HBR IdeaCast

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...

Global Workers Are Ready for Retraining

07 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Joseph Fuller, professor at Harvard Business School, says that the story we hear about workers being afraid for the future of their jobs might not be ...

HBR Presents: Cold Call

02 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Harvard Business School's Brian Kenny is joined by professors to distill the school's legendary case studies into podcast form, giving listeners impor...

How China Is Upending Western Marketing Practices

30 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Kimberly Whitler, assistant professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, believes the days of transplanting well-worn Western ma...

What Managers Get Wrong About Feedback

23 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Marcus Buckingham, head of people and performance research at the ADP Research Institute, and Ashley Goodall, senior vice president of leadership and ...

HBR Presents: Exponential View with Azeem Azhar

18 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Entrepreneur, investor, and podcast host Azeem Azhar looks at some of the biggest issues at the intersection of technology and society, with a focus t...

Avoiding the Expertise Trap

16 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Sydney Finkelstein, professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, says that being the most knowledgeable and experienced person on yo...

HBR Presents: After Hours

11 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Harvard Business School professors and hosts Youngme Moon, Mihir Desai, and Felix Oberholzer-Gee discuss news at the crossroads of business and cultur...

Why People — and Companies — Need Purpose

09 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Nicholas Pearce, clinical associate professor at Kellogg School of Management, says too many companies and individuals go about their daily business w...

The Right Way to Get Your First 1,000 Customers

02 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Thales Teixeira, associate professor at Harvard Business School, believes many startups fail precisely because they try to emulate successful disrupti...

Why U.S. Working Moms Are So Stressed – And What To Do About It

26 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Caitlyn Collins, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis, conducted interviews with mothers in four countries -- the United States, Italy,...

A Theoretical Physicist (and Entrepreneur) on Why Companies Stop Innovating

19 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Safi Bahcall, a former biotech CEO, began his career as a theoretical physicist before joining the business world. He compares the moment that innovat...

Why Are We Still Promoting Incompetent Men?

12 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a psychologist and chief talent scientist at ManpowerGroup, says we're not picking leaders in the right way. While we should ...

Make Customers Happier with Operational Transparency

05 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ryan Buell, associate professor at Harvard Business School, says the never-ending quest for operational efficiency is having unintended consequences. ...

Fixing Tech’s Gender Gap

26 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, is on a mission to get more young women into computer science. She says the problem isn't lack of interest....

How Innovative Companies Help Frontier Markets Grow

19 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Efosa Ojomo, global prosperity lead at the Clayton Christensen Institute, argues that international aid is not the best way to develop poor countries,...

How to Cope With a Mid-Career Crisis

12 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Kieran Setiya, a philosophy professor at MIT, says many people experience a mid-career crisis. Some have regrets about paths not taken or serious prof...

Why Business Jargon Isn’t All Bad

05 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Anne Curzan, English professor at the University of Michigan, studies the evolution of language. While many of us roll our eyes at bizspeak — from s...

Use Your Money to Buy Happier Time

29 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ashley Whillans, professor at Harvard Business School, researches time-money trade-offs. She argues more people would be happier if they spent more of...

Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace

22 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Amy Edmondson, professor at Harvard Business School, first identified the concept of psychological safety in work teams in 1999. Since then, she has o...

How Retirement Changes Your Identity

15 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Teresa Amabile, professor at Harvard Business School, is approaching her own retirement by researching how ending your work career affects your sense ...

The Harsh Reality of Innovative Companies

08 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Gary Pisano, professor at Harvard Business School, studies innovation at companies large and small. He says there’s too much focus on the positive, ...

How One Google Engineer Turned Tragedy into a Moonshot

02 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Mo Gawdat, founder of One Billion Happy and former Chief Business Officer at Google's X, spent years working in technological innovation. At Google's ...

Improving Civility in the Workplace

26 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Krista Tippett, host of "On Being," believes we are in the middle of a big shift in the workplace. For a long time, she says, we were taught to keep a...

How One CEO Creates Joy at Work

18 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Richard Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovations, says it took him years to learn what really mattered at work and how to create that kind of workplace cult...

Why It’s So Hard to Sell New Products

11 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Thomas Steenburgh, a marketing professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, was inspired by his early career at Xerox to discove...

The Right Way to Solve Complex Business Problems

04 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Corey Phelps, a strategy professor at McGill University, says great problem solvers are hard to find. Even seasoned professionals at the highest level...

Speak Out Successfully

27 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

James Detert, a professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, studies acts of courage in the workplace. His most surprising findi...

