|
|
Nearly five years after donating $125 million to Harvard—the largest philanthropic gift ever to the University—Hansjörg Wyss has matched that sum with a second $125 million gift to the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, the Institute announced Tuesday.The University will call its upcoming capital campaign “The Harvard Campaign,” University spokesperson Kevin Galvin confirmed Tuesday.Tim Cook performed brilliantly in front of Congress today. He was authoritative, in breathtaking command of his facts, as he always is, and brought a unique perspective to each response. Senator Levin was out for blood, but "No one laid a glove on him," as Phillip Emer DeWitt wrote for Fortune. He put his questioners to shame. His response to the question of whether Apple was violating basic rules of fairness was brilliant: "I am a fair person. Apple is a fair company. I would not administer [something ...For the past four years, faculty and fellows from Harvard Kennedy School and MIT have partnered in a project called “Explorations in Cyber International Relations.”Founding donor Hansjörg Wyss doubled his gift to Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering from $125 million to $250 million to the University to further advance the institute’s pioneering work.THE WYSS
INSTITUTE FOR BIOLOGICALLY INSPIRED ENGINEERING, founded following a 2008
gift of $125 million from Hansjӧrg
Wyss, M.B.A. ’65 ,has
received a follow-on gift, also of $125 million. The two gifts are tied as the largest in Harvard’s history. No other single donation to the University has topped $125 million, making Wyss Harvard’s most generous donor, perhaps, since its eponymous benefactor. Wyss is a biomedical-device entrepreneur who as CEO built Synthes into the leading supplier of ...Teens are sharing more information about themselves on social media sites than they have in the past, but they are also taking a variety of technical and non-technical steps to manage the privacy of that information. Despite taking these privacy-protective actions, teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-parties (such as businesses or advertisers) accessing their data; just 9% say they are “very” concerned. Key findings include : Teens are sharing more information ...Harvard Magazine features the ART production of the Pirates of Penzance. Director Sean Graney, who will be a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute in 2013–2014, conceived and directed the new production and will likely do more work in collaboration with the ART during his fellowship year at Harvard. August Kleinzahler will be the poet, and Linda Greenhouse
the orator, at the Phi Beta Kappa Literary (PBK) Exercises—the first formal
community event of Commencement week, and in many respects the intellectual
core of the festivities for College seniors and their families. Students
elected to PBK will also honor faculty members for outstanding teaching during
the ceremony. The exercises are scheduled for 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, May 28, in
Sanders Theatre. A Poet of Fort, Lee,
New Jersey, and San Francisco ...As screens get increasingly getting cheaper and more ubiquitous, are we going to keep counting them? Not too long ago, I was asked to give a presentation on the state of digital media and how well brands are intersecting the worlds of marketing and technology. Prior to my closing keynote, there was a panel discussion about the state of media. One senior media executive was discussing the power of "a four screen world." I thought that he had made a mistake. I was familiar with the concept of three screens ...Amid continuing
leadership changes at the Harvard Library during a period of major
reorganization, Provost Alan Garber announced on May 20 that Sarah Thomas, who
currently directs the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, will be
shifting her office to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in August. Thomas has been
named vice president for the Harvard Library, a new position with overall
responsibility for the institution. She will report to Garber; her
responsibilities will include those held by Mary Lee ...Most measures of creativity are based on the work of psychologist Joy Paul Guilford (1897-1987), who defined creativity as the ability to think differently along a number of clearly defined dimensions. Building on Guilford's work, psychologist Ellis Paul Torrance (1915-2003), probably the international leader in creativity research, developed the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), which are used in the business world and in education to assess individuals' capacities for creativity. In the early ...Getting the most out of store liquidation Store liquidation is a brutal but necessary part of retail—a means for investors to recover capital and managers to correct failed strategy. The new working paper Improving Store Liquidation , by Nathan Craig and Ananth Raman, offers a method that can improve net recovery on cost by up to 7 percent. The paper also identifies shortcomings with current store liquidation practice. Do matching grants produce more philantropy? Almost any National Public Radio ...by Diego A. Comin and Martí Mestieri Ferrer Executive Summary — To respond to the question posed in the title of their paper, the authors explore one potential driver—the dynamics of technology adoption. Using a stylized model of adoption that accounts for individual technologies, the authors identify two margins of adoption: adoption lags and penetration rates. Analyzing a panel of adoption lags and penetration rates for 25 technologies and 132 countries, they show that adoption lags have ...May 21, 2013 — The Harvard Library and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University are pleased to announce the appointment of Peter Suber as director of the Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC), starting July 1, 2013. Suber will continue his current activities as director of the Harvard Open Access Project , based at the Berkman Center, as well as his affiliations as a Berkman faculty fellow, senior researcher at the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), ...Freek Vermeulen , associate professor at London Business School, explains how the newspapers improved sales by debunking an industry myth.In an impressively short time, Kickstarter has quickly become the go-to high-impact mashup of crowdsourcing sensibility and entrepreneurial endeavor. If you've got a genuinely creative idea — or even a " me, too with a twist " — Kickstarter's "crowd funding" platform offers a genuinely innovative way to finance creativity and innovation. Since its 2009 launch, Kickstarter claims that more than 4.1 million people have pledged over $619 million to fund over 41,000 projects. It's exciting. But ...The death of over 800 people in the collapse of Rana Plaza , a building with garment factories in Bangladesh, spurred widespread outrage over working conditions in offshore factories. In the search for blame, many commentators point to the absence of building codes, lack of workplace safety rules, and the greed of US corporations. Many of the solutions proposed are around paying people more to manufacture in the USA. But however well intentioned the ideas are, this is not the best use of one of the most ...Fifteen institutions of higher education joined edX on Tuesday, expanding Harvard and MIT’s one-year-old virtual learning venture for the first time to Asia and more than doubling the rapidly expanding platform’s size.edX, the year-old Harvard-MIT online-learning venture, announced that 15 new institutions have become partners, increasing the number of participating universities and colleges to 27. The expansion is particularly pronounced among international universities, especially those in Asia, where enrollments in existing edX courses indicate significant student demand. The new affiliates also include a specialty school in the United States; a second U.S. college (alongside Wellesley)—an important aim for edX, ...Sarah E. Thomas, director of Oxford University’s library system, was appointed vice president for the Harvard Library, University Provost Alan M. Garber ’76 announced in a press release Monday.The grades are in for CS 124. Hooray! Interesting trend : freshmen, who make up a small fraction of the class, are highly over-represented in the A and A- grades. This has been happening for some years now. Extension of the interesting trend : women freshmen*, who make up a smaller fraction of the class, are even more highly over-represented in the A and A- grades. I'd be very excited if I were teaching the class again next year -- finding undergraduates who have the potential to be TAs for multiple ...The Nieman Foundation of Journalism has named 24 journalists from across the globe to the 2013-2014 class of Nieman Fellows, who will take temporary leaves from their journalism careers to study at Harvard.Despite winning none of their races outright, the Radcliffe heavyweight crews came away with a load of hardware from the Ivy League Championships this weekend.A profile of the work of HKS alumnus Brad Davis MPA 2009.For the fourteenth time in Harvard history, both the Crimson heavyweight and lightweight crews achieved first-place finishes in the first varsity event at the 2013 EARC Sprints. The competition took place on Sunday on Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, Massachusetts.The Radcliffe Institute awarded the Fay Prize to three graduating seniors whose theses set forth the most imaginative work and original research: mathematics concentrator Ashok Cutkosky for Polymer Simulations and DNA Topology ; history and literature concentrator Benjamin Naddaff-Hafrey for The "Electrified Fable": Radio Experimentation, Interwar Social Psychology, and Imagined Invasion in the War of the World s; and history concentrator Laura Savarese for Slavery's Battleground: Contesting the Status ...With the hand of nature trained on a beaker of chemical fluid, the most delicate flower structures have been formed in a Harvard laboratory—and not at the scale of inches, but microns. Radcliffe Advisor Joanna Aizenberg, an expert in biologically inspired materials science, biomineralization, and self-assembly, is the principal investigator for this research.Michael Shinagel was honored on May 14 for his accomplishments as dean of the Extension School, a position he has held since 1977. He will be retiring at the end of this academic year.In this time of hope and decorative mortarboards, we reached out to some of our favorite writers, asking them: What do graduates really need to know about the world of work? Their answers are below. Heidi Grant Halvorson Associate director for the Motivation Science Center at the Columbia University Business School and author of Nine Things Successful People Do Differently . There will be obstacles, setbacks, challenges. Many things will be more difficult than you thought they'd be. The key to success ...Jay Winsten of the Harvard School of Public Health hopes to recruit entertainers for a campaign to reduce distracted driving.As Yahoo goes through with its acquisition of Tumblr , CEO Marissa Mayer may have a user rebellion on her hands. The early reaction from the Tumblr community is not encouraging — blogs lit up with memes of crying babies and apocalyptic rants upon the announcement of the news. The uproar was bolstered by stories critical of Yahoo's earlier acquisitions , and fueled by rumors that Yahoo may introduce advertising to the popular blogging site. Amidst this uproar, Mayer can take a page from the book of ...Employees at semiconductor-chip-maker Intel recently devised a new chemistry process that reduced chemical waste by 900,000 gallons, saving $45 million annually. Another team developed a plan to reuse and optimize networking systems in offices, which cut energy costs by $22 million. The projects produced financial and environmental benefits, of course. But just as valuable is the company's ability to energize and empower front-line employees. New data shows that sustainability is an increasingly important ...For the fourth consecutive year, the Pforzheimer House dining services staff helped students and staff celebrate GreekFest by creating a delicious feast.I had never heard of Jason Richwine until I started reading the reports about his Harvard PhD thesis, on the IQs of immigrants and the policy implications for the US. The thesis itself ( here it is , if you want to read it and make up your own mind) was presented in 2009. Apparently nobody noticed it, or thought it was worth complaining about, until Richwine worked its conclusions into the Heritage Foundation's report on the economic costs of US immigration policy. That blew up, and Richwine resigned from ...Enjoy these cartoons from the June issue of HBR, and test your management wit in the HBR Cartoon Caption Contest at the bottom of this post . If we choose your caption as the winner, you will be featured in next month's magazine and win a free Harvard Business Review Press book. "It's not a requirement, but if you have a PhD in the arts or humanities, it's definitely a plus." Kaamran Hafeez "Most people prefer to keep their pencils and coffee in separate cups." Michael Shaw "Interns." Kaamran Hafeez "Oh, ...Broad diversity continues to characterize the Latino Leadership Initiative (LLI) sponsored by the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard Kennedy School. CPL announced today that 71% of the participants in the fourth installment of LLI are the first in their families to attend college.I wanted help learning more about the history of civil rights movements and how separate accommodations were often unequal, and the Schlesinger librarians said, “We can definitely help with that.”At an event at Harvard Business School that was three parts analysis and one part rally, participants tried to chart a new path forward for the sluggish US economy—a move that may require a new definition of "competitiveness." Highlighting the panel discussions Wednesday on "US Competitiveness: Paths Forward," an HBS initiative , was an appearance by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, who was brought in by wheelchair but rose to his feet to speak about how the city could be a model for the nation. "I ...As part of his administration's strategy to rejuvenate American manufacturing, President Obama has called for the creation of a National Network of Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) to advance and diffuse novel manufacturing technologies. To launch it, he has allocated $1 billion in the 2013 budget. Critics have denounced this proposal as yet another government intrusion into the market and a futile attempt to "pick winners." What these critics ignore is that the US government has a long history of investing ...Current and future leaders in public service – from the U.S. and across the globe – will receive their diplomas during commencement ceremonies May 30 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.Kate McFarlin, president of the Harvard Club of Shanghai, wears her dual enthusiasms for Harvard and China on her sleeve.Design is a service, not a magic spell. There are designers who do it well, and those who do it poorly ; some produce profitable outcomes, and some waste money. More and more companies view design as an important strategic element of their business and are seeking partners to help them understand how it can help. If you're setting out to do so, you'll need to confront uncertainty about how to get the most value from the investment and carefully consider what you're setting out to achieve. An effective ...Adam Cohen, professor of chemistry and chemical biology and of physics, and Hopi Hoekstra, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and molecular and cellular biology, are among the 27 scientists nationwide to be appointed as investigators by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.The annual 10-K report that JPMorgan Chase filed with the SEC in February includes a 13-page section on "Risk Factors." It's a lawyerly, exhaustive, exhausting rundown of all the things that could possibly weigh on the earnings of a giant global bank, from regulatory changes to loans going bad to a liquidity crisis to the possibility that "one or more of its employees causes a significant operational breakdown or failure." What's missing, though, is something like this: CEO Risk: Much of JPMorgan Chase's ...Click here to read my column in Sunday's NY Times .Evelynn M. Hammonds has been in negotiations about a possible departure from her position as Dean of Harvard College and is expected not to return to the post in the fall, a person with direct knowledge of the situation confirmed Friday.Whether airing on your local public television station or playing film festivals around the world, each relies on hours of research and stacks of supporting materials. Where is that research done? Increasingly, the answer is the Schlesinger Library.It wasn’t an interest in science or anatomy that motivated Elizabeth Blackwell to become the first woman in America to earn a medical degree; it was a dying friend’s plaint that she would have fared better if she’d had a “lady doctor.”Former National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration administrator Jane Lubchenco described her four years in Washington, D.C., as difficult and frustrating, but said it’s imperative that other scientists follow suit to give science a voice in national policies.Patty Gelfman ’56 led her Radcliffe class to make a generous gift to the Schlesinger Library for its 50th reunion. That gift has funded the processing of some of the library’s most illustrious collections, including those of Betty Friedan and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.Five years after Harvard and Boston struck a community benefits cooperation agreement, the University’s neighbors in Allston-Brighton point to an enhanced partnership that has resulted in a vibrant Harvard Allston Education Portal, workforce preparation classes for adults, mentoring for students, and a wide variety of other programs.Humanitarian relief workers and climate scientists gathered in Cambridge this week to discuss the connection between climate change and humanitarian disasters and what relief workers can learn from science.At an event at Harvard Business School (HBS) that was three parts analysis and one part rally, participants tried to chart a new path forward for the sluggish U.S. economy — a move that may require a new definition of “competitiveness.”Harvard Kennedy School adjunct lecturer Todd Fogelsong delivered a message April 8 2013 before a meeting convened by the UN Rule of Law Unit.Generic drugs can be inexpensive and effective alternatives to their branded counterparts. But according to this devastating Fortune investigation , they can also be useless on a good day and deadly on a bad one — that is, if they were manufactured by Ranbaxy, an Indian drug maker. In this epic piece, Katherine Eban uncovers downright fraud in how generics were tested (or, rather, weren't) and exposes a corporate culture so steeped in greed and dysfunction that fistfights were known to break out ...From " When Governments Go Bad ": This scandal arises from a larger cultural virus: leakaphobia. Every administration centralizes power more tightly than the one before and is more paranoid about leaks than the one before. Every administration successively narrows the circle of debate, forsaking wide deliberation for the sake of reducing leaks (except the politically useful ones). Why do they do this? Because people who go into government not only have a tendency to want to control other people but also to ...We don't often think about the way we usually operate at work, whether we're performing an informal five-step process for evaluating a new proposal, or setting priorities for managing our time. But our ability to improve the ways we do things depends on defining and shaping our daily habits of mind and practice — our "standard work." Consider the experience of my friend Lynn Kelley , who joined Union Pacific Railroad , the largest railroad network in the United States with 46,000 employees, as vice ...After reading yesterday's post about MOOCs , a colleague asked me why I preferred BY-SA licensing to BY-NC-SA licensing. Now that looks like a technical question about lawyerly alphabet soup, but it is actually a basic question about what HarvardX is trying to accomplish. The faculty should be discussing the nature of the HarvardX intellectual property policy, and if we don't, we'll have another explosion like the one that happened this year when Harvard unwisely sent around detailed proposed revisions to ...The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects . To subscribe, click here . Islawmix calls for better fact checking, less sensationalism re: Muslims in the news You have most probably heard by now that three Emirati men were allegedly thrown out of a cultural Janadriyah Festival by the Saudi religious police (pl. mutawaeen) for “being too handsome.” Most reports, however, have claimed the three men were actually deported from the Kingdom, itself, for their ...The workplace has never been more global than today. But despite that, I often find the last thing on people's minds when doing international work is the global element. Instead, and often for good reason, people focus on concrete and pressing work details: finishing that PowerPoint deck, running the financials one more time, or planning the logistical elements of foreign travel. As a result, they tend to follow "gut" theories — what they assume to be true about adapting behavior across cultures. The ...New York Times Op-Ed by Radcliffe fellow Hector Carrillo on the expansion of same-sex marriage in Latin America and the U.S. Organizations have nearly perfected implementing the industrial model of managing work — the effort applied toward completing a task. For individuals, this model ensures that we know what we're supposed to do each day. For organizations, it guarantees predictability and efficiency. The problem with the model is that work is becoming commoditized at an increasing rate, extending beyond manual tasks into knowledge work, as data entry, purchasing, billing, payroll, and similar responsibilities become ...One of the dumbest corporate governance issues is whether to split the roles of Board Chair and CEO. That debate is now playing out on the front pages of business sections (print and online) as shareholders will decide next week in a nonbinding vote whether to take the chairman of the board title away from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon . This is a reprise, for the zillionth time, of the pointless push by governance types to call the senior director "chairman of the board" rather than "lead" or "presiding" ...In light of the controversy surrounding history professor Niall Ferguson’s recent comments about economist John Maynard Keynes’s sexuality, the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History—an affiliate of the American Historical Association—has called on Harvard to hire a tenure-track scholar devoted to the study of BGLTQ history.With an inaugural group of 46 women, Harvard’s newest sorority Alpha Phi has sought to transition into the Harvard social scene in recent weeks.Students in the Visiting Undergraduate Student Program said they were not expecting to witness a massive cheating investigation, two University-wide closures resulting from the weather, an email search scandal, or a deadly act of terrorism when they came to Harvard this year.This semester, Harvard Law School launched the Law and History program of study, which is headed by two faculty