Process management

What does it take to effectively manage projects whose requirements are constantly shifting?

Your organization can become more decisive—and can implement strategy more quickly—if you know where the bottlenecks are and who’s empowered to break through them.

Breakthrough innovations--not just steady improvements--in operations can destroy competitors and shake up entire industries. Just look at Dell, Toyota,...

Femtosecond lasers emit pulses of light that last just a millionth of a billionth of a second. These lasers enable surgery so precise that a single mitochondrion can be removed without harming the rest of the cell, and machining so controlled that structures can be micromachined within a piece of glass. Eric Mazur, a professor […]

In most companies, strategic planning isn’t about making decisions. It’s about documenting choices that have already been made, often haphazardly. Leading firms are rethinking their approach to strategy development so they can make more, better, and faster decisions.

How to get the most value from the investment.

And start taking action.

Marketers and finance people seldom see eye to eye. The makers say, “This product will open up a whole new market segment.” Finance people respond, “It’s a bad investment. The IRR is only 8%.” Why are they so often in opposition? The financial criteria used to decide if a project will be profitable are entirely […]

By thoroughly mapping the job a customer is trying to get done, a company can discover opportunities for breakthrough products and services.

The most dubious business plan can look solid—even smart—if it’s cast as a virtuous circle. “See, we invest our profits in innovation to create delightful products that customers buy—which generate profits that we invest in innovation!” Who could argue with that? Indeed, the merit of self-reinforcing systems seems so obvious that businesspeople instinctively describe their […]

A good plot, good friends, and full of expectation; an excellent plot, very good friends. Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I Special Report When trying to assess performance, there is no business function top executives worry about more than marketing. Most of them look at the marketers in their companies as something between vacuum-cleaner salespeople […]

The movement to standardize processes has gone overboard. Some require an artist’s judgment—and should be managed accordingly.

Scrums and kanbans can’t help you if you’ve got a legacy culture that punishes vulnerability.

From the moment I stepped off the bus at the rowing venue, I felt reassured that the London Olympic Games were operating like a well-oiled machine. There was an abundance of smiling volunteers wishing everyone a good morning, clear signage—bright pink—showing the way, barriers made less intimidating by the lively logo on them. At the […]

Four in 10 workers say that switching between tools is a major drag on their productivity.

Like zillions (or at least tens and tens of thousands) of other non-surgeons, I’ve been reading Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto. It’s a wonderfully entertaining and thought-provoking book. (If you want the short version, you can listen to HBR’s Katherine Bell interviewing Gawande here.) Gawande convincingly makes the case that medicine — in particular surgery […]

A simple solution saved thousands of hours.

The early results are astonishing.

Even at the prototype stage, experts were saying the technology was obsolete. Yet, in the face of tepid consumer response, the company stubbornly kept...

To find the secrets of business success, what could be more natural than studying successful businesses? In fact, nothing could be more dangerous, warns...