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Why Businesses Need to Think Like the Media

Larry Kramer, founder of MarketWatch, Inc., and author of "C-Scape: Conquer the Forces Changing Business Today."




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Build a Better Business Model

Rita McGrath, Columbia Business School professor and coauthor of "Discovery-Driven Growth."




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All Business Is Green Business

Jib Ellison, founder of Blu Skye and coauthor of the HBR article "The Sustainable Economy."




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Business Wasn’t Always the Villain

Nancy Koehn, Harvard Business School historian and editor of "The Story of American Business."




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What Successful People Do Differently

Heidi Grant Halvorson, motivational psychologist and author of "Nine Things Successful People Do Differently."




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Business Jargon Is Not a “Value-Add”

Dan Pallotta, president of Advertising for Humanity and author of "Uncharitable."




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The Right Mindset for Success

Carol Dweck, professor at Stanford University and author of "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success."




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Idea Watch: Harnessing Creativity

Andy O'Connell and Scott Berinato, editors of the Idea Watch section of HBR and The Daily Stat.




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Unilever’s CEO on Making Responsible Business Work

Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever.




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Pressed for Time? Give Some of Yours Away

Cassie Mogilner, assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School and author of the HBR article "You'll Feel Less Rushed If You Give Time Away."




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How Campaign Finance Reform Could Help Business

Russ Feingold, former US senator from Wisconsin and founder of Progressives United.




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Ernest Shackleton’s Lessons for Leaders in Harsh Climates

Nancy Koehn, Harvard Business School historian and editor of "The Story of American Business."




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The High Cost of Rudeness at Work

Christine Porath, associate professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and coauthor of the HBR article "The Price of Incivility."




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Improve Your Business Writing

Bryan Garner, editor in chief of Black's Law Dictionary and author of the "HBR Guide to Better Business Writing."




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Yes, Business Relies on Nature

Mark Tercek, CEO of The Nature Conservancy and author of "Nature's Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature."




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The Booming Business of Craft Cocktails

Thomas Mooney, co-owner and CEO of House Spirits Distillery.




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Reduce Stress with Mindfulness

Maria Gonzalez, author of "Mindful Leadership," explains how to minimize stress -- not just manage it. Contains a brief guided breathing exercise.




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The Management Myths Hurting Your Business

Freek Vermeulen of London Business School explains how best practices become bad practices.




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Taking Business Back from Wall Street

Gautam Mukunda, HBS professor, on the dangers of managing companies for shareholders.




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Succeeding Quietly in Our Recognition-Obsessed Culture

David Zweig, author of "Invisibles," on employees who value good work over self-promotion.




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Marc Andreessen and Jim Barksdale on How to Make Money

The tech luminaries on bundling and unbundling in the digital age.




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Fixing the College Grad Hiring Process

Sanjeev Agrawal, Collegefeed cofounder and CEO, explains what recruiters, new graduates, and college career centers need to do differently.




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Explaining Silicon Valley’s Success

AnnaLee Saxenian, author of the classic book "Regional Advantage," still thinks the area's future is bright.




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Be Less Reactive and More Proactive

Peter Bregman, author of "Four Seconds," on changing the way you lead.




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The Creator of WordPress

Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic, on growth, leadership, and mindfulness.




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What Makes Social Entrepreneurs Successful?

Sally Osberg, president and CEO of the Skoll Foundation and author of "Getting Beyond Better" with Roger Martin.




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Marketing Lessons for Companies Big and Small

Denise Lee Yohn, author of "Extraordinary Experiences" and "What Great Brands Do," explains what we can learn from retail and restaurant brands




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Yo-Yo Ma on Successful Creative Collaboration

The acclaimed cellist explains how he chooses and works with partners and shares advice on honing one's talent.




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Excessive Collaboration

Rob Cross, professor at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, explains how work became an exhausting marathon of group projects. He's the coauthor of the HBR article "Collaborative Overload."




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Handling Stress in the Moment

HBR contributing editor Amy Gallo discusses the best tactics to recognize, react to, and recover from stressful situations. She's a contributor to the "HBR Guide to Managing Stress at Work."




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Stopping and Starting With Success

Jerry Seinfeld shares his insights into innovation, self-criticism, and how to know when to quit. The U.S. comedian conquered 1990s television with his sitcom and is now finding a new audience for his online talk show, "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee."




