Around this time last year, I wrote about how we need to get back to allowing conversation to occur without texting, emailing, browsing, Tweeting, Facebooking, or doing whatever else zeros and ones can do these days on smart phones, iPads, notebooks, etc. I am as guilty as the next person of falling for the perception that any response latency is unacceptable. As 2012 fast approaches, this needs to go on top of my New Year's resolution list: focus on the live conversations at hand, rather than parallel conversations on the Blackberry screen. But the bigger need is just for more live…
Harvard Business
-
Most Topular Stories
-
Don't Send That Email. Pick up the Phone!
Anthony Tjan1 Nov 2011 | 11:30 am -
The Biggest Myth in Time Management
Peter Bregman24 Jan 2012 | 2:17 pmBrad* is as hard a worker as anyone I know. He's not just busy, he's keenly focused on getting the right things done. And it pays off — he is the largest single revenue generator at his well-known professional services firm. A few days before Thanksgiving, Brad flew from Boston to Los Angeles with his family. He was going to work for the first few days and then relax with his family. During the flight, he decided not to use the plane's internet access, choosing to talk and play with his children instead. A five-hour digital vacation. When they landed, Brad turned on his BlackBerry and… -
Congressional Judgment: Built to Lapse?
HBR.org27 Jan 2012 | 5:40 pmPresident Barack Obama spoke this week in the State of the Union message about creating "an economy built to last." Who could argue with this admirable goal? It's one all Americans should be able to get behind. But unfortunately, there's a major obstacle to making progress toward it: the judgment capacity of the US Congress. The two of us have been thinking a lot in the past year about how some organizations manage to be decisive—and wise—consistently over time. Our book, Judgment Calls: Twelve Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams that Got Them Right, comes out in March. Perhaps… -
285: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Teamwork and Career Transitions
HBR IdeaCast26 Jan 2012 | 5:37 pmKareem Abdul-Jabbar, basketball legend, New York Times best-selling author, and filmmaker. -
A.G. Lafley vs. Steve Jobs
Scott Anthony23 Jan 2012 | 3:41 pmUsually the question comes right after I tell an audience that I put former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley on my "Innovation Mount Rushmore" as a reminder of the importance of investing time and energy to understand the target market. "But how do you square that with Steve Jobs?" an intrepid audience member asks. "After all, Jobs said, 'It isn't the customer's job to know what they want.'" It feels like a classic battle — the scientific approach of a company that launches 80 market research studies a day versus the intuitive touch of the iconic innovator of our time. But it's a false…
-
HBR.org
-
Congressional Judgment: Built to Lapse?
27 Jan 2012 | 5:40 pmPresident Barack Obama spoke this week in the State of the Union message about creating "an economy built to last." Who could argue with this admirable goal? It's one all Americans should be able to get behind. But unfortunately, there's a major obstacle to making progress toward it: the judgment capacity of the US Congress. The two of us have been thinking a lot in the past year about how some organizations manage to be decisive—and wise—consistently over time. Our book, Judgment Calls: Twelve Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams that Got Them Right, comes out in March. Perhaps… -
What Google's Larry Page Doesn't Understand
27 Jan 2012 | 4:06 pmGoogle has been self-destructive recently. Last weekend, Google was exposed by engineers from Twitter, Facebook, and mySpace for interfering with their search results. Instead of apologizing and vowing to protect the sanctity of search, this week Larry Page announced that Google will soon integrate its products even further. On March 1st, Google will change its privacy agreement to allow the company to collect and unify user data across all its web properties. There is no opting out. Whether you want it or not, Google will be consolidating the data about what you search for, what you read in… -
Transform Your Employees into Passionate Advocates