leaders: Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who is also a Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Professor Kenneth Mack. In a Q&A, Brown-Nagin discusses the origins and goals of the new program of study as well as her own scholarship.With the Association of American Medical Colleges slated to introduce a new MCAT in 2015, Harvard students say that the premed track at Harvard does not adequately prepare them for the exam. And, they say, they often face prohibitively expensive costs when they turn to classes run by test preparatory companies for instruction.Even when women deserve respect, subtle issues of perception—even in the absence of outright discrimination—mean that they are less likely to get it.What distinguishes Yesh Atid from previous secular parties, however—including the one Lapid’s father headed up—is that it is unafraid to speak in the language of Jewish tradition and refuses to concede Judaism as the demesne of Haredim.Our commitment to transparency, fairness, sustainability, and human dignity should not end at Harvard’s gates. Harvard must be a responsible owner of all its investments, particularly of the companies in which it owns a controlling stakeHowever, this time what really struck me about her questions was the never asked, but very much underlying question, “What is Harvard?".As you can expect in any Loach film, there is no shortage of vividly rendered scenery. The cinematography is a real treat for the eyes, a visual whiskey tasting of colors, textures, and terrains. And despite a lazy plot, "The Angels' Share" still manages to be a heartening and enjoyable story.An international ambassador for Harvard, a trailblazing judge and policymaker, and a seasoned College administrator will receive the 2013 Harvard Medal for “extraordinary service” to the University, the Harvard Alumni Association announced Wednesday.The real problem at the core of the movie seems to be restraint: Luhrmann has none. In fact, the film is packed so full of confetti and sex that there seems to be little room for one key element: the source text. This makes for an entertaining film, perhaps, but not for a successful adaptation of one of the great American novels.An interview with Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh , coauthors of the forthcoming article "The New Employer-Employee Compact." Download this podcast A written transcript will be available by May 24.There is a drive-by quote from me in Nathan Heller's good New Yorker article about Massive Open Online Courses. Reading the story reminds me how hard this kind of writing is -- I spent a long time with Heller, and tried to sell him on the idea of CS20 as an anti-MOOC , but our conversation got reduced to one line about students sleeping through class. It is interesting to see the MOOC euphoria being replaced by MOOC dread. The best articulation of the worries is that of Pr of. Bob Meister of the UC Santa ...The United States is struggling: wages are stagnant, millions are jobless, government debt is large and growing, Congress is polarized, and businesses can’t find skilled employees. For the first time in a quarter-century, says Michael Porter , Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School (HBS), U.S. firms are able to compete internationally, but they’re not producing a rising standard of living for American workers. An economy isn’t competitive if it doesn’t do both, and Porter and his ...A malfunction aboard NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has jeopardized what has been one of the agency’s highest-profile missions, one that has revealed a galaxy rich with planets. The Gazette talked to Astronomy Professor Dimitar Sasselov, one of the mission’s principal investigators, about the implications.Theatergoers on their way into the
Loeb Drama Center’s mainstage area encountered a party already in progress
before the opening curtain: the cast of the innovative
production of The Pirates of Penzance at the ART wearing leis, shorts, and Hawaiian shirts, and strumming guitars,
banjos, mandolins, and ukuleles. Numerous beach balls were being batted around and
two plastic children’s swimming pools were in evidence. And actually, there was no curtain: this production was mounted more or less in the
...The culmination of the Harvard Horizons initiative was a symposium in which eight Ph.D. students each offered five-minute presentations, styled on the popular TED talks, about a specific aspect of their current research.Harvard College dean Evelynn M. Hammonds announced today
that professor of the history of science Anne Harrington ’82 and her husband,
John Durant, will serve as the new master and co-master of Pforzheimer House. Having
spent their careers focused on teaching and learning, Harrington and Durant—who
succeed current masters Nicholas and Erika Christakis—will begin their duties
this fall, living in the house along with their eight-year-old son, Jamie. “I am very excited,” Harrington said in a ...Professor Anne Harrington and her husband, MIT Museum Director John Durant, have been appointed master and co-master of Pforzheimer House.History of science professor Anne Harrington ’82 and her husband John R. Durant have been appointed as the new Masters of Pforzheimer House, resident dean Lisa Boes announced in an email to the Pfoho community Thursday morning.Overcoming people's past perceptions of you isn't easy. When I launched my consulting business seven years ago, I was astonished to find — years later — that acquaintances and even friends hadn't kept up with my career transition. They'd ask about my past work in politics or nonprofit advocacy, oblivious to the changes that had been consuming my life. It wasn't their fault, however. These days, we all have thousands of Facebook friends or LinkedIn connections; it's just not realistic to keep up ...The question served as the mid-term assignment this semester in the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) course “Global Europe: Democracy, Policy and Governance" (DPI 431), taught by Muriel Rouyer, adjunct professor in public policy at HKS and a professor of political science in France since 2004. It was Rouyer's idea to turn the assignment into an essay contest by engaging the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) as the contest sponsor.Listen to the language that any leader, consultant, or HR professional uses, and you'll hear them expound at length about how "we" need to change "them." That says it all: the fact is, no one likes to be changed, even if the change is ultimately beneficial. In his recent HBR blog post , Ron Ashkenas argues that the reason most change management initiatives fail is due to stunted managerial capability to implement change. He points out — correctly, I believe — that in many organizations the ...by Andrei Hagiu and Julian Wright Executive Summary — Retailers including Best Buy and Safeway act as intermediaries between suppliers and buyers, reselling the products they purchase from suppliers to buyers. Other intermediaries, such as eBay or Mall of America, act as marketplaces in which suppliers sell directly to buyers via a platform. In the existing literature, the structure of an intermediary—reseller or marketplace—is taken as given. It is important to recognize, however, that ...For millennia people have run by feel, an "art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain," says Christopher McDougall in his anthropological study of the topic. Many of us still run this way, of course, but for how much longer? Now we can lace up a pair of "smart" sneakers and instantly shift from running by feel to running by metrics. Guesses at how far and how fast are replaced by real time stats on pace and meters travelled. If you think you'll never make ...Writing under a pseudonym in the Financial Analysts Journal in 1960, mutual fund executive Jack Bogle made "The Case for Mutual Fund Management." Bogle took the track records of four leading mutual funds going back to 1930 and compared them to the performance of the Dow Jones Industrials. Not only had the four beaten the Dow, handily, but during the period from 1950 through 1956, for which the brokerage Arthur Wiesenberger & Co. (the Lipper/Morningstar of its day) had calculated mutual fund volatility, all ...Fifty years after the Supreme Court determined in Gideon v. Wainwright that criminal defendants must be provided with counsel, scholars and practitioners from around the country grappled with continued limits on access to justice during an Harvard Law School conference in April titled “Toward a Civil Gideon: The Future of Legal Services.”In April, Harvard Law School Professor Mark Tushnet, a specialist in constitutional law and theory, was interviewed by his colleague and former collaborator Vicki Jackson on the new book “Routledge Handbook of Constitutional Law” (Routledge 2012). Tushnet co-edited the book with Thomas Fleiner and Cheryl Sanders. University President Drew G. Faust received $899,734 in salary and benefits in 2011, according to a recent filing with the Internal Revenue Service. While that figure is about the same as last year’s, Harvard’s chief investment manager, who is paid far more than most administrators, saw a 52 percent increase in her earnings.With the filing in mid May of its tax return for
nonprofit organizations (Form 990) for 2011 (covering the tax year from July 1,
2011, to June 30, 2012— Harvard’s fiscal year 2012 ), the University has
also released information on the compensation paid to Jane L. Mendillo,
president and chief executive officer of Harvard Management Company (HMC, which is
responsible for investing the endowment) and its highest-paid portfolio
managers. The tax filing discloses compensation for other University officials ...An article featuring Harvard Kennedy School Professor Jeffrey Frankel's working paper "The Future of the Currency Union."The longest-serving dean in
Harvard’s history, Michael Shinagel, dean of continuing education and
University extension, was honored at a reception in the Faculty Room of
University Hall on May 14, prior to his retirement at the end of this academic
year. ( Huntington
D. Lambert , head of continuing education at Colorado State University,
succeeds him on July 1.) At
the robustly attended party, Michael D. Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and
Sciences, produced some archival research to prove that ...Stephen Dupont, an award-winning photographer who traveled repeatedly to Papua New Guinea as a Robert Gardner Fellow, is displaying his works showing the intersection of traditional Papuan life and the industrialized world in a new exhibit at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.Berkman Events Newsletter Template Upcoming Events / Digital Media May 15th, 2013 berkman luncheon series/book launch Technologies of Choice? – ICTs, development and the capabilities approach Tuesday, May 28 , 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor. This event will be webcast live. ICT for development (ICT4D) scholars claim that the internet, radio and mobile phones can support development. Yet the dominant paradigm of development as economic growth is too limiting to ...Michael Watkins , author of The First 90 Days , explains how to secure early wins during a transition.Science and Technology It's spring and you've taken care of the dust and dirt, but what about some digital cleaning? It’s that time of year when you clean out your closets, dust off shelves, and spruce up your floors. Once you’ve taken care of the dust and dirt, what about some digital cleaning? Going through all your files and computers may seem like a daunting task, but we found ways to make the process fairly painless. Leftover laptops After my last laptop died, I was taking it out to the ...Three alumni —James V. Baker ’68, M.B.A. ’71, William
Thaddeus Coleman Jr., J.D. ’43, LL.D. ’96, and Georgene Botyos Herschbach, Ph.D.
