- 02 May 2007
- Research & Ideas
The Authentic Leader
Podcast: The best leaders are not the "follow me over the hill" type, says Professor Bill George. Rather, they're the people who lead from the heart as well as the head, and whose leadership style springs from their fundamental character and values. George discusses his new book True North, co-written with Peter Sims. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 01 May 2007
- First Look
- 30 Apr 2007
- Research & Ideas
All Eyes on Slovakia’s Flat Tax
The flat tax is an idea that's burst to life in post-communist Eastern and Central Europe, especially in Slovakia. But is the rest of the world ready? A new Harvard Business School case on Slovakia's complex experience highlights many hurdles elsewhere, as HBS professor Laura Alfaro, Europe Research Center Director Vincent Dessain, and Research Assistant Ane Damgaard Jensen explain in this Q&A. Key concepts include: Despite successful examples of tax reduction, introducing a flat tax in the U.S. or Western Europe is a long way off. Slovak reforms have clearly been attractive to foreign investors. Neighboring Austria, for instance, has lowered its corporate tax rate from 34 percent to 25 percent. One lesson to be learned from Slovakia is that any changes to fundamental tax habits need to be thoroughly explained to all individuals and groups affected by it. Flat taxes were relatively easier to introduce in Central and Eastern Europe because tax collection was limited under the communist regimes. With a flat tax, tax revenues were likely to increase. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 25 Apr 2007
- Research & Ideas
Feeling Stuck? Getting Past Impasse
Feeling "stuck," as psychologically painful as it is, is the first step to awareness of new opportunities in career and in life, says Harvard Business School's Timothy Butler. In this Q&A and excerpt from his new book, Getting Unstuck, he explains six steps for getting from here to there. Key concepts include: A psychological impasse is developmentally necessary for human beings. Although impasse is usually first expressed as a failure, it is a requirement for individuals to change their way of thinking about themselves and their role in the world. There is a six-phase plan for recognizing and overcoming impasse, starting with feeling stuck and ending with finally taking action. Each phase has its predictable challenges, but some people find one phase more difficult than another. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 24 Apr 2007
- First Look
- 23 Apr 2007
- Research & Ideas
Are Great Teams Less Productive?
While studying teamwork, Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson chanced upon a seeming paradox: Well-led teams appeared to make more mistakes than average teams. Could this be true? As it turned out, good teams, which value communication, report more errors. In a recent research paper Edmondson and doctoral student Sara Singer explore this and other hidden barriers to organizational learning. Key concepts include: There are built-in tensions between learning and performance, which smart organizations must learn to recognize and deal with. The challenge for managers is to promote learning without sacrificing performance in the short term. In well-led teams, a climate of openness could make it easier to report and discuss errors compared to teams with poor relationships or with punitive leaders. The good teams, according to this interpretation, don't make more mistakes, they report more. Seen in this way, managers have two jobs. One is to become team leaders who encourage open discussion, trial and error, and the pursuit of new possibilities in the small groups they directly influence. The other is to work hard to build organizations conducive to extraordinary teamwork and learning behaviors throughout the organization. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 18 Apr 2007
- HBS Case
How Magazine Luiza Courts the Poor
Brazilian retailer Magazine Luiza has developed an innovative strategy for selling to the poor, combining technology with great service that please both customers and employees. The question of how the company can grow without sacrificing the special qualities that have made it successful is at the heart of a case study developed by Harvard Business School professor Frances X. Frei. Key concepts include: The case "Magazine Luiza: Building a Retail Model of 'Courting the Poor'" looks at the Brazilian retailer's innovative approach to selling to the poor. Magazine Luiza sells a mix of furniture, consumer electronics, and white goods. The retailer's flexible procedure for credit approval employs nontraditional metrics, which enables customers with lower, less easily established incomes to make purchases. Students who discuss the case in the HBS classroom must assess the viability of Magazine Luiza's acquisition of another Brazilian retailer and consider future growth initiatives. Can the company retain the qualities that have made it special to both customers and employees? Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 17 Apr 2007
- First Look
- 16 Apr 2007
- Research & Ideas
Delivering the Digital Goods: iTunes vs. Peer-to-Peer
Apple's iTunes music download service and illegal peer-to-peer music downloads offer two contrasting approaches to delivering digital content to users. Can Apple and the recording industry seriously compete against free? Do iTunes and p2p help each other in some ways? Professor Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and collaborator Andres Hervas-Drane discuss their recent research on competition in digital distribution. Key concepts include: ITunes demonstrates that to compete effectively against free p2p networks, online digital distribution must deliver experiences to consumers that cannot be easily matched by decentralized, self-sustained peer-to-peer networks. In designing new models, managers must consider how robust a given design is to models of other industry participants with which they interact. Managers must also ponder how aggressive their business models are toward those of other players and ask whether or not complementarities are exploited. The "scarce" resource in digital goods distribution through p2p networks is not content, but bandwidth. As a consequence, ISPs will have a more visible role in shaping industry structure. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 13 Apr 2007
- Working Paper Summaries
Incorporating Price and Inventory Endogeneity in Firm-Level Sales Forecasting
