First Look

Publications

Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American

Abstract

Andy Grove, the CEO of Intel during its years of explosive growth, is on the shortlist of America's most admired businesspeople, along with Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates. Brilliant, brave, and willing to defy conventional wisdom, Grove is, according to Harvard Business School professor Richard S. Tedlow, "the best model we have for leading a business in the twenty-first century." Grove gave Tedlow unprecedented access to his private papers, along with wide-ranging interviews and access to his closest friends and key business associates. Nothing was off limits, and Tedlow was free to draw his own conclusions. The result is not just a gripping life story but a fascinating analysis of how Grove attacks problems. Born in Hungary of Jewish background in 1936, Andras Istvan Grof survived the Nazis only to face the Soviet invasion of his country. He fled to America at age twenty, studied engineering, and arrived in Silicon Valley just in time for a historic opportunity. He became the third employee of Intel, working for the legendary Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce.

As talented as he was as an engineer, Grove became an even better manager, as we learn from exclusive excerpts from his secret management diaries. Tedlow shows us exactly how that penniless immigrant taught himself to lead a major corporation through some of the toughest challenges in the history of business.

This is an inspiring biography that will enthrall anyone who cares about technology or leadership.

Purchase this book:
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The Costs and Benefits of Undoing Egocentric Responsibility Assessments in Groups

Abstract

Individuals working in groups often egocentrically believe they have contributed more of the total work than is logically possible. Actively considering others' contributions effectively reduces these egocentric assessments, but this research suggests that undoing egocentric biases in groups may have some unexpected costs. Four experiments demonstrate that members who contributed much to the group outcome are actually less satisfied and less interested in future collaborations after considering others' contributions compared with those who contributed little. This was especially true in cooperative groups. Egocentric biases in responsibility allocation can create conflict, but this research suggests that undoing these biases can have some unfortunate consequences. Some members who look beyond their own perspective may not like what they see.

How to Manage Urban School Districts

Abstract

One of the biggest management challenges anywhere is how to improve student performance in urban public schools in the United States. There has been no shortage of proposed solutions: Find great principals and give them power; create competitive markets with charters, vouchers, and choice; establish small schools to ensure that students receive sufficient attention—the list goes on. Although these approaches have created positive changes in individual schools, they have failed to produce a single high-performing urban school system. In this article, the authors, who are members of Harvard University's Public Education Leadership Project (PELP), explain why. One reason, they say, is that educators, researchers, and policy makers see the district office, which oversees all the schools in a district, as part of the problem rather than a crucial part of the solution—and this is a mistake. The district office plays an important role in developing strategies, identifying and spreading best practices, developing leadership capabilities at all levels, building information systems to monitor student improvement, and holding people accountable for results. The authors propose a holistic framework that district leaders can use to develop an improvement strategy and build coherent organizations to implement it. The framework is based on three beliefs. First, school systems need their own management models; they cannot simply import them from the business world. Second, "the customer" is the student; therefore, urban districts need to focus on improving teaching and learning in every classroom at every school. Third, district leaders must design their organizations so that all the components—culture, systems and structures, resources, and mechanisms for managing stakeholders and the external environment—reinforce one another and support the implementation of the strategy across schools.

When Perspective Taking Increases Taking: Reactive Egoism in Social Interaction

Abstract

Group members often reason egocentrically, believing that they deserve more than their fair share of group resources. Leading people to consider other members' thoughts and perspectives can reduce these egocentric (self-centered) judgments such that people claim that it is fair for them to take less; however, the consideration of others' thoughts and perspectives actually increases egoistic (selfish) behavior such that people actually take more of available resources. A series of experiments demonstrates this pattern in competitive contexts in which considering others' perspectives activates egoistic theories of their likely behavior, leading people to counter by behaving more egoistically themselves. This reactive egoism is attenuated in cooperative contexts. Discussion focuses on the implications of reactive egoism in social interaction and on strategies for alleviating its potentially deleterious effects.

Breaking the Trade-Off Between Efficiency and Service

Abstract

For manufacturers, customers are the open wallets at the end of the supply chain. But for most service businesses, they are key inputs to the production process. Customers introduce tremendous variability to that process, but they also complain about any lack of consistency and don't care about the company's profit agenda. Managing customer-introduced variability, the author argues, is a central challenge for service companies. The first step is to diagnose which type of variability is causing mischief: Customers may arrive at different times, request different kinds of service, possess different capabilities, make varying degrees of effort, and have different personal preferences. Should companies accommodate variability or reduce it? Accommodation often involves asking employees to compensate for the variations among customers—a potentially costly solution. Reduction often means offering a limited menu of options, which may drive customers away. Some companies have learned to deal with customer-introduced variability without damaging either their operating environments or customers' service experiences. Starbucks, for example, handles capability variability among its customers by teaching them the correct ordering protocol. Dell deals with arrival and request variability in its high-end server business by outsourcing customer service while staying in close touch with customers to discuss their needs and assess their experiences with third-party providers. The effective management of variability often requires a company to influence customers' behavior. Managers attempting that kind of intervention can follow a three-step process: diagnosing the behavioral problem, designing an operating role for customers that creates new value for both parties, and testing and refining approaches for influencing behavior.