’69—will receive the 2013 Harvard Medal for outstanding service to the
University, the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) announced today. The medals
will be officially awarded on May 30, during the HAA’s annual meeting on
the afternoon of Commencement day. Baker is the first international alumnus to have served as president
of the HAA (see “‘Pure Brit’ ...If you want to provoke a vigorous debate, start a conversation on organizational culture. While there is universal agreement that (1) it exists, and (2) that it plays a crucial role in shaping behavior in organizations, there is little consensus on what organizational culture actually is, never mind how it influences behavior and whether it is something leaders can change. This is a problem, because without a reasonable definition (or definitions) of culture, we cannot hope to understand its connections to ...The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) has announced that James V. Baker ’68, M.B.A. ’71, William Thaddeus Coleman Jr., J.D. ’43, LL.D. ’96, and Georgene Botyos Herschbach, A.M. ’63, Ph.D. ’69, are the recipients of the 2013 Harvard Medal.Researchers from Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) are the first to report that synthetic silicate nanoplatelets (also known as layered clay) can induce stem cells to become bone cells without the need of additional bone-inducing factors.Unhappily shocked by Sputnik's unexpected 1957 success, President Eisenhower quickly pushed the Pentagon to establish the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) . Its ostensible mission: " to prevent technological surprise to the U.S. military, and to create surprises of its own ." Anticipating and enabling " technological surprise " has become even more challenging, DARPA director Arati Prabhakar recently told an MIT audience, because more people in more places have more access to more ...…going after plagiarists on legal grounds… “Judge Coco Declares Ang Out of Line!” image by flickr user Coco Mault used by permission. One of the services that journal publishers claim to provide on behalf of authors is legal support in the case that their work has been plagiarized, and they sometimes cite this as one [...]Humans engage with their world in two reciprocal ways: firstly as passionate participants and secondly as detached observers. As managers we cycle between these modes constantly. It's the mark of a great manager to be able to judge, in a complex situation, when and how to use each of them. Detached observation requires a certain maturity. Consider that we are born into the world immersed in context. We are embodied organisms, fine-tuned by evolution to garner cues to action from our surroundings. We pay ...Led by Joshua Sanes and Jeff Lichtman, a group of Harvard researchers has made a host of technical improvements in the “Brainbow” imaging technique.The next time we hear about a bank or insurance company's "green program" — like using energy efficient light bulbs or operating out of a LEED Platinum building — we'll either scream or throw up. Don't get us wrong. We aren't "climate change deniers" and we believe that every individual and organization should use energy and other natural resources responsibly. Our problem with banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions that tout their commitment to sustainability by focusing ...A LONG LIFE IN SHORTHAND: FLORENCE JULIE LILLIBRIDGE One woman’s diaries, covering more than 30 years, offer an unexpected riddle.At 7:30 on a sunny winter day in London, I settle into a conference room with the usual low-tech tools for high-stakes teamwork: Big white Post-It pads, Sharpies of every color, and a sense of urgency. Six top executives are midway through a 12-week assignment: Figure out how thousands of employees in their $8 billion company can absorb major changes—three acquisitions, a new global IT system, and a mandate to double revenue in three years—in minimal time. Their employer has hired me to ...Years ago, as a family physician in Louisiana, I made house calls. Certain patients were too sick or too hurt to get to my office. Sometimes a condition or injury had worsened, requiring my evaluation bedside. I would visit patients at home for the simplest of reasons: home was where they needed care. By the mid-1980s, the pressures of time and money prevented most physicians from making house calls anymore. But I kept seeing patients at home until I retired from my practice after 29 years. Home visits ...Editor's note: Think money can't buy happiness? Behavioral economists Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton beg to differ. It actually can, they say—but only if we spend it the right way. In their book released this week , Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending , Dunn and Norton draw on years of quantitative and qualitative research to explain how we can turn cash into contentment. The key lies in changing our spending habits and adhering to five key principles: Buy Experiences (research shows that ...Much has been said about the virtues of failure — it's a learning opportunity, it happens to everyone, it's character-building. Failure is becoming some romanticized rite of passage, invoking images of young entrepreneurs burning the midnight oil and yelling "Eureka!" I can say from experience that any entrepreneur who fails repeatedly before finding the golden ticket had better be ready to coat themselves in protective armor, because your stakeholders may not be as understanding of your failures. ... ถือว่าทำพลาดเองจริงๆ สำหรับเสือเหลืองโปรเซีย ดอร์ทมุน ที่ยิงนกตกปลาไปหลายจังหว่ะเลย ในนัดที่บุกไปเยือนทีมมาลาก้าในบ้าน ...Classmates and advisers remembered Joanna Y. Li ’12 as a kind and discerning friend who often went out of her way to help out those around her with a well-timed gift, a meaningful conversation, or a ukulele serenade. Li, who had been on leave from the College since February 2012, died on May 7 in her Somerville apartment.Given the poor economics of the bill, I can only hope that Senator Warren’s real intention is to garner publicity and popularity rather than actually implementing her policies.The recent adoption of new examination policies comes as welcome news in the midst of this academic year’s own finals period.China has the ability to offer its own citizens and the rest of the world much more than material progress.Reflecting on my time here, there is nothing I would rather do than thank Harvard for all that it has done.Every Harvard student who founds a start-up does not become the next billionaire under 30. Instead, they are faced with a new set of obstacles, such as finding funding and developing management skills. And upon leaving, these former students must also find housing and often form an entirely new social circle.Harvard Law School will accept members of the Harvard College Class of 2015 next year in the pilot stage of a new deferred admission program for college juniors, according to the Law School’s Assistant Dean and Chief Admissions Officer Jessica L. Soban ’02.The bill would provide undocumented immigrants who arrived before 2011 with a 13-year process that would lead to legalization and eventually citizenship.More than a month after stepping down as head of Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs in protest of a Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ financial policy, government professor Beth A. Simmons said that top FAS deans have not formally acknowledged her resignation.Harvard completed a $168.5 million sale of Watertown’s Arsenal on the Charles to electronic health records company athenahealth, Inc., according to a Monday announcement by real estate firm Avison Young.A team at Tel Aviv University in Israel and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has just discovered an exoplanet using a new method that relies on Einstein’s special theory of relativity.William Simmons ’14 applied for and won a Carol K. Pforzheimer Student Fellowship from the Schlesinger Library. Now he’s writing an article about Eloise Saunders's passion for agriculture and community and curating a show of artist Judy Chicago's work.A new research paper, co-authored by Center for International Development director Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard Kennedy School analyzes How to better match international aid donors with recipients based on their specific needs.Former Ethiopian judge and political prisoner Birtukan Midekssa, at Harvard as a Scholar at Risk, argues that her native land — with its heritage of religious tolerance and its innate appetite for liberty — is ripe for democracy.Joanna Behrman RI '13 is writing a thesis, even though the Harvard physics department doesn’t require one. Her topic—a comparison of undergraduate physics teaching at Harvard and Radcliffe from 1895 to 1953—led her to the Schlesinger Library.What does talk of cyber war mean for our liberties? The United States has a new military command for cyberspace, with the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) as its commander. At the same time, the Secretary of State has announced that the “freedom to connect” is an aspect of fundamental human rights and [...]Something astonishing is happening to the market for young, smart labor. The luster of big prestigious firms, particularly on Wall Street, has dimmed: " The End of Wall Street as They Knew It ," goes a recent New York Magazine headline. A few months ago at Davos, CEOs complained about the brain drain affecting their companies. Where are all these people going? Increasingly to start-ups, which seem to have captured the public imagination, particularly among millennials (ages 18 to 29). In an opinion piece , ...Just as America's visa rules enabled the rapid growth of India's information-technology companies over the last two decades, the Obama Administration's recent drive to reform immigration regulations could prove to be a turning point for them. Although the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Bill of 2013 — introduced four weeks ago by a bipartisan group of eight U.S. senators — seeks to increase the number of visas that the US government can grant highly-skilled ...Check out these new and forthcoming books from HBR Press: What You're Really Meant to Do: A Road Map for Reaching Your Unique Potential By Robert Steven Kaplan How do you create your own definition of success — and reach your unique potential? Building a fulfilling life and career can be a daunting challenge. It