HBR IdeaCast

By Harvard Business Review

What's HBR IdeaCast about?

A weekly podcast featuring the leading thinkers in business and management from Harvard Business Review.

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700: Dematerialization and ...

09.17.2019

Andrew McAfee, co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, explains how the U.S. economy is growing and actually using less and less stuff to do so. Thanks to new technologies, many advanced economies are reducing their use of ...

HBR IdeaCast episodes:

09.17.2019 700: Dematerialization and What It Means for the Economy — and Climate Change Andrew McAfee, co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, explains how the U.S. economy is growing and actually using less and less stuff to do so. Thanks to new technologies, many advanced economies are reducing their use of ...
09.10.2019 699: What Great Coaching Looks Like Richard Boyatzis, professor at Case Western Reserve University, says that every professional can benefit from having a coach — and serving as one for someone else. He says that a coaching relationship moves beyond mentoring or sponsoring in that it ...
09.03.2019 698: The Inherent Failures of Long-term Contracts — and How to Fix Them Oliver Hart, Nobel-winning Harvard economist, and Kate Vitasek, faculty at the University of Tennessee, argue that many business contracts are imperfect, no matter how bulletproof you try to make them. Especially in complicated relationships such as outsourcing, one side ends ...
08.27.2019 697: How African-Americans Advance at Work — And What Organizations Can Do To Help Laura Morgan Roberts, professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, says that organizations are still falling short on promoting racial diversity, particularly in their most senior ranks. While many large companies have "inclusion" initiatives, most leaders still ...
08.20.2019 696: The Challenges (and Triumphs) of a Young Manager Julie Zhuo, Facebook’s VP of product design, started at the company as its first intern and became a manager at the age of 25. Like many first-time bosses, she made many missteps and acted how she thought managers were supposed ...
08.13.2019 695: How to Thrive as a Working Parent Daisy Dowling, founder and CEO of Workparent, says that moms and dads with jobs outside the home don't have to feel stressed or guilty about trying to balance their professional and personal lives. The key is to tease apart the ...
08.06.2019 694: How Robots and AI Are Changing Job Training Matt Beane, assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, finds that robots, machine learning, and AI are changing how we train for our jobs — not just how we do them. His study shows that robot-assisted surgery is ...
07.30.2019 693: Finding (and Keeping) Your Company's Soul Ranjay Gulati, professor at Harvard Business School, says the most successful organizations tend to have one thing in common: a soul. Moving beyond culture, the "soul" of a growing start-up -- or a more established company -- is built on ...
07.23.2019 692: Improve Your Critical Thinking at Work Helen Lee Bouygues, founder of the Reboot Foundation, believes that a lack of critical thinking is responsible for many business failures. She says organizational leaders often rely too heavily on expertise and then jump to conclusions. Instead, leaders should deliberately ...
07.16.2019 691: 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, ...
07.09.2019 690: The 3 Types of Leaders of Innovative Companies Deborah Ancona and Kate Isaacs, researchers at MIT Sloan School of Management, say many companies struggle to be nimble with a command-and-control leadership culture. They studied Xerox’s R&D outfit PARC and the materials science company W.L. Gore & Associates and ...
07.02.2019 689: Stopping White-Collar Crime at Your Company Eugene Soltes, associate professor at Harvard Business School, studies white-collar crime and has even interviewed convicts behind bars. While most people think of high-profile scandals like Enron, he says every sizable organization has lapses in integrity. He shares practical tools ...
06.25.2019 688: 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 ...
06.18.2019 687: The Surprising Benefits of Sponsoring Others at Work Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and the founder of the Center for Talent Innovation, has studied the difference between mentoring and sponsorship and what leaders have to gain from the latter. She says it's important to seek out protégés who ...
06.11.2019 686: Why You Need Innovation Capital — And How to Get It Nathan Furr, assistant professor of strategy at INSEAD, researches what makes great innovative leaders, and he reveals how they develop and spend “innovation capital.” Like social or political capital, it’s a power to motivate employees, win the buy-in of stakeholders, ...
06.04.2019 685: Advice for Entrepreneurs from a Leading Venture Capitalist Scott Kupor, managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, says there's a lot about navigating the venture capital world that entrepreneurs don't understand. Some can't figure out how to get in the door. Others fail to deliver persuasive pitches. Many don't know ...
05.28.2019 684: Understanding the Space Economy Sinéad O'Sullivan, entrepreneurship fellow at Harvard Business School, discusses how space is much more important to modern business than most people realize. It plays a role in making food, pricing insurance, and steering self-driving cars. While moonshot projects from SpaceX ...
05.21.2019 683: Why It’s Time to Finally Worry about ESG Robert Eccles, a visiting professor of management practice at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, says that the global investment community's interest in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues has finally reached a tipping point. Large asset management ...
05.14.2019 682: How Having a Rival Improves Performance Adam Grant, organizational psychologist at The Wharton School, argues that individuals and companies alike can benefit from having rivals. He has studied sports and business rivalries and believes they often add up to more than just zero-sum competition. Grant explains ...
05.07.2019 681: Global Workers Are Ready for Retraining Joseph Fuller, professor at Harvard Business School, says that the story we hear about workers being afraid for the future of their jobs might not be right. In surveying 11,000 people in lower-income and middle-skills jobs and 6,500 managers across ...
05.02.2019 HBR Presents: Cold Call Harvard Business School's Brian Kenny is joined by professors to distill the school's legendary case studies into podcast form, giving listeners important takeaways they can use in their own businesses and careers. In this episode, Harvard Business School professors Leslie ...
04.30.2019 680: How China Is Upending Western Marketing Practices Kimberly Whitler, assistant professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, believes the days of transplanting well-worn Western marketing practices into national markets may be numbered. She has researched marketing campaigns in China and finds they are faster, ...
04.25.2019 HBR Presents: FOMO Sapiens with Patrick J. McGinnis Patrick McGinnis, creator of the term FOMO, engages business leaders, entrepreneurs, politicians and more about the paths they’ve taken in life – and what they’ve let go of. In this episode, he speaks with Zola CEO Shan-Lyn Ma and Female ...
