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How Google Has Changed Management, 10 Years After its IPO

Harvard Business Review

It has also helped shape the practice of management. Staying true to its roots as an engineering-centric company, Google has stood out both for its early skepticism of the value of managers as well as for its novel, often quantitative approaches to management decisions. How Google manages.

IPO 14
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What Spinning Off a GE Business Taught Me About Managing Ultra-Fast Change

Harvard Business Review

Change management can be a test for any organization. Several studies by Towers Watson show that just 25% of change management initiatives are successful over the long term. Change management certainly tested us. We have hired more than 5,000 new employees since beginning the effort in late 2013.) What did we do?

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Disruptive Trends to Watch in 2013

Harvard Business Review

Managers at companies like General Motors, Sears, and Eastman Kodak simply didn't have the tools to spot and respond to would-be disruptors. What disruptive innovations are set to take similarly big strides in 2013? A generation ago, incumbents that struggled to respond to disruptive innovations had an excuse. 3-D printing.

Trends 8
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Why Unicorns Are Struggling

Harvard Business Review

When financial services company Square priced its IPO at $9 a share last November, well under the $15+ price that private investors paid the year before, it was a cold shower of reality for the 6-year-old company. Until the IPO, Square had been one of more than 130 unicorns: privately owned tech companies valued at $1 billion or more.

IPO 8
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Alibaba Looks More Like GE than Google

Harvard Business Review

Alibaba, the Chinese internet titan that filed for an IPO in the U.S. last week, could be the largest tech IPO in history. Instead, it operates more like GE. The exhibit below, from the 2013 HBR piece, describes how Alibaba and firms like it handle strategy, in light of such a distributed approach: with a “group center.”.

IPO 12
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Why Financial Statements Don’t Work for Digital Companies

Harvard Business Review

On February 13, 2018, the New York Times reported that Uber is planning an IPO. Twitter reported a loss of $79 million before its IPO, yet it commanded a valuation of $24 billion on its IPO date in 2013. Its value growth is powered by the network in place, not by increments of operating costs.

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A Simple Way to Test Your Company’s Strategic Alignment

Harvard Business Review

For example, as it grew, Facebook found that its early “move fast and break things” culture had to be funneled into focused technical teams and product groups to make its product development process faster and less erratic, and for it to have a chance of meeting the demands of its new public shareholders following its IPO.

Banking 14