27 Jan 2012 | 9:49 amEmployee happiness is becoming a hot topic among CEOs and in boardrooms, and it's about time. The current issue of Harvard Business Review, which includes a series of articles focused on employee happiness, is just one more sign of the growing recognition that happy, engaged employees are more productive and generate better outcomes for their companies. But there's also a risk in all this attention to "happiness." Happiness for its own sake is not the right outcome to seek. If you want happy employees, you can just pay them more. You can give them more time off. You can give them free lunches… -
Finding Great Ideas in Emerging Markets: The Idea in Practice
27 Jan 2012 | 9:42 amFor the past two and half years, we have been interviewing executives in multinationals around the world about their biggest challenges. One recent interview stood out. Tomas* is a regional vice president in Santiago, Chile He works for a European company with operations throughout the globe. When we met, he expressed deep frustration with his home office in Germany. Executives there had repeatedly shut down his attempts to develop a modified product for the Latin America market. Despite the negative response, Tomas kept trying. He explained to us why the product needed to change, why the… -
Retail Revolution: We Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
27 Jan 2012 | 9:30 amLast week, I moderated a "Super Session" at this year's annual National Retail Federation "Big Show." Seated with me on stage at one end of a long and cavernous room in New York's Javits Center, my panelists were Jennifer Hyman of Rent The Runway and Doug Mack of One Kings Lane. To say that Boeing could have built its next 787 Dreamliner in this space would be no understatement. I suspect that the nearly 4,000 registrants attending our "intimate" session would have agreed. The panel made one thing clear: just when any sensible person might have concluded that e-commerce business models had…
-
HBR IdeaCast
-
285: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Teamwork and Career Transitions
26 Jan 2012 | 5:37 pmKareem Abdul-Jabbar, basketball legend, New York Times best-selling author, and filmmaker. -
284: Designing Spaces for Creative Collaboration
19 Jan 2012 | 5:06 pmScott Doorley and Scott Witthoft, co-directors of the Environments Collaborative at the Stanford University d.school and authors of "Make Space." -
283: The Right Mindset for Success
12 Jan 2012 | 5:32 pmCarol Dweck, professor at Stanford University and author of "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success." -
282: How to Keep Your New Year's Resolutions
5 Jan 2012 | 5:49 pmPeter Bregman, author of "18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done." -
281: Breaking the Work/Family Deadlock
29 Dec 2011 | 8:00 amStephanie Coontz, professor of history at The Evergreen State College and author of "A Strange Stirring."
-
Scott Anthony
-
A.G. Lafley vs. Steve Jobs
23 Jan 2012 | 3:41 pmUsually the question comes right after I tell an audience that I put former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley on my "Innovation Mount Rushmore" as a reminder of the importance of investing time and energy to understand the target market. "But how do you square that with Steve Jobs?" an intrepid audience member asks. "After all, Jobs said, 'It isn't the customer's job to know what they want.'" It feels like a classic battle — the scientific approach of a company that launches 80 market research studies a day versus the intuitive touch of the iconic innovator of our time. But it's a false… -
Kodak and the Brutal Difficulty of Transformation
17 Jan 2012 | 11:46 am2012 has not gotten off to a great start for Eastman Kodak. Three of the company's directors quit near the end of last year, and word recently emerged that the company was on the brink of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The easy narrative is that Kodak is a classic case of a company blind to the disruptive changes in its marketplace. Like many easy narratives, this one is not quite right. In the 20th century, Kodak was truly one of the world's powerhouses. Its rise to prominence began when it launched its affordable Brownie camera in 1900. In the decades that followed Kodak… -
How to Choose the Ideas Your Company Should Invest In
