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What Kind of Leader Are You? How Three Action Orientations Can Help You Meet the Moment

by Ben Rand

Executives who confront new challenges with old formulas often fail. The best leaders tailor their approach, recalibrating their "action orientation" to address the problem at hand, says Ryan Raffaelli. He details three action orientations and how leaders can harness them.

Reinventing an Iconic Independent Bookstore

Re: Ryan L. Raffaelli

In 2020, Kwame Spearman (MBA 2011) made the career-shifting decision to leave a New York City-based consulting job to return to his hometown of Denver, Colorado, and take over an iconic independent bookstore, The Tattered Cover. Spearman saw an opportunity to reinvent the local business to build a sense of community after the pandemic. But he also had to find a way to meet the big challenges facing independent booksellers amid technological change and shifting business models. Professor Ryan Raffaelli and Spearman discuss Spearman’s vision for reinventing The Tattered Cover, as well as larger insights around how local businesses can successfully compete with online and big box retailers in the case, “Kwame Spearman at Tattered Cover: Reinventing Brick-and-Mortar Retail.”

The Vinyl Renaissance: Take Those Old Records Off the Shelf

by Christine Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette

If listeners today can stream just about any song they want, why are so many music aficionados still buying records? Ryan Raffaelli and Gold Rush Vinyl CEO Caren Kelleher discuss the resurgence of vinyl. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Reinventing Retail: The Novel Resurgence of Independent Bookstores

by Ryan Raffaelli

Independent booksellers in the United States have proven resilient in the face of multiple technological and business model shifts in the bookselling industry. By tapping into a larger social movement that promotes the value of shopping local and a desire to cultivate community, successful booksellers are differentiating themselves from online and big box competitors.

Lessons for Retailers from the Rebirth of Indie Bookstores

by Michael Blanding

Independent bookstores are resurging. Their strategies offer lessons for many disrupted industries to compete against Amazon and other digital retailers, says Ryan Raffaelli. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Field-Level Paradox and the Co-Evolution of an Entrepreneurial Vision

by Ryan Raffaelli and Richard DeJordy

Swiss watchmaking embodies the classic strategic paradox created by the introduction of new technology: the choice between resisting and defending, or embracing and prospecting. This paper offers a model for how fields and organizational leaders experiencing similar paradoxes can adapt to environmental change while still preserving valuable aspects of their past success.

How Independent Bookstores Have Thrived in Spite of Amazon.com

by Carmen Nobel (with video by Amelia Kunhardt)

Ryan Raffaelli set out to discover how independent bookstores managed to survive and even thrive in spite of competition from Amazon and other online retailers. His initial findings reveal how much consumers still value community and personal contact. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Faber-Castell Doubles Down on the Pencil

Re: Ryan L. Raffaelli

Some products are just harder to innovate than others. The pencil, for instance. Yet, Faber-Castell has been turning them out for more than 200 years, adding improvements such as color and cosmetic products to the mix. In this podcast, Ryan Raffaelli discusses how older products can become young again. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Reversing the Losing Streak on Sesame Street

Re: Rosabeth M. Kanter & Ryan L. Raffaelli

When CEO Jeffrey Dunn took over Sesame Street in 2014 with a new mission to “Make kids smarter, stronger, and kinder,” skepticism ran high as Big Bird's hair. In this podcast, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, who wrote the case with Ryan Raffaelli, talks about reversing a losing streak, answering foundational questions like, “Who are we if we make this deal?” Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Flexing the Frame: TMT Framing and the Adoption of Non-Incremental Innovations in Incumbent Firms

by Ryan Raffaelli, Mary Ann Glynn, and Michael Tushman

Organizations continuously face decisions about whether or not to adopt innovations. Often, however, senior teams do not adopt an innovation even when the organization has the resources to do so. Using real examples, this paper theorizes how the processes of cognitive and emotional framing inform managerial choices about whether or not to adopt innovations.

New Research and Ideas, May 9

Sean Silverthorne

How Do You Reorg Big Bird? ... Organized for a downturn ... Finding a new market for Fitbit.