takes courage and hard work. Too often, we charge down a path leading to "success" as defined by those around us — and ultimately, are left feeling dissatisfied. Each of us is unique ...Earlier this month the Rolling Stones kicked off a brief 2013 tour celebrating their 50th anniversary. The Stones have always been aggressive in setting ticket prices, and it appears they've pushed too hard this time. With arena seats reaching $600 and general admission packages in the "Tongue Pit" (close to stage) topping out at $2,000, ticket sales are reportedly tepid. As a result, tour promoters are on the verge of a "19th Nervous Breakdown." I have a particular interest in this topic, because I attend ...More than 50 years ago, U.S. President John F. Kennedy captured the world's imagination when he said, "This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth." And thus, the term moonshot entered the lexicon as shorthand for "a difficult or expensive task, the outcome of which is expected to have great significance." The term has experienced a recent resurgence in the corporate world. Google's moonshots include ...With graduation season upon us, it's important to remember that as a manager you must often be a teacher too. A major part of your role is instruction — which means that you need to pay attention to the massive disruption going on in higher education and what it means for company learning. The most visible part of educational disruption is the proliferation of online learning through MOOCs , or massive, open, online courses. These programs, sponsored by elite universities such as Harvard, Stanford, ...Hillary Clinton and social change Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter's new case explores the change process within Hillary Clinton's US State Department as it pursues women's empowerment through partnerships around the globe. One issue raised: Are the alliances sustainable when Clinton leaves office? Purchase the case, "Hillary Clinton & Partners: Leading Global Social Change from the US State Department." Where is the economic research on digitization? "In an industry that is all about information, shouldn't ...May 14, 12:30pm ET Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor What does talk of cyber war mean for our liberties? The United States has a new military command for cyberspace, with the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) as its commander. At the same time, the Secretary of State has announced that the “freedom to connect” is an aspect of fundamental human rights and has criticized countries that attempt to filter the Internet. Computer networks remain insecure, as ...Reed Hastings has emerged from hiding. Well, maybe not hiding — he was still posting on Facebook and talking to the occasional magazine writer . But by his previous standards, the Netflix co-founder and CEO had been laying uncharacteristically low in the almost two years since the Great Qwikster Fiasco . It took a clear recovery from the company's missteps, as evidenced by a blowout earnings report last month , to convince the Netflix PR team (and/or Hastings himself) that it was time to unleash him. ...Here's a very strange thing: Europe's decades-long effort to reduce carbon emissions has been thrown into a shambles because utilities and manufacturers are exceeding their carbon-reduction targets. That's right. Exceeding them. It almost sounds like a joke, but it's not. Europe's $100 billion carbon market, an innovative force in the powerful carbon-reduction approach known as cap and trade, has ceased to function the way it's supposed to. The resulting chaos in Europe's energy and environmental policies ...Fitting the entirety of your material possessions into a bunch of boxes and suitcases is no easy task. So when it comes time to do away with that saggy futon that didn't sell at your senior sale or that Ethical Reasoning coursepack you've fully accepted that you will never crack open again, the trash or recycling bin may seem like the only viable home for these items. But finding a greener solution for discarding your unwanted things might not be as tough as you think.Last month, Ihad the pleasure of hearingChristy Romer give a greattalkabout Japanese monetary policy at the NBER Macro Annual conference. You can nowread it here .The story of the national champion 1913 Harvard men's lacrosse team.Before an audience of about 30 Harvard students and affiliates crowded in the intimate setting of the Harvard College Women’s Center, history professor Niall Ferguson offered another apology Monday afternoon for his recent controversial comments about economist John Maynard Keynes’s sexuality.Harvard staff attended a workforce management conference to learn skills to communicate, solve problems, and innovate effectively across cultures.Hope Schwartz looks at the best stories from this semester in sports.The real enemy of salespeople today isn't their archrivals; it's no decision. That's according to the several hundred business-to-business salespeople I conducted recently . What is it that prevents a prospective customer from making a purchase even after they have conducted a lengthy evaluation process? The reasons may surprise you. Regardless of the prospective customers' confident demeanor, on the inside they are experiencing fear, uncertainty, and doubt while making their selection. The stress this ...When he was filling out the forms to establish his new nonprofit in 2008, Salman Khan paused at the mission statement section. The MIT grad, a math and computer whiz with an MBA from Harvard Business School, thought for a moment, and then jotted down a powerful response: "A free world-class education for anyone anywhere." Read More >Some of the best advice we have all got — be it while making big personal decisions or making critical business decisions — is the same: Follow your inner voice. Most of us have heeded that counsel, yet if we were asked to list the elements that enable better decision-making, we would cite experience, research, data, even polls — but never our inner voices. Logic precedes sixth sense because the known outnumber the unknown. When the reverse was true, people counted on extra-sensory cues ...The form of capitalism that has emerged in Britain is the textbook description of how to organize capital markets and corporate sectors. It features dispersed shareholders with powers to elect directors and remove them with or without cause, large stock markets, active markets for corporate control , a good legal system, strong investor protection, a rigorous anti-trust authority — the list goes on. It is what many countries around the world aspire to, what economists recommend, and what ...If you are sitting in a job interview and hear the words "dotted line reporting," you have just encountered the world of matrix management . In these organizational structures, you typically have two bosses: a "straight-line" direct boss, who is the person who prepares your performance review and decides on your raise; and a "dotted-line" boss, who may also assign you work but has less control over your review. It is easy to see how difficult a job could be if your two bosses aren't in agreement about your ...In a recent blog post , Paul Krugman writes: As far as I know, among basic textbooks only Krugman/Wells even talks about the liquidity trap. This is probably a true statement. It is not that other books don't cover the topic, however. It is just that Paul Krugman doesn't know it. FYI, here is what the leading introductory text says about the topic: The Zero Lower Bound As we have just seen, monetary policy works through interest rates. This conclusion raises a question: What if the Fed’s target ...Three HKS alumni has been named winners of the 2013 HKS Alumni Awards.Here is a leadership lesson: Be selfish. Be very selfish. For this message to be an effective leadership tip, we need to understand what selfishness is. Selfishness is typically defined as "concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself." If someone hears that the CEO is being selfish, the thought that is likely to come to mind is, "The leader is maximizing personal financial rewards even at the cost of the company's interests." If that is the case, it is unfortunate and unacceptable. But there is a ...The board of directors is supposed to keep watch over the CEO, right? So if the CEO also serves as the chairman of the board, you're setting yourself up for trouble, or so the conventional wisdom goes. The checks and balances are inadequate. The CEO has the run of the place. He or she is free to set compensation, engage in empire building, and make decisions that destroy shareholder value. Arguments like these are embroidered on the banners of activist shareholders such as AFSCME , which is urging that ...Want to know if someone's lying to you? Telltale signs may include running of the mouth, an excessive use of third-person pronouns, and an increase in profanity. These are among the findings of a recent experimental study that delves into the language of deception, detailed in the paper Evidence for the Pinocchio Effect: Linguistic Differences Between Lies, Deception by Omissions, and Truths , which was published in the journal Discourse Processes . Asked why the topic of deception is important to business ...Let's say you believed deeply in the importance of sleep health, and you wanted to start a movement to change people's attitudes and behavior. Maybe, like Arianna Huffington , it's a personal crisis that convinces you. Or maybe it's a key piece of research or two that opens your eyes, as it were, to the dangers of too little sleep: As a choice of cause, you could do a lot worse. Getting sufficient sleep is a need that every human on the planet shares. And for many people, the ability to do that is ...Last week Apple's Tim Cook made fleeting reference to "new product categories." Bloomberg West called it " tantalizing ." There are a couple of candidates in Apple's "big thing" category. One is an iWatch, but I think the one to monitor is the other, Apple TV. The current Apple TV, as it stands, is a set top box that enables an end-run around the cable companies and lets us pipe movies and TV into our living rooms. But an Apple-produced television has the potential to be so much more. As I've written in my ...Instead, seeing the writing on the wall, the administration may begin to wonder what could have been done differently: a less controversial, better-argued healthcare bill, avoiding the detrimental