11 Jan 2012 | 8:51 amMy last post described how Innosight follows a three-stage process to evaluate investment proposals from outside entrepreneurs. But deciding how to invest in ideas at a corporation is a different beast. In The Innovator's Guide to Growth we suggested that companies should create one-page "Idea Resumes" that capture the essence of an idea on a single PowerPoint slide. After this starting point, however, our VC process holds pretty well. The first decision is whether to explore an idea more deeply. Consider some combination of the following criteria: Does what we hope to do fit our strategy? -
A Disciplined Approach to Evaluating Ideas
3 Jan 2012 | 10:37 am"Make sure you ask the right questions at the right time." That's one memorable piece of advice from a leader at a global innovation powerhouse. Unfortunately, it is a piece of advice that is heeded too infrequently inside large companies. At many companies, the idea evaluation process revolves around detailed Excel spreadsheets, comprehensive PowerPoint documents, and an orchestrated sequence of pre-meetings leading up to a decision meeting. This kind of disciplined approach works very well when companies have knowledge that lets them be precise in their analysis, and executives have the… -
Business Model Innovation the Red Sox Way
21 Dec 2011 | 3:59 amWe entered the EMC Club at Fenway Park on a crisp December evening, about 10 minutes before the scheduled start of Innosight's year-end party. We gaped like little kids at what John Updike memorably called a "lyrical little bandbox of a ballpark" illuminated with wreaths. Then we turned to the scoreboard and saw what seemed a 300-foot-tall sign saying, "Fenway Park welcomes Innosight" (they even had our new logo!). Why am I writing about Innosight's holiday party? Because Fenway can show us some novel ways to grow a seemingly mature business. When John Henry and Tom Werner led the purchase of…
-
Peter Bregman
-
The Biggest Myth in Time Management
24 Jan 2012 | 2:17 pmBrad* is as hard a worker as anyone I know. He's not just busy, he's keenly focused on getting the right things done. And it pays off — he is the largest single revenue generator at his well-known professional services firm. A few days before Thanksgiving, Brad flew from Boston to Los Angeles with his family. He was going to work for the first few days and then relax with his family. During the flight, he decided not to use the plane's internet access, choosing to talk and play with his children instead. A five-hour digital vacation. When they landed, Brad turned on his BlackBerry and… -
Do People Really Want You to Be Honest?
10 Jan 2012 | 11:49 amMy wife Eleanor and I were walking up a mountain road, enjoying a rare moment of being alone together. As we rounded a bend, we saw a friend, Nancy,* not too far ahead. When we caught up with her she suggested we walk together. I've known Nancy for 35 years. We're close friends and both Eleanor and I love spending time with her. But, in that moment, we didn't want to walk with her. We wanted time to ourselves. We also didn't want to slow to her pace. Which is the excuse we used, explaining that I wanted to keep my heart rate in an aerobic zone. It was true and, somehow, felt less offensive… -
Your Problem Isn't Motivation
4 Jan 2012 | 9:40 am"Peter," my friend Byron emailed me a few days ago. "I haven't been diligent about working out over the past five years and I'm trying to get back in the gym and get myself into a healthier state. I've found that on my quest for a Mind, Body, Spirit balance, my body has been neglected. I need to fix it, and it's VERY hard for me to get motivated. Any insight?" It's the kind of question that's on many of our minds in the midst of New Year's resolution season. Something you should know about Byron: He recently started a business and he's constantly developing his skills through training… -
The Power of Workplace DIY
20 Dec 2011 | 11:16 amPlural Investments*, a hedge fund started several years ago, had a problem. They needed art on the walls of their New York City offices. It was a small problem of no strategic importance, one that could be solved quickly and effortlessly by simply buying a few paintings. But sometimes, problems lacking strategic importance never get solved because, well, they're just not that important. Which is what happened at Plural. The agenda item "Art in the office" kept getting pushed off in favor of work more critical to the business. Still, it remained a problem because no one liked having blank… -
How to Get a Raise When Budgets Are Tight
