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J PAT CARTER/Getty Images Teachers have had enough. Since March, schools in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina have either been shut down or turned into sites of resistance. In Kansas, teachers are threatening to strike because their legislature continues to fund schools at a level the state Supreme Court has deemed […]

px photography/Getty Images There are two contemporary strategic imperatives, among others, that many executives are grappling with: (1) competing in emerging markets and (2) partnering with startups to gain exposure to novel ideas and opportunities. While each on its own is hard enough to accomplish, in concert these imperatives pose a formidable challenge — yet one that […]

Heidi Grant, a social psychologist, explains the right ways and wrong ways to ask colleagues for help. She says people are much more likely to lend us a hand than we think they are; they just want it to be a rewarding experience. Grant is the author of Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help […]

Heidi Grant, a social psychologist, explains the right ways and wrong ways to ask colleagues for help. She says people are much more likely to lend us a hand than we think they are; they just want it to be a rewarding experience. Grant is the author of Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help […]

Heidi Grant, a social psychologist, explains the right ways and wrong ways to ask colleagues for help. She says people are much more likely to lend us a hand than we think they are; they just want it to be a rewarding experience. Grant is the author of Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help […]

Heidi Grant, a social psychologist, explains the right ways and wrong ways to ask colleagues for help. She says people are much more likely to lend us a hand than we think they are; they just want it to be a rewarding experience. Grant is the author of Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help […]

Heidi Grant, a social psychologist, explains the right ways and wrong ways to ask colleagues for help. She says people are much more likely to lend us a hand than we think they are; they just want it to be a rewarding experience. Grant is the author of Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help […]

hbr staff/thelinke/Getty Images After the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018, Dick’s Sporting Goods announced that it would no longer sell semiautomatic rifles in its hunting and fishing stores (it had already stopped selling them at its main stores after the December 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting). The company has gone on to […]

We’re delighted to be making more episodes for you. Download this podcast Help shape our conversations by responding to these questions. You can answer as few or as many as you’d like: What work decisions do you struggle with? Do you overthink? Stress about making the best choice? Is there a strategy you’ve found useful […]

Peter Dazeley/Getty Images The #MeToo movement started by activist Tarana Burke gained momentum in October of 2017 when actress Alyssa Milano invited women on Twitter to respond “me too” to her tweet if they’d experienced sexual harassment or abuse. Women did so across social media, telling their stories and revealing the extent to which so […]

Reza Estakhrian/Getty Images For over 25 years, women have made up at least 40% of U.S. medical students. This past year, more women than men were enrolled in U.S. medical schools. Yet overall women make up only 34% of physicians in the U.S., and gender parity is still not reflected in medical leadership. Women account […]

MakiEni/Getty Images I couldn’t stop crying. Months of late evenings and demanding travel had cracked my professional exterior. I tried to present my quarterly numbers while my colleagues squirmed in their seats, offered me a box of tissues, or just stared. My boss abruptly ended the meeting. My colleagues quickly evacuated the room. I was […]

MakiEni/Getty Images I couldn’t stop crying. Months of late evenings and demanding travel had cracked my professional exterior. I tried to present my quarterly numbers while my colleagues squirmed in their seats, offered me a box of tissues, or just stared. My boss abruptly ended the meeting. My colleagues quickly evacuated the room. I was […]

MakiEni/Getty Images I couldn’t stop crying. Months of late evenings and demanding travel had cracked my professional exterior. I tried to present my quarterly numbers while my colleagues squirmed in their seats, offered me a box of tissues, or just stared. My boss abruptly ended the meeting. My colleagues quickly evacuated the room. I was […]

OLI SCARFF/Getty Images When Apple CEO Steve Jobs approached AT&T about partnering on a new kind of mobile phone — a touchscreen computer that would fit in your pocket — Apple had no expertise in the mobile market. Yet AT&T executives quickly came to believe so strongly in Job’s vision that they skipped internal process protocols to […]

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Amid current outbreaks of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Nipah virus in India, an even scarier threat looms. Last year, researchers recreated an extinct smallpox-like virus with DNA bought online for just $100,000 and published how they did it. Their feat heightens concerns that rogue regimes and terrorists […]

