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The Senate confirms Jeremy Stein and Jerome Powell to the Federal Reserve Board .A landmark effort to sequence the genome of the butterfly Heliconius melpomene has revealed that it shares genes that control color patterns with two species that closely mimic its appearance — Heliconius timareta and Heliconius elevatus — suggesting that all three exchange genes as a result of occasional hybridization.Senior Matt Aucoin immersed himself in Harvard’s rich worlds of poetry and music, with a degree in English, a passion for writing and composing, and a future destined for The New Yorker, or the conductor’s chair, or both.Facebook "goes public" tomorrow. Imagine what it might be like inside the company right now. Soon, paper stock option agreements tucked into employee compensation folders could erupt into cascades of real dollars. Maybe employees will soon barge through the doors and board shuttle busses to the BMW dealerships, software bugs be damned. Or something like that. What is it really like to work at a company when it "goes public?" And what happens afterward? How will Mark Zuckerberg hold on to the people who ...An interview with Paul Polman , CEO of Unilever. This interview is featured in the forthcoming June issue of HBR . Download this podcast A written transcript will be available by May 24.On a tour of a slum settlement in Ahmedabad City, India, Martha “Marty” Chen paused when she noticed a woman hunched over a neat row of little pill bottles.In my last blog post , I encouraged thoroughly investigating the culture you're thinking of joining. In the comments, some people agreed they needed to learn about culture but were unsure how to approach it. A few were skeptical. I believe you can learn about culture, even in the early stages. Here are suggestions about how to structure your inquiry. To get started, be clear what culture to learn about. In a large institution, there may be big differences across departments. Cultures also can be moving ...Three-quarters of the world's CEOs say more emphasis should be placed on measuring the value of non-financial assets such as intellectual capital and customer relationships. This was the headline finding of a recent study (PDF) by the American Institute of CPAs and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. Considering the sponsors, it's sort of like the Army reporting that what we really need is more battleships. Unexpected, to say the least. But let's give our financial colleagues credit for ...Tony Schwartz's recent post The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time made a convincing case for staying focused. His claim that multitasking reduces individual productivity by about 25% is well supported by a mountain of research and other evidence . Schwartz argues that it's up to individuals and managers to avoid the multitasking trap. But I look at it a different way: ultimately, it's up to institutions to make sure employees are focused. Businesses and government agencies that are serious about improving ...Calling the Kennedy School "the voice of public service at Harvard," University President Drew Faust welcomed alumni from across seven decades Friday to a special 75th anniversary conference.For anyone running a sales organization, the 48 hours before a pipeline presentation are the worst days of the month. The pipeline meeting is where you tell management your team's sales forecast for the next month, and no matter how good your numbers were last month, your work life is a mess. In the days and weeks leading up to this point, you've had everyone send you their individual and team projections. You've told them, "Update me on the deals you've been working on, tell me about the new ones, ...Harvard Kennedy School news citiations May 17, 2012Each year, twenty million babies worldwide are born prematurely or with a low birth weight, and four million of them die, most in developing nations. Those who survive often suffer from low IQ, diabetes, and heart disease when they reach adulthood. According to the World Health Organization, 75% of these deaths and ailments could be averted by simply keeping these premature babies warm. Unfortunately, current options for warming babies in developing nations are either expensive or unsafe. The incubators ...What do your innovators want? What do they need from you? Earlier this month, we invited the HBR community on Twitter to share their personal insights into what they need to be at their most innovative. "What can your organizations do to help you?" we asked. "If you tell us, we will pass your comments on." A spirited conversation followed, one whose very richness demonstrates just what a challenge fostering innovation really is. Innovators are, almost by definition, a diverse lot, and our discussion made ...Published: May 17, 2012 Paper Released: April 2012 Authors: Michael Ewens and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf Executive Summary: Venture capital investments are an important engine of innovation and economic growth, but extremely risky from an individual investor's point of view. Furthermore, there are large differences in fund performance between top quartile and bottom quartile venture capital funds. The ability to consistently produce top performing investments implies that there is something unique and ...There she stood, in northern Libya, a spread of explosive weapons before her: mortars and rockets and surface-to-air missiles almost 20 feet long. For all her work in post-conflict zones, senior clinical instructor Bonnie Docherty ’01 had never seen anything like it. The weapons stretched on for miles. It was March, five months after the revolution had ended, and Docherty was supervising a team from the International Human Rights Clinic on a trip to assess the humanitarian risks of abandoned weapons. As ...New Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Faculty Working Paper co-authored by HKS Assistant Professor Filipe Campante.Supermassive black holes snack infrequently, making the recent discovery of a black hole in the act of feeding all the more interesting to astronomers.Every day brings some new bit of information — or hype — about social business. If you actively follow the social space, it's easy to get caught in the never-ending stream. If you don't, you may find all the talk about social overwhelming. So it's useful to step back, gain some perspective and see the bigger picture. And it is a big picture. Communication revolutions like this have happened before, but you have to go back to Gutenberg in 1450 to find one as significant. Before Gutenberg's ...As part of the John Harvard Book Celebration, Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean Kathleen McCartney spoke about the most effective ways to close the achievement gap between low-income students and their middle and higher-income peers.Harvard Kennedy School news citations for May 16, 2012Ever been shut down by someone who supposedly knows more than you? It happens to me daily. I get denied by people that are more senior, more polished, and more knowledgeable than me. I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed professional rejection , but I try my best to dust myself off and move forward, reminding myself that that a series of controlled failures are necessary for eventual success. Not surprisingly, I'm not the only one getting ignored because of my inexperience, and the rejections can be downright ...The World e-Government Forum named Jeremy Heimans MPP 2003 and Purpose.com co-founder David Madden among the “Top 10 People Who Are Changing the World of the Internet and Politics."You want to start a business. So you need a plan, right? No. Not really. As part of the research for a book I'm co-authoring — Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck , due out in August from HBR Press — my colleagues and I interviewed and surveyed hundreds of successful entrepreneurs around the globe to better understand what it takes to be an entrepreneur and build a really great business. One of our most striking findings was that of the entrepreneurs we surveyed who had a successful exit (that is, an ...You probably think that the barriers to innovation are negative elements of your organization — that is, the wrong people, behaviors, and processes. But the most subtle and pernicious barriers to innovation may be the seemingly positive myths about what has made your organization successful. Every organization has myths about who are the great leaders, what are the behaviors to admire and imitate, what business you are in, what customers want, what are the best skills to run a process. Whenever ...Berkman Events Newsletter Template Upcoming Events and Digital Media May 16th, 2012 Remember to load images if you have trouble seeing parts of this email. Or click here to view the web version of this newsletter. Below you will find upcoming Berkman Center events, interesting digital media we have produced, and other events of note. berkman luncheon series A Public Right to Hear and Press Freedom in an Age of Networked Journalism Tuesday, May 22 , 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 ...The Phi Beta Kappa Alpha Iota Chapter of Massachusetts announced three recipients of the Phi Beta Kappa Prize in Excellence in Teaching for this academic year.Steven Hoffman, a doctoral candidate in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Health Policy program, has been awarded the prestigious 2012 Trudeau Scholarship.Harvard’s Department of Biostatistics announced that Melissa D. Begg will be the first recipient of the newly established Lagakos Distinguished Alumni Award.HP announced in March that it was combining its printer and personal computer businesses. According to CEO Meg Whitman, "The result will be a faster, more streamlined, performance-driven