Taylor Callery/Getty Images Articles about artificial intelligence often begin with an intention to shock readers, referencing classic works of science fiction or alarming statistics about impending job losses. But I think we get closer to the heart of AI in 2018 when...

Lynn Koenig/Getty Images We all have times when we wonder, “Am I at the right company? Am I in the right job? And is this all there is?” These questions are especially agonizing for mid-career professionals who may...

Emma Innocenti/Getty Images Um. Ah. So. You Know. Like. Right? Well. When we find ourselves rattled while speaking — whether we’re nervous, distracted, or at a loss for what comes next — it’s easy to lean on filler words. These may give us a...

dlanor s./unsplash Machine learning is increasingly being used to predict individuals’ attitudes, behaviors, and preferences across an array of applications — from personalized marketing to precision medicine. Unsurprisingly, given the speed of...

Roger Martin, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business, offers two main reasons General Electric has lost its competitiveness. GE’s stock has been removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Martin blames pressures from...

Kenny Williamson/Getty Images No organization wants to burn out its employees. And yet, according to new research, companies’ efforts to prevent prolonged stress among their staffs are falling short. When Deloitte recently surveyed 1,000 full-time employees in...

Ted Soqui/Getty Images You’ve applied for a job. Your resume has passed the first screen; maybe you’ve been interviewed, once, twice, or even more. You might feel you are in the homestretch, with a job offer on the near horizon. Then, a new hurdle appears...

Melissa Ross/Getty Images Amazon’s highly visible search for a second headquarters has offered one tremendous public benefit: it has raised public awareness of what bad economic development is. Even Saturday Night Live satirized the lengths to which local...

Wunderfool/Getty Images In January of 2018, Annette Zimmermann, vice president of research at Gartner, proclaimed: “By 2022, your personal device will know more about your emotional state than your own family.” Just two months later, a landmark study from...

Wunderfool/Getty Images In January of 2018, Annette Zimmermann, vice president of research at Gartner, proclaimed: “By 2022, your personal device will know more about your emotional state than your own family.” Just two months later, a landmark study from...

Shana Novak/Getty Images In a world in which men dominate leadership roles, should we focus on changing the systems and structures that favor men at women’s expense? Or should we emphasize the tactics individual women can use to get ahead? Our research explored...

Jorg Greuel/Getty Images We’ve all experienced some version of this problem: Ask “how many customers do we have?” and the marketing team provides one answer, sales a second, and accounting a third. Each department trusts its own system, but when the...

jessica solomatenko/Getty Images It turns out that the word “innovation” is not a Harry Potter-esque magical incantation that, once spoken, renders companies more inventive, creative, and entrepreneurial. The word can be uttered by a CEO speaking to...

JW LTD/Getty Images Companies are using AI in all kinds of innovative ways to advance their businesses. If you’ve ever searched Netflix to watch a movie, AI (a recommendation algorithm) was no doubt used in your decision about what to watch.  If...

Yuji Sakai/Getty Images “We lose $800 billion a year on trade, every year,” President Trump said in March when he announced his new tariff plan, referring to the size of the U.S. trade deficit in goods. Trump has lamented the U.S. trade deficit repeatedly,...

Carlos Osorio/Getty Images Young management consultants may be novices, but they’re sold as experts. Conversely, even experienced consultants, who legitimately present themselves as experts, still feel like novices when they embark on a new project. The...

timsa/Getty Images A male friend of ours recently had a realization. He was walking through the bar at a private golf club, looking for a colleague he was meeting for dinner. The dark-paneled bar was filled with men and they all seemed to know each other. Will...

Patricia Toth McCormick/Getty Images Want to catch tax cheats? The government of Rwanda does — and it’s finding them by studying anomalies in revenue-collection data. Want to understand how American culture is changing? So does a budding sociologist in...

pchyburrs/Getty Images Academic studies in the social sciences often find very different results. Even in disciplines like medicine, where one might imagine there to be a direct, physical relationship between the intervention being tested and its consequences,...

