HBR IdeaCast

By Harvard Business Review

Business

What's HBR IdeaCast about?

A weekly podcast featuring the leading thinkers in business and management.

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A Deeper Understanding of C...

01.31.2023

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, ...

HBR IdeaCast episodes:

01.31.2023 A Deeper Understanding of Creativity at Work 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, ...
01.24.2023 Guy Raz on What Great Business Leaders Have in Common 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 ...
01.17.2023 Money, Flexibility, Development? Figuring Out What Employees Really Value 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 ...
01.10.2023 Work Insights from the World’s Longest Happiness Study 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 ...
01.03.2023 Best of IdeaCast 2022 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. ...
12.27.2022 LinkedIn’s CEO on Hiring Strategies and the Skills That Matter Most (from The New World of Work) 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 ...
12.20.2022 Ron Howard on Collaborative Leadership and Career Longevity 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 ...
12.13.2022 Why Some Start-Ups Fail to Scale 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 ...
12.06.2022 You’ve Made Some DEI Progress. Don’t Stop Now 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 ...
11.29.2022 The Growing “Do Good” Economy 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 ...
11.22.2022 Let’s Protect Our Frontline Workers from Rude Customers 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 ...
11.15.2022 What We Still Misunderstand About Mentorship and Sponsorship 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 ...
11.08.2022 Grit Is Good. But Quitting Can Be, Too. 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 ...
11.01.2022 How Women (and Everyone) Can Form Deeper Bonds to Fight Bias at Work 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 ...
10.27.2022 4 Business Ideas That Changed the World: Emotional Intelligence 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 ...
10.25.2022 What Leaders Need to Know About a Looming Recession – and Other Global Threats 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 ...
10.20.2022 4 Business Ideas That Changed the World: Shareholder Value 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 ...
10.18.2022 NASA’s Science Head on Leading Space Missions with Risk of Spectacular Failure 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 ...
10.13.2022 4 Business Ideas That Changed the World: Disruptive Innovation 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 ...
10.11.2022 What Kara Swisher Has Learned From Decades Covering Tech 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 ...
10.06.2022 4 Business Ideas That Changed the World: Scientific Management 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 ...
10.04.2022 To Improve AI Outcomes, Think About the Entire System 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, ...
09.29.2022 Introducing 4 Business Ideas That Changed the World 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 ...
09.27.2022 Advice from the CEO of an All-Remote Company 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 ...
09.20.2022 It’s Time to Fine-Tune Performance Management 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 ...
09.13.2022 Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner on Cultivating Creative Talent 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 ...
09.06.2022 Work-Life Supports That Truly Help Your Organization 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 ...
08.30.2022 What Business Leaders Should Know Now About the Metaverse 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 ...
08.23.2022 Why Companies Decide to Sell on Amazon—or Not 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 ...
08.16.2022 Strategies for Dealing with Difficult Coworkers Work is challenging for lots of reasons, but most of us have probably come to realize that what makes or break a professional experience is people - and sometimes we encounter a boss, peer, or direct report that isn’t at ...
08.09.2022 Decisions Don’t Have to Be Either-Or Making business decisions often means choosing one path over another. And psychology research shows that our brains are wired to make either-or choices. But Wendy Smith, management professor at the University of Delaware, and Marianne Lewis, dean of the University ...
08.02.2022 Is Cynicism Ruining Your Organization? Around the world, we've become increasingly cynical about other people, public institutions, and corporations. In Edelman's 2022 Trust Barometer, nearly 60% of respondents across 27 countries reported that their default is to distrust. And that's very bad for business, says ...
07.26.2022 The Case for Embracing Uncertainty For many of us, uncertainty is nerve-wracking. However, many of our best achievements and meaningful experiences come from a trying time of ambiguity. INSEAD professor Nathan Furr and entrepreneur Susannah Harmon Furr argue that uncertainty and possibility are two sides ...
07.19.2022 How the Unionization Trend is Changing Workplace Dynamics For years, union membership has been shrinking in the United States and many other countries. But recently we've seen a resurgence, with employees in sectors like retail, hospitality, and media organizing to collectively bargain for better pay, benefits, and job ...
07.12.2022 Red Flags You Won’t See on a CEO’s Resume For a long time, we have believed that strong corporate governance is enough to prevent CEO malfeasance. However, new research shows that the lifestyle behaviors of executives can spell trouble for companies, regardless of the guardrails in place. Aiyesha Dey, ...
07.05.2022 Sad, Mad, Anxious? How to Work Through Your ‘Big Feelings’ When things aren't going well -- in our own lives, our community, our country, or the world -- it's hard to be productive at work. Most of us also shy away from sharing what we're feeling with colleagues and bosses. ...
06.28.2022 Open Digital Platforms to Spur Innovation As the novel coronavirus surfaced in Wuhan in 2019, Chinese officials called for mobile isolation wards. Haier Group partnered with suppliers to design and construct units quickly, thanks to the openness of the leading manufacturer’s digital platforms. Unlike Haier, many ...
06.21.2022 A Debate Champion on How to Have More Productive Disagreements at Work In an ideal world, professional conflicts are settled with thoughtful discussion and collaborative decision-making. But that’s not usually how it works. More typically, you see leaders - or the loudest voices - win out, leaving others resentful. And sometimes people ...
06.14.2022 Fighting Bias and Inequality at the Team Level Despite the investments made in the last few years, many companies are falling short of their diversity, equity, and inclusion aims. Some firms have faced difficulty spreading their DEI efforts top-down throughout the organization. Trier Bryant, the cofounder and CEO ...
06.07.2022 The Pros and Cons of Our “Middleman Economy” Kathryn Judge, a finance professor at Columbia Law School, is troubled by the rise of intermediary platforms between products and services and the customers who eventually purchase them. Thanks to technology and globalization, she shows how the importance of “middlemen” ...
05.31.2022 Immigration, Upward Mobility, and the U.S. Economy In eras past, the United States welcomed immigrant laborers to build and support the country's infrastructure and innovators and entrepreneurs to advance its businesses and technology. And yet immigration is a hot-button issue today, with many saying it's a drain ...
05.24.2022 Leadership Lessons from a Republican Governor in a Blue State Underperforming state agencies, a natural disaster, and a pandemic are among the many challenges that faced Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker and his former Chief of Staff Steve Kadish. Looking back during the final year of the Baker Administration, they say ...
05.17.2022 How Government and Business Can Tackle Big Global Crises Together It feels like a moment of panic for many. While there were some success stories in how public and private sector leaders managed the global pandemic, it isn't over, and many more crises -- from political polarization to climate change ...
05.10.2022 Comedian Sarah Cooper On Bringing Humor to Any Career It's a cliche, but they say it's best to write what you know. That was the case for comedian Sarah Cooper, who rose to viral social media fame in the Trump era through her lip sync TikTok videos. She formerly ...
05.03.2022 3 Strategies for Dealing with Procrastination We’re all prone to procrastinate. We feel guilty about it. And yet, we still do it. Alice Boyes, a former clinical psychologist and author, says breaking the habit is more than simply a matter of discipline. She explains the different ...
04.28.2022 Find Joy in Any Job: How Do I Get My Team to Love Work? Not everyone likes everything about their job all the time. But we know from research that people who are energized by at least parts of their work perform better – and feel a greater sense of well-being. So there’s a ...
04.26.2022 Let’s Redefine the Role of Manager Most managers today are overwhelmed. Thanks to rapid technological change, flattening hierarchies, agile work, and new attitudes about talent, they have to do more than ever. Lynda Gratton, professor at London Business School and the founder of HSM, points to ...
04.21.2022 Find Joy in Any Job: How Do I Improve the Role I Have? A lot of us are feeling unhappy and disengaged at work – and that started long before the pandemic. A big part of the problem, says Marcus Buckingham, is that we don’t take the initiative to do more of the ...
04.19.2022 How Understanding Your Family Dynamics Can Improve Work Deborah Ancona, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, and Dennis Perkins, CEO of The Syncretics Group, have researched how family dynamics play out in the workplace. They say people often revert to childhood patterns at work. By applying ...
04.14.2022 Find Joy in Any Job: What Do I Really Love To Do? At a time when 41% of us are considering quitting our jobs, it’s time for us to understand why and what we can do about it. In this special series from HBR, we’re looking at how to craft your current ...

