: Accelerating projects called for by your strategy * Managing climate: Controlling what it feels like to work in your team * Cultivating experience: Harnessing employees' knowledge and expertise Strategic Speed provides real-world examples--from companies as diverse as Tata Sky, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Ameriprise, and Fender Guitars--showing these practices in action. And it's packed with tools and assessments for diagnosing where your execution efforts are in trouble and choosing specific actions for accelerating results in your firm.

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The Lessons Learned Series Wondering how the most accomplished leaders from around the globe have tackled their toughest challenges? Now you can find out--with Lessons Learned. Concise and engaging, each volume in this new series offers twelve to fourteen insightful essays by top leaders in business, the public sector, and academia on the most pressing issues they've faced. A crucial resource for today's busy executive, Lessons Learned gives you instant access to the wisdom and expertise of the world's most talented leaders. Featuring interviews with: Doug Elix, IBM Dave Balter, BzzAgent Richard Santulli, NetJets David Bell, Interpublic Group

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Bringing groups together is a central and unrelenting task of leadership. CEOs must nudge their executives to rise above divisional turf battles, mayors try to cope with gangs in conflict, and leaders of many countries face the realities of sectarian violence. Crossing the Divide introduces cutting-edge research and insight into these age-old problems. Edited by Todd Pittinsky of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, this collection of essays brings together two powerful scholarly disciplines: intergroup relations and leadership. What emerges is a new mandate for leaders to reassess what have been regarded as some very successful tactics for building group cohesion. Leaders can no longer just "rally the troops." Instead they must employ more positive means to span boundaries, affirm identity, cultivate trust, and collaborate productively. In this multidisciplinary volume, highly regarded business scholars, social psychologists, policy experts, and interfaith activists provide not only theoretical frameworks around these ideas, but practical tools and specific case studies as well. Examples from around the world and from every sector - corporate, political, and social - bring to life the art and practice of intergroup leadership in the twenty-first century.

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Venture capitalists are the handmaidens of innovation. Operating in the background, they provide the fuel needed to get fledgling companies off the ground--and the advice and guidance that helps growing companies survive their adolescence. In Creative Capital, Spencer Ante tells the compelling story of the enigmatic and quirky man--Georges Doriot--who created the venture capital industry. The author traces the pivotal events in Doriot's life, including his experience as a decorated brigadier general during World War II; as a maverick professor at Harvard Business School; and as the architect and founder of the first venture capital firm, American Research and Development. It artfully chronicles Doriot's business philosophy and his stewardship in startups, such as the important role he played in the formation of Digital Equipment Corporation and many other new companies that later grew to be influential and successful. An award-winning Business Week journalist, Ante gives us a rare look at a man who overturned conventional wisdom by proving that there is big money to be made by investing in small and risky businesses. This vivid portrait of Georges Doriot reveals the rewards that come from relentlessly pursuing what-if possibilities--and offers valuable lessons for business managers and investors alike.

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You will experience psychological impasse many times in your life. During these times, you have the sensation that you're stuck or paralyzed. You're convinced that something must change, whether in your work or personal life. Though this feeling is normal, you need to move beyond it. Failure to "get unstuck" can put your career and personal life--as well as the healthy functioning of your team or organization--at risk. In Getting Unstuck, business psychologist and researcher Timothy Butler offers strategies for moving beyond a career or personal-life impasse--by recognizing the state of impasse, awakening your imagination, recognizing patterns of meaning in your life, and taking action for change. Drawing on a wealth of stories about individuals who have successfully transitioned out of impasses, Getting Unstuck provides a practical, authoritative road map for moving past your immediate impasse--and defining a meaningful path forward.

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Net Worth explains how businesses can benefit by forming new partnerships with customers in matters of information capture and privacy. Consumers are losing patience with companies that use personal data about buying habits, income levels, and credit card usage for corporate gain. What consumers need is a new kind of business--an information intermediary or infomediary--to protect customers' privacy while maximizing their information assets. Companies playing the infomediary role will become agents of customer information, marketing such data to businesses on consumers' behalf and protecting consumer privacy. John Hagel, co-author of the bestselling Net Gain, teams with Marc Singer to lay out the underlying economic and competitive dynamics that will foster the emerging business of the infomediary. Net Worth identifies the convergence of commerce, technology, and consumer frustration as the incubator for the infomediary business, as consumers seek to release their personal information only when they can receive value in exchange for their data.

