HBR IdeaCast
Episodes
How Many Managers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jennifer Aaker, a Stanford professor, and Naomi Bagdonas, an executive coach, say that, even in times of stress and crisis, leaders should use and enc...
What Sets Family Businesses Apart
26 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Josh Baron and Rob Lachenauer, cofounders of BanyanGlobal Family Business Advisors, say that a family-run company has more flexibility than its public...
Goodbye Bureaucracy, Hello Common Sense
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Martin Lindstrom, founder and chairman of Lindstrom Company, says that many companies are still held back by doing things the way they've always done ...
How Empathy Helps Bridge Generational Differences
12 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Mimi Nicklin, a business coach and executive, has seen many leaders blame poor performance and communication on generational differences. But she argu...
What Kind of Networker Are You?
05 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Marissa King, professor at Yale School of Management, has studied the strengths and weaknesses of different types of social networks. She argues that ...
Stop Micromanaging and Give People the Help They Really Need
29 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Colin Fisher, associate professor at University College London's School of Management, conducted in-depth studies at several companies to determine ho...
Better Ways to Manage Up and Out
22 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Nashater Deu Solheim, a forensic psychologist and leadership coach, says many people struggle to gain influence with those in their organization who d...
Why Burnout Happens — and How Bosses Can Help
15 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Christina Maslach, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, has been studying the causes of burnout, and its impact, for dec...
When to Team Up with Your Competition
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Barry Nalebuff, professor at Yale School of Management and cofounder of Honest Tea, says too many companies shy away from cooperating with a competito...
Race at Work: Lessons in Diversity and Culture from Mastercard
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Race at Work is an HBR Presents podcast hosted by Porter Braswell about the role race plays in our careers and lives. In this episode, he speaks with ...
What Business Leaders Should Know About Cryptocurrency
01 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jeff John Roberts, an author and journalist, dug deep into the world of cryptocurrency to figure out what the rest of us really need to know about it....
Why Companies and Skilled Workers Are Turning to On-Demand Work
24 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Joseph Fuller, professor at Harvard Business School, and Allison Bailey, senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, say that the Covid-19 pandemic is ...
Women at Work: Too Shy to Be a Leader
23 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Women at Work is a podcast from Harvard Business Review that looks at the struggles and successes of women in the workplace, hosted by HBR's Amy Berns...
How Jeff Bezos Built One of the World’s Most Valuable Companies
17 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sunil Gupta, Harvard Business School professor, has spent years studying successful digital strategies, companies, and leaders, and he's made Amazon a...
Managing Working Parents During the Pandemic
10 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ellen Ernst Kossek, management professor at Purdue University, is researching how the pandemic is putting an enormous strain on working parents and th...
Defining and Adapting Your Leadership Style
06 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Suzanne Peterson, associate professor at Thunderbird School of Global Management, says many talented professionals get held back from leadership roles...
How Those With Power and Privilege Can Help Others Advance
27 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tsedale Melaku, sociologist at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and David Smith, professor at the U.S. Naval War College, have been l...
Why Work-From-Anywhere Is Here to Stay
20 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, associate professor at Harvard Business School, was studying the growing work-from-anywhere movement long before the Covid...
The Fundamental Human Relationship with Work
13 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
James Suzman, an anthropologist and former executive, says one way to better understand the future of work is to learn from the history of it. He has ...
How to Build Workplaces That Protect Employee Health
06 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
John Macomber, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and a veteran of the real estate industry, was studying ways to make workplaces safer for em...
When Efficiency Goes Too Far
29 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Roger Martin, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, says that for decades the U.S. corporate system has been ...
The Subtle Art of Saying No
22 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce Tulgan, founder of the management training firm RainmakerThinking, says that the key to career success isn't only embracing opportunities; it's ...
Cultivate a Trans-Inclusive Workplace
15 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Katina Sawyer, assistant professor at the George Washington University, says transgender workers continue to be overlooked even as organizational dive...
Creating More Resilient Supply Chains
08 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Willy Shih, professor at Harvard Business School, says that the complex, global, and just-in-time manufacturing processes we've developed in recent de...
To Build Grit, Go Back to Basics
01 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Shannon Huffman Polson, a consultant and former military pilot, experienced early on how to build grit. At 19, she was the youngest woman to summit De...