HP that is customer focused." But that remains to be seen. The merging of the two businesses is a reversal for HP. In 2005, HP split off the printer business from the personal computer business, dissolved the Customer Solutions Group (CSG) which was a sales and marketing organization that cut across product categories, and ...The new millennium has not brought much progress for women seeking top leadership roles in the workplace. Although female graduates continue to pour out of colleges and professional schools, the percentages of women running large companies, or serving as managing partners of their law firms, or sitting on corporate boards have barely budged in the past decade. Why has progress stalled? A recent study suggests the unlikeliest of reasons: the marriage structure of men in the workplace. A group of researchers ...In Sunday’s first-ever Ivy League Championship, the Radcliffe heavyweight varsity eight kicked off a new Ancient Eight tradition in style.Published: May 16, 2012 Author: J. Ronald Fox Editor's note: Even with recent disclosures about out-of-control spending on corporate perks and government agency parties, the US military is frequently held up as the exemplar of organizational largesse run wild. In the new book Defense Acquisition Reform 1960-2009: An Elusive Goal , J. Ronald Fox, the Tiampo Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, analyzes efforts since the Kennedy administration to reform defense spending on aircraft, ships, ...Technology is meant to serve us. Instead it increasingly runs us — and runs us down. Where we put our focus shapes our agenda and defines our experience in every moment. More and more, we're turning over this precious resource to our digital technology, allowing it to define the depth and span of our attention, and to seduce us into operating at such high speeds that we don't notice the insidious toll that's taking. I see it in myself, as I fight to stay focused on what's most important, and to ...Approaching the 361st Harvard Commencement, we asked several degree candidates to reflect on their Harvard Extension School experiences. Below, Tasneem Mohammed, a 2012 degree candidate in the Mathematics for Teaching Graduate Program, shares some of her favorite memories and how the lessons learned in her Extension School classes have carried over into her own classroom. [...]Safe Childbirth Checklist Program Aims to Prevent Maternal and Newborn Deaths in Low-Income Countries For immediate release: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 Boston, MA - A new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the World Health Organization (WHO) found that a simple checklist-based childbirth safety program dramatically improved adherence to essential childbirth care practices at a pilot hospital in south India. Of 29 practices measured, 28 were improved after adoption of the checklist and ...People get awfully excited about quotas. So do countries. After Norway's lead in 2008, gender quotas on corporate boards have been rolling out in a whole series of countries: Spain, then France, the Netherlands, even Italy voted them in. EU Commissioner Viviane Reding is pushing hard , and if she has her say, and if companies continue to make so little progress unassisted, quotas are likely to become an EU reality within the next few years. Managers in Anglo-Saxon countries hate the idea. And perhaps ...The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University has selected Harvard Law School Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen '03 to be a Radcliffe Institute fellow for the 2012–2013 academic year. Cohen is among the 51 women and men who will pursue independent projects in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences within the rich, multidisciplinary community.The Harvard co-ed sailing team has just shortened its summer.Final grades are finally in, thank goodnees. With 100+ students, even entering the grades is non-trivial. Once again, freshman in my undergraduate Algorithms and Data Structures class receive A's at a substantially higher rate than other students. (Way, way higher.) My conclusion: it's best for your grade if you take my class as a freshman.After stints in medicine and investment banking, Andrew Heffernan (MBA 2006) realized what he'd been missing. Read More >As the chairman of Peters & Co. Limited, an investment firm specializing in oil and gas, Michael Tims is well established in the Canadian investment banking industry. Yet classroom memories of helping to "crack the case" have stayed with him. Read More >How do we balance the empowering possibilities of the networked public sphere with the dark, unsettling, and even dangerous energies of cyberspace? Matthew Battles — author, cofounder of the blogHiLobrow.com, and program fellow with metaLAB (at) Harvard — blends a deep-historical perspective on the internet with storytelling that reaches into its weird, uncanny depths. The [...]Cathy Davidson , Duke University professor and HASTAC cofounder, shares new ways to collaborate, share, and learn, which make teams more productive. She is the author of Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn .If you've spent any amount of time in executive retreats or leadership off-sites, you've probably been asked to participate in a familiar evaluation of your career and impact. "Take twenty minutes," a facilitator will say, "and write your professional obituary. What legacy did you leave? What contribution did you make? What might colleagues remember about you?" At one level, it's a strange (and slightly morbid) exercise. At another level, it serves a worthwhile purpose — encouraging leaders to see ...The other day, I finally tackled a long-overdue task: reviewing a stack of VHS tapes to see what was on them and whether it was worth digitizing. Amidst the usual detritus (Patriots games and Saturday Night Live episodes of yore), I found an unexpected discovery: a tape of the 1993 lesbian and gay march on Washington . Replaying those clips, I realized the difference two decades has wrought — not just in the acceptance of gays and lesbians in the workplace, but even more so in our ability to create ...Harvard Kennedy School news citations for May 15, 2012How do we balance the empowering possibilities of the networked public sphere with the dark, unsettling, and even dangerous energies of cyberspace? Matthew Battles — author, cofounder of the blogHiLobrow.com, and program fellow with metaLAB (at) Harvard — blends a deep-historical perspective on the internet with storytelling that reaches into its weird, uncanny depths. The [...]To stay competitive, organizations need to continually find opportunities for innovation in key processes such as customer service and product development, and adoption of a new process almost always requires the implementation of new information technology. In his 1990 classic HBR article " Reengineering Work: Don't Automate, Obliterate ," Michael Hammer argued that IT must drive radical process innovation. Unfortunately, this creates two problems. First, as Hammer argued, these large investments in new ...Have you ever been in a situation where everyone seemingly agrees on a particular strategy , but somehow it never happens? See if you identify with this example: A technology firm — with a number of different product areas, geographic units, and service functions — was figuring out how to integrate services for their largest global customers. After extensive planning, the senior management team decided to assign experienced executives to a dozen of these customers, and give them the authority ...Institutional banking businesses — including trading operations — typically don't have high barriers to entry. There are few copyrights or patents. Both the talent and customers are extremely mobile. It does require capital to get in, but new capital has historically flowed into the system. When a U.S. financial institution has pulled back or failed, there has almost always been a European bank or a Japanese bank or some other player willing to take over its trading operations or enter the ...This week marks the release of Clayton Christensen's highly-anticipated book, How Will You Measure Your Life (with co-authors James Allworth and Karen Dillon). The book expands on Christensen's McKinsey-award-winning HBR article , drawing life lessons from the models that form the basis of his business-oriented writing. I first heard the germs of those ideas in late 2000. At the time I was one of Christensen's students at HBS. Like all professors, Christensen used his final class lecture to share broader ...These probably aren't words that you were expecting to see in the same sentence — Harvard Business School and empathy. But as I reflect back on my time as a student there, I've begun to realize that more than anything else, this is one of the the most valuable things that the school teaches. It starts on day one. You're put into a "section" with 90 incredibly smart folks, people with whom you quickly become good friends. Then the moment arrives when you step into class, prepared for a case discussion ..."A ballot initiative this November would give California a whopping 13.3 percent top marginal rate for state income taxes." Source .Samari left Togo as a young man, determined to pursue his education free of the threats and violence that plagued the college he had attended back home.Jamie Oliver, the internationally acclaimed chef of “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” will be honored by the Harvard School of Public Health for his substantial achievements in working to end the childhood obesity epidemic.Noted neuroscience professor S. Allen Counter was appointed Knight of the Order of the Polar Star First Class by Carl XVI Gustaf, king of Sweden.“Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War,” a book by Megan Kate Nelson, has recently been published by the University of Georgia Press.The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School announced it will fund 23 students through experiential learning projects this summer.The World Trade Organization has appointed Harvard Law School alumnus and former HLS Visiting Professor of Law Seung Wha Chang LL.M. ’92 S.J.D. ’94 to serve on its seven-member Appellate Body. Chang will settle international trade disputes alongside distinguished trade experts from the U.S., the E.U., China, India, Mexico and South Africa.Tuesday, May 15, 12:30 pm Berkman Center, 23 Everett Street, second floor This event is now at capacity; the event will be webcast live at 12:30 pm ET and archived on our site shortly after. How do we balance the empowering possibilities of the networked public sphere with the dark, unsettling, and even dangerous energies of cyberspace? Matthew Battles blends a deep-historical perspective on the internet with storytelling that reaches into its weird, uncanny depths. It's a hybrid approach, reflecting the ...I am not pessimistic about Facebook's future. I have used the social network for eight years and continue to be impressed with Mark Zuckerberg's focus on product and his vision for the internet. When I logged into the site for the first time in the spring of 2004, I was prepared to hate the service. It was just weeks until Zuckerberg's addictive platform won me over. And that was a far inferior Facebook: a sophomoric site where Zuck's own silhouette still hovered in the top left corner of every page. ...The higher up in the organization you get, the less likely you'll receive constructive feedback on your ideas, performance, or strategy. No one wants to offend the boss, right? But without input, your development will suffer, you may become isolated, and you're likely to miss out on hearing some great ideas. So, what can you do to get people to tell you what you may not want to hear? What the Experts Say Most people have good reasons for keeping their opinions from higher ups. "People with formal power can ...The Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard announced the recipients of the 2012 Norman Podhoretz Prize in Jewish Studies and the 2012 Selma and Lewis Weinstein Prize in Jewish Studies.Planes are now held together by tape, not bolts. It's really, really strong tape, but still. Who knew the maker of Post-It Notes could help keep aircraft aloft? This somewhat frightening factoid is just one of the fascinating things I learned in a recent visit to the St. Paul, MN, headquarters of the perennial innovation leader, 3M. During my daylong visit, I observed a quiet, longtime sustainability leader plugging away, creating new products that will help the world save energy, water, waste...and lots ...While recovering from knee surgery may have required Jeremy Lin ’10 to sit out the NBA playoffs, all is not lost for the Harvard alum this summer.Connecting Home Depot Perhaps no organization is as attached to its brick-and-mortar roots than a store that actually sells bona fide bricks and mortar. But even Home Depot realizes the importance of a multifaceted retail strategy. In the case "Home Depot and Interconnected Retail," José B. Alvarez, Zeynep Ton, and Ryan Johnson discuss how the home improvement giant grappled with marrying multiple marketing channels. Explaining coordination's role in collaboration In examining the aspects of successful ...Harvard Law School S.J.D. candidate Claire Houston has been named a recipient of the Julius B. Richmond Fellowship from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. She will receive a dissertation grant totaling $10,000 from the Center to fund independent research during the 2012-13 academic year. Houston is the first student from HLS to be awarded this honor.Ivy League athletic directors have blocked proposed plans for a four-team playoff, instead voting to maintain the league’s current system for crowning a conference champion.Bite your nails, hold your breath, take a shot.... Grades are now up.University Health Services has decided not to implement a plan to close Stillman Infirmary and after-hours urgent care this summer, according to a letter sent by UHS Director David S. Rosenthal last Wednesday.Harvard men’s heavyweight and lightweight crew both competed in Worcester, Mass. on Sunday for the EARC Sprints championship. While the heavyweights were defeated in the first varsity race, they came away with a freshman eight title and an overall team win. The lightweights secured the varsity title for the second year in a row and placed second as a team.This piece was co-authored with Whitney Hess , founder and principal of Vicarious Partners, a leading user experience consultancy based in NYC. I confess — I have a somewhat clunky phone manner. I tend to dispense with small talk, go straight to the business at hand, and when the business is done I'm ready to hang up. I'm so abrupt, once my business partner asked me, "What is UP with you and the phone?" And it's not just business calls: my husband and children lodge similar complaints. I'm not much ...Here is an answer not anticipated in the collection I co-edited by that name: To train economists to help Peter Thiel, who has declared higher education to be a worthless bubble. Thiel Capital wants only applicants who have a "High GPA from top-tier university," thank you very much.A new research paper suggests that public pension funds are “dangerously underfunded to the extent that their assets are unable to meet future liabilities without either outsize investment returns or huge cash infusions”.Harvard Kennedy School news citations for May 14, 2012People often ask me why it's so hard for big companies to be innovative. My answer is "corporate antibodies" — the people and processes that extinguish a new idea as soon as it begins to course through the organization. Corporate antibodies are not just naysayers; they are necessary to protect the company from risk. When they attack an idea, it's because they perceive that idea to be a foreign object trying to harm the stability of the organization. But that doesn't mean innovation can't happen, even ...The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School announced the recipients of its annual Challenges to Democracy Grant program.The National Academy of Sciences elected additional members at its annual meeting on April 30, including Harvard professors Susan Athey and Xiaowei Zhuang.Published: May 14, 2012 Author: Leslie A. Perlow Editor's note: Check out the crowd at a concert, a movie, a school play, a beach—heck, even a funeral—and you'll likely see several people sneaking prolonged peeks at their smartphones. They just can't help themselves. Ringtones and message alerts are siren songs that lure them back to the world of work, no matter where they are. "Let's face it," writes HBS Professor Leslie Perlow. "When that phone buzzes, few of us have the mental fortitude to ...This post is the second in a three-part series. In his provocative book The Paradox of Choice , Barry Schwartz's warns that giving consumers more product choices actually lowers their purchase satisfaction. Schwartz reasons that having too many options makes us fear missing out, which causes anxiety, analysis paralysis and regret. But many marketers have dismissed Schwartz's warning, arguing that today's consumers expect a wide range of options and have learned to filter greater amounts of information. ...Thanks to my brother Dick for this.Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital have uncovered a new way that animals detect pathogens, by detecting disruptions of critical cellular processes.For immediate release: May 8, 2012 Jamie Oliver Boston, MA – Jamie Oliver, the internationally acclaimed chef of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, will be honored by Harvard School of Public Health for his substantial achievements in working to end the childhood obesity epidemic. Jamie Oliver has campaigned to provide schoolchildren in the U.S. and U.K. with whole, freshly cooked food and has inspired millions of people around the world to become passionate about preparing delicious meals from ...Following its first-place victory at the Ivy League Championships, the Harvard women’s golf team faced its toughest set of competitors yet at the NCAA Central Regional at Ohio State's Scarlet Course this past weekend.In the first weekend of the NCAA men’s tennis tournament, the Harvard men’s tennis team both rose and fell, winning its initial match before losing the next afternoon.You've sent out an imploring message over every house and interest group email list, to no avail. You still need a roommate. Good thing Craigslist has more to offer than serial killers and casual encounters. We know finding someone to physically live with through the virtual world can be daunting, but luckily Flyby is here to help you with a few trustworthy tips.Apparently a chaste activity does exist that is analogous to sex: talking about oneself. A recent series of studies conducted by Harvard neuroscientist and Associate Professor Jason P. Mitchell (who taught SLS 20 in 2010) and psychology student at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Diana I. Tamir found that self-disclosure activates the same regions of the brain that are associated with food, money, and sex.The Harvard softball team completed one of its group goals Friday by claiming a second straight title. But that wasn’t the only accomplishment achieved by the squad this year.Yale economist John Geanakoplos discusses his view of the financial crisis. It takes about an hour.Led by its pair of aces, the Harvard softball team earned its second straight conference title by sweeping Penn.Every week, The Crimson publishes a selection of articles that were printed in our pages in years past.“It’s important we focus on the future, not the past,” warned Richard Gingras, head of news products for Google. “We can’t reverse time.” Gingras came to the Nieman Journalism Lab Friday not as doomsayer from Silicon Valley to predict the demise of the news business, but rather to foresee a bright future.Most members of the Harvard men’s tennis team only just finished finals, but for each of them, the real test starts now.Interested in European history? Economics? Politics? The Center for European Studies Library is selling its books on these topics until 6 p.m. today.NYU has a Shanghai campus . When challenged as to whether free speech and free inquiry could really take place at NYU Shanghai, NYU's President Sexton said , “I have no trouble distinguishing between rights of academic freedom and rights of political expression. These are two different things.” So then, are the words "New York University" academic or political speech? The latter, apparently, according to the Chinese Internet censors. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education , China’s Internet ...Donald Berwick ’68, M.D.-M.P.P. ’72, lecturer on