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A year of HBR''s essential thinking on tech—all in one place.Generative AI, biometrics, spatial computing, electric vehicles—new technologies like these are reshaping organizations at the hybrid office, on factory floors, and in the C-suite. What should you and your company be doing now to take advantage of the new opportunities these technologies are creating—and avoid falling victim to disruption?The Year in Tech 2025: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you understand what the latest and most important tech innovations mean for your organization and how you can use them to compete and win in today’s turbulent business environment.Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind?Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the topics that are shaping your company''s future with the Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR''s smartest thinki

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AI—including generative AI—is radically transforming business. Are you ready? Accenture technology leaders Paul Daugherty and Jim Wilson provide crucial insights and advice to help you meet the challenge.Look around you. Artificial intelligence is no longer just a futuristic notion. It''s here right now—in software that senses what we need, supply chains that "think" in real time, and now generative AI that is radically reshaping work and productivity. Twenty-first-century pioneer companies are already using AI to innovate and grow fast. The bottom line is this: Businesses that understand how to harness AI can surge ahead. Those that neglect it will fall behind. Which side are you on?In this updated and expanded edition of Human + Machine—including a new chapter on gen AI—Accenture technology leaders Paul Daugherty and Jim Wilson show that the essence of the AI paradigm shift is the transformation of all busine

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What will it take to create a more gender-balanced workplace?If you read nothing else on leadership and gender at work, read these 10 articles by experts in the field. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you understand where gender equality is today--and how far we still have to go.This book will inspire you to: Better understand the path women must take to leadership Learn the root causes of the barriers that exist for women in the workplace Check your own gender biases and distinguish between confidence and competence in your colleagues Manage a more effective gender-diversity program Recognize the issues women face when speaking up about bias or harassment Help women reenter the workforce after taking time off--and create opportunities for them to reach their ambitions. This collection of articles includes "Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership," by Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli; "Do Women Lack Ambition?" by Anna Fels; "Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers," by Herminia Ibarra, Robin Ely, and Deborah Kolb; "Women and the Vision Thing," by Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru; "The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why," by Deborah Tannen; "The Memo Every Woman Keeps in Her Desk," by Kathleen Reardon; "Why Diversity Programs Fail," by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev; "Now What?" by Joan C. Williams and Suzanne Lebsock; "The Battle for Female Talent in Emerging Markets," by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid; "Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success," by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce; and "Sheryl Sandberg: The HBR Interview," by Sheryl Sandberg and Adi Ignatius.

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Health-Care Solutions from a Distant ShoreHealth care in the United States and other nations is on a collision course with patient needs and economic reality. For more than a decade, leading thinkers, including Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen, have argued passionately for value-based health-care reform: replacing delivery based on volume and fee-for-service with competition based on value, as measured by patient outcomes per dollar spent.Though still a pipe dream here in the United States, this kind of value-based competition is already a reality--in India. Facing a giant population of poor, underserved people and a severe shortage of skills and capacity, some resourceful private enterprises have found a way to deliver high-quality health care, at ultra-low prices, to all patients who need it. This book shows how the innovations developed by these Indian exemplars are already being practiced by some far-sighted US providers--reversing the typical flow of innovation in the world.Govindarajan and Ramamurti, experts in the phenomenon of reverse innovation, reveal four pathways being used by health-care organizations in the United States to apply Indian-style principles to attack the exorbitant costs, uneven quality, and incomplete access to health care. With rich stories and detailed accounts of medical professionals who are putting these ideas into practice, this book shows how value-based delivery can be made to work in the United States. This "bottom-up" change doesn't require a grand plan out of Washington, DC, agreement between entrenched political parties, or coordination among all players in the health-care system. It needs entrepreneurs with innovative ideas about delivering value to patients. Reverse innovation has worked in other industries. We need it now in health care.

