Economics

You're grabbing a coffee in the break room when your boss's boss walks in. You're surprised that she seems to recognize you. Did you make an impression...

That is, if businesses embrace a circular economy.

The “boring” world of institutional investment is ripe with possibility.

It’s disaster in the desert. Late last week, Dubai World quasi-defaulted — and took the Emirate’s credibility with it. Will Dubai meet its obligations? It’s the question the beancounters of the universe are nervously asking. As usual, it’s the wrong question. Dubai was a mini-America: finance and real estate made up the lion’s share of […]

Limited oversight, tons of money, and hype for days. What could go wrong?

Scary new year? Think again. 2009 may look bleak - but this year, those with the purpose, courage, and vision to get seriously radical will have the opportunity...

By pooling the resources of the poor and by sharing information, religious and financial institutions can work together to change inner-city economies.

(Editor’s note: This post forms part of the month-long HBR Debate, “Finance: The Way Forward.” It is the third post on this week’s topic: “Who is regulation for — the individual or society?”) Who is regulation for? This is a question that always intrigued me ever since I got involved in my research passion: share […]

It still holds promise, so long as companies adjust their strategies.

Lessons from Bugatti, Starbucks, and Moderna.

A revolution in pricing is occurring, courtesy of the Internet. Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, discusses how new pricing models are making the...

Under the economically liberal policy consensus of the last 30 years, the senior management of multi-national corporations concerned themselves with commercial...

In business, one must always look at possible upsides. Even with all the dire predictions about what could happen in North Korea after the sudden death of its “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il, this event could possibly pave the way for South Korean and foreign companies to make new inroads into the reclusive country. The […]

One of the emotional impacts of navigating a tough economy is fear. We speak of courage as a virtue, but seldom do we spend enough time considering the flip side of courage, fear! Of course it’s there, lurking, but how should we deal with it? Specifically, should manager show fear? If so, what happens when […]

There are two kinds of people in the world, the saying goes, people who divide everything into two, and everyone else. Binary divisions everywhere shape our perception of the world. For several years they have crippled our civic life. We are used to partisans uniformly labeling events and ideas “good” or “bad,” without thoroughgoing analysis. […]

A distinctive brand is good for business, of course. But you’d be surprised how important it is to a firm’s overall performance. We studied how customer perceptions of brand differentiation related to stock price over the course of 11 years in 275 “monobrand” companies such as AT&T, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, and Reebok. (Customer brand-perceptions data […]

Of late, offshoring and outsourcing have become political hot buttons--they have been conflated to mean that high-paying, white-collar jobs have been...

The value of information in the knowledge economy is indisputable, but so is its capacity to overwhelm consumers of it. HBR contributing editor Hemp reports...

Have we found a better gauge of success than GDP?

I believe the big “innovation story” of 2008 won’t involve a cool product, a specific company, or a new creative hotspot. Rather, it will involve a general sense of anxiety about a phenomenon that I call Innovation Overdrive. And since 2008 is a presidential-election year, this general anxiety may influence the political conversation in the […]