healthcare policy and former
administrator of the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS), will address Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Dental
Medicine degree candidates on May 23 as Class Day speaker. Berwick has championed
the interests of patients and consumers while simultaneously speaking out on
the need to ration healthcare and cap spending. A pediatrician by training, Berwick resigned from the Obama
administration in ...Harvard Kennedy School's 75th Anniversary Conference is held at the Charles Hotel on May 11, 2012Diane Paulus explained her approach to theater, one that involves the active engagement of the audience.A “proof-of-concept” study that applies financial portfolio theory to federal life science research funding shows that potentially significant gains are available by altering the allocation of funding by the National Institutes of Health.Three Harvard Kennedy School alumni will be honored with awards during Reunion Weekend, May 11-13, 2012Harvard Kennedy School news citations for May 11, 2012New York Magazine columnist Frank Rich ’71, previously a longtime theater critic and
political columnist for The New York
Times who was profiled in Harvard Magazine in 2007, will be
the speaker at the annual dinner of the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus (HGLC), held on the
evening of Commencement Day, May 24. The
HGLC’s newsletter describes Rich as “one of the LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual] community’s most outspoken straight allies.” Rich
is not the first heterosexual to keynote ...Diversity is the crucial element for group creativity. Innovation teams tasked with creating new products or technologies or iterating existing ones need tension to produce breakthroughs, and tension comes from diverse points of view. This is the opposite of groupthink, the creativity-killing phenomenon of too much agreement and too similar perspectives that often paralyzes otherwise great teams. We've all been on these teams. Everyone is just like us — say, marketers or engineers. Consensus comes ...Colorful Realm: Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings by Itō Jakuchū
(1716–1800) was the seventh most-visited show in theNational Gallery of Art’s history, as measured by the number of visitors per day. The exhibit, which closed April 29 , drew an average of 7,473 visitors each day of its month-long run, placing it just ahead of
the National Gallery’s 1976 hosting of the international traveling exhibit Treasures of Tutankhamun . The suite of Japanese
nature paintings by the eighteenth-century ...A serious threat facing most brands in dynamic markets is the loss of relevance because the category or subcategory they are serving is declining. Customers are no longer buying what the brand is perceived to make. New categories or subcategories emerge as competitors' innovations create "must haves." This dynamic can happen even if the brand is strong; customers are loyal; and the offering has never been better, thanks to incremental innovations. Relevance dominates. If a group of customers wants a ...The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel , a new film set in India and directed by Shakespeare in Love's John Madden (age 63), hangs its plot on the notion of "outsourcing" the elderly. Sonny, a young Indian entrepreneur played by Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel, opens a once-grand, now-crumbling palace as a kind of Leisure World for the global village. Early in the action he tells his disapproving mother that he has a dream to get rich and do some good in the process: "A most brilliant one: to outsource old age," ...We aren't being critical with that headline. But the problem really is you. More specifically, it's the way you were taught to think. However, don't feel bad. First, of all you are not alone. All of us have the same problem. Second, and much more important, there is a solution. But first let's explain how the problem was created in the first place. From even before kindergarten, we all were taught to reason in a way that works fantastically well in a predictable world: you establish a goal; you construct a ...Pinterest surged into the spotlight earlier this year when it was revealed that it drives more web traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined. What's so compelling about a website that lets you make virtual bulletin boards of "pinned" images, observers wondered, and does this service now belong in the pantheon of must-use social tools like Facebook and Twitter? Perhaps most important, marketers are asking, is this something that will drive revenue? Not long after the Pinterest spike, my employer, ...Published: May 11, 2012 Paper Released: April 2012 Author: Gary P. Pisano Executive Summary: This note by Gary P. Pisano provides a framework for designing an R&D strategy. It starts with the simple notion that a strategy is a system approach to solving a problem. An R&D strategy is defined a coherent set of interrelated choices across decision concerning: organizational architecture, processes, people, and project portfolios. To illustrate the framework, we use examples of three pharmaceutical companies ...In his wonderful book Expert Political Judgment , psychologist Philip Tetlock (following the lead of Isaiah Berlin ), divided the world of political forecasters into hedgehogs and foxes: The intellectually aggressive hedgehogs knew one big thing and sought, under the banner of parsimony, to expand the explanatory power of that big thing to "cover" new cases; the more eclectic foxes knew many little things and were content to improvise ad hoc solutions to keep pace with a rapidly changing world. These ...If you're wondering what to do next in your career, you're hardly alone. The debate about where and how we may best feed our hunger for mastery, service, prestige, approval, safety, achievement — whatever we're after — is fiercer than ever. Do you go after, or hold on to, a corporate job or strike out on your own? Daniel Gulati and Lucy Kellaway recently offered contrasting views. There is less need to join prominent institutions today to demonstrate our worth, argued Gulati, an entrepreneur, ...Apple is the latest company to execute what I like to call the "Little Dutch Boy" approach to CSR strategy. The apocryphal Dutch legend tells of a boy who, upon seeing a trickle of sea water coming through a hole in a dyke, pokes his finger in to stem the flow. Many companies have taken a similar approach to CSR . Instead of acknowledging the rising tide of social expectations on the other side of their corporate PR bulwark, executives respond reactively to each individual activist or community complaint. ...In the spirit of reverse innovation, and reverse mentoring , I submit to you that the next trend to watch out for in leadership is, you guessed it — reverse leadership. You've likely seen reverse leadership in action. It happens when someone not in a formal leadership role demonstrates great leadership ability: when a field service agent steps up with a solution to a persistent problem, for example; when a customer service rep inspires her colleagues through her exemplary customer-centric behavior. ...At its founding eight years ago, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute had fewer than ten principal faculty members, according to Benjamin D. Humphreys, co-director of the HSCI Kidney Program. Today, that number has ballooned to more than 80.Interest rates on student loans have become a point of contention between U.S. Senator Scott Brown and Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren in the 2012 U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts.Full Circle—if it comes to fruiton—will be a culmination of several youth-oriented projects that Cambridge has undertaken in past years. But financing and potential partnerships are still up in the air.A sandwich stand on Harvard Medical School property that has long been beloved by the Longwood Medical Area community has been threatened with closure if it does not make improvements to meet city codes.Sixty-five Harvard University Library employees have accepted early retirement packages as part of the Library’s Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Program, according to a University spokesperson.Bioengineering, an academic unit of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is on the table to move to Allston, according to several University officials.As Harvard’s peer institutions move to update their sexual misconduct policies by lowering the standard of evidence required for a guilty conviction, two lawyers interviewed for this