Andy Roberts/Getty Images It takes time for a big idea to make its way into business practice. Six years ago, Harvard’s Michael Porter and FSG’s Mark Kramer made the bold statement that shared value — the idea that the purpose of a company is to achieve both shareholder profit and social purpose — would “reinvent capitalism.” They […]

Tim Robberts/Getty Images Research has repeatedly shown that U.S. patients receive recommended care only half of the time. It is also known that patients receive non-recommended or “low-value” care as much as 20% of the time. Despite the proliferation of evidence-based guidelines to improve clinicians’ practice patterns, clinicians often don’t respond to them. So healthcare […]

Tim Robberts/Getty Images Research has repeatedly shown that U.S. patients receive recommended care only half of the time. It is also known that patients receive non-recommended or “low-value” care as much as 20% of the time. Despite the proliferation of evidence-based guidelines to improve clinicians’ practice patterns, clinicians often don’t respond to them. So healthcare […]

Tim Robberts/Getty Images Research has repeatedly shown that U.S. patients receive recommended care only half of the time. It is also known that patients receive non-recommended or “low-value” care as much as 20% of the time. Despite the proliferation of evidence-based guidelines to improve clinicians’ practice patterns, clinicians often don’t respond to them. So healthcare […]

baranozdemir/Getty Images Having a great boss is a potentially life-changing gift. On the other hand, many of us know firsthand that having a bad boss can cause a lot of drama, headaches, and stress. While it’s easy to love the great bosses and flee the bad ones, there’s one kind of boss that’s much less […]

baranozdemir/Getty Images Having a great boss is a potentially life-changing gift. On the other hand, many of us know firsthand that having a bad boss can cause a lot of drama, headaches, and stress. While it’s easy to love the great bosses and flee the bad ones, there’s one kind of boss that’s much less […]

baranozdemir/Getty Images Having a great boss is a potentially life-changing gift. On the other hand, many of us know firsthand that having a bad boss can cause a lot of drama, headaches, and stress. While it’s easy to love the great bosses and flee the bad ones, there’s one kind of boss that’s much less […]

Artiga Photo/Getty Images Each year around Father’s Day, some businesses take a moment to express well wishes for the working dads among the staff. Unfortunately, that sensibility is too often short-lived. Seventy-three percent of U.S. working fathers say there is little workplace support for fathers, according to a new survey from Promundo and Dove Men+Care. […]

Alistair Berg/Getty Images The supply chain is the heart of a company’s operations. To make the best decisions, managers need access to real-time data about their supply chain, but the limitations of legacy technologies can thwart the goal of end-to-end transparency. However, those days may soon be behind us. New digital technologies that have the […]

Rolfo Brenner/EyeEm/Getty Images In almost any business these days, you are guaranteed to interact with people whose cultural background is quite different from your own. In a global organization, you may have colleagues that come from a different country. You may partner with organizations whose employees come from another part of the country. There may […]

HBR Staff One of the most common ways to get people to save is through their employer. In particular, behavioral economics—that marriage of economics and psychology that has put terms like “nudge” into the popular lexicon—has provided a powerful tool for increasing savings, in the form of the default enrollment. The idea is simple: people save […]

Hero Images/Getty Images Women who have already made it to the top say that the only person who will get you there is yourself. While many researchers and observers have examined the structural and other barriers that limit women’s progress through the ranks, we wanted to explore a different question: how have the few women […]

Hero Images/Getty Images Women who have already made it to the top say that the only person who will get you there is yourself. While many researchers and observers have examined the structural and other barriers that limit women’s progress through the ranks, we wanted to explore a different question: how have the few women […]

Hero Images/Getty Images Women who have already made it to the top say that the only person who will get you there is yourself. While many researchers and observers have examined the structural and other barriers that limit women’s progress through the ranks, we wanted to explore a different question: how have the few women […]

Hero Images/Getty Images Women who have already made it to the top say that the only person who will get you there is yourself. While many researchers and observers have examined the structural and other barriers that limit women’s progress through the ranks, we wanted to explore a different question: how have the few women […]

Hero Images/Getty Images Women who have already made it to the top say that the only person who will get you there is yourself. While many researchers and observers have examined the structural and other barriers that limit women’s progress through the ranks, we wanted to explore a different question: how have the few women […]