Lya_Cattel/Getty Images As the saying goes, “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” After a long exile, tariffs are back, and they’re being levied on billions of dollars of traded goods, ranging from steel and aluminum to...

Is a recent firing weighing on you? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Susan David, a psychologist, lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and the author of Emotional...

Andrew Lichtenstein/Getty Images I recently moderated a panel at a conference and asked the group of successful executives to describe someone who has been instrumental in their careers. Two panelists eagerly jumped in with stories of bosses who had mentored,...

Ryan McVay/Getty Images With U.S. household credit card debt at an all-time high of more than $1 trillion, delinquent payments can be more costly than ever. For companies, delinquencies can mean massive collection costs and write-offs of entire accounts. For...

When is it possible for David to beat Goliath in the platform economy? On March 25 mighty Uber bowed out of Southeast Asia by selling its operation in several countries to local rival Grab. The news came as a surprise to many observers. Grab, which launched its...

Orlagh Murphy/Getty Images A quiet revolution is taking place. In contrast to much of the press coverage of artificial intelligence, this revolution is not about the ascendance of a sentient android army. Rather, it is characterized by a steady increase in the...

hbrstaff/birdimages/Getty Images Productive: “Achieving or producing a significant amount of result.” Enough: “As much or as many as required.” As a time management coach, I’m keenly aware that you could answer the question “Am I...

Illustration by James Yang Language is a uniquely human capability and the manifestation of our intelligence. But through AI —  specifically natural language processing (NLP) — we are providing machines with language capabilities, opening up a new...

Zachary Scott/Getty Images Public speaking is so stressful for so many people that it is routinely used as a stress manipulation in psychological studies. Tell undergrads they have 10 minutes to prepare a speech that will be evaluated by experts, and their levels...

Peter Dazeley/Getty Images Culturally diverse teams, research shows, can help deliver better outcomes in today’s organizations. This is largely a good thing: Diverse teams have the potential to be more creative because of the breadth of information, ideas, and...

Walker and Walker/Getty Images At the law firm Allen & Overy, the idea of replacing traditional, annual performance appraisals with a technology-enabled continuous feedback system did not come from human resources. It came from a leader within the practice....

RichVintage/Getty Images “Go find your passion,’’ Henry directed his children when they reached their late teens and early twenties. “Find your interests outside our family business and pursue them.’’ As inspiring as those words may...

Alice Mollon/Getty Images In any organization, people apply unspoken rules and understood norms to get collective work done — in other words, they collaborate. Over the past 15 years, my team and I have observed and facilitated thousands of meetings and...

Frank Schwere/Getty Images Like any psychological concept that booms in popularity, growth mindset — the dual belief that skills and abilities can be improved, and that developing your skills and abilities is the purpose of the work you do — is ripe for...

Clarity and consistency are key. from HBR.org https://ift.tt/2JMUbAR

Tanased Heamathulin/EyeEm/Getty Images If we were designing a labor market from scratch today, it’s unlikely we’d create one that rewards only full-time employees. It wouldn’t make sense given the many ways that people choose to — or...

markus spiske/unsplash In 2014, Stanford professor Clifford Nass faced a student revolt. Nass’s students claimed that those in one section of his technology interface course received higher grades on the final exam than counterparts in another. Unfortunately,...

H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images Although religion is a central aspect of life for many people across the globe, there is scant research on how religion affects non-religious routines like grocery shopping. But using both field and laboratory data,...

Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images Human beings have an astonishing ability to learn, but our motivation to do so tends to decrease with age, particularly in adulthood. As children, we are naturally curious and free to explore the world around us. As adults, we are much more...

Classen Rafael/EyeEm/Getty Images Despite good intentions—and widespread acceptance of the importance of innovation—efforts to innovate at large companies often lack a clear mission and framework, and as a result, they go off the rails. At one large...

Oliver Burston/Getty Images While overall adoption of artificial intelligence remains low among businesses (about 20% upon our last study), senior executives know that AI isn’t just hype. Organizations across sectors are looking closely at the technology to see...