Insights

The internet makes distance less a problem for conducting business, but geography still matters in the digital age. Professor Shane Greenstein explains why.

Companies that contribute to (and use) open source software can gain a competitive advantage—even though they may be helping their competitors in the short run. The reason? Contributing to crowdsourced “public goods” that benefit other firms or industries can enable companies to gain valuable insights and compete more effectively in the long term. Call it the “Linux effect.”

When Professor Ethan Bernstein used wearable technology to track workers around their open office, he discovered many who were trying to avoid collaboration rather than engage in it. This research throws a wrench in the much-hyped claims that open office plans increase productivity and collaboration.

It’s a declaration we’ve all heard before: “We need more collaboration! We need to break out of our silos and build integrated, cross-functional teams!” But what if — when it comes to collaboration — there can be too much of a good thing? This is the hypothesis Professor Jeff Polzer set out to test with his research on collaborative overload, that is how the amount of collaboration relates to organizational productivity. Using digital trace data to analyze organizational productivity at scale, Professor Polzer finds some answers that may surprise you.

DI editor Theresa Diederich reflects on the DI’s digital publication a year on and shares her highlights of the advancements in the tech community at HBS.

Professor Sunil Gupta takes a closer look at Amazon and examines how it has gained such supremacy in the modern economy. The lesson? Strategy in the digital era comes with a whole new set of rules, and no business will remain unaffected.

Despite mounting evidence that innovation tools such as crowdsourcing are better, faster, and cheaper, it is still difficult for organizations to embrace this change. Held at HBS, the first annual Crowd Academy brought together researchers and industry experts to further the conversation on crowdsourcing, open innovation, and the future of work.

It makes sense that born-digital educational products like MOOCs would have robust data capabilities, but what about the schools and teachers that are, as they always have been, in charge of training children in the earlier stages of their education journey? Harvard Director of Education and Communication Miriam Greenberg makes the case for establishing a new profession in K-12 education: the data strategist.

The explosion of available data and subsequent renaissance in data-driven decision making is poised to open up 2.7 million new jobs in analytics by 2020. To meet this growing demand, Harvard is taking an interdisciplinary approach to help professionals upskill their business analytics mastery.

Using HBS’s innovative virtual classroom, HBX Live, the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship is reaching leaders in a range of industries and locations in order to teach them how to scale their business ventures.