04.23.2019 679: What Managers Get Wrong About Feedback Marcus Buckingham, head of people and performance research at the ADP Research Institute, and Ashley Goodall, senior vice president of leadership and team intelligence at Cisco Systems, say that managers and organizations are overestimating the importance of critical feedback. They ...
04.18.2019 HBR Presents: Exponential View with Azeem Azhar Entrepreneur, investor, and podcast host Azeem Azhar looks at some of the biggest issues at the intersection of technology and society, with a focus this season on artificial intelligence. In this episode, he speaks with University of Bath professor Joanna ...
04.16.2019 678: Avoiding the Expertise Trap Sydney Finkelstein, professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, says that being the most knowledgeable and experienced person on your team isn't always a good thing. Expertise can steer you wrong in two important ways. It can ...
04.11.2019 HBR Presents: After Hours Harvard Business School professors and hosts Youngme Moon, Mihir Desai, and Felix Oberholzer-Gee discuss news at the crossroads of business and culture. In this episode, they analyze the current food delivery wars and garner some lessons in crisis management from ...
04.09.2019 677: Why People — and Companies — Need Purpose Nicholas Pearce, clinical associate professor at Kellogg School of Management, says too many companies and individuals go about their daily business without a strong sense of purpose. He argues that companies that are not simply profit-driven are more likely to ...
04.02.2019 676: The Right Way to Get Your First 1,000 Customers Thales Teixeira, associate professor at Harvard Business School, believes many startups fail precisely because they try to emulate successful disruptive businesses. He says by focusing too early on technology and scale, entrepreneurs lose out on the learning that comes from ...
03.26.2019 675: 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 ...
03.19.2019 674: A Theoretical Physicist (and Entrepreneur) on Why Companies Stop Innovating Safi Bahcall, a former biotech CEO, began his career as a theoretical physicist before joining the business world. He compares the moment that innovative companies become complacent ones to a glass of water freezing, becoming ice. The elements are the ...
03.12.2019 673: Why Are We Still Promoting Incompetent Men? Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a psychologist and chief talent scientist at ManpowerGroup, says we're not picking leaders in the right way. While we should be promoting people based on their competence and potential, it's often the incompetent, overconfident candidates -- most of ...
03.05.2019 672: Make Customers Happier with Operational Transparency Ryan Buell, associate professor at Harvard Business School, says the never-ending quest for operational efficiency is having unintended consequences. When customers don’t see the work that’s being done in back offices, offshore factories, and algorithms, they’re less satisfied with their ...
02.26.2019 671: Fixing Tech's Gender Gap Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, is on a mission to get more young women into computer science. She says the problem isn't lack of interest. Her non-profit organization has trained thousands of girls to code, and the ranks ...
02.19.2019 670: How Innovative Companies Help Frontier Markets Grow Efosa Ojomo, global prosperity lead at the Clayton Christensen Institute, argues that international aid is not the best way to develop poor countries, nor are investments in natural resource extraction, outsourced labor, or incremental improvements to existing offerings for established ...
02.12.2019 669: How to Cope With a Mid-Career Crisis Kieran Setiya, a philosophy professor at MIT, says many people experience a mid-career crisis. Some have regrets about paths not taken or serious professional missteps; others feel a sense of boredom or futility in their ongoing streams of work. The ...
02.05.2019 668: 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 ...
01.29.2019 667: Use Your Money to Buy Happier Time Ashley Whillans, professor at Harvard Business School, researches time-money trade-offs. She argues more people would be happier if they spent more of their hard-earned money to buy themselves out of negative experiences. Her research shows that paying to outsource housework ...
01.22.2019 666: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace Amy Edmondson, professor at Harvard Business School, first identified the concept of psychological safety in work teams in 1999. Since then, she has observed how companies with a trusting workplace perform better. Psychological safety isn't about being nice, she says. ...
01.15.2019 665: How Retirement Changes Your Identity Teresa Amabile, professor at Harvard Business School, is approaching her own retirement by researching how ending your work career affects your sense of self. She says important psychological shifts take place leading up to, and during, retirement. That holds especially ...
01.08.2019 664: The Harsh Reality of Innovative Companies Gary Pisano, professor at Harvard Business School, studies innovation at companies large and small. He says there’s too much focus on the positive, fun side of innovative cultures and too little understanding of the difficult truths behind sustained innovation. From ...
01.02.2019 663: How One Google Engineer Turned Tragedy into a Moonshot Mo Gawdat, founder of One Billion Happy and former Chief Business Officer at Google's X, spent years working in technological innovation. At Google's so-called "dream factory," he learned how to operationalize moonshot ventures aiming to solve some of the world's ...
12.26.2018 662: Improving Civility in the Workplace Krista Tippett, host of "On Being," believes we are in the middle of a big shift in the workplace. For a long time, she says, we were taught to keep all of our personal opinions and problems out of the ...
12.18.2018 661: How One CEO Creates Joy at Work Richard Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovations, says it took him years to learn what really mattered at work and how to create that kind of workplace culture. As a company leader today, he works hard to make sure both his ...
12.11.2018 660: Why It’s So Hard to Sell New Products Thomas Steenburgh, a marketing professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, was inspired by his early career at Xerox to discover why firms with stellar sales and R&D departments still struggle to sell new innovations. The answer, ...
12.04.2018 659: 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 ...
11.27.2018 658: 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 ...
11.20.2018 657: How Your Identity Changes When You Change Jobs Herminia Ibarra, a professor at the London Business School, argues that job transitions — even exciting ones that you've chosen — can come with all kinds of unexpected emotions. Going from a job that is known and helped define your ...
11.13.2018 656: Why Management History Needs to Reckon with Slavery Caitlin Rosenthal, assistant professor of history at UC Berkeley, argues there are strong parallels between the accounting practices used by slaveholders and modern business practices. While we know slavery's economic impact on the United States, Rosenthal says we need to ...
11.06.2018 655: Avoiding Miscommunication In A Digital World Nick Morgan, a communications expert and speaking coach, says that while email, texting, and Slack might seem like they make communication easier, they actually make things less efficient. When we are bombarded with too many messages a day, he argues, ...