Innovation: The Classic Traps

Abstract

Never a fad, but always in or out of fashion, innovation gets rediscovered as a growth enabler every half dozen years. Too often, grand declarations about innovation are followed by mediocre execution that produces anemic results, and innovation groups are quietly disbanded in cost-cutting drives. Each managerial generation embarks on the same enthusiastic quest for the next new thing. And each generation faces the same vexing challenges—most stemming from the tensions between protecting existing revenue streams critical to current success and supporting new concepts that may be crucial to future success. In this article, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter reflects on four major waves of innovation enthusiasm she's observed over the past 25 years. She describes the classic mistakes companies make in innovation strategy, process, structure, and skills assessment, illustrating her points with a plethora of real-world examples—including AT&T Worldnet, Timberland, and Ocean Spray. A typical strategic blunder is when managers set their hurdles too high or limit the scope of their innovation efforts. Quaker Oats, for instance, was so busy in the 1990s making minor tweaks to its product formulas that it missed larger opportunities in distribution. A common process mistake is when managers strangle innovation efforts with the same rigid planning, budgeting, and reviewing approaches they use in their existing businesses—thereby discouraging people from adapting as circumstances warrant. Companies must be careful how they structure fledgling entities alongside existing ones, Kanter says, to avoid a clash of cultures and agendas—which Arrow Electronics experienced in its attempts to create an online venture. Finally, companies commonly undervalue and underinvest in the human side of innovation—for instance, promoting individuals out of innovation teams long before their efforts can pay off. Kanter offers practical advice for avoiding these traps.

Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration

Abstract

There is a new wave of business communication tools including blogs, wikis and group messaging software—which the author has dubbed, collectively, Enterprise 2.0—that allow for more spontaneous, knowledge-based collaboration. These new tools, the author contends, may well supplant other communication and knowledge management systems with their superior ability to capture tacit knowledge, best practices and relevant experiences from throughout a company and make them readily available to more users. This article offers a paradigm that highlights the salient characteristics of these new technologies, which the author refers to as SLATES (search, links, authoring, tags, extensions, signals). The resulting organizational communication patterns can lead to highly productive and highly collaborative environments by making both the practices of knowledge work and its outputs more visible. Drawing on case studies and survey data, the article offers managers a set of ground rules for implementing the new technologies. First, it is necessary to create a receptive culture in order to prepare the way for new practices. Second, a common platform must be created to allow for a collaboration infrastructure. Third, an informal rollout of the technologies may be preferred to a more formal procedural change. And fourth, managerial support and leadership is crucial. Even when implanted and implemented well, these new technologies will certainly bring with them new challenges. These tools may well reduce management's ability to exert unilateral control and to express some level of negativity. Whether a company's leaders really want this to happen and will be able to resist the temptation to silence dissent is an open question. Leaders will have to play a delicate role if they want Enterprise 2.0 technologies to succeed.

Mastering the Three Worlds of Information Technology

Abstract

The information age has brought with it a host of new technologies—and an overabundance of choices. Managers are hard-pressed to figure out what all those innovations do, let alone which ones to adopt and how to implement them. Furthermore, many so-called advancements haven't lived up to expectations: Frustration, delays, and even outright failures tempt many executives to avoid dealing with IT altogether. But those who turn away are selling their companies short. Executives have three critical responsibilities when it comes to IT: They must help choose technologies, using an inside-out approach that keeps the true needs of the business in mind; smooth the adoption of those technologies, taking into account that they may encounter strong resistance; and encourage their exploitation by leveraging already standardized data and work flows. What's most important, though, is that they look beyond the individual IT projects they select to the broader picture of how IT is likely to affect the organization. Information technology can be classified into three types, each of which provides companies with a particular level of change. Function IT encompasses technologies—such as spreadsheet and word-processing applications—that streamline individual tasks. Network IT includes capabilities like e-mail, instant messaging, and blogs and helps people communicate with one another. Enterprise IT brings with it approaches such as customer resource management and supply chain management and lets companies re-create interactions between groups of workers or with business partners. Different types of technology bring about different types of organizational change, and managers should tailor their own roles accordingly. Categorizing IT in this manner can help leaders determine which technologies to invest in and how they can assist organizations in making the most of them.

When More Power Makes You Worse Off: Turning a Profit in the American Economy

Abstract

We propose a theory which predicts that an increase in an actor's relative power reduces the actor's rewards in high mutual dependence dyads. Our argument is based on the premise that higher relative power gives the more powerful actor a greater share of surplus, but it also reduces dyadic exchange frequency, which lowers the expected magnitude of that surplus. As mutual dependence increases, fairness issues associated with power imbalances reduce exchange frequency and expected surplus at an increasingly higher rate. Thus, at a certain level of mutual dependence, the more powerful actor obtains a greater share of a much smaller exchange surplus leading him or her to be worse off than he would be in an equal-power dyad. We support this prediction with data on profit rates in American industries from 1977 through 1992.

Facing Ambiguous Threats

Abstract

On February 1, 2003, the world watched in horror as the Columbia space shuttle broke apart while reentering the earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts. Some have argued that NASA's failure to respond with appropriate intensity to the so-called foam strike that led to the accident was evidence of irresponsible or incompetent management. The authors' research, however, suggests that NASA was exhibiting a natural, albeit unfortunate, pattern of behavior common in many organizations. The foam strike is a prime example of what the authors call an ambiguous threat—a signal that may or may not portend future harm. Ambiguous threats differ from threats with obvious causes—say, a fire in the building—for which the response is clear. They also differ from unmistakable threats that may lack straightforward response paths (such as the frightening oxygen-tank explosion aboard Apollo 13). However, when the warning sign is ambiguous and the threat's potential effect is unclear, managers may choose to ignore or discount the risk. Such an approach can be catastrophic. Firms that do a good job of dealing with ambiguous threats do not improvise during a crisis; rather, they apply a rigorous set of detection and response capabilities that they have developed and practiced beforehand. In this article, the authors outline how to put such capabilities in place long before a crisis strikes. First, companies need to hone their teamwork and rapid problem-solving skills through practice. Second, they must learn to recognize weak signals, amplify the threat, and encourage employees to ask disconcerting "what if" questions in a safe environment. Finally, they should explore possible responses to threats through quick, low-cost experimentation.