When Pricing Algorithms Hurt Customer Relationships

Marco Bertini, marketing professor at Esade Business School, says more and more companies are turning to pricing algorithms to maximize profits. But many are unaware of a big downside. The constant price shifts can hurt the perception of the brand and its products. He warns that overreliance on artificial intelligence and machine learning without considering...

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Tech’s Exponential Growth – and How to Solve the Problems It’s Created

Technological development is happening faster than ever and changing our lives in fundamental ways. The companies behind all these new gadgets and services are no doubt the greatest corporate success stories of our age. But entrepreneur and investor Azeem Azhar worries that our public institutions haven't kept pace with the industry, which has created...

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First He Saved Unilever. Now He Wants to Save Capitalism.

Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, led a dazzling career in consumer goods, from Procter & Gamble to Nestlé to the British multinational. His experience fending off a hostile takeover bid taught him that the doctrine of shareholder capitalism is wrong. He believes there’s a better way of doing business, one that embraces all stakeholders — not...

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How to Make Strategic Career Decisions, Even in a Crisis (Back to Work, Better)

When it comes to work, it's easy to focus on the near term: the next meeting, project, promotion. The global pandemic pushed many of us even further into heads-down mode. But Dorie Clark, author of the book The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-term World, wants everyone to step back, take a breath, and start thinking longer term about...

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The Innovation System Behind Moderna’s Covid-19 Vaccine

Noubar Afeyan, cofounder and chair of Moderna Therapeutics and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, says that the breakthrough innovation behind the company’s Covid-19 vaccine came not as a stroke of luck, but from a repeatable process. He outlines a system called “emergent discovery” that involves working back from future ideals, pioneering in novel spaces,...

Sep 2021

Can Big Tech Reform Itself?

Mehran Sahami, a Stanford professor and former Google employee, wants to see a reset from the technology industry. For the past few decades, the world's technologists (many of whom become its corporate executives and venture capitalists) have been taught to prioritize optimization and efficiency without thinking a whole lot about ethics. The result...

Sep 2021

Why Companies Need Returnship Programs (Back to Work, Better)

Carol Fishman Cohen, human resource consultant and CEO of iRelaunch, says that extended career breaks have always been common. Now the pandemic has made them even more widespread. So, companies are increasingly considering formal back-to-work programs and “returnships.” That’s where employers set up special training and support mechanisms to ease people...

Sep 2021

How the Pandemic Changed Talent Management

Johnny C. Taylor Jr., CEO and President of the Society for Human Resource Management, says that this is a reset moment for organizations that want to finally get human resources right. The crisis has taught leaders just how important it is to find and mobilize talent and evaluate and adjust to employee needs. He shares research on several trends set...

Aug 2021

Best of IdeaCast: Saying No to More Work

When the work keeps piling on, there comes a time when everyone needs to say no. But how do you do so without offending your coworkers or hurting your career? Former host Sarah Green Carmichael, and Karen Dillon, the author of the “HBR Guide to Office Politics,” talk about the best practices on saying no to work when you're overwhelmed.

Aug 2021

What We Still Need to Learn about AI in Marketing — and Beyond

Eva Ascarza, professor at Harvard Business School, studies customer analytics and finds that many companies investing in artificial intelligence fail to improve their marketing decisions. Why is AI falling flat when it comes to this key lever for profit? She says the main reasons are that organizations neglect to ask the right questions, weigh the value...

Aug 2021