Why Work Friends are Worth It
25 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Shasta Nelson, relationship expert and author, says that work friendships are critical to individual and organizational success but acknowledges that ...
Breaking Down Bureaucracy and Building Up Workers
18 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini, cofounders of the consultancy Management Lab, say that even though we all lament how rigid, parochial, and time sucking...
Mastering the Art of Persuasion
11 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jonah Berger, professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says that most of us aren’t approaching persuasion the right way. P...
Adapting Negotiations to a Remote World
04 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Leigh Thompson, professor at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, studies negotiations to understand the path to the "sweet spot" ...
Future-Proofing Your Strategy with Scenario Planning
28 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Scoblic, cofounder and principal of the consultancy Event Horizon Strategies, says that too many companies are short-sighted in their strategy-m...
Every Business Can Be a Subscription Business
21 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Robbie Kellman Baxter, a strategy consultant, says that subscriptions aren’t just for newspapers and Netflix. She says they can help companies from ...
Helping People Move from Trauma to Growth
14 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Tedeschi, a psychology professor and distinguished chair of the Boulder Crest Institute, says that crises like the Covid-19 pandemic and its e...
Pricing Strategies for Uncertain Times
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Rafi Mohammed, founder of the consulting firm Culture of Profit, says a crisis or recession is not the time to panic and slash prices. He says leaders...
AB InBev CEO on Adapting in the Face of Crisis
30 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Carlos Brito, the CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev since 2008, has worked to build a culture of adaptability and customer centricity at the global brewer. ...
Applying Porter’s Five Forces to Fix U.S. Politics
23 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine Gehl, a former CEO and the founder of the Institute for Political Innovation, and Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School, ap...
Megan Rapinoe on Leading — On and Off the Field
16 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Megan Rapinoe, U.S. women's soccer star and World Cup champion, knows how to perform under pressure, motivate her teammates, and advocate for the caus...
Corporate America’s Work in Fighting Racism is Just Beginning
09 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ella Washington, an organizational psychologist at Georgetown University, argues that private sector American organizations have a big role to play in...
Great Leaders Use Tough Love to Improve Performance
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Frances Frei, professor at Harvard Business School, says that trust, empathy - and even a bit of tough love - are all essential ingredients to strong ...
Staying Agile Beyond a Crisis
26 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Darrell Rigby, partner at Bain & Company, says many firms have rapidly adopted agile principles to react to the coronavirus crisis. Namely, they’ve ...
Smarter Side Gigs
19 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ken Banta, founder of the Vanguard Network, and Orlan Boston, partner at Ernst & Young, argue that every aspiring leader needs to have a side gig -- n...
To Build Strategy, Start with the Future
12 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Johnson, cofounder of the consulting firm Innosight, says that too many managers develop strategy while focusing on problems in the present, and ...
How Marketers Can Drive Social Change and Profits
05 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Myriam Sidibe, senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, says that brands are uniquely positioned to encourage shifts in consumer behavior that ben...
Digital Transformation, One Discovery at a Time
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Rita McGrath, professor at Columbia Business School, says the need for organizations to adopt digital business models is more important than ever. Cha...
Another Workplace Crisis: Loneliness
21 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Vivek Murthy, former U.S. Surgeon General, says that, even before the Covid-19 pandemic, we were facing another health crisis: loneliness. Studies sho...
Managing Crises in the Short and Long Term
14 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Eric McNulty, associate director of Harvard’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, studies how managers successfully lead their companies th...
How Entrepreneurs Succeed Outside Silicon Valley
07 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Lazarow, venture capitalist at Cathay Innovation, says that start-ups in cities around the U.S. and the world are creating their own rules for su...
Working Parents, Let Go of the Idea of Balance
31 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Stewart Friedman, organizational psychologist at The Wharton School, and Alyssa Westring, associate professor at DePaul University’s Driehaus Colleg...
Real Leaders: Oprah Winfrey and the Power of Empathy
26 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1976, broadcast journalist Oprah Winfrey moved to Baltimore to coanchor the evening newscast at a local TV station. But she struggled in that spot ...
Adjusting to Remote Work During the Coronavirus Crisis
24 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tsedal Neeley, a professor at Harvard Business School, says that there are simple ways leaders can help their employees stay productive, focused, and ...
Real Leaders: Abraham Lincoln and the Power of Emotional Discipline
19 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln wrote a scathing letter to his top Union general, who had squandered a chance to end the Civil War. Then Linco...