Does your direct report get on your nerves? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Art Markman, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin and cohost of the podcast Two Guys on Your Head. They talk through […]

Does your direct report get on your nerves? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Art Markman, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin and cohost of the podcast Two Guys on Your Head. They talk through […]

Does your direct report get on your nerves? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Art Markman, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin and cohost of the podcast Two Guys on Your Head. They talk through […]

Does your direct report get on your nerves? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Art Markman, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin and cohost of the podcast Two Guys on Your Head. They talk through […]

Does your direct report get on your nerves? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Art Markman, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin and cohost of the podcast Two Guys on Your Head. They talk through […]

rawpixel/unsplash First impressions in the workplace really matter — and not just to the employer. New employees can begin to formulate impressions about organizations from the get-go, influencing their decision to stay with the company in the long term. Poor onboarding experiences can lead to unnecessary and preventable turnover, the cost of which can be […]

Juj Winn/Getty Images The term “innovation” is often associated with geniuses turning startups into gold mines — the next Google, Apple, or Amazon, with products no one even knew they needed. Private equity firms place hundreds of little bets on these startups, hoping one produces a windfall that covers the rest. These bets on the next […]

Kulka/Getty Images Over the last decade, e-commerce has imposed a painful profit squeeze on big-box retailers, resulting in layoffs, store closings, mall reconfigurations, and even bankruptcies. With no reprieve in sight for retailers, the online world is poised to do the same to brand-name consumer products companies. One of the core reasons that this is […]

Gary John Norman/Getty Images Employers are increasingly finding ways to meet the needs of working fathers, offering them family leave, flexible scheduling, and affordable child care options. But fathers remain reluctant to take full advantage of this support, despite professing to want to be equal partners with mothers in child care, with all the diapering, […]

HBR Staff Raise your hand if you have an insurmountable pile of projects on your to-do list and an inbox so terrifying to behold that you can hardly bear to behold it. Cue the sea of arms waving wildly. You have too much to do. You can’t do it alone. You need people to help […]

HBR Staff Raise your hand if you have an insurmountable pile of projects on your to-do list and an inbox so terrifying to behold that you can hardly bear to behold it. Cue the sea of arms waving wildly. You have too much to do. You can’t do it alone. You need people to help […]

HBR Staff Raise your hand if you have an insurmountable pile of projects on your to-do list and an inbox so terrifying to behold that you can hardly bear to behold it. Cue the sea of arms waving wildly. You have too much to do. You can’t do it alone. You need people to help […]

Juanmonino/Getty Images I’d known Jeff (not his real name) for many years, as a client and as a friend, but I’d never seen him so thrown. I could feel his fear, his sense of uncertainty. And it was with good reason. Jeff was the head of sales for a company whose product was, more or […]

HBR Staff/George Caswell/Steven Errico/Getty Images This week’s decision by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon to allow AT&T and Time Warner to complete their merger will bring to a close a deal that has been pending for almost two years. In his blistering, 172-page decision, Judge Leon did much more than simply reject the government’s claim that combining […]

MirageC/Getty Images One of the most recent automation technologies to emerge is robotic process automation, or RPA. RPA is a category of software tools that enable complex digital processes to be automated by performing them in the same way a human user might perform them, using the user interface and following a set of predefined rules. […]

japatino/Getty Images Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity is booming. From the $68 billion CVS-Aetna deal to the $27 billion merger of Microsoft and LinkedIn, 2017 set records with more than 50,000 deals, valued at $3.7 trillion. This momentum is continuing into 2018 with the bidding war for UK media company Sky ($24–$30 billion) and Microsoft’s […]

By Ayman Sayed, President and Chief Product Officer, CA Technologies You’ve probably already heard of the rise in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) across many industries and applications. But, what about the application of AI and ML to agile development, testing and even portfolio management? We’re all striving to deliver better products faster […]

MirageC/Getty Images It’s a good time to be a consumer. New digital business models have flipped the customer-brand relationship on its head. No longer do consumers need to do their own background research on a product or company to find what they are looking for. Instead, brands come to us. There are more options and […]