14 Dec 2011 | 9:26 amMy friend Dave* mentioned to me that he just received the results from a medical exam and was surprised and disappointed by his numbers. His cholesterol was high. Especially, he told me, given how he eats. "Dave," I said, "you can't be serious. You eat horribly. Everything you eat is fried. And if it's not, then it's a chocolate chip cookie. I can't remember seeing you eat a vegetable. How can you expect your cholesterol to be anything other than high?" "But the day before the test," he answered, "I ate really well." The idea of immediate results is alluring. Almost all of advertising is…
-
Dan Pallotta
-
The Real Virtual Reality
26 Jan 2012 | 12:34 pmI usually go for a walk in the morning and listen to music or a dharma talk. Occasionally I listen to nothing (or so it would appear by the absence of earbuds), but then I find the chatter of my mind so nauseating that I have to do something to stop it. This morning I was more present than usual. I noticed things in the real world that in the past two years of walking I have noticed not once: that the fire hydrants on our street are red. That the street next to ours has old-fashioned black Victorian lampposts. That the asphalt on which I have walked for many dozens of hours is not one… -
An Executive Pay Witch Hunt
20 Jan 2012 | 10:57 amNew York governor Andrew Cuomo has turned what should have been a simple, targeted criminal justice investigation into a destructive witch hunt of all New York charities. Such populist opportunism at the expense of the good name of the humanitarian sector has become epidemic. Elected officials consistently conflate smart investments in the talent, organizational strength, and long-term planning necessary to address massive social problems with fraud. Why? Because they lack a fundamental understanding of how long-term social problems get solved and because the humanitarian sector has been too… -
I Don't Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore
5 Dec 2011 | 9:57 amListen to Dan Pallotta explain why we still use jargon, even though we hate it. I'd say that in about half of my business conversations, I have almost no idea what other people are saying to me. The language of internet business models has made the problem even worse. When I was younger, if I didn't understand what people were saying, I thought I was stupid. Now I realize that if it's to people's benefit that I understand them but I don't, then they're the ones who are stupid. There are at least five strains of this epidemic. Abstractionitis We have forgotten how to use the real names of real… -
Stop Thinking Outside the Box
7 Nov 2011 | 9:37 amThe exhortation to think outside the box has become ubiquitous in business. So much so that it has become the new box inside of which everyone thinks. It pays lip service to the notion of transformation without really understanding the difference between transformation and change, and often without tolerance for the real thinking that must occur for an idea to be truly outside the existing paradigm. But worse than that, the advice is backwards. You cannot possibly think outside the box unless you understand the nature of the box that bounds your current thinking. You must come to know that… -
You Should Be Able to Get Rich in Charity
28 Sep 2011 | 9:40 amThere, I've said it. There should be no limit to the amount of money a person can earn making the world a better place, so long as the money is commensurate with the value they produce. If a person is a value-generating machine, and produces additional commensurate value for every additional increment of money they receive — and you can measure that value — then never stop the machine. And never let anyone else stop the machine. Let it keep producing value. Keep measuring it. And keep paying, without limit. To limit the production of value in the service of social progress is the…
-
Bill Taylor on HarvardBusiness.org
-
Are You Learning as Fast as the World Is Changing?
26 Jan 2012 | 11:00 amTom Kelly, general manager of IDEO, the world-renowned design firm, likes to quote French novelist Marcel Proust, who famously said, "The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes." What goes for novelists goes for leaders searching to craft a novel strategy for their company, a new product for their customers, or a better way to organize their employees. In a world that never stops changing, great leaders never stop learning. Today, the challenge for leaders at every level is no longer just to out-hustle, out-muscle, and out-maneuver the competition. -
Average Is Over. What's Your Extra?
