The Disruptive Voice

This week on The Disruptive Voice, Derek van Bever is joined in the studio by venture capitalists Nate Redmond and Britt Danneman, of Alpha Edison, to discuss trust as a business model, as an asset, and as the foundation for new market innovation. Earlier this year, Nitin Nohria, Dean of Harvard Business School, wrote in the Financial Times that HBS and other business schools need to play a vital role in "molding leaders who deserve the world's trust." At The Forum for Growth & Innovation, we're responding to Dean Nohria's gauntlet by studying business models built on risk-shifting and by starting discussions about the role of trust and ethical leadership in business. We hope you'll enjoy this timely and thought-provoking conversation!

This week on The Disruptive Voice, Shaye Roseman, a former Research Associate at The Forum for Growth & Innovation and a current MBA candidate at Harvard Business School, is joined in the studio by Bob Moesta and Ryan Singer. Bob is a regular on the podcast and is a principal co-architect of the theory of "Jobs To Be Done". Ryan has worked at Basecamp for over 15 years and has been involved with projects spanning UI design, strategy, and product development. He is currently Head of Strategy at the company. Together, Bob, Ryan and Shaye discuss the ways Jobs Theory can be employed as a tool for consumer research, on the one hand, and product development, on the other. In particular, they focus on the trials and travails of software development.

The best independent projects that BSSE students take on after completing the course have (at least) one thing in common: They are important—relevant to our students' interests, as well as to the wider world. On this podcast, Maria Creixell (MBA 2019) and Ari Medoff (MBA/MPP 2011) share the findings from Maria's research into why home health caregivers hire—and fire—employers, and what employers can do about it. To conduct this research, Maria learned how to conduct Jobs interviews at the feet of the master, Bob Moesta, and she selected Ari's company, Arosa, as her research site because of a connection she and Ari struck up through the HBS alumni network. In a business that is entirely dependent on human capital, lowering search costs and improving employee retention are critical differentiators. For all of you seeking to improve your performance in hiring and retaining employees, listen and learn!

This week on The Disruptive Voice, Derek van Bever, Director of The Forum for Growth & Innovation and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, is joined in the studio by Bob Moesta and Andrew Glaser for an illuminating discussion of the "paradox of innovation" through the lens of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory. Andrew is Chief Strategy Officer at American Signature, Inc. and an outspoken evangelist for JTBD, which was co-architected by Bob Moesta, President and CEO of the Re-Wired Group. We're delighted to bring you this conversation on the disjunct between innovator and consumer perceptions, leveraging Jobs Theory effectively in an organization, and the role of honesty and vulnerability in JTBD interviews.

When Ann-Somers Hogg, Director of Innovation at Atrium Health, came to Cambridge to teach about disruption in healthcare at the Harvard Macy Institute "Leading Innovations" program, we invited her to the podcast studio to hear a little more about how disruption is affecting her organization—and what they are doing about it. Ann-Somers is a 2015 past participant of our Executive Education course now known as "Disruptive Innovation" and was recently named one of the "Top 40 Under 40" in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is someone to watch, and her message is relevant to anyone who is trying to do that most difficult thing: Turn a big organization around to face off against a disruptive entrant. She and Atrium are fully about the exercise, and we're sure you'll be as impressed with her as we have been.

And now for something completely different: What can we learn by looking at changes in religious affiliation through the lens of Jobs to Be Done? Why are rising generations "firing" organized religion in greater and greater numbers, and what are they "hiring" instead? And what do organizations such as Crossfit have to do with all this? Enjoy this conversation with our own Bob Moesta, co-founder of Jobs theory with Clay, and Casper ter Kuile, a Ministry Innovation Fellow with Harvard Divinity School and co-creator of the wildly popular podcast "Harry Potter and the Sacred Text."

Through the lens of Jobs To Be Done, MBA graduates Jasmyn Beausejour and Nicolas Kernick consider the scale and complexity of the types of jobs for which clients hire the Big 3 consulting firms – McKinsey, BCG, and Bain. With the 2013 HBR article as the springboard for their research, their framework and analysis help to explain current trends in the consulting industry and, crucially, to consider where the industry may be heading in the future, both in terms of threats and opportunities.

A not to be missed conversation. We sit down with Bob Moesta and Todd Rose, Harvard professor and author of The End of Average, for a deep-dive on the underpinnings of jobs theory and analysis. You'll learn when to average vs. when to aggregate data and why individuality is so important in product and service design.

A not to be missed special conversation. We sit down with Bob Moesta and Todd Rose, Harvard professor and author of The End of Average, for a deep-dive on the underpinnings of jobs theory and analysis. You'll learn when to average vs. when to aggregate data and why individuality is so important in product and service design. 

Professor Derek van Bever speaks with BSSE case protagonist BJ Hess, former Senior Vice President of Global Operations for Arrow Electronics, to discuss the difficulty of business mergers and integrations. Hear why "Acquisition" is a bad word, and how business leaders can lead humane, successful integrations. BJ is a wealth of practical, intelligent experience, and continues to be a huge draw and delight for BSSE students.