Mint Images/Getty Images For working parents with school-age children, this time of year is especially chaotic. The season brings end-of-the-school-year projects, state testing, report cards, parent-teacher conferences, the transition to 10 long weeks of child care arrangements, the awkwardness of explaining to colleagues why you’re out of the office again, the need to follow up […]

Mint Images/Getty Images For working parents with school-age children, this time of year is especially chaotic. The season brings end-of-the-school-year projects, state testing, report cards, parent-teacher conferences, the transition to 10 long weeks of child care arrangements, the awkwardness of explaining to colleagues why you’re out of the office again, the need to follow up […]

Mint Images/Getty Images For working parents with school-age children, this time of year is especially chaotic. The season brings end-of-the-school-year projects, state testing, report cards, parent-teacher conferences, the transition to 10 long weeks of child care arrangements, the awkwardness of explaining to colleagues why you’re out of the office again, the need to follow up […]

Mint Images/Getty Images For working parents with school-age children, this time of year is especially chaotic. The season brings end-of-the-school-year projects, state testing, report cards, parent-teacher conferences, the transition to 10 long weeks of child care arrangements, the awkwardness of explaining to colleagues why you’re out of the office again, the need to follow up […]

Mint Images/Getty Images For working parents with school-age children, this time of year is especially chaotic. The season brings end-of-the-school-year projects, state testing, report cards, parent-teacher conferences, the transition to 10 long weeks of child care arrangements, the awkwardness of explaining to colleagues why you’re out of the office again, the need to follow up […]

Tasha Eurich, an organizational psychologist and executive coach, talks about why we all should be working on self-awareness. Few people are truly self-aware, she says, and those who are don’t get there through introspection. She explains how to develop self-awareness through the feedback of loving critics and how to mentor someone who isn’t self-aware. Eurich […]

Ian Nolan/Getty Images When you think about who needs flexibility at work to manage personal and family responsibilities, who comes to mind? If you are like most people, you envision a working mom. The prevailing assumption is that working mothers are the ones who want and need flexibility at work. To be sure, many working […]

William Andrew/Getty Images The pervasive adoption of mobile devices has driven an explosion of contextual user information, including geolocation data, which has become a valuable resource for marketers. However, a lack of technical skill sets among marketers has made it difficult for them to use this data (when they have access to it) effectively. Plus, […]

Jorg Greuel/Getty Images M&A and partnership deals are at an all-time high. But what about competition? The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) wants to know too. It is reviewing or arguing this question in court for a slew of proposed mergers — AT&T-Time Warner, T-Mobile-Sprint, CVS-Aetna, and Express Scripts-Cigna, to name a few. A court decision […]

Will technology cost jobs in the long run, or increase them? Who is set up best for success in the fourth industrial revolution? In this edition of Trailblazers, a podcast series brought to you by Dell Technologies, we investigate the future of robotics. Join Walter Isaacson, former CNN Chairman and CEO, as he and Gary […]

ROGER HARRIS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images The movement to make cities smarter is transforming municipal governments worldwide. But that’s only one side of the story. For companies, smart cities represent major business opportunities — and not only for tech firms selling systems to government agencies. Technology is reconfiguring traditional roles and divisions of labor. City governments […]

vgajic/Getty Images Engineering faces a serious gender-based retention problem. Despite all the efforts encouraging women to study engineering, over 40% of highly skilled women who enter the field end up leaving. Much has been written about why women in the field leave, but we wanted to better understand what encourages some women to stay. In 2014 […]

vgajic/Getty Images Engineering faces a serious gender-based retention problem. Despite all the efforts encouraging women to study engineering, over 40% of highly skilled women who enter the field end up leaving. Much has been written about why women in the field leave, but we wanted to better understand what encourages some women to stay. In 2014 […]

vgajic/Getty Images Engineering faces a serious gender-based retention problem. Despite all the efforts encouraging women to study engineering, over 40% of highly skilled women who enter the field end up leaving. Much has been written about why women in the field leave, but we wanted to better understand what encourages some women to stay. In 2014 […]

david arky/Getty Images As more and more companies cultivate a global workforce and international client base, it’s increasingly necessary to present remotely. For years, teleconferencing was the best option, but in the past five years internet speeds and web conferencing technologies have become sufficiently robust to support a shift to live video streaming. But presenting in […]