19 Dec 2011 | 8:05 amI approach a book by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman with a mixture of wariness and anticipation. Wariness because Friedman's books tend to go on for many pages longer than they need to, and many of those pages contain his trademark blend of Davos Man self-congratulation and cheesy metaphors. Yet I still have a sense of anticipation because in every one of Friedman's books there are a handful of insights that are so clear, so sharp, so flat-out right that they frame how you look at the world going forward. That Used to Be Us, Friedman's newest book (written with Johns Hopkins… -
Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should
6 Dec 2011 | 1:52 pmAs we come to the end of a bitter, divisive, downright ugly year in business and society, it's hard to pick the one big story that defines the climate of the times. This summer's rancorous debt-ceiling talks come to mind, as do the collapse of the feckless Italian government and the rise of Occupy Wall Street and its satellite movements around the country and the world. But if I had to pick one small story that provides a huge "teachable moment" for business leaders going forward, I'd choose Bank of America's late-September decision to charge customers a $5 monthly fee to use their debit… -
Don't Let What You Know Limit What You Imagine
29 Nov 2011 | 2:03 pmOne of the most perplexing features of these troubled times is that so many capable people in so many fields look so lost and ineffective. Whether it's the stubborn inefficiencies of the health-care system, the ever-rising costs of the higher-education system, even the slow-motion collapse of the US postal system, leaders with unrivaled expertise and decades of experience can't seem to develop creative solutions to dire problems. Why are so many smart executives so ineffective? One answer may be that all this experience is itself a problem. In her underappreciated book, The Innovation Killer,… -
The Values Proposition: Do Small Things with Great Love
24 Oct 2011 | 9:18 amThe world confronts vast uncertainty, from unrest in the social climate to accelerating shifts in the climate itself. The economy faces huge challenges, from public-debt crises in Europe to the overhang of mortgage debt in the U.S. The business community faces an ongoing series of stops and starts, from the loss of an icon like Steve Jobs to the rise of new-economy giants like Amazon and Facebook. There is a temptation, amidst the turmoil, for pundits to conclude that the only sensible response is to make bold bets — new business models that challenge the logic of an industry, products…
-
Anthony Tjan
-
Business Needs More Judo, Less Karate
24 Jan 2012 | 11:19 amConsider two hypothetical restaurants: type one and type two. Restaurant type one: Imagine yourself wandering the streets of a new city. You could be on Ocean Drive in South Beach, or Piazza Navona in Rome. You're thinking about dinner, and you come across a restaurant conveniently located on a busy stretch of street. Outside, it displays its panoply of meal choices in wax replica splendor, or "freshly cooked" under Saran wrap. On the sidewalk, an aspiring tan model flanks a manager-host, who wears a loud tie to go with the even louder voice he uses to solicit passersby. "Would you like to… -
Make Time for Time
22 Dec 2011 | 9:00 am"Donner du temps au temps," the late French President François Mitterrand used to say. "Give time for time." The notion being that you need to make time in order to appreciate the ultimate gift we have been given: time on this earth. Every day, we make conscious and less conscious choices on time allocation. Some uses of our time are routine — dropping off kids, eating meals, or going for a daily run. In between those routines, we look to our agendas to see what we are meant to be doing, whom to meet, when and where to go next. Most of us will spend more than one-third of our lives and… -
Don't Send That Email. Pick up the Phone!
1 Nov 2011 | 11:30 amAround this time last year, I wrote about how we need to get back to allowing conversation to occur without texting, emailing, browsing, Tweeting, Facebooking, or doing whatever else zeros and ones can do these days on smart phones, iPads, notebooks, etc. I am as guilty as the next person of falling for the perception that any response latency is unacceptable. As 2012 fast approaches, this needs to go on top of my New Year's resolution list: focus on the live conversations at hand, rather than parallel conversations on the Blackberry screen. But the bigger need is just for more live… -
The Challenge of the Average Employee
4 Oct 2011 | 8:13 amMost businesses have a normal distribution of talent — a limited number, say top 10 percent, of high potential, rock star performers, a bottom decile of underperformers, and a thick middle of 80 percent of folks who get the day-to-day stuff done. In well-managed businesses, there are clear feedback mechanisms to ensure that the bottom of the talent pack gets managed out efficiently and objectively. While at GE, Jack Welch popularized the notion that it was good to fire the "bottom 10" of his managers every year. On the other end of the spectrum, the better companies manage the top-end… -
The Power of Nuance of the Heart
12 Sep 2011 | 11:12 amIn the wake of his recent retirement, much has been written about Steve Job's peerless leadership and how he transformed not just his company, Apple, but the way we interact and live with media and technology. However long Apple manages to stay on top, there is no doubt that Jobs, with his angular genius, relentless quest for perfection, and industry-changing products, will go down as one of the greatest iconoclasts of business. But this is less a piece about Steve Jobs or Apple than it is a question followed by a short rumination. Is there a single trait that distinguishes the world's great…
-
Rita McGrath
-
Industry Analysis Is Dead. What's Next?