Square’s Cofounder on Discovering — and Defending — Innovations
17 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jim McKelvey, entrepreneur and cofounder of Square, says that most companies that think of themselves as innovative are really just copycats. True inn...
Real Leaders: Rachel Carson Seeds the Environmental Movement
12 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1958, writer Rachel Carson began her exhaustive research on the effects of widespread pesticide use for her next book, Silent Spring. Over the next...
Why Capitalists Need to Save Democracy
10 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Rebecca Henderson, professor at Harvard Business School, says that both capitalism and democracy are failing us. She argues that it will take public a...
Real Leaders: Ernest Shackleton Leads a Harrowing Expedition
05 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1915, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship became trapped in ice, north of Antarctica. For the next two years, he kept his crew of 27 men aliv...
How Workplaces — Not Women — Need to Change to Improve Equality
03 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Michelle King, director of inclusion at Netflix, says it’s time to stop telling women to adapt to the male-dominated workplace and time for the work...
Rules for Effective Hiring — and Firing
25 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Joel Peterson, chairman of JetBlue Airways, has spent a career leading teams, building businesses, and managing people at every level. Along the way, ...
Defining Radical Candor – and How to Do It
18 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kim Scott, a cofounder of the executive coaching firm Radical Candor, says that too many managers give meaningless positive feedback, while many other...
How People Succeed By Defying Expectations
11 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Huang, associate professor at Harvard Business School, has studied groups that face bias in the workplace, from entrepreneurs with accents to wo...
How to Set Up — and Learn — from Experiments
04 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Stefan Thomke, professor at Harvard Business School, says running experiments can give companies tremendous value, but too often business leaders make...
How to Capture All the Advantages of Open Innovation
28 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Henry Chesbrough, adjunct professor at the University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business, coined the term "open innovation" over a decade ...
Revisiting “Jobs To Be Done” with Clayton Christensen
27 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this repeat episode, we honor the legacy of HBS professor Clayton Christensen, who passed away on January 23, 2020. The legendary management thinke...
Why Business Leaders Should Solve Problems Beyond Their Companies
21 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor at Harvard Business School, believes the world demands a new kind of business leader. She says so-called “advanced l...
A New Way to Combat Bias at Work
14 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Joan Williams, professor and the founding director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, say...
Setting a High Bar for Your Customer Service
07 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Horst Schulze, cofounder of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, started out cleaning ashtrays as a busboy before working his way up through some of the wo...
The Right Way to Form New Habits
31 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
James Clear, entrepreneur and author, says that the way we go about trying to form new habits and break bad ones — at work or home — is all wrong....
How One CEO Successfully Led a Digital Transformation
24 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Nancy McKinstry, CEO of Wolters Kluwer, has successfully shifted her company’s business to digital products over 15 years. The Dutch multinational s...
The Art of Asking for (and Getting) Help
17 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Wayne Baker, professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, has spent much of his career researching the best way to effectiv...
The Tipping Point Between Failure and Success
10 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dashun Wang, associate professor at Kellogg School of Management, crunched big datasets of entrepreneurs, scientists, and even terrorist organizations...
Why Cybersecurity Isn’t Only a Tech Problem
03 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Parenty and Jack Domet, cofounders of the cybersecurity firm Archefact Group, say that most organizations are approaching cybersecurity all wro...
A Nobel Prize Winner on Rethinking Poverty (and Business)
26 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Esther Duflo, an MIT economist, won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. Duflo’s e...
To Truly Delight Customers, You Need Aesthetic Intelligence
19 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Pauline Brown, former chairman of North America for the luxury goods company LVMH, argues that in additional to traditional and emotional intelligence...
Why “Connector” Managers Build Better Talent
12 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sari Wilde, a managing vice president at Gartner, studied 5,000 managers and identified four different types of leaders. The surprising result is that...
Why Meetings Go Wrong (And How to Fix Them)
05 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Steven Rogelberg, a professor at UNC Charlotte, has spent decades researching workplace meetings and reports that many of them are a waste of time. Wh...
Why Open Offices Aren’t Working — and How to Fix Them
29 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ethan Bernstein, associate professor at Harvard Business School, studied how coworkers interacted before and after their company moved to an open offi...
Accelerate Learning to Boost Your Career
22 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Scott Young, who gained fame for teaching himself the four-year MIT computer science curriculum in just 12 months, says that the type of fast, focused...
