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New research on education from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including higher education, business school curriculums, and job training.
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Learning or Playing? The Effect of Gamified Training on Performance

by Ryan W. Buell, Wei Cai, and Tatiana Sandino

Games-based training is widely used to engage and motivate employees to learn, but research about its effectiveness has been scant. This study at a large professional services firm adopting a gamified training platform showed the training helps performance when employees are already highly engaged, and harms performance when they’re not.

Managerial Quality and Productivity Dynamics

by Achyuta Adhvaryu, Anant Nyshadham, and Jorge Tamayo

Which managerial skills, traits, and practices matter most for productivity? This study of a large garment firm in India analyzes the integration of features of managerial quality into a production process characterized by learning by doing.

Sports: Lessons for Managers

by Sean Silverthorne

When people look to illustrate a great business idea or accomplishment, a sports metaphor usually isn't far away. Why Harvard Business School researchers look for teaching gold on the playing fields of the world. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Reverse the Curse of the Top-5

by Robert S. Kaplan

Scholars and those who evaluate them for promotion can overweight publications ranked in a discipline’s five top journals. This paper explains the origins of journal rankings, the errors and distortions when journal rankings are used to evaluate faculty research, how they inhibit innovative research on emerging practice issues, and possible reforms to reduce their perverse incentives.

The Creative Consulting Company

by Robert S. Kaplan, Richard Nolan, and David P. Norton

Management theories cannot be tested in laboratories; they must be applied, tested, and extended in real organizations. For this reason the most creative consulting companies balance conflicting demands between short‐term business development and long‐term knowledge creation.

Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-Generational Investment

by Nava Ashraf, Natalie Bau, Corinne Low, and Kathleen McGinn

For many girls in developing countries, early adolescence is a time of key challenges: school dropout rates rise, and social and economic pressures increase for marriage and motherhood. This randomized control trial involving Zambian adolescent girls finds that negotiation skills can help them navigate these challenges. Girls taught negotiation skills had significantly better educational outcomes over the next three years.

Executive Education in the Digital Vortex: The Disruption of the Supply Landscape

by Mihnea Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas

The competitive landscape of executive education is feeling a tectonic shift even as demand grows for managerial skills. This study maps and analyzes the major providers of executive education programs, including business schools, consultancies, and corporate universities, to better understand and explain the industry’s present and future dynamics.

How an African History Scholar Became a Modern Righter of Wrongs

by Carmen Nobel

A scholar of colonial-era African history, Caroline M. Elkins had dramatic success turning prior knowledge into real-world action—namely, with a groundbreaking lawsuit against the British government, which revealed a chillingly bureaucratic process for destroying evidence of torture. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Forget About Making College Affordable; Make it a Good Investment

by Joseph Fuller

Making college affordable is a popular campaign topic this year, but Joseph Fuller argues the real debate should be over increasing the returns for students. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Executive Development Programs Enter the Digital Vortex: I. Disrupting the Demand Landscape

by Mihnea Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas

The informational and computational “tectonic shifts” of the past decade—enabling sharing, transacting, collaborating, and learning online—have created new challenges for executive development programs, in part by making visible to both buyers and sellers the specific objectives of participants and their organizations. Drawing on interviews with sponsoring organizations and participants in executive education at Harvard Business School, this study examines what learners and organizations want from executive development and maps the sources of value and drivers of demand for executive development.

The Skills Gap and the Near-Far Problem in Executive Education and Leadership Development

by Das Narayandas and Mihnea Moldoveanu

An increasingly obvious and costly gap has emerged between the skills that executives need in order to cope with the volatile, uncertain, ambiguous, and complex business landscape and the skills being imparted by executive development programs. Providers of these programs need to focus on cultivating skills least susceptible to digital distributed delivery in ways that will make them most relevant to the greatest number of contexts. In addition, skills that are difficult to articulate and translate into formulas will benefit from focused, heavily social learning environments supported by constant reinforcement from savvy facilitators and motivated peers.

Why College Rankings Keep Deans Awake at Night

Re: William C. Kirby

Can parents and prospective students trust college rankings? Bill Kirby unpacks this complex system, including what “world-class” actually means, what rankings don’t take into account, and how schools are learning to game an imperfect system. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

How Can We Hold the “Leadership Industry” Accountable?

by James Heskett

SUMMING UP This month’s reader comments provide little hope that the leadership-development industry can achieve its goals, says James Heskett. So why does the leadership industry continue to thrive? Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Who is to Blame for 'The Great Training Robbery'?

by Roberta Holland

Companies spend billions annually training their executives, yet rarely realize all the benefit they could, argue Michael Beer and colleagues. He discusses a new research paper, The Great Training Robbery. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

The Great Training Robbery

by Michael Beer, Magnus Finnstrom, and Derek Schrader

There is a widely held assumption in corporate life that well trained, even inspired individuals can change the system. This article explains why training fails and discusses why the “great training robbery” persists. The authors offer a framework for integrating leadership and organization change and development, and discuss implications for the corporate HR function.

In This Classroom, Beer Can Improve Your Grade

by Roberta Holland

The Strategic Brew computer simulation puts MBAs in charge of their own breweries, rising or sinking based on the popularity of their pseudo suds. Ramon Casadesus-Masanell explains lessons learned from a beer game Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Why It's Best to Take Tests Early in the Day

by Carmen Nobel

New research by Francesca Gino and colleagues finds students perform best on standardized tests at the start of the school day. The findings also provide insight into how workers can avoid cognitive fatigue in the office. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

The Power of Presence at the Podium

Running for office requires a lot of public speaking. But often, it’s what candidates aren’t saying that can make or break their campaigns. Take the case of Dan Silver, an experienced congressional candidate that leaves voters cold despite his eminent qualifications. With the help of KNP Communications, Silver is forced to watch himself at the podium and makes some profound discoveries. Professor Amy Cuddy delves into this fascinating case and the importance of body language, believing in your own story, and how to put your best self forward. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Are the 'Best and Brightest' Going into Finance? Skill Development and Career Choice of MIT Graduates

by Pian Shu

Pian Shu finds that MIT students who self-select into finance are less academically accomplished than those who choose science and technology.

What Happens When Zambian Schoolgirls Receive Negotiation Training

Re: Kathleen L. McGinn

Research by Kathleen McGinn and colleagues shows how teaching negotiation skills to young Zambian women can greatly improve their health and educational outcomes. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.