Professional services

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.

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.

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 […]

What they should prove before you bring them on board.

Back in the 1990s, computer engineer and Wall Street "quant" were the hot occupations in business. Today data scientists are the hires firms are competing...

If managers want their employees to share information, why do they encourage them to hoard it by rewarding competition among them? My colleagues Erik Brynjolfsson at MIT and Nat Bulkley at the University of Michigan and I have been studying knowledge sharing and productivity in the executive recruiting industry. We asked 71 employees, from partners […]

It is over fifteen years now since I met my first really dumb multimillionaire, and it made quite an impression on me. Up till then I had thought that you needed brains to make money: I was used to being asked “If you’re so clever, why aren’t you rich?” but this was the first time […]

Auditors are like building inspectors: We check out a business’s structure and systems and attest to their integrity so that investors can put their money in with confidence. But having grown up working in my dad’s business, a hardware store in Cleveland, I’ve always liked another side of this trade: helping people actually build things. […]

In the four years since Rob Miranda became CEO of Growing Places, a provider of on-site child care for companies in the Midwestern United States, he has...

In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the buying of professional services by management. This is true for a broad range of advisory activities, such as financial, economic, public relations, advertising, legal, personnel, research, and many others. By the same token, there has been a marked growth in the firms selling these […]

When the biotech pioneer had to get a blockbuster drug to market fast, it didn’t lock itself into a rigid supply chain. It joined with partners to become a virtual manufacturer.

"Please don't tell me that I need to have a baby to have this time off." Those words were still ringing in the ears of Jessica Gonon an hour after a tense...

The most popular offshore sites for service functions are overheating. Now is the time for companies to explore a world of opportunity beyond those hot spots and to base investment decisions not just on costs but also on talent, markets, strategic aims, and appetite for risk.

Successful innovation requires tracking your partners and potential adopters as closely as you track your own development process.

By building on a hierarchy of goals, consultants and managers can work toward mutual interests.

Three ways to minimize risk.

Rewarding individual performance is the way of the business world, but there are rare exceptions. At executive search firm Egon Zehnder International, seniority and companywide results determine pay. The company’s founder explains how this unconventional compensation system works—and why.

Being smart and working hard will only take you so far.

Flynn Fuller Consulting’s largest client has a new CEO, and now the account is at risk. How does the firm win his approval?