article say that these universities’ changes may encourage Harvard to follow suit.Physicians looking to make surgeries safer took some cutting-edge questions in medical device design to a group of Harvard students, who presented their attempts at solutions this week.On Wednesday, President Obama did one of the most courageous things I have ever seen a president do; on the eve of a hotly contested election to be decided by a few swing states, he declared his personal support for gay marriage.What worries me is that I think Harvard students have convinced ourselves that we have such a theory, one that exculpates us from sacrifice while leaving us convinced that we are doing the right thing. We call it “meritocracy.”But it was not until Wednesday, when President Barack Obama became the first sitting President of the United States to express full support for same-sex marriage, that I felt again that same stunned joy I’d felt back in 2004.Although it is terribly unfortunate that the president ever chose to feign opposition to marriage equality, it is nevertheless extremely heartening that, as of Wednesday, the president of the United States of America, for the first time in history, supports true equality for gay Americans.On April 27, Harvard University honored a group of 10 students chosen as 2012 Presidential Fellows for their commitment to public service initiatives, only the second group to be awarded grants from the Presidential Public Service Fellowship Program at Harvard. Current Harvard Law School students Crystal Redd '13 and Angela Chuang '13 were among those selected as fellows.Freshman runner Ashley Collinsworth has learned about the challenges of being a college athlete from her father, Cris.Members of the Crimson baseball team decided to cover Carly Rae Jepsen’s hit song. Little did they know that their boredom would lead to stardom.A desire to understand why America remained passive despite increasing incidences of violence towards Jews in Germany in the 1930s inspired Erik Larsen to write his most recent book “In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Berlin,” the author explained in a talk in Sanders Theatre Wednesday evening.Done with exams but not done with BoardPlus? Read on for Flyby's tips to finish up any leftover BoardPlus, whether you want to share the wealth or stock up for the summer.An interview with Daniel Gross , columnist and economics editor for Yahoo! Finance and author of Better, Stronger, Faster: The Myth of American Decline . . . and the Rise of a New Economy . Download this podcast A written transcript will be available by May 17.The professional world is powered by favors — busy individuals helping those in their extended networks land highly contested roles, get feedback on ideas, or connect with influencers, typically without the expectation of either compensation or reciprocation. I've been on the receiving end of many professional favors , the givers of which I'm deeply indebted to. I believe that in today's world, if you don't ask, you don't get, and that's why I'm more than happy to extend favors, large and small, to ...In the first year of Harvard’s renewed early admissions program, the yield for the class of 2016 soared to nearly 81 percent, a significant increase from last year’s rate of 77 percent, the University announced on Thursday.Nearly 81 percent of students admitted to Harvard’s Class of 2016 have chosen to matriculate at the College. The last time the yield on admitted students reached 80 percent was 41 years ago.Harvard President Drew Faust met with a new crop of Presidential Public Service Fellows for a candid discussion of what the University can do to promote public service as a career and a calling.Harvard College announced today that nearly 81 percent of
students admitted to the class of 2016, enrolling this coming August, had
decided to matriculate. The last time the “yield” reached 80 percent, according
to the College news release ,
was in 1971, for admission to the class of 1975. Last year, 75.9 percent of
admitted students enrolled. The elevated acceptance rate was expected, given the College’s
reinstatement of voluntary early-action admissions for this class.
Typically, early-action and ...It's pretty widely accepted that people's innate intelligence doesn't change much. Youth, health, and a positive environment can help people make better use of their brains, but they can't do much to make the brains significantly better — at least on the weight of the evidence so far. But an organization's brains can change. A new measure — RQ — that I presented in my HBR article out this month allows you to assess your R&D effectiveness quite precisely. I applied this metric to a sample ...“Envision,” a tool developed with backing from the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure at GSD, provides a comprehensive framework for governments and industry to evaluate infrastructure projects of all types and sizes based on environmental, economic, and community benefits.Here's a rough summary of our worldview: excellence = design x culture. Your job as a leader is to get both right. You must build a winning structure for your organization and then foster the often unspoken rules and values that will bring that structure to life. People tend to gravitate towards the design challenge, which includes things like strategy, business models, and incentive systems. The levers of design change are tangible. We can draw org charts and issue stock options. We can hire management ...Resumes are dead. Interviews are largely ineffectual. Linked-In is good. Portfolios are useful. But projects are the real future of hiring, especially knowledge working hiring. No matter how wonderful your references or how well you do on those too-clever-by-half Microsoft/Google brainteasers , serious firms will increasingly ask serious candidates to do serious work in order to get a serious job offer. Call them "projeclications" or "applijects." World-class talent will engage in bespoke real-world ...In the recent HBR article "The Crowdfunding Road to Hell," Daniel Isenberg argues persuasively that crowdfunding — specifically equity crowdfunding — cannot work. As an entrepreneur, angel investor, VC, philanthropist, and CEO with 40 years' experience, I cannot agree. From my experience investing in emerging start-ups (I'm invested in 60 right now) and launching my share of both failures (4) and highly successful (3) companies, I can attest that Mr. Isenberg is perfectly correct in his ...The most famous cognitive obstacle to innovation is functional fixedness — an idea first articulated in the 1930s by Karl Duncker — in which people tend to fixate on the common use of an object. For example, the people on the Titanic overlooked the possibility that the iceberg could have been their lifeboat. Newspapers from the time estimated the size of the iceberg to be between 50-100 feet high and 200-400 feet long. Titanic was navigable for awhile and could have pulled aside the iceberg. ...Cambridge, MA — The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University announced today that five new members have been appointed to its Board of Directors, bringing the total number of directors to thirteen. The new members are: Susan Crawford (Visiting Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the Kennedy School of Government; Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School); Phillip Malone (Clinical Professor of Law; director, Cyberlaw Clinic); Felix Oberholzer-Gee (Andreas Andresen Professor of ...Net Promoter Score (NPS) is perhaps the best known customer loyalty tool around today, based on the entirely sound principle that the more customer promoters you have (i.e., customers who say on surveys that they're highly likely to refer you to a colleague or friend), the more likely you'll be to grow your business and outpace the competition. That makes powerful sense, and the continued growth and success of Net Promoter is a testament to the idea's relevance and value. But I have found in my years of ...The American Philosophical Society awarded the Jacques Barzun Prize for the best book in cultural history published in 2010 to Amabel B. James Professor of History Peter E. Gordon.The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures recently awarded two V.M. Setchkarev Memorial Prizes of $500 each at its spring reception this May.Published: May 10, 2012 Paper Released: April 2012 Author: Julie Wulf Executive Summary: For decades, management consultants and the popular business press have urged large firms to flatten their hierarchies. Flattening (or delayering, as it is also known) typically refers to the elimination of layers in a firm's organizational hierarchy, and the broadening of managers' spans of control. While flattening is said to reduce costs, its alleged benefits flow primarily from changes in internal governance: by ...Harvard Kennedy School news citations for May 10, 2012.William Bratton, former Los Angeles police chief and police commissioner of New York, discussed his new book, “Collaborate or Perish! Reaching across Boundaries in a Networked World” (New York: Crown Business, 2012), at the 13th annual Police Union Leadership Seminar hosted by the Labor & Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. Susan Farbstein, a leading practitioner in the field of human rights, has been appointed assistant clinical professor of law and co-director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School .In 1932, in a Philadelphia courtroom, a defense attorney representing a man accused of murder cross-examined a police officer. There was nothing unusual about this scene, except that the defense attorney, Raymond Pace Alexander ’23, was black, and the officer he was aggressively questioning was white. This scene is one of many dramatic moments in the new book by HLS Professor