19 Jan 2012 | 11:54 amOne of the most widely held beliefs in strategy is that variations in performance can often be explained by what industry a company competes in. A lot of our most cherished tools — five-forces analysis, the BCG portfolio matrix, and even SWOT analysis — rest on this assumption. But evidence is all around us that, although industries matter, they matter in different ways and with different effects than we may have thought. To take one example that crossed my desk recently, consultancy Accenture has developed a point of view on what they call the "Age of Aggregation." Among the… -
How Many Customers Did You Lose Today?
7 Dec 2011 | 12:36 pmMy theme this month appears to be tone deafness among business designers. Cue Bank of America! But genuinely, one of the most vexing dilemmas for senior executives is being plugged in to what is actually going on in the front lines of their business. It's all too easy to miss critically important customer experience information when one is engaging in the day-to-day grind that constitutes an executive's job. All the same, not being attuned to the way your business is perceived by customers can lead to a lot of damage. Here's a recent example. My husband and I were traveling from Edinburgh to… -
Bank of America: A Case Study in Tone Deafness
2 Nov 2011 | 9:33 amYou would think that savvy, sophisticated companies would have an easy time figuring out whether a move they are considering would blow up on them, wouldn't you? And yet, in the last few weeks we've seen some amazing examples of firms that seem to be tone deaf about how their customers feel about them. Take Bank of America. A month ago, it famously introduced a fee for using its debit cards, to a withering storm of protest. One customer was sufficiently enraged to gather 200,000 signatures asking the bank to reverse its decision. Oops. Yesterday, the bank announced plans to do just that. But… -
Groupon's Business Model Is Leaking
13 Oct 2011 | 12:54 pmRemember late last year when Google offered $5.3 billion to buy out Groupon? When the daily deals site rejected the generous offer from the search giant in favor of pursuing an IPO, it unleashed a flood of commentary, from this site and others. Many were skeptical; I wrote a blog post for HBR in the aftermath of the decision questioning the business stability of Groupon's model. Others contended that the deals site — at one time speculated to be valued at $15-20 billion — had nowhere to go but up. But in hindsight, spurning Google's offer is starting to look like a bad decision… -
For Growth, New Ideas Aren't Enough
15 Sep 2011 | 7:22 amThis post is part of the HBR Insight Center Growing the Top Line. There it was again in the Wall Street Journal on August 29: a beloved and uplifting, but unfortunately not effective, approach to driving growth through innovation. The idea is that companies need to encourage innovation from everyone and at every level in the organization. Ironically, the article cites Apple and Procter & Gamble, two companies that have most emphatically learned that generating lots of ideas is the least of their problems when it comes to growth. The "let a thousand flowers bloom" approach to innovation often…
-
Andrew Winston
-
Ecosystem Economics: Navigating the Water-Food-Energy Nexus
26 Jan 2012 | 11:02 amWhen we talk about natural resource constraints on business — such as shortages in water or increases in the cost of energy or agricultural products — we tend to forget how deeply intertwined these commodities are. In the business community, just as in a natural ecosystem, an individual organism (in this case a company) is vulnerable to changes in the availability of these systemic inputs. The risks are greater than we realize because the availability of any of these key resources deeply affects the availability of the others. For example, it takes 95 liters of water to produce… -
Top 10 Green Business Stories of 2011
20 Dec 2011 | 9:42 amYes, it's December again somehow: time to look back on what we've learned and oversimplify into a handy list. Here's my take on the 10 big stories in sustainability and green business this year: The usual sustainability drivers got stronger Ok, this one is cheating a bit, but on a fundamental level, the top themes in green business haven't actually changed too much (see the 2010 list). So, rather than take up valuable list real estate with these perennial favorites and big-picture drivers, I'll quickly list them in one big bucket of mega-trends: The rise of the consumer around the world,… -
Water's Economics as Muddy as Ever