How Your Identity Changes When You Change Jobs

20 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Herminia Ibarra, a professor at the London Business School, argues that job transitions — even exciting ones that you've chosen — can come with al...

Why Management History Needs to Reckon with Slavery

13 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Caitlin Rosenthal, assistant professor of history at UC Berkeley, argues there are strong parallels between the accounting practices used by slavehold...

Avoiding Miscommunication in a Digital World

06 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Morgan, a communications expert and speaking coach, says that while email, texting, and Slack might seem like they make communication easier, the...

Stop Initiative Overload

30 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Rose Hollister and Michael Watkins, consultants at Genesis Advisers, argue that many companies today are taking on too many initiatives. Each manager ...

When Men Mentor Women

23 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

David Smith, associate professor of sociology at the U.S. Naval War College, and Brad Johnson, professor of psychology at the United States Naval Acad...

John Kerry on Leadership, Compromise, and Change

16 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

John Kerry, former U.S. Secretary of State, shares management and leadership lessons from his long career in public service. He discusses how to win p...

The Power of Curiosity

09 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Francesca Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School, shares a compelling business case for curiosity. Her research shows allowing employees to exer...

How Companies Can Tap Into Talent Clusters

02 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Bill Kerr, a professor at Harvard Business School, studies the increasing importance of talent clusters in our age of rapid technological advances. He...

A Hollywood Executive On Negotiation, Talent, and Risk

25 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Mike Ovitz, a cofounder of Creative Artists Agency and former president of The Walt Disney Company, says there are many parallels between the movie an...

How Companies Get Creativity Right (and Wrong)

18 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Beth Comstock, the first female vice chair at General Electric, thinks companies large and small often approach innovation the wrong way. They either ...

How Alibaba Is Leading Digital Innovation in China

11 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Ming Zeng, the chief strategy officer at Alibaba, talks about how the China-based e-commerce company was able to create the biggest online shopping si...

The Science Behind Sleep and High Performance

04 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Marc Effron, president of the Talent Strategy Group, looked at the scientific literature behind high performance at work and identified eight steps we...

Understanding Digital Strategy

28 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Sunil Gupta, a professor at Harvard Business School, argues that many companies are still doing digital strategy wrong. Their leaders think of "going ...

Managing Someone Who’s Too Collaborative

21 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Rebecca Shambaugh, a leadership coach, says being too collaborative can actually hold you back at work. Instead of showing how well you build consensu...

Networking Myths Dispelled

14 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

David Burkus, a professor at Oral Roberts University and author of the book “Friend of a Friend,” explains common misconceptions about networking....

Designing AI to Make Decisions

10 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Kathryn Hume, VP of integrate.ai, discusses the current boundaries between artificially intelligent machines, and humans. While the power of A.I. can ...

Why Opening Up at Work Is Harder for Minorities

07 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Katherine Phillips, a professor at Columbia Business School, discusses research showing that African-Americans are often reluctant to tell their white...

Learning from GE’s Stumbles

31 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Roger Martin, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, offers two main reasons General Electric has lost its competit...

Turning Purpose Into Performance

24 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Gerry Anderson, the CEO of DTE Energy, and Robert Quinn and Anjan Thakor, professors at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and the...

The 2 Types of Respect Leaders Must Show

17 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Kristie Rogers, an assistant professor of management at Marquette University, has identified a free and abundant resource most leaders aren’t giving...

How Some Companies Beat the Competition… For Centuries

10 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Howard Yu, Lego Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD Business School in Switzerland, discusses how the industrial cluster in the Swiss city o...

Architect Daniel Libeskind on Working Unconventionally

03 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Daniel Libeskind, a former academic turned architect and urban designer, discusses his unorthodox career path and repeat success at high-profile, emot...

When India Killed Off Cash Overnight

27 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Bhaskar Chakravorti, the dean of global business at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, analyzes the economic impact of India’s unprecedented d...

Getting People to Help You

19 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Heidi Grant, a social psychologist, explains the right ways and wrong ways to ask colleagues for help. She says people are much more likely to lend us...

How to Become More Self-Aware

12 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Tasha Eurich, an organizational psychologist and executive coach, talks about why we all should be working on self-awareness. Few people are truly sel...

Bill Clinton and James Patterson on Collaboration and Cybersecurity

05 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and author James Patterson discuss their new novel, The President is Missing, in which a fictional president fights...

Ask Better Questions

29 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Leslie K. John and Alison Wood Brooks, professors at Harvard Business School, say people in business can be more successful by asking more and better ...