Kenneth Mack ’91, “Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer.” I'm told my exams are not nearly as much fun as I like to think they are. (It's a very rare occurrence when someone turns in their exam early at my 3-hour final.) I can say that this year they weren't much fun to grade. The issue was the large class size -- the final number was 110 (about twice the size of last year). You'd think with more TAs it might not take too much longer to grade... but apparently there are non-linearities in there somewhere. Anyhow, grading took about 6 hours today. For any ...Harvard Kennedy School news citations for May 9, 2012It seems that you can't go anywhere these days without seeing a new pretender to a digital revolution in education. Just this week, Harvard and MIT launched an online initiative, edX . It follows Stanford University's digital education initiatives and the start-ups it has spawned, CourseRA and Udacity. Apple (with iTunes U) and now Microsoft (with its deal with Barnes & Noble) are also moving into course materials. And then there has been a longstanding set of course management tools with a dominant and ...The first Design Fair at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) displayed the wealth of ideas that have emerged at SEAS throughout this past academic year.Harvard researchers have shown that a compound called rutin, commonly found in fruits and vegetables and sold over the counter as a dietary supplement, inhibits the formation of blood clots in an animal model of thrombosis.Anne Morriss , managing director of the Concire Leadership Institute, explains how the coffee giant increased efficiency and satisfaction by treating customers like employees. She is the coauthor of Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business .Most customers now ignore targeted marketing campaigns, avoid responding to offers, and provide minimal feedback when asked. Instead, potential customers interact with each other, bypassing sanitized corporate messages devoid of meaning or value. Meanwhile, employees increasingly look beyond compensation to non-monetary factors such as advancement, recognition, and corporate social responsibility in choosing where to work. And with the retirement of the Baby Boomers looming, attracting, retaining, and ...Mindsets matter. For more than two years, we and others have been talking about the need to shift the prevailing view among managers, boards of directors and investors from "quarterly capitalism" to what we call "capitalism for the long term" . Together with Harvard Business Review and the Management Innovation eXchange, we have issued a challenge calling for the most instructive case studies and provocative ideas that will help us re-imagine capitalism for the long term. Despite promising signs of change, ...Miranda Morrison ’14 and Patrick Rooney ’14 were presented with the Joseph L. Barrett Award at a special ceremony on May 2.The Delta Kappa Gamma Society International has selected Donna Hicks’ “Dignity: The Essential Role It Plays in Resolving Conflict” as the recipient of its 2012 Educators Award.The innovator's quest has been to find the win-win proposition: a great new product that can create differentiated value for consumers while supporting differentiated profits for the producer. But the focus on win-win can blind us to the needs of critical partners. When success depends on others — suppliers, complementors, distributors, retailers — satisfying end consumers is not enough. The innovator's job is now to create wins across the board. Win-lose-win is a recipe for failure. Nokia's ...Berkman Events Newsletter Template Upcoming Events and Digital Media May 9th, 2012 Remember to load images if you have trouble seeing parts of this email. Or click here to view the web version of this newsletter. Below you will find upcoming Berkman Center events, interesting digital media we have produced, and other events of note. berkman luncheon series Going Feral on the Net: the Qualities of Survival in a Wild, Wired World Tuesday, May 15 , 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett ...What would you like to learn in 2012-13? Join us at the Harvard Extension School Information Session on Wednesday, June 13, to explore your options and see what’s new for the coming year. Whether you are interested in taking a course or pursuing a professional certificate or degree, you will have an opportunity to speak [...]Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis will work with United Nations University on a system that will allow users to track and map wildlife crime, and how it is related to a host of socioeconomic factors.As the online waters rose, executives at the Susan G. Komen Foundation huddled behind their fortress walls like first-class passengers on the Titanic. The AP broke the story of Komen de-funding Planned Parenthood Federation of America on Monday, January 30th. As the online world took them to task, according to marketing blogger, Kivi Leroux Miller , nearly 24 hours went by before Komen posted anything on its Facebook or Twitter accounts and three days before Nancy Brinker, Komen's CEO, released a video ...Published: May 9, 2012 Author: Clayton Christensen Editor's note: Every year, HBS Professor Clayton Christensen teaches students that well-tested academic theories can help them succeed not just in business, but in life. He expounds upon those lessons in his forthcoming book, How Will You Measure Your Life? Co-authored with James Allworth (MBA 2010) and Karen Dillon, the book uses meaningful corporate and personal anecdotes to extoll the value of theory in finding and creating happiness. "You'll see that ...Inspired by the loss of her thirteen year-old daughter, Candice Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in 1980 to combat drunk driving through education and legislation. Just a few years later, Lightner and MADD played a pivotal role in passing a federal law which penalized any state that didn't raise the minimum drinking age to 21. After Barbara Minto joined McKinsey as the firm's first ever female consultant, she found that many management consultants had trouble communicating information ...Most VCs and entrepreneurs believe start-ups are inherently iterative, that a string of mistakes doesn't prevent success, but may even be the path to it. Generally, that view is correct, but there are a few choices made early on that have implications so deep as to be functionally irreversible, with profound implications for outcomes. Product and business models are evolutionary by nature, but we see four things a young company must get right: The founding team The core values Where the company is located ...Lin will not play in his team’s first-round playoff series against the Miami Heat.As the league seeks out higher levels of national exposure, it appears caught between two masters: the pressure to excel as a sports conference and the pull of tradition to maintain the status quo.Tommy Amaker has put together a number of strong recruiting classes during his five years as the Harvard men’s basketball coach.Andrew Campbell established himself as the top U.S. single sculler in the summer of 2011In some ways, those hours spent reading a book or watching a movie are even more impactful on intellectual, moral, and behavioral development than what is traditionally considered “educational.”What prevalent mentalities on education lack is an emphasis on its moral, ethical, and humanistic dimension.Before a journalist suggests, yet again, that Harvard students never put their feet on the ground about issues they care about, it’s important to point out the impressive nature of this school year’s student activism.Illicit Adderall use should be regarded a serious problem on campus, one that carries the potential for serious widespread abuse.“The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” an adaptation of the 1935 opera, scooped up ten Tony nominations last Tuesday, second only to “Once,” the musical version of the eponymous 2006 film.The primate, which has been identified as a marmoset, died in the New England Primate Research Center in Southborough, Mass. after escaping from its cage, being caught with a net by NEPRC staff, and undergoing an imaging procedure.Students headed to summer school most likely imagine long days in stuffy classrooms filled with their least favorite academic subjects instead of their favorite summertime activities.In “Sleeping with Your Smartphone,” Perlow addresses the harmful effects of a work culture that requires employees to respond to work demands at home, during weekends, and on vacation.At Dunster Grille, students pay $3.50 for mozzarella sticks. But only a few block away at Eliot Grille, another student with the same late-night craving pays $4.00, due to price discrepancies that exist between the four grilles in undergraduate houses.Stephen Apkon (MBA 1986) envisioned a starring role for his town's abandoned movie theater. Read More >University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne says that dysfunction within American society promotes high levels of religious belief that in turn blocks general acceptance of evolutionary theories.From the MediaBerkman blog: In today's episode we wrap up our coverage of last week's Rethink Music conference with a conversation between guest host Chris Bavitz and Kristin Thomson . In addition to her work as community organizer, social policy researcher, entrepreneur and musician, Kristin is a consultant at the Future of Music Coalition , which recently unveiled the findings from its massive Artist Revenue Streams project designed to answer the question, "How are today’s musicians earning money?" ...A group of hackers, dubbing itself only as "The Unknowns", claimed that it hacked into parts of Harvard's website, in addition to websites of other major