Lucidio Studio Inc/Getty Images Performance evaluation systems are critical for evaluating, motivating, and rewarding employees, but companies are hard-pressed to find a system that achieves these goals and promotes fair evaluations. Inconsistencies and biases in the evaluation process can leave employees dissatisfied and demotivated, especially if undeserving employees are rewarded and recognized while more deserving […]

Eugene Mymrin/Getty Images M&A deals that are made for the purpose of acquiring new technology can make or break a company. At worst, a disastrous deal leads to wasted effort and dollars, often in the millions or even billions. On the flip side, a strategic transaction can catapult a company into first-mover position, give a […]

Krzysztof Dydynski/Getty Images The wave of sexual harassment reports in recent months has resulted in the dethroning of high-profile men in media and entertainment, sports, business, and politics. At the same time, social media, such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, have made public conversation about the issue hyper visible and easier to organize — as was the case for the […]

Krzysztof Dydynski/Getty Images The wave of sexual harassment reports in recent months has resulted in the dethroning of high-profile men in media and entertainment, sports, business, and politics. At the same time, social media, such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, have made public conversation about the issue hyper visible and easier to organize — as was the case for the […]

Krzysztof Dydynski/Getty Images The wave of sexual harassment reports in recent months has resulted in the dethroning of high-profile men in media and entertainment, sports, business, and politics. At the same time, social media, such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, have made public conversation about the issue hyper visible and easier to organize — as was the case for the […]

Krzysztof Dydynski/Getty Images The wave of sexual harassment reports in recent months has resulted in the dethroning of high-profile men in media and entertainment, sports, business, and politics. At the same time, social media, such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, have made public conversation about the issue hyper visible and easier to organize — as was the case for the […]

Krzysztof Dydynski/Getty Images The wave of sexual harassment reports in recent months has resulted in the dethroning of high-profile men in media and entertainment, sports, business, and politics. At the same time, social media, such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, have made public conversation about the issue hyper visible and easier to organize — as was the case for the […]

Martin Konopka/EyeEm/Getty Images The market caps of just four companies, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft, now exceed $3 trillion. Their combined assets of $944 billion are an order of magnitude lower than the combined assets of $7,700 billion of the largest 3,177 companies in 1986, when the aggregate market capitalization reached $3 trillion for the […]

Daniel Sambraus/EyeEm/Getty Images When brothers Shep and Ian Murray cut their ties with Corporate America to start a little company on Martha’s Vineyard in 1998, their motivation was clear: “We’re making neck ties so we don’t have to wear them.” Little did they know that the business they founded, Vineyard Vines, would become a darling […]

Erik Dreyer/Getty Images The impact investment industry is growing rapidly, a fact that many of us in the field celebrate. In 2010, J.P Morgan projected up to $1T in investment would be deployed this decade — which would make impact investing twice the size of official development aid to the world’s less develop countries (as […]

Hero Images/Getty Images Over the next decade, approximately 10,000 Baby Boomers will retire every day. Young leaders will have substantial opportunity to climb the corporate ladder — by 2030, millennials alone will comprise three out of every four individuals in the U.S. workforce — and companies will increasingly grapple with how to accelerate the development of […]

HBR Staff/MirageC/flashpop/Getty Images Chances are that you spend between a third and a half of your waking hours each week at work. As a result, your relationships with people at work can become among the most important relationships in your life. Indeed, having good relationships with colleagues is one of the strongest predictors of people’s […]

HBR Staff/MirageC/flashpop/Getty Images Chances are that you spend between a third and a half of your waking hours each week at work. As a result, your relationships with people at work can become among the most important relationships in your life. Indeed, having good relationships with colleagues is one of the strongest predictors of people’s […]

HBR Staff/MirageC/flashpop/Getty Images Chances are that you spend between a third and a half of your waking hours each week at work. As a result, your relationships with people at work can become among the most important relationships in your life. Indeed, having good relationships with colleagues is one of the strongest predictors of people’s […]

HBR Staff/MirageC/flashpop/Getty Images Chances are that you spend between a third and a half of your waking hours each week at work. As a result, your relationships with people at work can become among the most important relationships in your life. Indeed, having good relationships with colleagues is one of the strongest predictors of people’s […]

frank mckenna/unsplash U.S. trade policy is roiling markets. At the end of March, the U.S. stock market tumbled 700 points in a single day on news that President Trump would impose tariffs on Chinese exports. A degree of volatility and uncertainty has continued since then as the tariffs continue to make news. Canada, China, Europe, […]