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Business Leadership Under President Trump

Larry Summers, former U.S. treasury secretary, is calling on American business leaders to stand up to President Donald Trump. Summers sharply criticizes the administration’s protectionist agenda, and he says it’s time for executives to call out how those policies undermine the economy and the country's best interests in the long term.




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Why You Should Buy a Business (and How to Do It)

Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff, professors at Harvard Business School, spell out an overlooked career path: buying a business and running it as CEO. Purchasing a small company lets you become your own boss and reap financial rewards without the risks of founding a start-up. Still, there are things you need to know. Ruback and Yudkoff are the authors of the “HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business.”




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Nike’s Co-founder on Innovation, Culture, and Succession

Phil Knight, former chair and CEO of Nike, tells the story of starting the sports apparel and equipment giant after taking an entrepreneurship class at Stanford and teaming up with his former track coach, Bill Bowerman. Together (and with the help of a waffle iron) they changed how running shoes are designed and made. Knight discusses the company's enduring culture of innovation, as well as the succession process that led to former runner and Nike insider Mark Parker becoming CEO.




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How AI Is Already Changing Business

Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT Sloan School professor, explains how rapid advances in machine learning are presenting new opportunities for businesses. He breaks down how the technology works and what it can and can’t do (yet). He also discusses the potential impact of AI on the economy, how workforces will interact with it in the future, and suggests managers start experimenting now. Brynjolfsson is the co-author, with Andrew McAfee, of the HBR Big Idea article, “The Business of Artificial Intelligence.” They’re also the co-authors of the new book, “Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future.




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When Startups Scrapped the Business Plan

Steve Blank, entrepreneurship lecturer at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Columbia, talks about his experience of coming to Silicon Valley and building companies from the ground up. He shares how he learned to apply customer discovery methods to emerging high technology startups. And he explains why he believes most established companies are still failing to apply lean startup methodology in their corporate innovation programs. Blank is the author of the HBR article, "Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything."




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How Successful Solopreneurs Make Money

Dorie Clark, a marketing strategy consultant, answers a burning question: how do people make money off of what they know? She outlines the options for experts who want to monetize their knowledge. Clark explains, using herself and other successful solopreneurs as examples, how to earn revenue from public speaking, podcasting, e-books, and online courses. She also goes over what to charge and when to get an assistant. Clark teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and is the author of the new book “Entrepreneurial You.”




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The Hardscrabble Business of Chinese Manufacturing in Africa

Irene Yuan Sun, a consultant at McKinsey, explains why so many Chinese entrepreneurs are setting up factories in Africa. She describes what it’s like inside these factories, who works there, what they’re making—and how this emerging manufacturing sector is industrializing countries including Lesotho and Nigeria. Sun’s new book is “The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa.”




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Leading with Less Ego

Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter, of the global consulting firm Potential Project, make their case for mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion in leadership. Their survey of 30,000 leaders showed those characteristics are foundational — and often missing from leadership development programs. Practicing self-awareness, they say, leads to more focused and more people-focused organizations. They’re the authors of the new book, “The Mind of the Leader: How to Lead Yourself, Your People, and Your Organization for Extraordinary Results."




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Speak Out Successfully

James Detert, a professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, studies acts of courage in the workplace. His most surprising finding? Most people describe everyday actions — not big whistleblower scandals — when they cite courageous (or gutless) acts they’ve seen coworkers and leaders take. Detert shares the proven behaviors of employees who succeed at speaking out and suffer fewer negative consequences for it. He’s the author of the HBR article “Cultivating Everyday Courage.”




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The Right Way to Solve Complex Business Problems

Corey Phelps, a strategy professor at McGill University, says great problem solvers are hard to find. Even seasoned professionals at the highest levels of organizations regularly fail to identify the real problem and instead jump to exploring solutions. Phelps identifies the common traps and outlines a research-proven method to solve problems effectively. He's the coauthor of the book, "Cracked it! How to solve big problems and sell solutions like top strategy consultants."




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Why Business Jargon Isn’t All Bad

Anne Curzan, English professor at the University of Michigan, studies the evolution of language. While many of us roll our eyes at bizspeak — from synergy to value-add to operationalize — Curzan defends business jargon. She says the words we say around the office speak volumes about our organizations and our working relationships. She shares how to use jargon more deliberately, explains the origin of some annoying or amusing buzzwords, and discusses how English became the global business language and how that could change.




