Recessions

U.S. unemployment numbers came in just before Labor Day, and they are grim: 9.7 percent and rising. Small comfort that they were expected to be worse....

“They gave us a whole can of soda” was how my octogenarian mother-in-law explained a recent experience when her plane was kept on the ground an extra hour for de-icing. Monica was not complaining; she was framing the delay as a positive. This veteran traveler knows that delays are inevitable. My mother-in-law’s attitude might serve […]

There are many reasons for not working with jerks, as Bob Sutton has pointed out in his memorably-titled book The No Asshole Rule. But I think I’ve discovered another reason for not having them in your organization’s employ: they often make bad decisions. While all jerks don’t always make bad decisions, and non-jerks occasionally decide […]

Research on the Great Recession found that aggressive companies outperformed those that hunkered down.

An entire generation’s prosperity vanishing, food stamp use exploding. Welcome to the jobless future. This month’s jobs numbers drive home the point. The unemployment rate fell at the fastest rate for years — great news, right? Wrong. The lion’s share of the gains came from (wait for it) “temporary help services.” See what just happened? […]

The economic situation isn't getting any easier. We all know people (or are people) who have been laid off, had hours radically reduced, or have watched...

This blog post is part of the HBR Online Forum The Future of Retail. Last year on Black Friday, I dropped by a local Staples store in Watertown, Massachusetts, to pick up a few office supplies. Surprised at the 40% off sale on many items, I ended up leaving with a lot of office supplies […]

It’s become the mantra of the moment: “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Leaders everywhere are struggling to make sense of the worldwide economic crisis, to learn lessons that will guide them and their companies going forward. My worry is that too many leaders are learning the wrong lessons — they are becoming […]

A research roundup

Finance has always been dominated by men and driven by a testosterone-enhanced culture. If women had been running our banks, might we have avoided the sub-prime mess and the resulting economic meltdown? Halla Tomasdottir, a prominent Icelandic financier, answers yes. In a recent BBC interview she shared her outrage at the wild risks male bankers […]

The companies you serve are slashing their budgets—but you can still make the sale.

Win, my mountain biking partner, and I looked down the ten-foot drop. “Should be fun,” he said as we backed away from the edge and climbed up the hill to get some runway. I wasn’t so sure. He climbed on his bike, pedaled to get a little speed, and took the plunge, effortlessly gliding over […]

A subtle tension that many senior executives get just plain wrong in a downturn has to do with the distinction between making resource allocation decisions...

The 2008 recession is an economic firestorm unlike anything the country has seen since the Great Depression. But 2009 is shaping up to be a trigger for an unprecedented surge of innovation that may be one of the most important turning points in the last 100 years. While things are undoubtedly more difficult these days, […]

As reported in the web-exclusive article "Consumer Credit: The Next Crisis," American consumers are carrying a dangerous, unsustainable amount of debt....

There’s an old story about two shoe salesmen whose company sends them to a remote village in Africa. Upon arrival, one sends home a message saying, “No one here wears shoes; will return shortly.” The other salesman sends this message: “No one here wears shoes; send inventory!” The point of the story, of course, is […]

Because no two recessions are exactly alike, marketers find themselves in poorly charted waters every time one occurs. But guidance is available, say...

Mention “Google,” and innovation watchers immediately think of the company’s seemingly paradigm-busting approach to innovation, where engineers spend up to 20 percent of their time working on passion projects, teams self-form around ideas, and internal market mechanisms prioritize, shape, and scale ideas. Add in Google’s legendary perks, and it is no surprise that the company […]

Given the recent economic news, I will go out on a limb and state that we are officially headed back into recession, or what can now officially be called a double-dip recession. Business optimism is at a record low, commodities prices have jumped to inflationary levels, home sales recently dropped to prices not seen since […]

The question over how best to link CEO compensation to company performance defies an easy answer. But in the current financial crisis, the atmospherics...