Glasshouse Images/Getty Images Poor pricing practices are insidious — they damage a company’s economics but can go unnoticed for years. Consider the case of a major industrial goods manufacturer that was struggling with low profit margins, relative both to competitors and to its own historical performance. It traced much of the cause to a mismatch […]

Caiaimage/Chris Ryan/Getty Images Far too many great ideas for solving pressing social problems are not being applied at the scale they deserve, because thousands of nonprofit organizations are teetering on the brink of collapse. Of the 300,000 nonprofits in the United States, two-thirds have an annual budget of $500,000 or below, which does not allow […]

AFPContributor/Contributor/Getty Images An estimated 1,833 lives were lost in 2005 in Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest storms in U.S. history. The federal government’s lack of preparedness and inadequate response to Katrina met with widespread criticism, and the need for a more robust system to respond to natural catastrophes emerged as one of the key […]

Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty Images Earlier this spring, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos released his annual letter to shareholders. Like every shareholders letter Bezos has written since his company went public in 1997, this year’s version was brilliant, entertaining, and filled with big strategic insights and gritty management takeaways. To my eyes, though, it was also missing something — […]

Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty Images Earlier this spring, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos released his annual letter to shareholders. Like every shareholders letter Bezos has written since his company went public in 1997, this year’s version was brilliant, entertaining, and filled with big strategic insights and gritty management takeaways. To my eyes, though, it was also missing something — […]

Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty Images Earlier this spring, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos released his annual letter to shareholders. Like every shareholders letter Bezos has written since his company went public in 1997, this year’s version was brilliant, entertaining, and filled with big strategic insights and gritty management takeaways. To my eyes, though, it was also missing something — […]

Justin Tierney/EyeEm/Getty Images In 2007 Joseph Golan, a division leader at Elop, an Israeli electro-optics company, faced a challenge. As an experienced manager, he knew that his manufacturing and operation division’s success depended on getting creative ideas from his employees. But he also realized that the existing system was not working as needed. Only a relatively small […]

HBR Staff/CSA Images/B&W Archive Collection/Getty Images Retail has been constantly reinventing itself, and participants race to keep up with what feels like a series of epic shifts in consumer preferences. Apparel brands are investing especially heavily in online shopping capabilities and introducing interactive features that complement apps and websites. Retailers and manufacturers are rushing out […]

Drew Angerer/Getty Images Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub is a perfect illustration of how value is ascribed differently in Silicon Valley than in the rest of the world. GitHub was acquired for close to 30x annual recurring revenue (an astronomical multiple). To put this in perspective, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26 billion in 2016 (7.2x revenue), in […]

HBR Staff/Chris Ryan/Getty Images When companies merge, customer experience (CX) is often overlooked — yet it’s arguably one of the most important aspects of any company. In fact, according to Gartner research, tomorrow’s companies are expected to compete primarily on customer experience. I just took my company through an acquisition and found that even the smallest […]

By Billy Bosworth, CEO, DataStax Like many technology companies, DataStax competes with some of the world’s largest enterprises for top talent. We’ve come to realize that much of that talent is located outside of Silicon Valley, and even outside of the typical urban areas where a company might naturally look for new talent. Over the […]

HBR/Martin Barraud/Getty Images Judson Manor is a gracious former 1920s luxury hotel near The Cleveland Clinic, Case Western University, and many of the museums and arts institutions in Cleveland, Ohio. Today it houses 120 highly educated retirees with an average age of 79 — and seven 20-something graduate students. Back in 2010, one of Judson’s residents […]

bs photo/Getty Images Imagine yourself at a restaurant, trying to decide between two desserts: a chocolate cake and a fruit bowl. You’ve been trying to eat healthier, but the cake just sounds so tasty… What do you do? As it turns out, your decision is likely to be influenced by how busy you perceive yourself […]

bs photo/Getty Images Imagine yourself at a restaurant, trying to decide between two desserts: a chocolate cake and a fruit bowl. You’ve been trying to eat healthier, but the cake just sounds so tasty… What do you do? As it turns out, your decision is likely to be influenced by how busy you perceive yourself […]

bs photo/Getty Images Imagine yourself at a restaurant, trying to decide between two desserts: a chocolate cake and a fruit bowl. You’ve been trying to eat healthier, but the cake just sounds so tasty… What do you do? As it turns out, your decision is likely to be influenced by how busy you perceive yourself […]

