From Microsoft to Google to Meta, many of the world's biggest tech companies have been announcing layoffs recently. Their explanation is usually that they overhired and need to cut costs. But Harvard Business School professor Sandra Sucher, who has been studying layoffs for years, says companies often underestimate the downsides. Layoffs don’t just come with bad publicity, she explains. They also lead to loss of institutional knowledge, weakened engagement, higher turnover, and lower innovation ...
Feb 07, 2023•29 min•Ep 896•Transcript available on Metacast We all know that creativity is the backbone of innovation and, ultimately, business success. But we don't always think deeply about how creative people get their ideas and the steps we might take to do the same. Gabriella Rosen Kellerman, a physician and chief product and chief innovation officer at BetterUp, and Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, say there are four types of creativity -- integration, splitting, figure-ground reversal, and distal thinki...
Jan 31, 2023•30 min•Ep 895•Transcript available on Metacast By hosting the podcasts How I Built This and Wisdom from the Top, Guy Raz has won an inside look at how visionary leaders build their own careers and incredible companies. While many leaders have unique qualities that help them succeed, he has identified three behaviors that consistently rise to the surface. These leaders create a culture of collaboration. They encourage risk-taking. And they allow for failure. Raz shares stories of leaders of everything from Starbucks to Proctor & Gamble.
Jan 24, 2023•27 min•Ep 894•Transcript available on Metacast Even in a slowing economy, the battle to attract and retain talent persists. But employers need to look beyond what people are currently demanding — whether it’s higher salaries, more stock options or the flexibility to work from home. Studies show that, over the long term, employees also find value in aspects of work that they overlook in the short term, such as community and opportunities for growth. Professor Amy Edmondson and INSEAD associate professor Mark Mortensen offer up strategies for ...
Jan 17, 2023•28 min•Ep 893•Transcript available on Metacast It's the start of a fresh year, and optimism is in the air. But if you want happiness to extend far beyond your New Year's resolution, Robert Waldinger says you can take some inspiration from the longest-running study of happiness out there. He’s a psychiatrist who runs the Harvard Study of Adult Development. The longitudinal research has followed individuals and their families for nine decades. He shares what makes people happiest in the long run and how their work factors into that. Waldinger ...
Jan 10, 2023•25 min•Ep 892•Transcript available on Metacast From incivility for frontline workers to struggles with hybrid work to actual progress made since the murder of George Floyd, HBR IdeaCast spent 2022 sharing impactful management research and exploring the social and business trends that affect workers and leaders. Join hosts Alison Beard and Curt Nickisch as they listen in on some of their favorite interviews of the year. They share what made these conversations so memorable and insightful and why they’re still worth a listen—or a re-listen—in ...
Jan 03, 2023•25 min•Ep 891•Transcript available on Metacast In The New World of Work video series, host and HBR Editor in Chief Adi Ignatius explores how top-tier executives see the future and how their companies are trying to set themselves up for success. Each week, he interviews a top leader live on LinkedIn, and in this special IdeaCast episode, he speaks with LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky on how his company adapted during the pandemic (and after) and how he approaches growth, talent management, and more. You can browse previous episodes of The New Wor...
Dec 27, 2022•30 min•Ep 890•Transcript available on Metacast For decades, actor-producer-director Ron Howard has made popular and critically acclaimed movies while also maintaining a reputation for being one of the nicest guys in Hollywood. He explains how he turned early TV gigs into long-term success and why he often involves his cast and crew members in creative decisions. His latest film is Thirteen Lives.
Dec 20, 2022•29 min•Ep 889•Transcript available on Metacast Managing rapid growth is a huge challenge for young businesses. Even start-ups with glowing reviews and skyrocketing sales can fail. That’s because new ventures and corporate initiatives alike have to sustain profitability at scale, according to Harvard Business School senior lecturer Jeffrey Rayport. He has researched some of the biggest stumbling blocks to long-lasting success and explains how to make the tricky transition out of the start-up phase successfully. With professors Davide Sola and...
Dec 13, 2022•26 min•Ep 888•Transcript available on Metacast Over the past few years, organizations around the world have invested in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives with varying results. But to achieve lasting change, they'll need to commit to that work for much longer, says Ella Washington, organizational psychologist and professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Her research shows that companies move toward DEI maturity in five stages (aware, compliant, tactical, integrated, and sustainable) and each takes time to ...
