Articles – John Hagel

PUBLICATIONS >>

Edited Collections
“Integrating Human Capital Strategies into the Overall Business Strategy,” contribution to Leaders Talk Leadership: Top Executives Speak Their Minds Meredith D. Ashby and Stephen A. Miles (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2002). Discusses the implications of the ability of talent to capture increasing value in business environments. Suggests companies will need to develop more creative and leveraged human capital strategies to continue to attract world-class talent and generate additional economic value for shareholders.

Harvard Business Review – print edition
“Feed R&D – Or Farm It Out?” (HBR Case Study with Commentary co-authored with John Seely Brown), July 2005 – Addresses a specific company’s dilemma regarding offshoring and outsourcing by applying the concept of productive friction. Discusses the specific requirements to make productive friction work.

“The Big Shift: Measuring the Forces of Change” (co-authored with John Seely Brown and Lang Davison) July-August 2009 – Provides an overview of the long-term forces re-shaping the global business landscape and the impact that these forces are having on consumers and businesses.

“Shaping Strategy in a World of Constant Disruption” (co-authored with John Seely Brown and Lang Davison” October 2008 – Discusses a powerful approach to strategy designed to restructure major markets and industries to the advantage of the shaper but mobilizing a large number of third parties to invest in the strategy – achieving significant competitive advantage with a leveraged approach that reduces the investment required by the shaper.

“Productive Friction: How Difficult Business Partnerships Can Accelerate Innovation” (co-authored with John Seely Brown), February 2005 – Explores the importance of productive friction as a management technique to promote innovation and learning across company boundaries. Drawing on examples of companies around the world, it suggests that most companies are missing significant opportunities to get better faster by working with others.

“Does IT Matter?” (letter to editor co-authored with John Seely Brown in response to Nick Carr article “Does IT Matter?) June 2003 – Provides an extensive rebuttal to the perspective offered by Nick Carr, making the case that strategic advantage can still be enabled by information technology, but that companies need to learn from the experiences of the past decade in order to harness the full potential of the technology.

“Leveraged Growth: Expanding Sales Without Sacrificing Profits” October 2002 – Discusses an innovative new approach to growth that involves accessing and mobilizing the resources of other companies to add more value to one’s own customers. Profiles a number of companies including Li & Fung who are pursuing innovative leveraged growth strategies. Bottom line: an opportunity to meet growing pressures for profitability and growth.

“Your Next IT Strategy” (co-authored with John Seely Brown), October 2001 – Analyzes the experience of companies with the early adoption of Web services technology and highlights the pragmatic approach that can quickly generate tangible business value.

“Unbundling the Corporation” (co-authored with Marc Singer), March-April 1999 – Suggests that most companies today represent an unnatural bundle of three very different businesses and urges executives to ask the most fundamental question of all: “What business are we really in?”

“The Coming Battle for Customer Information” (co-authored with Jeffrey Rayport), January-February 1997 – Developed the concept of “infomediary” – a business working as an agent on behalf of customers, helping them to maximize the value of their information profiles. Suggests that electronic networks will increase the power of consumers, allowing them to assert ownership over information about themselves and to demand value in exchange for access to this information

“The Real Value of On-Line Communities” (co-authored with Arthur Armstrong), May-June 1996 – Explores the opportunity to use electronic networks to help people to interact with each other, taking a well-known social phenomenon – the spontaneous emergence of virtual communities – and developing the commercial potential. Suggests that companies creating on-line communities will command significant customer loyalty and generate strong economic returns.

Harvard Business Review – digital articles
“We Need to Expand Our Definition of Entrepreneurship Innovation & Entrepreneurship” September 28, 2016

“Technology Should Be About More than Efficiency Leadership & Managing People” September 25, 2015

