Boxes and Arrows
JUNE 7, 2012
Recently the web design community has been eating up the secrets of game design. The Gamification trend merely borrowed simple game mechanics, from badges to progress bars. But now designers are looking more closely at core game design principles like design for flow and mastery, blending them with our old friend, ease of use. But how many of these techniques are relevant for more everyday sites, like ecommerce and productivity apps?
CorporateIntel
JUNE 22, 2012
“Uncovering hidden supply to meet pent-up demand is the magic behind some of today’s most exciting start-ups.” I read that opening phrase in a Heard on the Street WSJ Article by Rolfe Winkler last week and it stuck with me. It’s not a particularly new idea, but it is elegant, simply stated, and true. At its core, the internet in many ways is a giant marketplace—a shared global space for socializing, exchanging ideas, buying and selling goods and services, hanging out, obs
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Harvard Business Review
JUNE 8, 2012
We live an age when just about anything can be bought and sold — brides, organs, Facebook friends, wedding toasts, and so on. But should we allow this to happen, even if the market demands it? In this Boston Review forum , Harvard professor Michael Sandel says love and friendship simply shouldn’t be for sale. Things get a bit more complicated when we bring other goods into play.
Boxes and Arrows
JUNE 18, 2012
Ten years ago, when I wrote The Making of a Discipline: The Making of a Title, 2002, there was a big debate on: Is experience design about online and mobile interfaces or is it something more? Forward-thinking initiatives, like the AIGA ’s Advance for Design, began the conversation at the center of the convergence of the media, technology, and business worlds.
Speaker: Jady West, VP of Hospitality & Chris Bennett, Head of Sales & Engineering
The modern hotel room is no longer just a place to stay—it’s an experience to remember. Today’s guests expect seamless connectivity, personalized comfort, and high-tech convenience. From AI-powered smart room controls to keyless entry, in-room entertainment, and app-based services, technology is redefining hospitality from the inside out. In this new session featuring industry pros Jady West and Chris Bennett, we’ll explore how high-speed, high-bandwidth connectivity powers the innovations that
CorporateIntel
JUNE 13, 2012
About a year ago I wrote the following article at the request of ACM Computers in Entertainment for the debut of their redesigned site, which launched last week. It is a bit longer than my usual posts, but for those interested in the topic, hopefully it will inspire good thoughts and discussion. Here is a link to that article on the ACM site, which can also be found in the CIR Library , with the full text below: “Why Did Edutainment Become a Bad Word?
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 7, 2012
On Fast Company's website, Bruce Kasanoff and Michael Hinshaw offer a nifty little primer for prospective disruptors. Looking to take an unsuspecting industry by storm? To start, try eliminating customer pain points. "Each industry has practices that drive customers crazy," write the authors of Smart Customers, Stupid Companies. Take technology providers' technical support, with its long hold times "hopelessly complex interactions.
Business Innovation Brief brings together the best content for business innovation and strategy professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 12, 2012
When I met for lunch with Dr. Phil Zimbardo , the former president of the American Psychological Association, I knew him primarily as the mastermind behind The Stanford Prison Experiment. In the summer of 1971, Zimbardo took healthy Stanford students, gave them roles as either guards or inmates, and placed them in a makeshift prison in the basement of Stanford University.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 12, 2012
You'd think that good economic times would mean good news for chief executives. But when it comes to job security, the data says otherwise. Among the notable findings in Booz & Company's annual study of CEO succession was an increase in leadership turnover in the face of 2011's improved economic outlook. More than 14% of CEOs were replaced last year, compared to just 11.6% in 2011.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 25, 2012
Steve Jobs is among America's greatest business leaders. He transformed industries, changed society, and altered how companies do business. After his best-selling biography of Jobs came out, author Walter Isaacson saw many commentators focus on Jobs' personality — without understanding how he led. Listen as Isaacson and Harvard Business Review Editor Adi Ignatius talk about the keys to Jobs' success, and the lessons that leaders of any organization can use in their own work.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 6, 2012
If you feel sucked into a bottomless guilt vortex every time you look at your email inbox, this post is not for you. If you struggle to keep up with a deluge of 50, 100, 400 emails every day, go away. If you've clicked on this looking for tips in curtailing this incursion of correspondence, leave now. This post isn't for you. It's for the other guy.