Older episodes

HBR IdeaCast

What's HBR IdeaCast about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

HBR IdeaCast episodes:

700: Dematerialization and What It Means for the Economy — and Climate Change

699: What Great Coaching Looks Like

698: The Inherent Failures of Long-term Contracts — and How to Fix Them

697: How African-Americans Advance at Work — And What Organizations Can Do To Help

696: The Challenges (and Triumphs) of a Young Manager

695: How to Thrive as a Working Parent

694: How Robots and AI Are Changing Job Training

693: Finding (and Keeping) Your Company's Soul

692: Improve Your Critical Thinking at Work

691: Business Lessons from How Marvel Makes Movies

690: The 3 Types of Leaders of Innovative Companies

689: Stopping White-Collar Crime at Your Company

688: How to Fix Your Hiring Process

687: The Surprising Benefits of Sponsoring Others at Work

686: Why You Need Innovation Capital — And How to Get It

685: Advice for Entrepreneurs from a Leading Venture Capitalist

684: Understanding the Space Economy

683: Why It’s Time to Finally Worry about ESG

682: How Having a Rival Improves Performance

681: Global Workers Are Ready for Retraining

HBR Presents: Cold Call

680: How China Is Upending Western Marketing Practices

HBR Presents: FOMO Sapiens with Patrick J. McGinnis

679: What Managers Get Wrong About Feedback

HBR Presents: Exponential View with Azeem Azhar

678: Avoiding the Expertise Trap

HBR Presents: After Hours

677: Why People — and Companies — Need Purpose

676: The Right Way to Get Your First 1,000 Customers

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

674: A Theoretical Physicist (and Entrepreneur) on Why Companies Stop Innovating

673: Why Are We Still Promoting Incompetent Men?

672: Make Customers Happier with Operational Transparency

671: Fixing Tech's Gender Gap

670: How Innovative Companies Help Frontier Markets Grow

669: How to Cope With a Mid-Career Crisis

668: Why Business Jargon Isn’t All Bad

667: Use Your Money to Buy Happier Time

666: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace

665: How Retirement Changes Your Identity

664: The Harsh Reality of Innovative Companies

663: How One Google Engineer Turned Tragedy into a Moonshot

662: Improving Civility in the Workplace

661: How One CEO Creates Joy at Work

660: Why It’s So Hard to Sell New Products

659: The Right Way to Solve Complex Business Problems

658: Speak Out Successfully

657: How Your Identity Changes When You Change Jobs

656: Why Management History Needs to Reckon with Slavery

655: Avoiding Miscommunication In A Digital World

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