“Finding the Money in the Internet of Things” November 11, 2014

“Turn the Pressures of Technology into Potential” October 08, 2014

“How Drucker Thought About Complexity Managing uncertainty” June 25, 2013

“How to Make Your Big Idea Really Happen” May 09, 2012

“Five Tips to Break Through Your Filter(s)” October 10, 2011

“Five Ways to Hold the Right Kind of Attention” April 05, 2011

“Five Tips for Smarter Social Networking” January 31, 2011

“Designing for Propensity” December 09, 2010

“Do You Have a Growth Mindset?” November 23, 2010

“Pulling for the Long Term” November 12, 2010

“The Increasing Importance of Physical Location” October 27, 2010

“The Power of the Social Cloud” October 15, 2010

“The Enterprise Value of Social Software” September 30, 2010

“Cloud Computing’s Stormy Future” September 14, 2010

“Shape Serendipity, Understand Stress, Reignite Passion” August 30, 2010

“Six Fundamental Shifts in the Way We Work” August 17, 2010

“A Brief History of the Power of Pull” April 09, 2010

“Are All Employees Knowledge Workers?” April 05, 2010

“Three Ways to Distinguish an Edge from a Fringe” March 22, 2010

“The Best Way to Measure Company Performance” March 04, 2010

“From Do It Yourself to Do It Together” February 18, 2010

“Open Innovation’s Next Challenge: Itself” February 04, 2010

“A Better Way to Manage Knowledge” January 19, 2010

“Networking Reconsidered” January 04, 2010

“Are Your Sources of Strategic Advantage Eroding?” December 11, 2009

“Why We Need Big Organizations” August 11, 2009

“Measuring The Big Shift” June 19, 2009

“What Does Your Facebook Profile Say About You?” May 13, 2009

“Defining Common Collaboration Tensions” May 07, 2009

“Four Ways to Spur Innovation at Your Company” April 29, 2009

“Four Ways to Use “Pull” to Increase Your Success” April 22, 2009

“Three Elements You Need for Successful Creation Spaces” April 16, 2009

“Introducing the Collaboration Curve” April 08, 2009

“Does the Experience Curve Matter Today?” April 02, 2009

“The Strategic Advantage of Global Process and Practice Networks” March 25, 2009

“Tomorrow’s Talent Networks” March 18, 2009

“The New Organization Model: Learning at Scale” March 11, 2009

“The Case for Institutional Innovation” March 04, 2009

“Why Do Companies Exist?” February 25, 2009

“Managing Resources in an Uncertain World” February 18, 2009

“How to Bring the Core to the Edge” February 06, 2009

“Abandon Stocks, Embrace Flows” January 27, 2009

“The New Reality: Constant Disruption” January 17, 2009

“Reshaping the Competitive Landscape” September 30, 2008

McKinsey Quarterly
“Creation nets: Getting the most from open innovation” (co-authored with John Seely Brown), May 2006 – Explores a specific form of ecosystems that helps to accelerate the learning and performance improvement of its participants. The basic unit of organization is a small cell of participants that can form deep, trust based relationships with each other and then these small cells are connected into a broader network that can scale indefinitely.

“From Push to Pull: The Next Frontier of Innovation” (co-authored with John Seely Brown), 2005, No. 3 – Discusses a fundamental shift in how institutions mobilize resources, moving from push models to pull models. While this shift is driven by the desire for greater flexibility, institutions are finding that pull models are very powerful in supporting innovation. This shift is occurring a wide range of arenas in response to fundamental forces re-shaping our business landscape. The shift will be difficult for many institutions, but they will be increasingly vulnerable to new pull-based players if they fail to master the techniques of pull.

“Innovation Blowback: Disruptive Management Practices from Asia” (co-authored with John Seely Brown), 2005, No. 1 – Suggests that most executives are thinking much too narrowly about the strategic role of emerging economies like China and India. These economies are certainly important as growth engines for many companies. However, they are even more important as significant catalysts in business innovation as companies strive to serve demanding customers in these markets. Makes the case that these economies will be a seedbed for disruptive innovations that will ultimately support attacker strategies targeting entrenched players in more developed economies.

“Offshoring Goes on the Offensive” 2004 N0. 2 –
Observes that most companies fail to capture the real value of offshoring because they continue view it solely as a way to save money. Sophisticated companies are beginning to realize that offshoring provides an opportunity to access distinctive capabilities through new forms of high performing organizations. A few companies are beginning to use these capabilities for offensive purposes to drive growth and to restructure entire industries, rather than simply focusing on defensive efforts to reduce costs.

“Flexible IT, Better Strategy” (co-authored with John Seely Brown) 2003 N0. 4 – Compares flexible service-oriented architectures to the more rigid IT architectures that preceded them, concentrating on communicating the business value of these new architectures. Urges executives to focus on IT architecture issues because, in the past, IT architectures have been a significant constraint on building strategic advantage and now they provide a foundation for building strategic advantage.