austerity of the debt ceiling, sidestepping the self-harm of sequestration. Arriving at the recognition of his own irrelevance, as the media whips itself into 2016 frenzy and Congress stonewalls, President Obama should ponder the mistakes of his term and consider what could have been done differently.Instead, seeing the writing on the wall, the administration may begin to wonder what could have been done differently: a less controversial, better-argued healthcare bill, avoiding the detrimental austerity of the debt ceiling, sidestepping the self-harm of sequestration. Arriving at the recognition of his own irrelevance, as the media whips itself into 2016 frenzy and Congress stonewalls, President Obama should ponder the mistakes of his term and consider what could have been done differently.As strange as it seems, differences are what bring students together. And it can be only through embracing and learning from those differences, rather than comparing them, that students will remain together. I’ve tried both ways, and trust me—it doesn’t even compare.As Harvard determines the priorities for the campaign, administrators should give students and faculty a stake in the planning, prioritizing, and fundraising.While those inside the White House wants to deify Obama as its “North Star,” the potentiality of corruption in his administration must not be overlooked. President Obama must proceed carefully if he doesn’t want to end up with an eerily Nixonian legacy of disgrace.A computer science concentrator and iLab regular, Zachary Hamed ’14 was selected as one of 22 2013 Thiel Fellows. The fellowship awards $100,000 to 22 young people from the ages of 17-20 to continue entrepreneurship projects related to science and technology.The winning projects, most of which were senior theses, were selected from a pool of nominations by students’ faculty supervisors. Hoopes winners are awarded $4,000 each and their nominators receive $1,000.As the Harvard women’s rugby team transitions to varsity status next year, the Crimson will have an experienced leader at the helm of the emerging program. The Harvard Athletic Department announced the hiring of Sue Parker last Wednesday. Parker will take over as head coach of the varsity team starting in the fall of 2013.The Harvard women’s golf team wrapped up its season on Saturday with a 20th-place finish at the NCAA West Regionals in Stanford, Calif. The Ivy League champions entered the national championship qualifier seeded 20th in a field of 24 schools. The Crimson matched expectations over the three-day event to finish 61-over-par with 913 strokes.The No. 21 Harvard men’s tennis team’s strong season drew to a close on Saturday when it fell, 4-1, to No. 10 Mississippi State in the second round of the 2013 NCAA Men’s Tennis Tournament.The Institute of Politics announced Thursday the creation and sponsorship of the John C. Culver Institute of Politics Scholarship, which will be awarded annually to fund the tuition and mandatory fees for two-year graduate study at the Harvard Kennedy School. The first Culver Scholars will enroll at the Kennedy School for the 2014-2015 academic year.The Cambridge Public Health Department and Harvard University Health Services are urging a limited number of students and faculty to undergo tuberculosis tests after a member of the Harvard community recently tested positive for the infection.The Cambridge Public Health Department and Harvard University Health Services are urging a limited number of students and faculty to undergo tuberculosis tests after a member of the Harvard community recently tested positive for the infection.Whether you're looking to relive the days of Prohibition or want to jet off on the USS Enterprise, summer movie season is here to satisfy your cinematic needs.The weather may have not been in prime form at the NCAA Tournament on Friday, but the Harvard men’s tennis team sure was. Despite the match being moved indoors following a rain delay, the Crimson was not deterred, taking four straight singles matches en route to a 4-0 victory over No. 63 Samford in the first round of the 2013 NCAA Men’s Tennis Tournament in Starkville, Miss.In a new paper, Professor of Psychology Richard McNally and graduate student Don Robinaugh say that while people suffering from complicated grief — a syndrome marked by intense, debilitating emotional distress and yearning for a lost loved one — had difficulty envisioning specific events in their future, those problems disappeared when they were asked to imagine an alternate future that included their lost loved one.Judges on Thursday gave an innovative Harvard group $30,000 and the grand prize in the inaugural Deans’ Cultural Entrepreneurship Challenge.Harvard’s Summer Youth Employment Program puts local high school students from Boston and Cambridge to work on campus during the summer months. For many young people, it’s their first job.The singer Psy spoke at Memorial Church about his life, his time in the United States, and the runaway success of “Gangnam Style.”Ruth Goins ’13 and Kabungo “Yanick” Mulumba ’15 were presented with the Joseph L. Barrett Award at a special ceremony on Wednesday.There's a striking difference between the logo of The Upper Crust pizzeria and that of its replacement on Brattle Street, The Just Crust. While The Upper Crust sign depicted the elite image of a butler figure carrying pizza, the door now features the emblem of a worker triumphantly holding up the sign for The Just Crust.A newly acquired writer’s guide for the science fiction fantasy TV show “Star Trek” at Harvard’s Houghton Library offers aspiring scriptwriters everything they would need to know before crafting a script for the ’60s cult classic.It seems that everyone is freaking out about teens abandoning social media sites like Facebook. By "everyone" I mean advertisers. They’re racking their brains trying to figure out why it’s happening. If you’re puzzled too, read this lovely piece in Medium by Cliff Watson , who argues that the number one reason kids don't need Facebook is that they "literally don't need Facebook." After running through a host of theories as to why, including the fact that parents (ew) and even grandparents are on ...As a senior professional in financial services — an industry with comparatively few women in the executive ranks — I've spent a lot of time thinking about why there aren't more women at the top-most levels of companies . I've read the studies and heard the theories that women don't network well ; don't have the "vision thing" ; communicate too passively ; don't ask for bigger jobs and the top clients ; and have fewer sponsors who are willing to use political capital to advocate for them the way ...The 2013 Harvard
Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT) conference, which nearly filled
the largest Science Center lecture hall on May 8, demonstrated wide interest
across the University in improving pedagogy. Ever since
HILT was launched in the fall of 2011 , during Harvard’s 375th-anniversary
celebration, it has catalyzed campus conversation on cognition and learning,
course and curriculum design, classroom spaces, educational technology,
assessment, and more, through an annual
symposium and a ...Life has never been more predictable. Yelp provides an early-warning system for dining out, by helping us avoid bad restaurants and alerting us to must-try items at good ones. Facebook lets us investigate a potential romantic interest before the first date. Turn-by-turn instructions from Google Maps prevent us from ever getting lost. The same thing is happening in marketing organizations. "Big Data" is the latest buzzword in our industry. Data-rich practices such as econometric modeling, analytics and ...I am back from a few days in Germany, which have made me appreciate some things about Germany and some things about the US. I was in Berlin and Dusseldorf, and I love how open and uncongested these cities are, with quiet, efficient streetcars everywhere (by contrast, I took the Green Line home from Logan, and was crushed and suffocated). There is a lot of green and many open areas for walking; in Dusseldorf several downtown blocks near the Rhine are given over to pedestrian walkways with shops and ...Microsoft has named Amy Hood as its first woman chief financial officer, relacing Peter Klein, who will leave at the end of June. Hood, 41, was previously CFO of the business division, where she oversaw the acquisitions of Skype and Yammer, two key moves in Microsoft's strategy to protect its share of the enterprise software market. Read More >With alumni support, this summer four HBS students will team up with entrepreneurs in America's heartland. Read More >Radcliffe Day, May 31, 2013 May 13, 2013 Radcliffe College Archives Radcliffe Day is a time of celebration—a time especially to celebrate Radcliffe College alumnae. In tribute, we highlight some of the popular digital resources from the Radcliffe College Archives . Over time the Library has digitized thousands of photographs and hundreds of publications, making the material accessible online to be enjoyed by alumnae and scholars alike. These sources provide important historical documentation of college ...Donning a dark suit and his signature black sunglasses,
Korean rapper and international YouTube sensation PSY told a large Harvard
audience last night in Memorial Church that he was “shocked” and humbled to be
invited to the podium. But the “Gangnam Style” pop star hardly seemed nervous,
riffing about his meteoric rise to stardom for more than an hour, which forced a
scheduled audience question-and-answer session and discussion to be limited due