Bhandharangsri/Getty Images Today we consume five times more information every day than we did in 1986, an incredible amount that’s equivalent to a 174 newspapers…a day. That probably includes a lot of Instagram posts, but it’s not only social media. The corporate e-learning space has grown by nine times over the last 16 years, such […]

HBR Staff/Clare Jackson/EyeEm/Getty Images As soon as you step into a top position at a company that needs to significantly improve the way it operates, there’s pressure to get off to a quick start. Yet the best way to succeed, paradoxically, is to slow things down. Forces pushing in the other direction — toward hyperspeed — are […]

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Getty Images In his classic book, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, the political scientist A.O Hirschman argued that dissatisfaction with a product, service, relationship, or other outcome can give rise to two broad options: one can walk away (exit) or try to change the outcome by engagement (voice). In the labor market, exit and voice […]

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Most people show at least three. from HBR.org https://ift.tt/2JgqZTm

HBR Staff/Clare Jackson/EyeEm/Getty Images As soon as you step into a top position at a company that needs to significantly improve the way it operates, there’s pressure to get off to a quick start. Yet the best way to succeed, paradoxically, is to slow things down. Forces pushing in the other direction — toward hyperspeed — are […]

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and author James Patterson discuss their new novel, The President is Missing, in which a fictional president fights a cybersecurity attack amid intense political dysfunction. The coauthors share their lessons for collaborating across disparate skillsets — “clarity on the objective” and “don’t be afraid to admit what you don’t know.” […]

Microzoa/Getty Images As uncertainty is increasing and competition is becoming more fierce, executives need to have a broader understanding of competition itself in order to sustain an edge. Executives should be thinking about four different types of competition to maintain relevance in a changing environment, which originate from our work on competitiveness, strategy, and strategic […]

Nicholas Eveleigh/Getty Images Employers today know that employees want flexibility, and many companies say they offer it. But there are lots of people out there who need flexibility but don’t have access to it. In our study on flexibility in the modern workforce, we set out to determine whether a gap exists between flexibility supply and […]

Nicholas Eveleigh/Getty Images Employers today know that employees want flexibility, and many companies say they offer it. But there are lots of people out there who need flexibility but don’t have access to it. In our study on flexibility in the modern workforce, we set out to determine whether a gap exists between flexibility supply and […]

Martin Poole/Getty Images We all complain about meetings. We have too many. They’re a waste of time. Nothing gets done. These complaints often have merit, but they are so broad that they’re difficult to argue with and harder to address. There are specific complaints that can be tackled, however. When I ask people in the […]

Bernhard Lang/Getty Images Although it’s hard to pinpoint when skills shortages became the norm in the U.S., one widely acknowledged indicator of a crisis in the making appeared in 1983, with the release of “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.” This groundbreaking report, commissioned by President Ronald Reagan, concluded that the U.S.’s “once […]

Adie Bush/Getty Images Richard (not his real name) graduated from college on a Friday. Three days later he would start his first day on the job in his family business. The choice was not one that he gave much thought to. He’d grown up in the family wine business, which his grandfather had founded, and his […]

Adie Bush/Getty Images Richard (not his real name) graduated from college on a Friday. Three days later he would start his first day on the job in his family business. The choice was not one that he gave much thought to. He’d grown up in the family wine business, which his grandfather had founded, and his […]

Kant Santi Nu Ta Nnth/EyeEm/Getty Images “Almost everything we do is a recommendation.” That’s the essential design philosophy articulated by then-Netflix engineering director Xavier Amatriain five years ago, where personalizing and customizing choice is the coin of the realm. “I was at eBay last week,” he said at the time, “and they told me that […]

Gary Burchell/Getty Images Fair managers can reap big dividends. Extensive research finds that employees who feel fairly treated are better performers, helpful to colleagues, more committed to their workgroups and the organization, and less likely to steal or be rude to others. Yet, all too often, employees find themselves being treated unfairly – their boss […]