“Spider versus Spider” 1996, No. 1 – Analyzes economic webs – a powerful new approach to mobilize the resources of other companies to support your own business strategy. Proposes that the use of economic incentives and more informal relationships provides far more reach and economic power than traditional alliances or joint ventures. This concept was explored further in Net Worth.

“Edging Into Web Services” 2002, No. 4 – Observes that Web services are being adopted in production deployments first at the edge of the enterprise, helping to automate connections in business processes that extend across multiple enterprises, because this is where the technology has its most distinctive advantage. Predicts that adoption over time will extend back into operations within the enterprise.

“Loosening Up: How Process Networks Unlock the Power of Specialization” (co-authored with John Seely Brown and Scott Durchslag) 2002, No. 2 – Makes the case for a modular and loosely coupled approach to managing business processes as a way to encourage increasing specialization and spur innovation. Discusses the emergence of process networks as management implements a new approach to process orchestration.

“Unbundling the Corporation” (co-authored with Marc Singer) 2000, No. 3 – Reprint of Harvard Business Review article suggesting that most companies today represent an unnatural bundle of three very different businesses and urging executives to ask the most fundamental question of all: “What business are we really in?”

“Private Lives” (co-authored with Marc Singer) 1999, No. 1 – Excerpt from Net Worth discussing the growing economic power of consumers and the infomediary business opportunity, helping customers to capture information about themselves and to use this information to become even more helpful to customers.

“The New Infomediaries” 1997, No. 4 – Discusses different types of infomediary businesses likely to emerge in online environments and evaluates the capabilities of various categories of existing businesses to exploit the infomediary business opportunity.

“Retail Banking: Caught in a Web?” (Co-authored with Todd Hewlin and Todd Hutchings) 1997, No. 2 – Explores the opportunity for retail banks to exploit economic web strategies to focus on distinctive capabilities and create more economic value.

“Net Gain: Expanding Markets through Virtual Communities” (co-authored with Arthur Armstrong) 1997, No. 2 – Explores the impact of virtual community business opportunities on a variety of business functions including marketing and human resources. Adapted from a chapter of Net Gain.

“Who Will Benefit from Virtual Information?” (co-authored with A.M. Sacconaghi) 1996, No. 3 – Analyzes four different scenarios regarding the possible evolution of information capture in online environments and discusses the implications for economic value creation. This is the first article to suggest that customers may have an opportunity to capture information about themselves and use it to bargain more effectively with vendors.

“Real Profits from Virtual Communities” (co-authored with Arthur Armstrong) 1995, No. 3 – This is the first article to suggest that the social phenomenon of virtual communities on electronic networks might be leveraged to create new kinds of business opportunities.

“Fallacies in Organizing for Performance” 1994, No. 2 – Identifies common mistakes made by management as they seek to build higher performance organizations. Maintains that the best way to proceed is in rapid incremental waves driven by clear performance metrics and frequent milestones

“The CEO as Chief Performance Officer” 1993, No. 4 – Insists that one of the primary tasks of the CEO is to make the invisible visible – to establish explicit links between the strategy of the firm, the key operational performance metrics implied by the strategy and the core operating processes required to deliver this performance to the marketplace

Business Week
“How to Distinguish an Edge from a Fringe” March 23, 2010

“The Best Way to Measure Company Performance” March 5, 2010

“The Next Wave of Open Innovation” April 8, 2009

“Does the Experience Curve Matter Today?” April 3, 2009

“Peer to Patent: A System for Increasing Transparency” March 18, 2009

“How World of Warcraft Promotes Innovation” January 14, 2009

“Harrah’s New Twist on Prediction Markets” December 22, 2008

“Innovation for Hard Times” November 21, 2008

“Learning from Tata’s Nano” February 27, 2008

“Catching the Innovation Wave” January 30, 2008

“Phoning from the Edge” January 9, 2008

“Embrace the Edge or Perish” November 28, 2007

Business 2.0
“Shift into Reverse” (co-authored with Marc Singer) March 1999 – Excerpt from Net Worth discusses how marketing will need to evolve to respond to the growing power of customers