Speaker: Kevin Burke, Founder & Managing Director at Digital One and AI & Automation Consultant
AI and automation are currently transforming the way sales and marketing teams operate. Generative AI crafts personalized outreach at scale, while conversational AI bots are engaging prospects in real time. Robotic process automation streamlines manual workflows by triggering tasks the moment a prospect takes a key action, and advanced AI analytics surface hidden patterns in the pipeline, improve forecasting, and help teams make data-driven decisions with confidence.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 7, 2012
Diversity on boards is critical to sustaining performance. Broadening the composition of the board increases the size of the candidate pool and, more importantly, helps expand perspectives at the top. While most CEOs recognize the importance of appointing directors of different ages and with different kinds of educational backgrounds and functional expertise, they tend to underestimate the benefits of gender diversity.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 21, 2012
As the up-and-coming vice president and CEO candidate for a Fortune 500 technology corporation sat before the CEO for his annual review, he was baffled to discover that the feedback from his peers, customers, direct reports, and particularly from board members placed unusual emphasis on one potentially devastating problem: his listening deficit. This executive was widely considered among the best and brightest in his company, but it was evident that this issue needed immediate attention if he ev
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 7, 2012
Diversity on boards is critical to sustaining performance. Broadening the composition of the board increases the size of the candidate pool and, more importantly, helps expand perspectives at the top. While most CEOs recognize the importance of appointing directors of different ages and with different kinds of educational backgrounds and functional expertise, they tend to underestimate the benefits of gender diversity.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 11, 2012
If you don't like how things are going, tell a different story. Sometimes strategic change just means taking something from the periphery — an anomaly, a demonstration, a small innovation — and redefining it as central. Put the past in perspective, not as a set of constraints or excuses, but as a springboard to new actions. Motivate change by creating a new narrative showing how success will be achieved and why the elements are in place to get there.
Speaker: Jason Cottrell and Gireesh Sahukar
Retailers know the clock is ticking–legacy SAP Commerce support ends in 2026. Legacy platforms are becoming a liability burdened by complexity, rigidity, and mounting operational costs. But modernization isn’t just about swapping out systems, it’s about preparing for a future shaped by real-time interactions, AI powered buying assistants, and flexible commerce architecture.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 11, 2012
If you don't like how things are going, tell a different story. Sometimes strategic change just means taking something from the periphery — an anomaly, a demonstration, a small innovation — and redefining it as central. Put the past in perspective, not as a set of constraints or excuses, but as a springboard to new actions. Motivate change by creating a new narrative showing how success will be achieved and why the elements are in place to get there.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 5, 2012
Now that final exams and spring commencement celebrations have passed, thousands of college students and fresh graduates will head off for their first internships or full-time jobs. If you're one of them, you're lucky. Recent statistics indicate that one in two new college graduates are unemployed or underemployed. And while many of you will have had part-time jobs, this new position can be an incredible learning experience and a stepping stone for your long-term career.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 14, 2012
I was lost. I looked at the map and my heart raced as I admitted to myself — only to myself — that I had no idea where I was. It felt too humiliating to let the others know. This was the summer of 1990 and I was leading a group of students on a 30-day mountaineering expedition. It was the first day of our trip and the students had no experience in the outdoors.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 4, 2012
You will fail. It's inevitable, so you might as well begin preparing for it now. The failure may be small, like, say, making a mistake on a client engagement. Or it may be quite grand, like losing a job you valued. How you handle that failure can raise or lower the risks of failing again — and shape your legacy as a leader. Some people handle these setbacks well.