organizations such as NASA, the U.S. Airforce, and the French Ministry of Defense among others, according to an ABC News article.In a letter to University President Drew G. Faust on Sunday, Robert A. Maginn Jr. claimed that the U.S. Senate candidate may have intentionally deceived the University into believing that she is Native American.Consumer behavior in China could be changing yet again. Until now, research has shown that the Chinese usually trust better-known brands, primarily because the latter help assuage concerns over product quality and safety. According to the latest McKinsey survey, 35% of respondents in China believe that companies that market products across a range of categories are more trustworthy than those that focus on just one or two segments. That's almost twice the number of Americans (18%) or British (13%) who feel ...James Gleick — author of a half-dozen books on science, technology, and culture — discusses his latest book The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, with Jonathan Zittrain. Also in ogg for download More info on this event hereJames Gleick — author of a half-dozen books on science, technology, and culture — discusses his latest book The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, with Jonathan Zittrain. Download the MP3 …or download the OGG audio format! More info on this event hereSix Sigma , Kaizen , Lean , and other variations on continuous improvement can be hazardous to your organization's health. While it may be heresy to say this, recent evidence from Japan and elsewhere suggests that it's time to question these methods. Admittedly, continuous improvement once powered Japan's economy. Japanese manufacturers in the 1950s had a reputation for poor quality, but through a culture of analytical and systematic change Japan was able to go from worst to first. Starting in the 1970s, ...U.S. telecom carriers face daunting challenges from device makers, content providers, social networks, and an array of disruptive technologies. But the solutions may not be housed on their own soil. The telecom industry has changed, and the industry dynamics will continue to shift under the pressure from social media and the power of the consumer. Already, the popularity of the iPhone app store and the iPhone device itself has given credence to a purchasing phenomenon and the clout a device company can ...Here's an uncomfortable truth about innovation: No matter how great your idea, you can't deliver breakthrough innovation without breakthrough organizational design. Some companies are great at finding opportunities, diagnosing what customers want, and even designing the perfect offerings to satisfy them. But even if you get all of that right, your effort will fall apart if you build the wrong team to execute. Most companies take the team building step far too casually. To build the right kind of team, for ...Here's a quick quiz for you. Is it easier to get A: 1% of a huge, established market? or B: 100% of a completely new one? If you work for Apple, you might have picked B. But too often when companies embark on innovation projects, they pick A: that is, they start by believing that nothing could be easier than to capture a small chunk of a very big, existing market. But to unleash the power of innovation to capture big markets, what matters is not how big any existing market is but how many people are ...A new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers has found that a subclass of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, the so-called good cholesterol, may not protect against coronary heart disease (CHD) and in fact may be harmful.This week, Microsoft is announcing an unusual initiative that it hopes will change how the company operates: an internal fee on carbon. Starting July 1st — the beginning of the company's fiscal year 2013 — the software giant will charge all of its 100-plus global offices and datacenters a fee for every ton of carbon they produce (mostly from plugging into the electric grid, so-called "indirect" emissions). The money collected will go to purchase Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and carbon ..."Here's my problem with email," Jane*, a lawyer friend of mine told me recently, "I open Outlook expecting to quickly check my email, but then I read an email with a link in it, I follow the link, and then I'm lost on the internet for hours." "My job is to be on email," Jane continued, "How can I avoid getting hooked?" In my recent post Coping With Email Overload , I suggested that it's better to bulk process email at scheduled times during the day than to read each email when it comes in. At first, Jane ...Harvard Kennedy School news citations for May 8, 2012Unilever's AdeS , a combination of soymilk and fruit juice, has become a big success in Latin America. In Brazil it's now so popular that it now has about ten direct competitors, among them a product made by Nestlé. All of which raises a question: Why did it take so long? AdeS was developed not by Unilever but by an Argentinean lawyer. And while he enlisted Unilever and other multinationals to distribute the product from its beginnings in the 1980s, it took them decades to appreciate its potential. In the ...As a growth officer in my early career with the mad men and women of McCann Ericksson , my mom could never quite grasp what I did for a living. But, when we pitched, won and delivered the phenomenon now globally known as Priceless for MasterCard, she could finally brag to her friends at my Aunt Rose's kitchen table. From the moment the very first television commercial appeared ( You remember it, right? "Two tickets: $28. Two hot dogs, two popcorns, two sodas: $18. One autographed baseball: $45. Real ...An intimate exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum offers viewers a look at a body of largely unknown photographic work by one of the most versatile talents of the modern art movement in Germany.Harvard Graduate School of Education student Rebecca Givens Rolland has won two recent literary prize for her prose and poetry.Kate Konschnik, Chief Environmental Counsel to U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), will join Harvard Law School on Aug. 1 as Policy Director for the Environmental Law and Policy Program.Tuesday, May 8, 12:30 pm Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Classroom 1023 ( Map ) This event will be webcast live at 12:30 pm ET and archived on our site shortly after. James Gleick, author of The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood , will discuss his new book. About James James Gleick is a native New Yorker and a graduate of Harvard and the author of a half-dozen books on science, technology, and culture. His latest bestseller, translated into 20 languages, is The Information: A History, a ...Source . The relative pay of CEOs skyrocketed during the 1990s and has since fallen by about half.Dispelling product development myths In the May issue of Harvard Business Review , Stefan Thomke and Donald Reinersten address the misconceptions that arise when firms treat product development as if it were akin to manufacturing. "Six Myths of Product Development" aims to dispel common fallacies such as "High utilization of resources will improve performance," "Processing work in large batches improves the economics of the development process," and "The sooner the project is started, the sooner it will be ...Might the greenback lose its special status?If you’ve ever missed the chance to see your favorite Harvard squad play because you missed out on those few ...At an April 9 ceremony at Harvard Law School, HLS student Sam Levine ‘12 and alumnus Bill Beardall ’78 received the Gary Bellow Public Service Award, given annually by the HLS student body, for their commitment to public interest and social justice work.[Editor's comment: Justin has been having quite a year; after a paper in ITCS, he's recently had papers accepted to ISIT, ICALP, HotCloud, and COLT. In this guest post, he tells us about the COLT result.] Rocco Servedio, Li-Yang Tan, and I recently had a paper accepted to COLT on attribute-efficient learning, which is a clean framework introduced in 1990 by Avrim Blum that captures the challenging and important problem of learning in the presence of irrelevant information. Think of a infant trying to ...and not in a good way. On April 19, a panel entitled " Singapore UnCensored" was held at Yale, in the aftermath of strong faculty reaction against the creating of the Yale-National University of Singapore campus. There is much to say about that arrangement, and many reasons for skepticism; Jim Sleeper has pulled together a series of critiques into one mammoth compendium, Yale Has Gone to Singapore, but Can It Come Back? A fuller analysis on my part will have to be for another time. For the moment I just ...