to time constraints. (PSY was invited to the ...One of the dilemmas of firms in rapidly transforming environments is that their ownership structure may get in the way of making tough decisions. Investors in publicly traded companies are understood to desire stable, predictable earnings and growth. But such expectations are unrealistic in many industries. As noted management expert Geoffrey Moore told me with respect to high-velocity competition, "I'm not sure you ever want to be in the public markets." The problems with public markets and ...Tak: Apps for childhood development. Photo by Corey Wilson/Green Bay Press-Gazette The Over in the Meadow Animated Storybook is an interactive, animated, and educational product, the first to be rolled out by a start-up called iMomConnect . It’s designed to help busy parents teach young children how to count and learn animal sounds, among other skills, with more features, convenience, and portability than a stack of books. “We created this company to create child development apps on the iPhone, ...Jeffrey Williams (MBA ’82) has been named the inaugural executive director of the Harvard Center Shanghai . Opened in March 2010, the center, a joint venture of HBS and the Harvard China Fund, supports a wide range of activities, including HBS Executive Education programs offered in partnership with Chinese institutions, student programs, faculty research, case writing, and conferences. Williams also will build relationships with key academic, business, and government leaders in China. “The ...During a memorable night in early December, the Class of 1959 Chapel shed its quiet sanctuary aura to host a full-tilt concert staged by Heard on the Street, the twelve-member HBS a cappella men’s chorus. With a repertoire that spans pop standards to hip-hop, the group delivered a spirited performance to a packed house. The HBS men’s original a cappella group, The Tycoons, was formed in 1947 and entertained campus gatherings for more than 25 years before disbanding. Heard on the Street, which ...McNerney: It’s all about being globally competitive and creating U.S. jobs. Illustration by Andy Friedman Related Links The Path to Economic Revival Making Their Way Squawk Box at HBS - Jim McNerney, Dean Nitin Nohria, and University Professor Michael Porter discuss U.S. competitiveness and trade. "Pilots Push 787 Dreamliner to the Limit" - Watch some take-offs and landings best left to the test pilot professionals. "Capturing the Birth of the Dreamliner" - Photographer Ed Turner documented the ...Pinchuk: CEO of a precision-tool company doesn’t exactly fit the mold. Photo by Tom Lynn/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel As CEO of Snap-on , Nicholas Pinchuk (MBA ’76) heads a company that’s all about precise fits for its tools. But he himself is no standard-issue corporate chieftain. A longtime former resident of Asia, he’s also a Vietnam veteran, a rarity among big-company CEOs, only 8 percent of whom have served in the military, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (December 5, 2010) ...Illustration by John Kachik Depending on which business school ranking you consult, the best MBA program in 2010 was at the University of Chicago, HBS, the London Business School, or Stanford University. Among the five leading media rankings, HBS fell no lower than fourth place last year, compiling the best overall showing. Chicago and Stanford each disappeared from the top five in at least one ranking. And the London Business School showed up only once in the top five — as No. 1. Two questions leap ...A recent early morning hike in Malibu, California, led me to a beach, where I sat on a rock and watched surfers. I marveled at these courageous men and women who woke before dawn, endured freezing water, paddled through barreling waves, and even risked shark attacks, all for the sake of, maybe, catching an epic ride. After about 15 minutes, it was easy to tell the surfers apart by their style of surfing, their handling of the board, their skill, and their playfulness. What really struck me though, was what ...As the clock struck midnight, shouts rang out across Harvard Yard. Despite exams to come in nine hours, students bared it all in the spring incarnation of an age-old, clothing-optional tradition: Primal Scream.Lamont is packed, there are naked people running in the Yard, and your email is surprisingly inactive. All of this can only mean one thing: finals period is upon us. It's time for the inevitable cycles of procrastination and panic and painful realizations that yes, it probably was a bad idea to skip the readings (don't worry, you'll be fine). "Flyby!" you cry, "How will I get through this week?" Dearest reader, fear not! These are the foremost productivity hacks to help you survive finals week. Read it and ...Richard J. Murnane, a professor known for his research on the intersection of economics and education, has been named acting dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, University President Drew G. Faust announced Thursday.Speaking off the cuff to a packed crowd in Memorial Church Thursday evening, Korean pop sensation Psy remarked on how strange it was to be giving a talk at Harvard.The law firm Brune & Richard is an anomaly. In a world where female lawyers represent fewer than 20 percent of partners in private practices, women make up 12 of the 18 lawyers at Brune & Richard.A proposal that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences approved at their monthly meeting on Tuesday will restructure reading and exam periods starting in 2014.The Harvard-Allston Task Force engaged in the first of a round of discussions on community benefits in Harvard’s new Institutional Master Plan for Allston development at a task force meeting Wednesday evening.We are all here because we worked hard, but something sinister lurks underneath every long night I spend in Lamont. I am faced with cold reality—that luck is what carried me here, and there are thousands of others with potential, smarts, and drive who did not receive the same opportunity. I’m not talking about those unlucky individuals who were forced to go to sub-par schools like Yale. I’m talking about those who may not have had time for homework because they had to hold down a job and take care of ...And as irresponsible as it would be for me to dismiss questions about social security’s long-term solvency and the appropriate federal response to gun violence, I cannot sit by as members of the political class laugh away issues of sustainability, psychedelic research, intellectual property, human enhancement, and geoengineering as matters of the apolitical long-term.Ferguson has since apologized for his statements, calling them “stupid and tactless,” an apt summary of his thoughtless and hurtful remarks. Not only was suggesting that Keynes’ promotion of counter-cyclical spending is tantamount to a lack of empathy for future generations an extreme simplification of Keynes’ philosophy, but it is obvious that sexual orientation or childlessness is not indicative of one’s investment in the future.As far as I was concerned, the freshman world was dog-eat-dog, tribute-spear-tribute. With every day came a new rush toward the Cornucopia to gather items perceived as essential to survival. Some were harder to acquire than others. Everyone could lay their hands on everyday necessities like those in Katniss’s backpack: an umbrella, a Snuggie, Advil, Adderall, condoms.The Harvard men’s tennis team has withstood the rigors of the Ivy League season, but it will face a new challenge on Friday when it takes on No. 67 Samford in the first round of the NCAA Men’s Tennis Tournament.An envelope sent to Harvard Law School Professor Alan M. Dershowitz that was opened Thursday afternoon contained a suspicious white powder, prompting the evacuation of Hauser Hall’s fifth floor.Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, explained his vision for online learning during a GSE Askwith Forum.An interview with Heidi Grant Halvorson and E. Tory Higgins , authors of Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing the World to Power Success and Influence . For more, see the article Do You Play to Win--or to Not Lose? Download this podcast A written transcript will be available by May 17.Big Data and Analytics could be the twin forces driving innovation in Asia—one provides information while the other sifts through it for precious insight. In Asia, the applications are endless: Forecasting the revenues of a new business unit; pinpointing bottlenecks in the regional supply chain; even searching for niches in unwieldy consumer markets. But in a world of uber-statistics and change, how can companies develop the capabilities to truly distinguish between signal and noise, nuggets and the ...This week at the Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab) 10 teams of students from across Harvard demonstrated their projects as finalists in the President’s Challenge for social entrepreneurship.Much like newspapers, conventional advertising agencies are becoming irrelevant. When one person with a wireless connection can be an agency, a media company, or even a manufacturer, traditional advertising organizations have to change their culture, processes, structure, talent policies, resources, and even their business and revenue models in order to embrace the power of open systems being fueled by digital connectivity. The old agency businesses may still have time to correct their course, but they ...The essentials of good teaching and learning took the stage at the second annual Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching conference.GE, perhaps more than any other major company, is dedicated to the use of data visualization as a key part of its marketing and communications efforts. Stemming from last month's Insight Center on visualizing data , I spoke with Linda Boff, GE's executive director of global brand marketing, about the benefits and challenges of this approach. An edited version of our conversation is below. What's the history of data visualization at GE? How did your strategy around it develop? GE specializes in complex ...Time & Time Again, a new exhibit centered on Harvard’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, uses artifacts to illustrate shifting conceptions of making and marking time, from the cyclic sun and stars to linear springs and gears.Two Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers have identified a protein in the blood of mice and humans that may prove to be the first effective treatment for the form of age-related heart failure that affects millions of Americans, a study says.Disclaimer: It's probably not a good idea to read this before you eat. I still remember how it felt when, as a medical student, I drained my first abscess in a patient. We called the procedure "I & D" which stands for "Incision and Drainage" (I told you not to read this just before you eat). When you do an I & D, you locate what is the most protruding and bulging part of the abscess, wipe it off with alcohol, than pierce it with a scalpel. At that point the pus comes out first, followed by any blood. After ...Researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell institute have
discovered a substance in the blood of young mice that reverses a major effect
of aging in the hearts of old mice. The substance, called GDF-11, is an obscure