Gary Burchell/Getty Images Fair managers can reap big dividends. Extensive research finds that employees who feel fairly treated are better performers, helpful to colleagues, more committed to their workgroups and the organization, and less likely to steal or be rude to others. Yet, all too often, employees find themselves being treated unfairly – their boss […]

Daniel Grizelj/Getty Images Why does it seem like you can’t throw a paper airplane in some offices without hitting a person who is training for a marathon, planning a 10-day silent meditation retreat, or intending on scaling Kilimanjaro? On top of working 24/7 for a company that doesn’t pay overtime? Extremism is becoming the norm […]

Becky Hayes/EyeEm/Getty Images Today, good marketing relies on having detailed and accurate customer data. And companies, not surprisingly, are eager to collect vast troves of it. For instance, Amazon continuously tracks the behaviors of its 100 million Prime members, an example of “first-party” data. And many companies have found that sharing their own customer information with other companies […]

Paul Taylor/Getty Images In a book titled Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?, MIT scientists Henry Lieberman and Christopher Fry discuss why we have wars, mass poverty, and other social ills. They argue that we cannot cooperate with each other to solve our major problems because our institutions and businesses are saturated with a […]

Kimberly Whitaker/Getty Images A Fortune 250 B2B company spent a quarter of a million dollars trying to solve the wrong problem. A new product line had failed, and the company believed the problem was either poor product delivery times or lack of effort by the sales force. After throwing millions at both problems, they finally […]

Kimberly Whitaker/Getty Images A Fortune 250 B2B company spent a quarter of a million dollars trying to solve the wrong problem. A new product line had failed, and the company believed the problem was either poor product delivery times or lack of effort by the sales force. After throwing millions at both problems, they finally […]

Eric Raptosh Photography/Getty Images Checking into a hotel for a conference several years ago, I asked the receptionist where I could get some dinner. There was no restaurant in the hotel, I was told; my only options were ordering delivery from a fast-casual chain or a pizza joint. I went with the pizza, but my lack of […]

Peter Dazeley/Getty Images Asian Americans are the forgotten minority in the glass ceiling conversation. This was painfully obvious to us while reading the newly released diversity and inclusion report from a large Silicon Valley company: Its 19 pages never specifically address Asian Americans. Asian men are lumped into a “non-underrepresented” category with white men (we’ll […]

Ilka & Franz/Getty Images Profit and purpose are converging. Over 80% of millennials report that making a positive difference in the world is more important to them than professional recognition. They no longer believe the primary purpose of business should be to make profit, but rather to create social value. On the investor side, more […]

Ilka & Franz/Getty Images Profit and purpose are converging. Over 80% of millennials report that making a positive difference in the world is more important to them than professional recognition. They no longer believe the primary purpose of business should be to make profit, but rather to create social value. On the investor side, more […]

PM Images/Getty Images The pressure put on CEOs to deliver quarterly results is greater than ever before. A 2014 global survey of more than 600 C-suite executives and directors, conducted by the non-profit Focusing Capital for the Long Term (FCLT), reported that two-thirds of those surveyed said pressure for short-term results had increased over the […]

Jekaterina Nikitina/Getty Images A non-negligible percentage of customers who buy a new smartphone return it within the “free return” window. Many of these returners claim that the phone does not work correctly. However, the data clearly indicates that this is often not the real issue. The reality is that these customers simply don’t know how […]

Is your office killing your productivity? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Pete Bacevice, a workplace researcher at the global design firm HLW and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. They talk through how to survive in […]

wragg/Getty Images There’s a lot of buzz around price differentiation these days, especially with the spotlight on AI and big data.  Machine learning makes it much easier to customize the marketing of products and services – and that includes the price. Let’s be clear: price differentiation is not a new phenomenon. We encounter it regularly and, as consumers, […]

Adrienne Bresnahan/Getty Images Feedback, as they say, is a gift. Research bears this out, suggesting that it’s a key driver of performance and leadership effectiveness. Negative feedback in particular can be valuable because it allows us to monitor our performance and alerts us to important changes we need to make. And indeed, leaders who ask […]