Monthly Archives: October 2011

Editors’ Note: This fictionalized case study will appear in a forthcoming issue of Harvard Business Review, along with commentary from experts and readers. If you’d like your comment to be considered for publication, please be sure to include your full … Continue reading →

The 2012 Beetle ad is a charmer. A guy driving a Beetle discovers that everyone who sees him wants to slap hands or punch fists. A new variation on the “punch buggy” is born. Our driver slaps hands with a … Continue reading →

Recently, I’ve been around the world and then back to the US of A. And what strikes me is how fast many parts of the globe are forging ahead — and how decrepit coming home can feel in comparison (JFK … Continue reading →

Recently, the Wall Street Journal had a startling headline: “Lean Companies Ready to Cut.” Its opening sentence: “Despite another quarter of robust corporate profits, an ominous impulse is stirring at many big companies — restructuring.” Spooked by prospects of sluggish … Continue reading →

This blog post is part of the HBR Online Forum The CEO’s Role in Fixing the System. The story is a familiar one: A company’s quarterly earnings fall significantly short of the investment community’s expectations, and the CEO announces a … Continue reading →

This blog post is part of the HBR Online Forum The CEO’s Role in Fixing the System. I recently heard that the only group held in lower regard than corporate executives in the United States is Congress. Wow! Think about … Continue reading →

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the nation’s top patent court, recently reached a decision that will have breathtaking ramifications: scientific research methods per se can be patented for a field of research. This decision promises to accelerate … Continue reading →

Over the past year I’ve shifted my presentation materials so they include mostly pictures and 96 point font. That’s good for audiences (at least, I think it is), but bad when I get the kind of request that landed in … Continue reading →

The Senate’s PROTECT IP Bill, designed to stop piracy, now has a matching bill in the House: E-PARASITE. It would have been tough to top PROTECT IP, but they’ve managed to do it. It contains provisions that will chill innovation. … Continue reading →

An interview with Nancy Koehn, Harvard Business School historian and editor of The Story of American Business. Download this podcast