Speaker: Yohan Lobo and Dennis Street
In the accounting world, staying ahead means embracing the tools that allow you to work smarter, not harder. Outdated processes and disconnected systems can hold your organization back, but the right technologies can help you streamline operations, boost productivity, and improve client delivery. Dive into the strategies and innovations transforming accounting practices.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 19, 2012
Sometimes you know your job just isn't right for you. Maybe you're in the wrong field, don't enjoy the work, feel surrounded by untrustworthy coworkers, or have an incompetent boss. Most people would tell you to find something that's a better fit. But that may not be possible. There are many reasons you may not be able to leave: a tough economy, family commitments, or limited opportunities in your field.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 18, 2012
Risk management is critical for business decisions — but may not be healthy for making decisions about your career. In fact, if you want your career to take off, you may need to do the opposite of what risk managers try to do: Instead of focusing on how to reduce risks, you may need to embrace and enhance them. In organizations, the basic purpose of risk management is to rationally identify and analyze threats that might compromise success, and then recommend steps to mitigate them.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 14, 2012
Most senior executives understand and generally buy into the famous aphorism, "Be the change you want to see in the world." Prompted by HR professionals or consultants, they often commit themselves to "being the change" by personally role-modeling the desired behaviors. And then, in practice, nothing significant changes. In the research for our book, Beyond Performance , we found that the reason for this is that most executives don't see themselves as "part of the problem.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 1, 2012
Nothing in career strategy is more important than picking the career field that's right for you. Get that right, and you may be headed to happiness and fulfillment in your work. The most straightforward path to that field is to build directly on your capabilities. A great deal of research shows that people who work in areas where they're especially strong accomplish a lot and enjoy the work.
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Harvard Business Review
JUNE 4, 2012
There is a common myth about product development: the more features we put into a product, the more customers will like it. Product-development teams seem to believe that adding features creates value for customers and subtracting them destroys it. This attitude explains why products are so complicated: Remote controls seem impossible to use, computers take hours to set up, cars have so many switches and knobs that they resemble airplane cockpits, and even the humble toaster now comes with a man
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 18, 2012
Recently, I was giving a talk to 160 senior executives at a large bank. As part of the talk, I asked them to fill out something we call " The Energy Audit ," as a way of assessing how well they are managing their own energy. It happened that they had access to individual polling devices, so we were able to aggregate their answers and show them on the screen in the front of the room.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 5, 2012
Most companies sabotage their own innovation processes without meaning to. I've noticed five tell-tale signs of this syndrome, which I recently described during a talk to the Columbia Media Forum. 1. Innovation is episodic. We've all seen this movie: A few people in the organization have a burning desire to foster more innovation, or a different kind of innovation, so they invent a new process.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 25, 2012
Frank Cespedes , senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, on how to connect what your people sell with your business goals.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
Incorporating generative AI (gen AI) into your sales process can speed up your wins through improved efficiency, personalized customer interactions, and better informed decision- making. Gen AI is a game changer for busy salespeople and can reduce time-consuming tasks, such as customer research, note-taking, and writing emails, and provide insightful data analysis and recommendations.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 6, 2012
Let's face it: selling isn't for everyone. Some people, including executives and entrepreneurs, panic at the thought of "putting themselves out there," especially when that means asking colleagues for referrals or reaching out to past clients to drum up new business. In the past few weeks, I've been approached by several company leaders clamoring for help.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 1, 2012
It's hard to reach the 90th percentile in anything, of course, and honesty is no different. So when we ran across one of those exceptional individuals, we wanted to have a word with him. A global controller of a professional services firm of more than 40,000 employees, he'd just participated in a 360-feedback process where he'd been assessed by his manager, peers, and direct reports on 16 leadership competencies.
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 26, 2012
The resonance of Anne-Marie Slaughter's Atlantic article is testimony to how far we've come since 1987, when I began talking about work and family in my Wharton School classes. Back then, many students — men and women — flat-out resented it. "We're here to learn about business, not family," they said. And when I started the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project a few years later, I got some strange looks, for it was odd to be a man talking about work and family at a business school k
Harvard Business Review
JUNE 6, 2012
How do you get a five-ton spacecraft safely to Saturn and land a probe on its largest moon when your project involves three space agencies, 17 countries, 18 separate scientific payloads, and 250 scientists working across 10 time zones? The secret isn't rocket science — it's a full-time commitment to the art and science of project management. New findings from the Project Management Institute (PMI), suggests that organizations that focus on excellence in project management execution can red
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