Launching a new enterprise—whether it’s a tech start-up, a small business, or an initiative within a large corporation—has always been a hit-or-miss proposition. According to the decades-old formula, you write a business plan, pitch it to investors, assemble a team, introduce a product, and start...
Diderot’s Encyclopedie, best known as an eighteenth-century repository of Enlightenment principles, might also serve as an interesting lens into what makes economies grow. The Encylcopedie was a project spearheaded by Denis Diderot, published in 28 volumes between 1751 and 1772. It aimed to gather all the knowledge in the...
Juan Díaz-faes for HBR Alice, an outstanding 24-year-old engineer working for a top technology company, wants to launch her own startup within the next five years, but she doesn’t yet have a venture concept. What knowledge and skills does Alice need to lead a technology venture?...
When I first became a CEO, at age 33, I read everything I could find about legendary business leaders and the companies they created. I was trying to discover the secret to building an innovative organization that would empower employees, deliver on our bold mission...
What defines success for a business? For most of the last century, it was profits. The leading enterprises of the world were ones that fashioned a profitable business model and leveraged it over time. Profitability as the key measure of business success was akin to...
It’s widely believed that the most successful entrepreneurs are young. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg were in their early twenties when they launched what would become world-changing companies. Do these famous cases reflect a generalizable pattern? VC and media accounts seem to suggest so. When...