Older episodes

HBR IdeaCast

What's HBR IdeaCast about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

HBR IdeaCast episodes:

A Deeper Understanding of Creativity at Work

Guy Raz on What Great Business Leaders Have in Common

Money, Flexibility, Development? Figuring Out What Employees Really Value

Work Insights from the World’s Longest Happiness Study

Best of IdeaCast 2022

LinkedIn’s CEO on Hiring Strategies and the Skills That Matter Most (from The New World of Work)

Ron Howard on Collaborative Leadership and Career Longevity

Why Some Start-Ups Fail to Scale

You’ve Made Some DEI Progress. Don’t Stop Now

The Growing “Do Good” Economy

Let’s Protect Our Frontline Workers from Rude Customers

What We Still Misunderstand About Mentorship and Sponsorship

Grit Is Good. But Quitting Can Be, Too.

How Women (and Everyone) Can Form Deeper Bonds to Fight Bias at Work

4 Business Ideas That Changed the World: Emotional Intelligence

What Leaders Need to Know About a Looming Recession – and Other Global Threats

4 Business Ideas That Changed the World: Shareholder Value

NASA’s Science Head on Leading Space Missions with Risk of Spectacular Failure

4 Business Ideas That Changed the World: Disruptive Innovation

What Kara Swisher Has Learned From Decades Covering Tech

4 Business Ideas That Changed the World: Scientific Management

To Improve AI Outcomes, Think About the Entire System

Introducing 4 Business Ideas That Changed the World

Advice from the CEO of an All-Remote Company

It’s Time to Fine-Tune Performance Management

Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner on Cultivating Creative Talent

Work-Life Supports That Truly Help Your Organization

What Business Leaders Should Know Now About the Metaverse

Why Companies Decide to Sell on Amazon—or Not

Strategies for Dealing with Difficult Coworkers

Decisions Don’t Have to Be Either-Or

Is Cynicism Ruining Your Organization?

The Case for Embracing Uncertainty

How the Unionization Trend is Changing Workplace Dynamics

Red Flags You Won’t See on a CEO’s Resume

Sad, Mad, Anxious? How to Work Through Your ‘Big Feelings’

Open Digital Platforms to Spur Innovation

A Debate Champion on How to Have More Productive Disagreements at Work

Fighting Bias and Inequality at the Team Level

The Pros and Cons of Our “Middleman Economy”

Immigration, Upward Mobility, and the U.S. Economy

Leadership Lessons from a Republican Governor in a Blue State

How Government and Business Can Tackle Big Global Crises Together

Comedian Sarah Cooper On Bringing Humor to Any Career

3 Strategies for Dealing with Procrastination

Find Joy in Any Job: How Do I Get My Team to Love Work?

Let’s Redefine the Role of Manager

Find Joy in Any Job: How Do I Improve the Role I Have?

How Understanding Your Family Dynamics Can Improve Work

Find Joy in Any Job: What Do I Really Love To Do?

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