How the FBI Reinvented Itself After 9/11

by Carmen Nobel

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the FBI was ordered to reorganize itself from a law enforcement agency to a national security organization. The transformation and the lessons it imparts are documented in a study by Ranjay Gulati, Ryan L. Raffaelli, and Jan W. Rivkin. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

‘Does 'What We Do' Make Us 'Who We Are'? Organizational Design and Identity Change at the Federal Bureau of Investigation

by Ranjay Gulati, Ryan Raffaelli, and Jan Rivkin

Both the design and identity of the FBI changed greatly in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This study tracing the co-evolution of the Bureau’s organizational design and identity before the 9/11 attacks and through three subsequent phases finds that successful changes to organizational identity are likely to be delayed after a radical external shock: Management is likely to be constrained, appropriate design is probably unclear, or both.

The Faculty Reader: Who is Reading What This Summer?

by Carmen Nobel

What titles made the Harvard Business Faculty short list for summer reading? Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Technology Reemergence: Creating New Value for Old Technologies in Swiss Mechanical Watchmaking, 1970–2008

by Ryan Raffaelli

Focusing on Swiss watchmaking from 1970 to 2008, this study demonstrates key factors that contribute to, and influence, the re-emergence of market demand for a legacy technology in a mature institutional field. This paper shows how processes of preservation and transformation serve as necessary counterweights that encourage retaining some valued elements of the old institutional order alongside new elements that allow for change and survival. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Has Apple Reinvented the Watch?

Re: Ryan L. Raffaelli

Will the Apple Watch reinvent wearables the way the iPhone did smartphones? Ryan Raffaelli shares his insights. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Mechanisms of Technology Re-Emergence and Identity Change in a Mature Field: Swiss Watchmaking, 1970-2008

by Ryan Raffaelli

According to most theories of technological change, old technologies tend to disappear when newer ones arrive. As this paper argues, however, market demand for old technologies may wane only to emerge again at a later point in time, as seems to be the case for products like Swiss watches, fountain pens, streetcars, independent bookstores, and vinyl records, which have all begun to claim significant market interest again. Looking specifically at watchmaking, the author examines dynamics of technology re-emergence and the mechanisms whereby this re-emergence occurs in mature industries and fields. Swiss watchmakers had dominated their industry and the mechanical watch movement for nearly two centuries, but their reign ended abruptly in the mid-1970s at the onset of the "Quartz Revolution" (also known as the "Quartz Crisis"). By 1983, two-thirds of all watch industry jobs in Switzerland were gone. More recently, however, as the field has moved toward a focus on luxury, a "re-coupling" of product, organizational, and community identity has allowed master craftsmen to continue building their works of art. The study makes three main contributions: 1) It highlights the importance of studying technology-in-practice as a lens on viewing organizational and institutional change. 2) It extends the theorization of identity to products, organizations, and communities and embeds these within cycles of technology change. 3) It suggests the importance of understanding field-level change as tentative and time-bound: This perspective may allow deeper insights into the mechanisms that propel emergence, and even re-emergence, of seemingly "dead" technologies and industries. (Read an interview with Ryan Raffaelli about his research.) Key concepts include: The value of some products may go beyond pure functionality to embrace non-functional aspects that can influence consumer buying behaviors. Introducing a new technology is not always the only way to get ahead of the curve when older technologies or industries appear to be reaching the end of their life. Industries that successfully re-emerge are able to redefine their competitive set - the group of organizations upon which they want to compete and the value proposition that they send to the consumer. There is significant interplay among community, organization, and product identities. Swiss watches—as well as fountain pens, streetcars, independent bookstores and vinyl records—are all examples of technologies once considered dead that have rematerialized to claim significant market interest. For Swiss watchmakers, "who we are" (as a community) and "what we do" (as watch producers) were mutually constitutive and may have been a potent force in the processes that sought re-coupling in the face of the de-coupling precipitated by technological change. Although new or discontinuous technologies tend to displace older ones, legacy technologies can re-emerge, coexist with, and even come to dominate newer technologies. Core to this process is the creation—and recreation—of product, organization, and community identities that resonate with the re-emergence of markets for legacy technologies. Substantial economic change may not be contained only within organizational or industry boundaries, but also extend outward to include broader forces related to field-level change. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Technology Re-Emergence: Creating New Value for Old Innovations

by Carmen Nobel

Every once in a while, an old technology rises from the ashes and finds new life. Ryan Raffaelli explains how the Swiss watch industry saved itself by reinventing its identity. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.