Harvard Business Review

JUNE 8, 2015

So much so that we see them as “the way things work” and forget that bureaucracies were once innovations too. Before Weber’s bureaucracies became predominant, most enterprises were fairly organic. Yet actually, small-world networks often form naturally, without design or complex organizational engineering.

Organization 8

Organization Bureaucracy Network Organization Informal Structure 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 26, 2015

The nerds’ power was sharply amplified: Massive investments required the centralized engineering of business processes, putting all the control in the hands of a cohort of experts. The Future of Operations. ” But here’s the problem for operations: Standardized processes that work are great. Insight Center.

Process 8

Process Banking Compliance Bureaucracy 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 17, 2015

Yet wanting to be closer with customers, and knowing what actual, operational pathways to take in order to achieve this are two very different things. The Future of Operations. The designers were focused on creating better user experiences, while the engineers were focused on speed, quality, and efficiency. Insight Center.

Productivity 8

Productivity Products Customer Intimacy Software 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 16, 2014

The most commonly cited ways to do this include making it easier to file the paperwork to start a business, and reducing the amount of administrative bureaucracy and restrictions that entrepreneurs encounter. In many countries, business policies vary a great deal among individual cities, which is where companies actually operate.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur Bureaucracy Real Estate B2B 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 16, 2014

The most commonly cited ways to do this include making it easier to file the paperwork to start a business, and reducing the amount of administrative bureaucracy and restrictions that entrepreneurs encounter. In many countries, business policies vary a great deal among individual cities, which is where companies actually operate.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur Bureaucracy Real Estate B2B 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 21, 2011

One key approach is "20% Time" (also called "Innovation Time Off") that encourages Google engineers to spend 20% of their work time (one day per week in theory, usually weekends or evenings in practice) on projects that interest them. Front line workers need broad empowerment to address problems with a minimum of bureaucracy.

Process 15

Process Bureaucracy Innovation Short-term 15

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 26, 2016

Three years later, GE hired veteran software engineer Ganesh Bell to be chief digital officer of GE Power and Water. Domain expertise at an automaker includes things like mechanics, telematics, structural engineering, design, and so on. Many such leaders are relatively young and highly sought after. Make the tough calls on people.

Short-term 8

Short-term How To Venture Capitalist CFO 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

Buffett prefers to accept the visible costs of "a few bad decisions" than incur "the invisible costs of stifling bureaucracies." Gain accounting advantage : Buffett reports on the performance of his operating businesses by grouping them according to similar balance sheet and income statement characteristics.

Letter 14

Letter P&L Net Present Value Insurance 14

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 26, 2016

And yet without Box 2, organizations don’t truly transform; they persist in limiting ways of operating. They have mentoring programs for high school students… Elfin’s self-engineered turn around became a very important symbol [of reducing bureaucracy]. So, how do you build Box 2 muscle?

Company 8

Company Welch Bureaucracy Innovation 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 21, 2015

His research showed that once-successful firms often failed not because they lacked competence or conscientiousness, but because they were operating according to a defective model. In the past, bureaucracies played a crucial coordinating role. Large institutions dominated because they could do what others could not.

Christensen 8

Christensen Disruptive Innovation Bureaucracy Business Model 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 14, 2016

Nineteen days later, as rescue crews grew desperate, a 24-year-old field engineer named Igor Proestakis decided to travel to the site with what he hoped was a breakthrough idea: using a particular drilling technology, called cluster hammers, to cut through the collapsed rock. So what is holding these engineers back?

Engineering 8

Engineering Project Benchmarking Hammer 8

Strategy Driven

OCTOBER 11, 2013

Business shift from the retail dealer customer service mentality of Firestone shifted to a high-production tire operation. When they are compelled to do so, company leadership will provide leadership for change management and re-engineering…two of the many worthwhile concepts that should be advocated every business day.

Crisis 58

Crisis Crisis Management Retail Budgeting 58

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 5, 2016

Yet there’s compelling evidence that bureaucracy creates a significant drag on productivity and organizational resilience and innovation. By our reckoning, the cost of excess bureaucracy in the U.S. Operating decisions are almost entirely decentralized. Here’s the arithmetic. trillion, of which the non-U.S.

