vii It’s never easy to whittle down a year’s worth of Harvard Business
Review ’s research, ideas, and advice to the few articles gathered in
this volume, but this past year was particularly tough. In addition
to staple HBR topics such as leadership and strategy, the complex
and difficult issues we were turning over in our minds and dis-
cussing in boardrooms and on social media also filled the pages
of HBR. Recurring themes included machine learning, the place of
business in society, and the implications of intersectionality— where
harassment and discrimination can aff ect any one of the multiple
layers of our identity. The standout articles of the year covered an
array of topics, from integrating cognitive technology with human
work to speaking up— whether as a CEO activist or as a manager
amid the #MeToo movement. Our authors gave you new lenses
through which to view the evolving context in which we work. This
collection of articles showcases these and other critical themes from
the past year of Harvard Business Review.
We’ve all been working in teams for years. The challenge today
is how to manage work and communication when you and every-
one you work with are all on a half- dozen other teams too. “The
Overcommitted Organization” affi rms that some standard advice
for working on teams still applies while also providing new strate-
gies for managing this growing modern- day dilemma, from map-
ping overlap to sharing insights across projects to helping teams
maintain progress when key members are yanked for “all hands on
deck” emergencies. Authors Mark Mortensen and Heidi K. Gardner
conduct research, teach, and consult on collaboration and leader-
ship issues. They have identifi ed several ways in which both team
and organizational leaders can reduce the negative aspects of over-
lap and take advantage of the benefi ts, including skill sharing across
teams, better time management, and opportunities to learn.
MBA students are taught that companies can’t expect to compete
on the basis of management competencies— they’re too easy for
rivals to copy, so they won’t sustain competitive advantage over time.
However, a decade- long research project undertaken by authors
Raff aella Sadun, Nicholas Bloom, and John Van Reenen reveals that
the conventional wisdom is fl awed, raising the question “Why Do
Editors’ Note