How AI Is Making Prediction Cheaper

22 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Avi Goldfarb, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, explains the economics of machine learning, a branch of artifi...

Dual-Career Couples Are Forcing Firms to Rethink Talent Management

15 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jennifer Petriglieri, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD, asks company leaders to consider whether they really need to reloca...

Choosing a Strategy for Your Startup

08 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Joshua Gans, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, advises against trying to commercialize a new technology or pro...

Use Learning to Engage Your Team

01 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Whitney Johnson, an executive coach, argues that on-the-job learning is the key to keeping people motivated. When managers understand that, and unders...

Why Technical Experts Make Great Leaders

24 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Amanda Goodall, a senior lecturer at Cass Business School in London, argues that the best leaders are technical experts, not general managers. She dis...

How AI Can Improve How We Work

17 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Paul Daugherty and James Wilson, senior technology leaders at Accenture, argue that robots and smarter computers aren't coming for our jobs. They talk...

You May Be a Workaholic If

11 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Nancy Rothbard, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, draws a distinction between workaholism and working lo...

Make Work Engaging Again

03 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Dan Cable, a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School, explains why people often lose their enthusiasm for their work and how le...

Why CEOs Are Taking a Stand

27 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Professors Michael Toffel, of Harvard Business School, and Aaron Chatterji, of Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, discuss the emerging phenomenon of C...

Leading with Less Ego

21 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter, of the global consulting firm Potential Project, make their case for mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion ...

McKinsey’s Head on Why Corporate Sustainability Efforts Are Falling Short

13 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Dominic Barton, the global managing partner of McKinsey&Company, discusses the firm’s sustainability efforts. He talks about the wake-up call he got...

Harvard’s President on Leading During a Time of Change

07 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard University, talks about leading the institution through a decade of change, from the financial crisis to t...

Make Tools Like Slack Work for Your Company

27 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Tsedal Neeley, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Paul Leonardi, a management professor at UC Santa Barbara, talk about the potential that ap...

The CEO of Merck on Race, Leadership, and High Drug Prices

19 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Kenneth Frazier, the CEO of the pharmaceutical company known as MSD outside of North America, discusses his upbringing and how it influences his leade...

The Future of MBA Education

14 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Scott DeRue, the dean of University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, says the old model of business school education is gone. It's no longer goo...

Introducing Dear HBR:

09 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

What should you do when you become the boss? HBR's new advice podcast Dear HBR: has the answers. In this bonus episode, Dear HBR: co-hosts Alison Bear...

Does Your Firm See You as a High Potential?

06 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jay Conger, a leadership professor at Claremont McKenna College, goes behind the scenes to show how you can get on, and stay on, your company's fast t...

Women at Work: Make Yourself Heard

30 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In this special episode, HBR IdeaCast host Sarah Green Carmichael introduces Harvard Business Review’s new podcast “Women at Work,” about women’...

Controlling Your Emotions During a Negotiation

23 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Moshe Cohen, a senior lecturer at Boston University's Questrom School of Business, says you can't take the emotion out of a negotiation. After all, ne...

For Better Customer Service, Offer Options, Not Apologies

16 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jagdip Singh, a professor of marketing at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, explains his research team’s new ...

Why Leaders Should Make a Habit of Teaching

09 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Sydney Finkelstein, a professor of management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, encourages leaders to approach their direct reports...

Hiring the Best People

02 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Patty McCord, Netflix’s former Chief Talent Officer, sees hiring as constant matchmaking. Building a team of people that gets amazing work done, she...

Breaking Down the New U.S. Corporate Tax Law

26 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Mihir Desai, a professor of finance at Harvard Business School, breaks down the brand-new U.S. tax law. He says it will affect everything from how cor...

Making Unlimited Vacation Time Work

20 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Aron Ain, the CEO of Kronos Incorporated, explains why unlimited vacation can be in the best interests of employees and the organization. He describes...

How Technology Tests Our Trust

12 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Rachel Botsman, the author of “Who Can You Trust?", talks about how trust works, whether in relation to robots, companies, or other people. Technolo...

Box’s CEO on Pivoting to the Enterprise Market

05 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, reflects on the cloud storage company’s entry into the enterprise market. He was skeptical about pivoting away from con...

Why More CEOs Should Be Hired from Within

28 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, a senior adviser at the global executive search firm Egon Zehnder, makes the case for finding a company’s next CEO inside...

Dow Chemical’s CEO on Running an Environmentally Friendly Multinational

21 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Liveris, the CEO of Dow Chemical, discusses the 120-year-old company’s ambitious sustainability agenda. He says an environmentally driven bus...