18 Nov 2011 | 9:34 amIt's hard to put into words how dry and hot Texas was this past summer. "Off the charts" is both figuratively and literally accurate: the data for the last 100 years shows a tight regression of temperature and water availability in Texas...except for the 2011 drought, which is far off the line (three degrees hotter with an inch less rainfall than any previous year). The economic cost of the drought has been incredible; Texas lost $5.2 billion in agricultural production alone. With agriculture making up 9 percent of the state's economy, and water shortages already threatening growth in the… -
You Can't Impress Stock Analysts...and Shouldn't Try
1 Nov 2011 | 7:33 amExxonMobil reported last week that its net income reached $10.3 billion...in just the third quarter. The oil giant is arguably the most profitable corporation in history. Ten billion in three months is historic, but as the New York Times reported, "analysts were not impressed." Is there a better distillation of the serious problem with our economic system? Not to put too fine a point on it, but the relentless pursuit to satisfy analysts, and not customers or other stakeholders, is killing our economy and our planet. Earlier this year, I asked a CEO of Fortune 100 company how he dealt with… -
GE's Eco-Innovation Platform
26 Oct 2011 | 6:05 am"We're looking for new models of innovation. We don't have all the answers or all the capabilities." This candid admission comes from Beth Comstock, GE's Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President. Comstock was telling me about the company's growing innovation platform, the GE Ecomagination Challenge which inspires collaboration between GE and entrepreneurs. The ecomagination brand has done yeoman's duty over the last six years. It started as a business strategy that wrapped a handful of greener products into one brand story about helping both the environment and customers. Now this…
-
shoescount.com
-
Getting ready for FIELD
6 Jan 2012 | 8:48 amWhile I’ve definitely been catching up on sleep these last couple of weeks following an exhausting first semester, in the back of my mind, I’ve been really curious/excited/nervous about the upcoming FIELD trip abroad. For my part, I’m heading to India (Mumbai and Dehli) later today and I just realized this morning that I didn’t have my schedule straight so I still need to book a hotel for at least one night in Mumbai. I’ll be gone for 2 weeks and my team is helping a large retailer develop an online grocery service. I still need to pack, do laundry, tidy up… -
I’m the 99%
29 Nov 2011 | 9:55 pmSorry for not being able to update this for awhile. It’s been a crazy ride both academically as well as professionally over these last couple of months. While I haven’t been formally recruiting, since I’ve devoted myself to go down the entrepreneurial path, I’ve been working on that every spare moment that I have. It’s exciting, scary, fun, scary, tumultuous, and scary. I have finals coming up in a week or so, I have my FIELD study trip to Mumbai to prepare for, and meanwhile, I’m meeting with alumni and entrepreneurs to get feedback on an idea that… -
“A tale told by an idiot…”
30 Oct 2011 | 6:13 pm“…full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” I always liked that line from Macbeth and I liked it even more after reading “The Sound and the Fury” by Faulkner in High School. So what does that have to do with anything? Well, apparently, getting into business school qualifies me now to regurgitate my barely comprehensible opinions to hundreds of incredibly accomplished (but similarly insecure) people on the internet. I definitely feel for them as going through the business school application process is quite the journey. Here’s the link to the… -
Apparently, I always have to be different…
19 Oct 2011 | 5:10 pmOkay, while there are so many things to talk about (startups I’m working on, midterms that I’m taking, my FIELD trip to Mumbai this January) I still have to churn through a few cases and study for my FRC (financial reporting & control) midterm so I’ll instead post a picture of my new business cards. Not being satisfied with the boring old HBS business card, I was referred to moo.com by someone I met at a HackHarvard event. I’m not recruiting (a story for another day) so I’m not sure if I’ll be passing out many (if any) business cards but just in case. -
Getting Good at Saying No!
22 Sep 2011 | 12:04 pmMost everyone that I spoke with prior to starting business school warned about a phenomenon called FOMO (fear of missing out). What I’ve found is that for me, this fear is manifesting itself not on the social, academic, or recruiting side, but definitely on the startup side. The above screenshot reflects what yesterday looked like and this is excluding the time needed to study for today’s classes as well as a social event in the evening with my section that I didn’t attend. The good thing is that I’m getting good at saying no simply because physics will…