HBR Presents: The Anxious Achiever with Morra Aarons-Mele
17 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On The Anxious Achiever, Morra Aarons-Mele explores the way anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues affect people at work – for better o...
How to Have a Relationship and a Career
15 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jennifer Petriglieri, associate professor at INSEAD, studied more than 100 couples where both partners have big professional goals. She finds that bei...
The CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods on Becoming a Gun Control Advocate
08 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ed Stack, the chief executive of Dick's Sporting Goods, decided after the Parkland school shooting to pull assault rifles and high-capacity magazines ...
Melinda Gates on Fighting for Gender Equality
04 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Melinda Gates, cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and founder of Pivotal Ventures, is committing $1 billion over the next ten years to adv...
How Companies Like Google and Alibaba Respond to Fast-Moving Markets
01 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dave Ulrich, professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, argues today's companies need to replace old hierarchical models with he...
How to Be Less Distracted at Work — and in Life
24 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Nir Eyal, an expert on technology and psychology, says that we all need to learn to be less distracted into activities that don't help us achieve what...
Dematerialization and What It Means for the Economy — and Climate Change
17 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew McAfee, co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, explains how the U.S. economy is growing and actually using less and less stu...
What Great Coaching Looks Like
10 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Boyatzis, professor at Case Western Reserve University, says that every professional can benefit from having a coach — and serving as one fo...
The Inherent Failures of Long-Term Contracts — and How to Fix Them
03 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Oliver Hart, Nobel-winning Harvard economist, and Kate Vitasek, faculty at the University of Tennessee, argue that many business contracts are imperfe...
How African-Americans Advance at Work — And What Organizations Can Do to Help
27 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Morgan Roberts, professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, says that organizations are still falling short on promotin...
The Challenges (and Triumphs) of a Young Manager
20 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Julie Zhuo, Facebook’s VP of product design, started at the company as its first intern and became a manager at the age of 25. Like many first-time ...
How to Thrive as a Working Parent
13 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Daisy Dowling, founder and CEO of Workparent, says that moms and dads with jobs outside the home don't have to feel stressed or guilty about trying to...
How Robots and AI Are Changing Job Training
06 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Matt Beane, assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, finds that robots, machine learning, and AI are changing how we train ...
Finding (and Keeping) Your Company’s Soul
30 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ranjay Gulati, professor at Harvard Business School, says the most successful organizations tend to have one thing in common: a soul. Moving beyond cu...
Improve Your Critical Thinking at Work
23 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Helen Lee Bouygues, founder of the Reboot Foundation, believes that a lack of critical thinking is responsible for many business failures. She says or...
Business Lessons from How Marvel Makes Movies
16 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Spencer Harrison, an associate professor at INSEAD, says that managers in any industry can learn from the success of the Marvel movie franchise. While...
The 3 Types of Leaders of Innovative Companies
09 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Deborah Ancona and Kate Isaacs, researchers at MIT Sloan School of Management, say many companies struggle to be nimble with a command-and-control lea...
Stopping White-Collar Crime at Your Company
02 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Eugene Soltes, associate professor at Harvard Business School, studies white-collar crime and has even interviewed convicts behind bars. While most pe...
How to Fix Your Hiring Process
25 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Cappelli, professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and director of its Center for Human Resources, says managers...
The Surprising Benefits of Sponsoring Others at Work
18 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and the founder of the Center for Talent Innovation, has studied the difference between mentoring and sponsorship and...
Why You Need Innovation Capital — And How to Get It
11 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Nathan Furr, assistant professor of strategy at INSEAD, researches what makes great innovative leaders, and he reveals how they develop and spend “i...
Advice for Entrepreneurs from a Leading Venture Capitalist
04 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Scott Kupor, managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, says there's a lot about navigating the venture capital world that entrepreneurs don't understan...
Understanding the Space Economy
28 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sinéad O'Sullivan, entrepreneurship fellow at Harvard Business School, discusses how space is much more important to modern business than most people...
Why It’s Time to Finally Worry about ESG
21 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Eccles, a visiting professor of management practice at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, says that the global investment commu...
How Having a Rival Improves Performance
14 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Grant, organizational psychologist at The Wharton School, argues that individuals and companies alike can benefit from having rivals. He has stud...