member of the transforming growth factor family of proteins; it was identified
by Forst family professor of stem cell and regenerative biology Amy
Wagers and Harvard Medical School
professor Richard
T. Lee , working with a startup company, SomaLogic , that has developed a technology for analyzing ...President Drew Faust today announced that Richard J. Murnane, Thompson professor of education and society , will serve as acting dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), effective July 1. He joined the faculty in 1983. Dean Kathleen McCartney, as previously announced, is departing to become president of Smith College . Murnane was among the senior faculty members serving on the search committee for her successor. Murnane, an economist and research associate at the National Bureau of ...Recently, the marketing director for a tech start-up told me that her CEO was furiously drafting job descriptions for a half-dozen summer interns. She was planning to bring a small army of youngsters on board to help push her business into overdrive this summer. As the director of marketing looked at her CEO quizzically, she asked, "you know you need to manage all those interns, right?" Interns can be a great addition to your team, but beware of the well-meaning twenty-year-old who lands in your lap ...Richard J. Murnane, the Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), will serve as acting dean of the HGSE, President Drew Faust announced May 9.A feature article about John Boehrer, who revolutionized teaching at Harvard Kennedy School.We knew that the Internet would bring with it a whole wave of new media disruption. We were unprepared for just how massive the disruption has been. You needn't look any farther than this one staggering statistic to understand the scale of change: Google's advertising revenue is larger than that of the entire print industry's revenue . In the past short while, we have seen a rise in new ways for advertisers to connect with consumers like never before. We're also seeing an increasing amount of media budgets ...by Aaron Chatterji, Edward Glaeser, and William Kerr Executive Summary — For many decades, the common wisdom among local officials pursuing employment growth for their areas was to attract a large firm to relocate. This "smokestack chasing" led to many regional governments bidding against each other and providing substantial incentives to large plants making their location choice decisions. The success of entrepreneurial clusters in recent decades, however, has challenged this wisdom, and now many ...So is the best man for the job a woman? Research by Hay Group, culled from its 17,000-person behavioral competency database in 2012, finds that when it comes to empathy, influence, and the ability to manage conflicts in the executive level, women show more skill than men. Specifically, women are more likely to show empathy as a strength, demonstrate strong ability in conflict management, show skills in influence, and have a sense of self-awareness. "Women often face barriers throughout their careers that ......say two NY Fed economists . World economies are unstable, making it increasingly difficult to lead a business over the past few years. The uncertainty that business leaders face today is palpable. Some of the news is good, some is bad, but it is altogether uncertain and seemingly random. On one hand, there are wars, terror, market crashes, bailouts, budget crises, cliffs, and sequesters. Yet we also have higher corporate profits, positive consumer sentiment, and low interest rates. This is part of the reason that the stock market, ...Joanna Li '12, a Kirkland House resident and neurobiology concentrator who had been on leave from the College since last spring semester, died Tuesday in Somerville, Kirkland House administrators announced in an email to the House community Wednesday night.In March, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick ’82 nominated Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute clinical instructor Gloria Tan to a seat on the Massachusetts Juvenile Court. Tan came to CJI, which supervises third-year law students representing indigent criminal defendants in local district and juvenile courts, after serving as a public defender for the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Boston. When a spot opened up on CPCS's Youth Advocacy Project, Tan switched to working on juvenile ...It’s Wednesday night in Cambridge and Thursday morning in Beijing, and their seminar rooms are some 6,700 miles apart, but for 30 students from Harvard Law School and the Renmin University of China School of Law, common interests and videoconferencing equipment easily bridge these distances. During this spring semester, students in a reading group taught by HLS Professor William P. Alford and an advanced negotiation skills class taught by Renmin Assistant Professor Alonzo Emery ’10 have come together ...The biennial Harvard Law School Conference on Intellectual Property Law attracted scores of IP lawyers, business people, academicians, and judges to the school April 12 to discuss recent developments in IP law.Harvard Law School Professor Jeannie Suk '02 received the Charles Fried Intellectual Diversity Award from the Harvard Federalist Society in April. The award is bestowed upon a faculty member who has furthered the cause of intellectual diversity and free and open debate at Harvard Law School, both inside and outside of the classroom, regardless of that professor's ideological leanings or favored theories of jurisprudence.It's a classic dilemma: You've finally turned in that take-home exam and you sense that the occasion calls for a celebration, but all your blockmates are busy and the trek to Berryline seems daunting. Before you turn to the time-honored solution of logging into Netflix, Flyby has a few suggestions for celebrating in a more functional way—here are beautiful, alternative creations that you can make yourself.This Wednesday, two men partook in a true test of heart and stomach when they set out to consume thirteen Chickwiches in all thirteen dining halls over the course of one lunch period. William H. Marks '12-'13, an inactive Crimson business editor, and C. M. Trey Grayson '94, director of the Institute of Politics, attempted what has been deemed the "Chickwich Challenge" to raise money for the Phillip Brooks House Association.Five panelists at Harvard Divinity School — including Dean David N. Hempton — grappled with the ways religion is sometimes used to justify acts of terror, covering as well the role of faith traditions in encouraging healing.One senior from each of Harvard’s Houses will speak during Morning Prayers as part of "Senior Talks." The May 9 speaker is Fred-Ivo Baca of Leverett House, with the series concluding on May 16 with Cassandra Thomson of Winthrop House.Eight rapid-fire, TED-style talks of five minutes each by Harvard Ph.D.
students kicked off the inaugural Harvard Horizons symposium on May 6 in
Sanders Theatre. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) program,
featuring the most innovative thinking of a select group of doctoral
candidates, was conceived by Reischauer Institute professor of cultural history Shigehisa
Kuriyama with the support of GSAS dean Xiao-Li
Meng , who referred to
the two men’s own experiences as graduate students at ...The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) devoted most of its
last meeting of the academic year, on May 7, to an unusual, wide-ranging
discussion of FAS and University governance. The subject was introduced as a
formal agenda item, docketed in advance of the meeting, under this bland
description: On behalf of
the Faculty Council, Professor Maya Jasanoff will lead a discussion on
consultation, communication, and governance. But the origins of the item—from
the faculty’s elected Council representatives, ...Any business trying to sell its products profitably must have some idea of what sales and hence revenue would be at different prices. Suppose we double our prices. Sales will fall, but will margins go up so much that it is worth it? Suppose we halve our prices. Margins will fall, but will sales go up so much that it is worth it? In making these judgments, a business might use historical data or simply guess by adding a mark-up over costs. But there is a better way to learn the structure of demand, one that ...Berkman Events Newsletter Template Upcoming Events / Digital Media May 8th, 2013 berkman luncheon series Cyber War Is Not the Answer, But What Is? Addressing Cyber Conflict While Protecting Privacy and Internet Freedom Tuesday, May 14 , 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor. This event will be webcast live. What does talk of cyber war mean for our liberties? The United States has a new military command for cyberspace, with the Director of the National Security Agency ...Over the past 20 years, no group has endured greater pain and humiliation within organizations than mid-level managers (MLMs — managers from two levels below the CEO down to the line managers). Before the IT revolution, MLMs wielded genuine power within companies, acting as gatekeepers of crucial data, financials, and intelligence. Then, automation and the Web put senior executives in touch with their own front lines — and handed many MLMs their pink slips. MLMs who remained were labeled ...In research described earlier this year in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Elinor Amit, a College Fellow in psychology, along with two collaborators, Cheryl Wakslak and Yaacov Trope, showed that people increasingly prefer to communicate verbally (versus visually) with people who are distant (versus close) — socially, geographically, or temporally.Henry Beyer walked up to a Mini Cooper in the city parking lot across the street from his office in downtown Houston. He waved his brand-new VillageCar card near the door handle and got in. "It looks like someone left something behind," his colleague Tony Cummins said, reaching into the back and picking up a pair of socks. He laughed; Henry grimaced. The two were executives of Beacon Car Rental, one of the industry's most established and respected brands. Henry was the senior vice president of operations. ...Harvard Gazette announces 2013–2014 Radcliffe Institute fellows to engage in science of toys, comedy of tragedies, design of destruction, and more. Harvard Magazine article features Radcliffe Institute 2013-14 fellows and the fifteen Harvard faculty members chosen to be fellows. |