Do you find Facebook a helpful tool for maintaining and growing business contacts, or are you contemplating what Harvard Online editor Paul Michelman is about to do: "Defriend" all his business contacts. As a business tool, says Michelman, Facebook is not working, and it's...
Think email is controlling your work life? Check out the in-box of John Halamka, the chief information officer for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. According to a recent Boston Globe story, Halamka "leaves 50 percent of his day's schedule open for responding to...
As people continue to pinch pennies in a slowing economy, how does the seller of upscale products and services convince them to buy items that are impractical Hummer, unnecessary Amazon rain forest excursion, or expensively luxurious Lobster of the Month Club? The answer is simple. Lay...
There is a worthwhile debate brewing over the value of Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis and prediction markets to improve corporate communication. Even the US Central Intelligence Agency has fired up a knowledge-sharing wiki called Intellipedia, which recently celebrated its second anniversary. According to the CIA:...
Harvard Business Review editor Thomas Stewart says its clear the airline industry has declared war on its customers. How else to explain American Airlines charging passengers for checked luggage, starting with $15 for the first piece -- even if it's just a briefcase. Stewart wonders why American...
Do you spend your work time as effectively as you could? Let me answer for you. No. Everyone from CEOs to front-line managers squander their most valuable resource -- time -- like an untuned automobile wastes fuel. Our opportunities to create real value for the organization are...
A friend of mine recently was part of a merger that left him reporting to a boss in his mid-30s. Since my friend is 53 -- about the age of his superior's own parents -- he found the relationship more than a little awkward. So I was...
In the real world, managing your reputation should be paramount. Showing up on time, being helpful to colleagues, and taking the occasional shower increase the reputation points you can leverage in any number of ways, including career advancement. Many of us spend a lot of time, if...
Every revolution needs a revolutionary. Have you identified the Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, or Che Guevara who is going to lead your corporate social revolution? This is the effort to forge new, interactive engagements with both your customers and employees using social technologies such as blogs,...
The corporate and personal lifestyles of top execs often lead them on a path of isolation. Eventually they lose touch with employees, customers, and market trends. As Bryant University professor Michael Roberto puts it: Far too many senior executives at large companies become isolated in...
Incoming eBay CEO John Donahoe is taking the mega online auctioneer in the absolute wrong direction with his recent moves to "muffle" buyer ratings, raise fees on small sellers while offering discounts to power vendors, and emphasizing fixed-price products at eBay Express, says Harvard Online blogger John Sviokla. What...
Seven years into the 21st century the world of business and management is certainly going through, if not revolution, at least evolution on a speedy scale. Traditional business models are getting turned on their heads (Anyone seen Google's share price lately?), resources and markets are available on...
Sometimes social networking gets a little too social. Just ask Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who this week penned a very public mea culpa for introducing a new "feature" called Beacon that divulged Facebook users' shopping habits to people in their networks. Facebook and other innovators...
Ludicrous question, right? But you youngsters gather round, because us old 'uns with a few gray hairs recall that precise question being subject of hot debate about a dozen years ago, when there actually was a "browser war" and we all wondered if Alta Vista would ever...