Benchmarking and forecasting firm level performance are key activities for both managers and investors. Retailer performance can be tracked using a number of metrics including sales, inventory, and gross margin. For operational reasons, the sales, inventory, and gross margin for a retailer are interrelated. Retailers often use inventory and margin to increase sales; and sales, conversely, provide input to the retailer’s decisions on inventory and margins. Inventory and margin also influence each other. This research uses firm-level annual and quarterly data for a large cross-section of U.S. retailers listed on NYSE, AMEX, or NASDAQ to construct a model that examines the interrelationships among sales per store, inventory per store, and margin. Key concepts include: This model can be used to benchmark retailers' performance in sales, inventory, and gross margin simultaneously. The model can also be used to generate sales forecasts even when sales were managed using inventory and gross margin. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 12 Apr 2007
- Working Paper Summaries
From Manufacturing to Design: An Essay on the Work of Kim B. Clark
The interdisciplinary research of economist Kim Clark, former dean of Harvard Business School and now President of Brigham Young University-Idaho, occupies a unique place in management scholarship for three reasons. First, he tended to focus on little known and under-appreciated management groups such as manufacturing managers, product development managers, and product and process architects. Thus, he directly positioned himself outside the "traditional" management disciplines of strategy, finance, marketing, and organizational behavior. Second, he swam against the academic tide by recognizing the power of comparative and longitudinal field studies. Third, he sought frameworks beyond his own field in design theory, the engineering sciences, and finance. This paper reviews his research contributions over almost thirty years. Key concepts include: Throughout his career, Clark has brought fresh insights to old questions and opened up new territories of research. He helped to replace Frederick Taylor's scientific management principles with the dynamic concepts of continual learning and learning organizations. Clark showed how product development could be actively managed for greater efficiency and effectiveness. He developed a theory of the embedding of knowledge in organizations, which he used to explain why established firms often fail in the face of "seemingly minor innovations." He showed how changes in the modular structure of products and processes could bring about fundamental change in the structure of industries. Finally, in Clark's later works, he built bridges from design theory to user innovation, transaction- and knowledge-based theories of the firm, and strategy. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 11 Apr 2007
- Research & Ideas
Adding Time to Activity-Based Costing
Determining a company's true costs and profitability has always been difficult, although advancements such as activity-based costing (ABC) have helped. In a new book, Professor Robert Kaplan and Acorn Systems' Steven Anderson offer a simplified system based on time-driven ABC that leverages existing enterprise resource planning systems. Key concepts include: The activity-based costing system developed in the 1980s fell out of favor for a number of reasons, including the need for lengthy employee interviews and surveys to collect data. The arrival of enterprise resource planning systems allows crucial data to be pumped automatically into a TDABC system. Managers must answer two questions to build an effective TDABC system: How much does it cost to supply resource capacity for each business process in our organization? How much resource capacity (time) is required to perform work for each of our company's transactions, products, and customers? Profit improvements of up to 2 percent of sales generally come in less than a year. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 10 Apr 2007
- First Look
- 09 Apr 2007
- Research & Ideas
Industry Self-Regulation: What’s Working (and What’s Not)?
Self-regulation has been all over the news, but are firms that adopt such programs already better on important measures like labor and quality practices? Does adopting a program help companies improve faster? In this Q&A, HBS professor Michael Toffel gives a reality check and discusses the trends for managers. Key concepts include: Many more of these programs are targeted at business customers than at end consumers. Most studies that have examined industry-initiated programs have found that, at the time of adoption, participants are no better than others. The results of government-initiated programs, however, are more ambiguous. Managers increasingly realize that some so-called voluntary programs are actually not very voluntary. In order to really deliver on the promise of these programs, third-party verification will become increasingly important. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 06 Apr 2007
- What Do You Think?
Will Market Forces Stop Global Warming?
HBS professor Jim Heskett sums up many creative responses from readers on the role of business in combatting global climate change. Online forum now closed. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 04 Apr 2007
- Research & Ideas
The Business of Global Poverty
Nearly half of the planet's population subsists on $2 a day or less. What role should business play as the world confronts what may be the most explosive socioeconomic challenge of the new century? Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 03 Apr 2007
- First Look
- 02 Apr 2007
- Lessons from the Classroom
Making the Move to General Manager
Managers face a critical transition when they rise from functional expert to general manager. It's an exciting shift but it's also fraught with pitfalls. A new executive education program at Harvard Business School aims to smooth and accelerate this transition, as professor and program chair Benjamin C. Esty explains. Key concepts include: The first big challenge for general managers with newly acquired or significantly expanded responsibilities is learning to see linkages and interconnections across the organization. The second is transitioning from the role of "doer" to the role of managing through other people—and that's a big change. The General Management Program helps participants lead through two big sources of turbulence: globalization—what happens when market boundaries change—and shifts in technology. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 27 Mar 2007
- First Look
How Do Managers Think?
"Uncertainty sometimes is essential for success" asserts a new book, How Doctors Think. The work of doctors raises intriguing questions about managing, says Jim Heskett, since diagnostics are an important part of managerial decision-making, too. Jim sums up nearly 60 responses from readers around the world, including practicing physicians. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.