Dec 06, 2022•30 min•Ep 887•Transcript available on Metacast From corporate social responsibility to ESG to “doing well by doing good,” an increasing number of organizations are pursuing positive social impact, and it’s not just nonprofits and government agencies. But incorporating social impact into a for-profit business raises all kinds of system dilemmas, says Jacob Harold, a cofounder of the philanthropy data platform Candid and the former CEO of GuideStar. He explains a bundle of tools that can be used together to create meaningful change. Harold wro...
Nov 29, 2022•25 min•Ep 886•Transcript available on Metacast From videos of drunk and disorderly airline passengers to stories of hospital visitors angrily refusing to wear masks, customer-facing work seems to have gotten a lot more difficult – even dangerous -- over the past few years. It's important that organizations understand the experience of frontline workers now, and help to better protect their employees, says Christine Porath, professor of management at Georgetown University. She's studied incivility for 20 years, and has spoken to workers in ma...
Nov 22, 2022•26 min•Ep 885•Transcript available on Metacast Companies offer sponsorship programs to help a more diverse group of high performers and future leaders advance. But the efforts can often misfire. Herminia Ibarra, professor at London Business School, says that’s because these arranged developmental relationships can lack authenticity and meaningful paths for action. She explains the key distinctions of mentorship and sponsorship and recommends that companies focus on two vital qualities: public advocacy and relational authenticity. Ibarra wrot...
Nov 15, 2022•28 min•Ep 884•Transcript available on Metacast From politics to sports to business, we tend to glorify those who persevere, show grit, never give up. But former professional poker player and consultant Annie Duke argues that there is also great value in quitting — whether it’s a project, job, career, or company. She walks us through the biases that keep us stuck in the status quo even when other paths would be more fruitful and explains how to make better decisions. Duke is the author of "Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away.”
Nov 08, 2022•29 min•Ep 883•Transcript available on Metacast The number of women—especially women of color—in leadership ranks at the world’s largest companies remains desperately small. Tina Opie, associate professor of management at Babson College, offers a new practice for women to lift each other up and fight systemic bias in the workplace, something she calls “shared sisterhood.” The idea is to be more honest with each other, forming truer bonds. That involves listening, understanding yourself, and a willingness to take risks. With University of Iowa...
Nov 01, 2022•28 min•Ep 882•Transcript available on Metacast In the early 1990s, publishers told science journalist Daniel Goleman not to use the word “emotion” in a business book. The popular conception was that emotions had little role in the workplace. When HBR was founded in October 1922, the practice of management focused on workers’ physical productivity, not their feelings. And while over the decades psychologists studied “social intelligence” and “emotional strength,” businesses cultivated the so-called hard skills that drove the bottom line. Unti...
Oct 27, 2022•45 min•Ep 881•Transcript available on Metacast Nouriel Roubini, professor emeritus at NYU’s Stern School of Business, says that a confluence of trends – from skyrocketing public and private debt and bad monetary policies to demographic shifts and the rise of AI – are pushing the world toward catastrophe. He warns of those interconnected threats, but also has suggestions for how political and business leaders can prepare for and navigate through these challenges. He draws on decades of economic research as well as his experience accurately pr...
Oct 25, 2022•30 min•Ep 881•Transcript available on Metacast The idea that maximizing shareholder value takes legal and practical precedence above all else first came to prominence in the 1970s. The person who arguably did the most to advance the idea was the business school professor Michael Jensen, who wrote in Harvard Business Review and elsewhere that CEOs pursue their own interests at the expense of shareholders' interests. Among other things, he argued for stock-based incentives that would neatly align CEO and shareholder interests. Shareholder prim...
Oct 20, 2022•44 min•Ep 880•Transcript available on Metacast In 2021, the U.S. space agency NASA launched a spacecraft toward a pair of asteroids more than 11 million kilometers away. The target? The smaller of the two asteroids, just 170 meters wide. The success of the $300 million, seven-year project demanded careful coordination of scientists, engineers, and project managers across different national space agencies. It also required strong leadership from NASA's head of science, Thomas Zurbuchen. He shares his path to an executive role at NASA, his man...
Oct 18, 2022•30 min•Ep 880•Transcript available on Metacast In the 1980s, Clayton Christensen cofounded a startup that took over a market niche from DuPont and Alcoa. That experience left Christensen puzzled. How could a small company with few resources beat rich incumbents? It led to his theory of disruptive innovation, introduced in the pages of Harvard Business Review in 1995 and popularized two years later in The Innovators Dilemma. The idea has inspired a generation of entrepreneurs. It has reshaped R&D strategies at countless established firms. And...