Cost 8

Cost Bureaucracy GDP Management 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 18, 2014

Indeed, "perhaps only in Silicon Valley would a group of engineers think they could hack their way to charisma with a series of neuroscientific shortcuts." Even more telling, Enderle argues, is that the executive presenting Microsoft’s data analytics offerings was COO Kevin Turner – not an engineer, but an end user.

Charisma 8

Charisma Hamel Bureaucracy Meyer 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 15, 2017

General Motors, once the world’s largest car maker, has decided to stop selling vehicles in India by the end of 2017, since it considers its India operation to be not profitable. For a period of 14 years, General Electric had the same American expat running the India operation, Scott Bayman. Understanding it takes time and focus.

CEO 10

CEO Long-term Short-term Mass Marketing 10

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 9, 2018

Top 10 Operational Impacts of the GDPR (IAPP). Internet companies have had over a decade to integrate basic data collection and use safeguards into their operations, including limiting the data they collect and adopting international information security standards. Full Text of the Regulations. GDPR Explained (CNET).

Advertising 11

Advertising Cost Business Model Information 11

Harvard Business Review

MAY 1, 2017

Some focus their best people on finding ways to squeeze out more profitability from existing operations, rather than creating new businesses. 3M, for example, has long allowed engineers to devote 15% of their time to skunkworks projects, without supervisor approval.) They create flux time for employees to devote to new projects. (3M,

ROE 14

ROE Long-term GDP Six Sigma 14

Harvard Business Review

JULY 8, 2014

In 2004, Bharti Airtel , the Indian telecomm company, had outsourced its vast network and IT operations—a move that Ranjay Gulati saw as indicating “ more progressive and forward-looking ” thinking than was evident in many Western corporations. Now, by “hierarchy” I don’t mean a stifling bureaucracy. The hierarchy is still in place.

Technology 8

Technology Marketing Outsourcing Supply Chain 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 1, 2013

Frustrated employees were complaining about the lack of amenities — such as child care facilities — on campus and the stifling bureaucracy which, for instance, made expense reimbursment a time-consuming process.

Innovation 9

Innovation Attrition Software Globalization 9

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 7, 2014

Moreover, Sloan did this by means of organizational mastery, without the major engineering breakthrough that other GM insiders believed was their only hope. The “organization men,” as sociologist and writer William Whyte called the troop of managers who populated these bureaucracies, expected lifetime employment in a single firm.

Decentralization 8

Decentralization Venture Capitalist Price Engineering 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 18, 2013

Many of the thousands of highly qualified engineers either started companies or joined growing startups — it did not take too many talented people with experience in developing advanced technology products to turbocharge Israel's entrepreneurial revolution. In India in the late 1970s there was a similar story.

Company 8

Company Bureaucracy Restructuring Bottom-up 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 7, 2016

Under the guise of acting like owners, many leaders operate as bureaucrats or, far worse, in some cases as personal-wealth maximizers. Companies with a strong founder’s mentality focus relentlessly on freeing up cash from their operations, but not so that they can hoard it or return it to creditors or shareholders.

Bureaucracy 8

Bureaucracy Short-term Budgeting Long-term 8

The Horizons Tracker

FEBRUARY 2, 2020

The park, which has been operating for a decade, has created a free zone and business park to encourage multinationals to rub shoulders with researchers and startups to generate technology-driven businesses.

Resources 78

Resources Innovation GDP Education 78

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 3, 2018

But even if an AI system gives an employee super-powered intelligence, it won’t be enough to make a timely decision if the company’s internal bureaucracy requires time-consuming pre-authorization from senior managers before acting on the decision. How companies are using artificial intelligence in their business operations.

Bureaucracy 8

Bureaucracy Tools Marketing Agility 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 9, 2014

That first group, the New Left, believed in bureaucracy, believed in hierarchy, believed in organizations. We would no longer need bureaucracy or hierarchy at all. But the real heroes are operating with automobiles and roads and whole systems of support without which they couldn’t be heroic. We would no longer need rules.

Information Technology 11

Information Technology Bureaucracy Technology Open-book 11