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

Caitlyn Collins, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis, conducted interviews with mothers in four countries -- the United States, Italy, Germany, and Sweden -- who have jobs outside the home to better understand the pressures they felt. She found that American moms were by far the most stressed, primarily because of the lack of parental benefits offered by their employers and the government. In Europe, women told Collins they had more help, but at times cultural norms around their personal and professional roles had yet to catch up. Collins thinks companies can work to improve the situation but argues that the real solution is carefully designed government interventions that will help families at all income levels. She’s the author of the book “Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving.”




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How to Fix Your Hiring Process

Peter Cappelli, professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and director of its Center for Human Resources, says managers at companies large and small are doing hiring all wrong. A confluence of changes, from the onslaught of online tools to a rise in recruitment outsourcing, have promised more efficiency but actually made us less effective at finding the best candidates. Cappelli says there are better, simpler ways to measure whether someone will be a good employee and advises companies to focus more on internal talent. He's the author of the HBR article "Your Approach to Hiring is All Wrong."




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Business Lessons from How Marvel Makes Movies

Spencer Harrison, an associate professor at INSEAD, says that managers in any industry can learn from the success of the Marvel movie franchise. While some sequels lack creativity, Marvel manages to make each of its new releases just different enough, so consumers are not just satisfied but also surprised. Research shows that several strategies drive this success; they include bringing in different types of talent while also maintaining a stable core creative team then working together to challenge the superhero action-film formula. And, Harrison argues, leaders in other industries and functions can easily apply them to their own businesses. He is the co-author of the HBR article "Marvel's Blockbuster Machine."




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How to Be Less Distracted at Work — and in Life

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 we want to each day. Unwelcome behaviors can range from social media scrolling and bingeing on YouTube videos to chatting with colleagues or answering non-urgent emails. To break these habits, we start by recognizing that it is often our own emotions, not our devices, that distract us. We must then recognize the difference between traction (values-aligned work or leisure) and distraction (not) and make time in our schedules for more of the former. Eyal also has tips for protecting ourselves from the external distractions that do come at us and tools to force us to focus on bigger-picture goals. He is the author of the book "Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life."




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A Nobel Prize Winner on Rethinking Poverty (and Business)

Esther Duflo, an MIT economist, won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. Duflo’s early life working at a non-governmental organization in Madagascar and volunteering in soup kitchens in her native France inspired her to study economics and research the root causes of poverty. With her fellow Nobel winners Abhijit Banerjee of MIT and Michael Kremer of Harvard, Duflo showed that effective policies often go against conventional wisdom and popular economic models. The only way to find out what works, she argues, is to rigorously test solutions on the ground, and she encourages businesses to do the same. With Banerjee, Duflo also wrote the new book "Good Economics for Hard Times."




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The Tipping Point Between Failure and Success

Dashun Wang, associate professor at Kellogg School of Management, crunched big datasets of entrepreneurs, scientists, and even terrorist organizations to better understand the fine line between failure and success. One surprising finding is that people who experience early failures often become more accomplished than counterparts who achieve early successes. Another insight is that the pace of failure is an indicator of the tipping point between stagnation and eventual success. Wang is a coauthor of the study in the journal Nature: “Quantifying the dynamics of failure across science, startups and security.”




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How One CEO Successfully Led a Digital Transformation

Nancy McKinstry, CEO of Wolters Kluwer, has successfully shifted her company’s business to digital products over 15 years. The Dutch multinational started in the 1830s as a publishing house and now earns more than 90% of its revenue from digital. McKinstry explains how her firm kept investing in product innovation – and how she learned to be patient as consumers slowly adopted new products and services. She also credits the role of increased diversity in her organization. McKinstry is the top woman in HBR’s 2019 list of the world’s best-performing chief executives.




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Why Business Leaders Should Solve Problems Beyond Their Companies

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor at Harvard Business School, believes the world demands a new kind of business leader. She says so-called “advanced leaders” work inside and outside their companies to tackle big issues such as climate change, public health, and social inequality. She gives real-life examples and explains how business leaders can harness their experience, networks, innovative approaches, and the power of their organizations to solve challenging problems. Kanter is the author of the book "Think Outside the Building: How Advanced Leaders Can Change the World One Small Innovation at a Time."