Goods, trade, and consumer services

The Internet promises to give marketing the same boost in productivity that new operational strategies have given to manufacturing.

The ousted J.C. Penney chief understood the importance of intuition.

The hardest part of being an entrepreneur can be learning to turn down business. It is also the only way to survive—and grow.

Researchers studied backlash to change at five elite law firms — and how leadership eventually won the skeptics over.

A second generation of electronic commerce is emerging, one that will be shaped more by strategy than by experimentation. The battle for competitive advantage will be waged along three dimensions: reach, affiliation, and richness.

New technologies can be dazzling. But do they represent the future of retailing? Have the fundamentals really changed?

One startup’s “barely legal by design” business model may force an answer.

The genetics boom is upon us, promising everything from cures for inherited diseases to smarter children. But companies must tread carefully as the ethical debate plays out.

Working product by product and country by country to develop the region’s digital economy

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly emerging in applications like autonomous vehicles and medical assistance devices, but consumers don't necessarily...

If nothing else, developments in the e-reader market provide substantial fodder for online commentary. It seems that every week features a story in a...

Inside the DEI journey of a Black-owned business, Uncle Nearest, which has become the fastest-growing whiskey brand in the United States.

The U.S. may be the world’s leading innovator, but it won’t be for long if investors, regulators, and the legal establishment continue to penalize companies for risk taking, says Deborah Wince-Smith, president of the Council on Competitiveness. Recently, the council’s National Innovation Initiative, a leadership network of CEOs and university presidents, released a report in […]

Lots of companies are buying sophisticated software to make personalized pitches to Web site customers. Problem is, customers don’t seem to care.

This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Marketing That Works. It was 8 a.m. on a Tuesday, and I stumbled into my local coffee shop. Laptop in tow and shaking off jetlag, I steeled myself for the onslaught: replying to the hundreds of emails that had built up while I’d been on a […]

Deep, lasting culture change requires an integrated approach that remodels a company’s social systems. The leadership team of Home Depot employed a remarkable set of tools to do that.

Word-of-mouth promotion has become an increasingly potent force, capable of catapulting products from obscurity into runaway commercial successes. But to harness the considerable power of buzz, companies must reject five common myths.

Companies often face new rivals, technologies, regulations, and other environmental changes that seem to come out of left field. How can they see these...

Don’t rip out the registers just yet.

J.C. Penney and its CEO Ron Johnson have parted ways. The news wasn’t terribly surprising as 2012 had been a challenging year: sales were down by $4.3B, the company lost close to $1B, and its stock price dropped by more than 50%. Despite Johnson’s and his supporters’ pleas of “give us more time,” Penney’s board […]