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Humans have a natural instinct to help others.Imagine walking up to a stranger on the subway and asking them for their seat. What about asking a random person on the street if you could borrow their phone? If the idea makes you squeamish, you're not alone--social psychologists have found that doing these very things makes most of us almost unbearably uncomfortable.But here's the funny thing: even though we hate to ask for help, most people are wired to be helpful. And that's a good thing, because every day in the modern, uber-collaborative workplace, we all need to know when and how to call in the cavalry.However, asking people for help isn't intuitive; in fact, a lot of our instincts are wrong. As a result, we do a poor job of calling in the reinforcements we need, leaving confused or even offended colleagues in our wake.This pragmatic book explains how to get it right. With humor, insight, and engaging storytelling, Heidi Grant, PhD, describes how to elicit helpful behavior from your friends, family, and colleagues--in a way that leaves them feeling genuinely happy to lend a hand.Whether you're a first-time manager or a seasoned leader, getting people to pitch in is what leadership is. Fortunately, people have a natural instinct to help other human beings; you just need to know how to channel this urge into what it is you specifically need them to do. It's not manipulation. It's just management.

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From crackly conference lines to pixelated video, virtual meetings can be problematic. But you can host a productive conversation in which everyone participates. Running Virtual Meetings takes you through the basics of:Selecting the right virtual venueGiving participants the information and support they need to connect and contributeEstablishing and enforcing a common meeting etiquetteFollowing up from afar Don't have much time? Get up to speed fast on the most essential business skills with HBR's 20-Minute Manager series. Whether you need a crash course or a brief refresher, each book in the series is a concise, practical primer that will help you brush up on a key management topic. Advice you can quickly read and apply, for ambitious professionals and aspiring executives--from the most trusted source in business. Also available as an ebook.

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Contrived. Disingenuous. Phony. Inauthentic. Do your customers use any of these words to describe what you sell--or how you sell it? If so, welcome to the club. Inundated by fakes and sophisticated counterfeits, people increasingly see the world in terms of real or fake. They would rather buy something real from someone genuine rather than something fake from some phony. When deciding to buy, consumers judge an offering's (and a company's) authenticity as much as--if not more than--price, quality, and availability. In Authenticity, James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II argue that to trounce rivals companies must grasp, manage, and excel at rendering authenticity. Through examples from a wide array of industries as well as government, nonprofit, education, and religious sectors, the authors show how to manage customers' perception of authenticity by: recognizing how businesses "fake it;" appealing to the five different genres of authenticity; charting how to be "true to self" and what you say you are; and crafting and implementing business strategies for rendering authenticity. The first to explore what authenticity really means for businesses and how companies can approach it both thoughtfully and thoroughly, this book is a must-read for any organization seeking to fulfill consumers' intensifying demand for the real deal.

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Corporate executives struggle to harness the power of social technologies. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube are where customers discuss products and companies, write their own news, and find their own deals but how do you integrate these activities into your broader marketing efforts? It's an unstoppable groundswell that affects every industry yet it's still utterly foreign to most companies running things now. When consumers you've never met are rating your company's products in public forums with which you have no experience or influence, your company is vulnerable. In "Groundswell", Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li explain how to turn this threat into an opportunity. In this updated and expanded edition of "Groundswell", featuring an all new introduction and chapters on Twitter and social media integration, you'll learn to: Evaluate new social technologies as they emerge; Determine how different groups of consumers are participating in social technology arenas; Apply a four-step process for formulating your future strategy; and, Build social technologies into your business. "Groundswell" is required reading for executives seeking to protect and strengthen their company's public image.

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Are you at the top of your game--or still trying to get there? Take your cues from the short, powerful 9 Things Successful People Do Differently, where the strategies and goals of the world's most successful people are on display--backed by research that shows exactly what has the biggest impact on performance. Here's a hint: accomplished people reach their goals because of what they do, not just who they are. Readers have called this "a gem of a book." Get ready to accomplish your goals at last.

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