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEWVwgDnuzE Haven’t you heard? Youtube is going nuts for this adorably bro-y rendition of Call Me Maybe. This reminds us of that time the Princeton swim team did Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream. We are secretly hoping that this becomes a trend and that other athletic teams will soon hop on-board. Follow the jump to see the [...]The Harvard-Radcliffe Rugby Football Club bypassed traditional forms of fundraising by creating a method of raising money unique to their athleticism: moving. Calling themselves "Radcliffe Movers," members of the Women's Rugby team will work in groups of two and three people to assist students as they move boxes and furniture out of their dorms and into house storage facilities. "We get off-season lifting workouts, you get your stuff moved," reads the tagline on the Radcliffe Movers sign-up form.Strongly restricted diets have already been shown to increase longevity and prolong one’s healthy years, but research highlighted at a Harvard Global Health Institute symposium at the Harvard School of Public Health shows that the benefits of such restriction may extend to more rapid recovery from surgery and an improved ability to fight disease.Four speakers recalled the spiritual and intellectual ambition of theologian Paul Tillich in an event marking the 50th anniversary of his retirement from Harvard.Recently we wrote about how managing for innovation requires balancing four critical factors to produce a highly motivated and creative workforce. Perhaps the most difficult of those balancing acts is ensuring that employees have clear, meaningful goals as well as considerable autonomy (PDF) in meeting those goals. It's not easy, but some companies have pulled it off — sometimes, rather ingeniously. At Valve Software , the award-winning video game developer, employees have almost complete autonomy in ...Since 2008, the Harvard Allston Education Portal has fostered learning, exploration, and connections between Harvard and the Allston-Brighton community. The new Ed Portal Annex will triple the size of the Harvard Allston Education Portal.Harvard Kennedy School news citations for May 7, 2012Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, will address HBS graduates as Class Day speaker on May 23. An advocate for women leaders, Sandberg has drawn attention to work-life balance while overseeing Facebook's business operations. Read More >Horace Dediu interviews his teacher Clay Christensen about his new book, as well as jobs to be done and approaches to self-disruption. The downloadable mp3 also covers what Christensen is working on next. Read More >Did you know that if you think you are creative, you're more likely to actually be creative? This surprising fact pops up again and again in our research. In our database of over 6,000 professionals who have taken the Innovator's DNA self & 360 assessments, people (entrepreneurs and managers alike) who "agree" with the survey statement "I am creative" consistently deliver disruptive solutions — by creating new businesses, products, services, and processes that no one has done before. They see ...Published: May 7, 2012 Author: Katie Johnston Let's say a successful businessman is in the process of buying a lakeside cottage from the original owner. The prospective buyer makes a lowball offer. The owner counters with a high demand. Both parties chest their cards, each hoping the other will misplay his hand. After lots of back-and-forth posturing, they settle on a price each can live with, although both know that the deal is likely better for one side than the other. Now imagine the same property but a ...For immediate release: Monday, May 7, 2012 Boston, MA – A new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers has found that a subclass of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, the so-called “good” cholesterol, may not protect against coronary heart disease (CHD) and in fact may be harmful. This is the first study to show that a small protein, apolipoprotein C-III (apoC-III), that sometimes resides on the surface of HDL cholesterol may increase the risk of heart disease ...Students and faculty in the social sciences division—which houses the two largest concentrations, economics and government—point to a divide in the strength of the advising students receive.As the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has almost doubled in undergraduate enrollment since 2008, the rapidly growing school has maintained a firm commitment to intimate, faculty-led advising.In their efforts to offer top-knotch public education in Cambridge, CCSC, Prospect Hill Academy, and Benjamin Banneker Charter Public School have tapped into Harvard’s resources during their fledgling years.Faculty response to the announcement has been largely positive, with professors across a wide range of disciplines citing not only increased public access but also on-campus advantages and applications of edX.Extending the role of the Harvard administration is not necessarily a bad thing.Part of the underlying problem with the availability of UMHS services is that mental healthcare is often dismissed as not as important as other kinds of healthcare, just as mental illness is stigmatized and dismissed.The establishment of Chicano Studies programs in universities across the country was a decades-long struggle led by Mexican-American faculty and students, and it would be a shame if it were all laid to waste in Arizona by a politician with irrational fears of a Reconquista, a supposed plan by Mexico to re-conquer the lands it lost in the Mexican-American War.New internet news sites like Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post—which scour Twitter for the latest eye-popping trends—have elevated the tweets of no-name wackos to the status of news.First drafts are no longer safe from the eyes of outsiders. Flyby raided the Lamont recycling bins to discover the deeply profound, uncover the roughest of the rough, and unearth a slew of amusing, verbose, and altogether fascinating papers. Here are some lessons we learned and the take-aways for the last stretch of finals:Coming into the 2011-12 season, the Harvard men’s track and field team boasted one of the strongest recruiting classes in the history of the Ivy League. Ranked No. 5 by Track and Field News, the squad’s rookies included some of the best young throwers, sprinters, and distance runners in the country.The Harvard women's lacrosse team fell to Penn in the semifinals of the Ivy League tournament on Friday.For the third consecutive year, the Harvard softball team earned a berth in the best-of-three Ivy League Championship Series.This is not exactly what Steinbeck or a grizzled baseball veteran might have in mind for the great American highway.It’s finals week, and that means something different for everyone at Harvard. For most, finals week leads to hours of ...The Harvard Men’s Basketball team is traveling to Italy in mid-August for some summer competition. The Crimson will be playing ...She says we should reduce it , financed bya tax increaseon dividends and capital gains at the personal level.Tastemaker is a series in which we reserve the right to opine. This week, the Internet Blow Up. #Whatshouldwecallme didn't stand a chance. In a year defined by what Flyby will refer to as the "Internet Blow Up," any slightly amusing online trend instantly became fodder for every blog and/or facebook status update. What once made us laugh now gives us the urge to report as spam, or at least vomit a little in our mouths and then all over our keyboards.Tired of Lamont? Stop by b.good from 9:30 to 11 p.m. for a free shake, courtesy of UC Restaurants and DAPA Deals. After all, you deserve it!Yale junior Brendan D. Ross, the driver of the U-Haul truck that killed a woman and injured two others at the Harvard-Yale football game this fall, was arrested on Friday.Next Saturday students will turn in the last batch of final exams and the 2011-2012 school year will be officially complete. The class of 2012, which only has a few tests, senior week, and Commencement ahead of them, can attest to the fact that your Harvard experience really will finish before you can say "Primal Scream." While there is no way to slow the passing of time, Flyby suggests that you take advantage of your remaining weeks, semesters, or years here and partake in those Harvard traditions that ...The Harvard men’s lacrosse team’s season didn’t end the way the Crimson would have liked, but three of the squad’s ...For the second straight season, the injury-riddled New York Knicks find themselves in a 3-0 hole going into what might ...Every week, The Crimson publishes a selection of articles that were printed in our pages in years past. May 3, 1927: New Manter Hall to Rise Soon The final plans for the Manter Hall School's new building which will be located at the corner of Mount Auburn and Holyoke Streets have been approved and work will start immediately. The building which has been designed by the firm of Adden and Parker will be four stories high of red brick and will be architecturally in harmony with the colonial style now so ...Every Friday, The Crimson publishes a selection of articles that were printed in our pages in years past.If you're looking to take a study break after spending days and days in Lamont, check out Crimson Compliments, the latest Harvard-student created website by Seth A. Riddley '12. "It's a Facebook page that allows Harvard students to post anonymous compliments to their friends," Barr Yaron '14, one of the site's co-administrators, explained. Riddley was inspired to create Crimson Compliments after viewing a similar page for students at The College of William and Mary. Riddley then launched the page on ...Listen: or download | …also in Ogg In today’s episode we wrap up our coverage of last week’s Rethink Music conference with a conversation between guest host Chris Bavitz and Kristin Thomson. In addition to her work as community organizer, social policy researcher, entrepreneur and musician, Kristin is a consultant at the Future of Music Coalition, [...]The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative has launched a new academy to formalize instruction in international disaster response, with the aim of saving the lives of those threatened by earthquakes, floods, wars, and other catastrophes.The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects . To subscribe, click here . Alison Head interviews David Weinberger about networked knowledge Read Project Information Literacy's interview with David Weinberger about what the rise of networked knowledge means for educators, librarians, print publishing and the very act of knowing, itself. David says "students need help in gaining the skill to discern what’s worth believing and what’s hucksterism and wish ... |