Oct 13, 2022•45 min•Ep 879•Transcript available on Metacast No industry has had more impact than technology over the past few decades. Tech companies have changed the way we live, work, and interact with each other. They’ve helped us in a lot of ways, but they’ve also created some big problems. Kara Swisher is a journalist, entrepreneur, and host of the podcast On with Kara Swisher. She’s had a front row seat to the tech industry’s evolution and interviewed all of its biggest players. She speaks with us about key trends — past, present, and future — and ...
Oct 11, 2022•30 min•Ep 879•Transcript available on Metacast In 1878, a machinist at a Pennsylvania steelworks noticed that his crew was producing much less than he thought they could. With stopwatches and time-motion studies, Frederick Winslow Taylor ran experiments to find the optimal way to make the most steel with lower labor costs. It was the birth of a management theory, called scientific management or Taylorism. Critics said Taylor’s drive for industrial efficiency depleted workers physically and emotionally. Resentful laborers walked off the job. ...
Oct 06, 2022•46 min•Ep 878•Transcript available on Metacast Artificial intelligence technology has been advancing, and businesses have been putting it into action. But too many companies are just gathering a bunch of data to kick out insights and not really using AI to its fullest potential. Joshua Gans, professor at Rotman School of Management, says businesses need to apply AI more systemically. Because decision-making based on AI usually has ripple effects throughout the organization. Gans cowrote the HBR article “From Prediction to Transformation" and...
Oct 04, 2022•23 min•Ep 878•Transcript available on Metacast Influential business and management ideas have tremendous influence over us. Like it or not, they shape how organizations are run and how people around the world spend their days. And Harvard Business Review has introduced and spread many of these consequential ideas since its founding in 1922. HBR IdeaCast is taking this 100th anniversary to ask: how have these ideas changed our lives? And where are they taking us in the future? Each Thursday in October, the podcast feed will feature a bonus se...
Sep 29, 2022•2 min•Ep 877•Transcript available on Metacast Most organizations have now accepted that the days of all their knowledge workers coming into the office full time are over. So what's next? Sid Sijbrandij, CEO and cofounder of Gitlab, thinks all-remote can be the answer. His open-source software development company took that approach from the start not because of the pandemic but because its founding team was dispersed and early employees were more productive at home. Now with more than 1,300 people spread across more than 60 countries, GitLab...
Sep 27, 2022•28 min•Ep 877•Transcript available on Metacast Measuring a broad set of standards across the organization seems like a fair way to judge employees’ performance year over year. But Heidi Gardner, distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School, says performance management systems often incentivize employees to scramble to hit their numbers and lose sight of the organizations’ bigger objectives. To boost collaboration and long-term customer value, Gardner shares a four-part scorecard that establishes shared organizational goals while also holding e...
Sep 20, 2022•28 min•Ep 876•Transcript available on Metacast Rolling Stone launched in 1967 with a mission to not only redefine music journalism but also chronicle important societal changes. Under the leadership of founding editor and publisher Jann Wenner, it published work from some of the 20th century’s greatest writers, reporters, designers and photographers. He explains how he identified and managed that talent and shares other lessons from his five decades at the forefront of rock and roll. Wenner is the author of "Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir."
Sep 13, 2022•26 min•Ep 875•Transcript available on Metacast Work-life support programs have long been known to lower turnover and raise employee loyalty. But new research shows they also have a positive effect on promoting diversity among managers at those firms, an effect that’s even stronger than that of some popular racial-equity programs. Alexandra Kalev chairs the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, and she explains why having strong, thoughtful policies around flexibility, time off, and dependent care pay off for compan...
Sep 06, 2022•28 min•Ep 874•Transcript available on Metacast It might still seem like a buzzword, or something that only matters to tech CEOs. But Matthew Ball, CEO of Epyllion and the former global head of strategy for Amazon Studios, says the metaverse is the "new internet" – and that it's already here. He argues that companies large and small need to not only better understand what the metaverse is, but should also be developing strategies around it today. That can have an impact on marketing, customer relations, product development, and much more, he ...
Aug 30, 2022•28 min•Ep 873•Transcript available on Metacast It's a dilemma facing more and more brands: should you sell your goods on Amazon? It's the most visited e-commerce platform in the U.S. and the dominant retailer in 28 other countries. But that reach comes at a price. There are downsides like costs, competition, and lack of data. Ayelet Israeli is an associate professor at Harvard Business School and a coauthor of the HBR article "Should Your Company Sell on Amazon?" She talks through step-by-step how businesses can decide whether Amazon is righ...
Aug 23, 2022•29 min•Ep 872•Transcript available on Metacast 
