Consumer services

The hardest part of being an entrepreneur can be learning to turn down business. It is also the only way to survive—and grow.

"Please don't tell me that I need to have a baby to have this time off." Those words were still ringing in the ears of Jessica Gonon an hour after a tense...

In the four years since Rob Miranda became CEO of Growing Places, a provider of on-site child care for companies in the Midwestern United States, he has...

This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Marketing That Works. It was 8 a.m. on a Tuesday, and I stumbled into my local coffee shop. Laptop in tow and shaking off jetlag, I steeled myself for the onslaught: replying to the hundreds of emails that had built up while I’d been on a […]

The genetics boom is upon us, promising everything from cures for inherited diseases to smarter children. But companies must tread carefully as the ethical debate plays out.

During economic slowdowns, consulting, law, and accounting firms often start offering services and taking on clients they really shouldn't, just to keep...

In the four years since Rob Miranda became CEO of Growing Places, a provider of on-site child care for companies in the Midwestern United States, he has...

During the foul-mouthed film Clerks, a bunch of overgrown adolescents huddle around the counter of a convenience store, grappling with the ethics of Return of the Jedi. Was it moral to blow up the second Death Star, even though it wasn’t yet completed? As one says, “All those innocent contractors hired to do a job […]

In the four years since Rob Miranda became CEO of Growing Places, a provider of on-site child care for companies in the Midwestern United States, he has...

In the last 20 years, business has become the dominant institution in American society, in many respects usurping the role once played by religion. As...

If managers want their employees to share information, why do they encourage them to hoard it by rewarding competition among them? My colleagues Erik Brynjolfsson at MIT and Nat Bulkley at the University of Michigan and I have been studying knowledge sharing and productivity in the executive recruiting industry. We asked 71 employees, from partners […]

It is over fifteen years now since I met my first really dumb multimillionaire, and it made quite an impression on me. Up till then I had thought that you needed brains to make money: I was used to being asked “If you’re so clever, why aren’t you rich?” but this was the first time […]

Here in the United States, the presidential election cycle gives us the opportunity to publicly discuss the characteristics of good leaders. Running a country calls for a sophisticated array of leadership skills — from shaping strategy to building a team to managing day-to-day operations. Choosing a candidate therefore requires thoughtfulness about what experiences provide the […]

Rewarding individual performance is the way of the business world, but there are rare exceptions. At executive search firm Egon Zehnder International, seniority and companywide results determine pay. The company’s founder explains how this unconventional compensation system works—and why.

Your organization can become more decisive—and can implement strategy more quickly—if you know where the bottlenecks are and who’s empowered to break through them.

Back in the 1990s, computer engineer and Wall Street "quant" were the hot occupations in business. Today data scientists are the hires firms are competing...

Auditors are like building inspectors: We check out a business’s structure and systems and attest to their integrity so that investors can put their money in with confidence. But having grown up working in my dad’s business, a hardware store in Cleveland, I’ve always liked another side of this trade: helping people actually build things. […]

How to build trust in a new era.

The unique benefits of private equity investment

In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the buying of professional services by management. This is true for a broad range of advisory activities, such as financial, economic, public relations, advertising, legal, personnel, research, and many others. By the same token, there has been a marked growth in the firms selling these […]