CFO Journal
“Manufacturers Reassess Role in Value Chain” December 10, 2015

“Patterns of Disruption, Part 1: Weekend Reading” December 7, 2015

“Businesses as movements” April 13, 2015

“Internet of Things—Unlocking the Business Value of Connected Devices: Weekend Reading” September 2, 2014

“Take the Shift Index Organizational Self-Assessment: Weekend Reading” July 23, 2014

“Federal CFO: Using the Cloud to Address Talent Challenges” April 11, 2014

“How CFOs can make social software work for their companies” March 11, 2014

“A Movement in the Making: Weekend Reading” February 21, 2014

“Four Paradoxes That Could Change a Company’s Performance Outlook:Weekend Reading” December 13, 2013

“Unlocking the Passion of Workers: Weekend Reading” September 27, 2013

“A simple strategy for winning the talent war” April 12, 2013

CIO Journal
“Computerized cars and the mobility ecosystem” August 3, 2016

“The power of platforms to create new value” May 27, 2015

“How CIOs can influence corporate performance” April 14, 2014

“How Redesigning the Work Environment Can Improve Corporate Performance” November 13, 2013

“Unlocking the Passion of Your Workers” October 23, 2013

“5 Ways Social Software Can Help Manage Chaos” June 5, 2013

“The CIO’s Role in Business Transformation” April 10, 2013

“John Hagel: What CIOs, CEOs Can Learn from the MIT Media Lab” November 9, 2012

CIO Magazine
“The Joy of Flex” (co-authored with John Seely Brown), September 1, 2005 – Discusses the role of loose coupling delivering both flexibility and the potential for accelerated innovation, not just at the technology level but also the business level. Makes the case that CIO’s can become significant players in the next wave of business innovation by working closely with non-technology business executives to understand the power of loose coupling.

“Go Slowly with Web Services” (co-authored with John Seely Brown and Dennis Layton-Rodin), February 15, 2002 – Urges senior management to adopt Web services technology using a pragmatic incremental approach focused on generating tangible economic value and enhancing learning opportunities

Corporate Dealmaker
“Reformulating the Firm” (co-authored with John Seely Brown), September-October 2005 – Suggests that changes in the global economy will force companies to choose among three different business types as a focus for specialization. More fundamentally, makes the case that the rationale for the firm itself is shifting from economizing on transaction costs to accelerating knowledge building and capability building.

Economist
“Business and change – Do most businesses adapt too slowly to change?” February 26, 2013

“Business lessons from extreme sports” March 7, 201

“Economist debates: Business and change – Do most businesses adapt too slowly to change?” February 26, 2012

“Pragmatic pathways to faster learning at work” October 4, 2011

“Innovation models, This house believes Japanese ‘incremental innovation’ is superior to the west’s ‘disruptive innovation’ March 15, 2011

“The three stages of talent-spike development” February 2, 2011

“The open company: The evolution of management” January 11, 2011

“The Dilbert paradox – reframing the talent imperative” December 1, 2010

Financial Times
“What do you know? Creating environments that fosters learning and improvement” December 2, 2013

“Creation spaces: Redesigning the future office” August 11, 2011

“Design thinking: The new office” July 7, 2011

“The aha moment: Designing ecosystems for talent development” June 23, 2011

“The multiplier effect: How to build a collaboration platform” May 25, 2011

“The Benefits of a Long Distance Relationship” (co-authored with John Seely Brown), August 9, 2005 – Suggests that most companies are underperforming in terms of harnessing the real potential of offshoring. The article distinguishes three different motivations for offshoring – wage arbitrage, skill arbitrage and skill building arbitrage. It suggests that executives need to focus much more on the opportunity for skill-building arbitrage.

“Don’t Resist Offshoring, Exploit It” (co-authored with John Seely Brown), August 13, 2004 – Recommends that companies make the difficult institutional changes required to create value through offshoring and outsourcing. The article suggests that companies will need to develop a much sharper focus within their own business and master new techniques for connecting with other highly specialized companies in ways that help all participants get better faster.

“Even As a Commodity, IT Still Matters” (co-authored with John Seely Brown) January 18, 2004 – Suggests that IT can still help to build significant strategic advantage even if the underlying IT components are rapidly commoditizing. Focuses on the convergence of two architectural trends – grid computing and service oriented architectures – offering the promise of delivering greater flexibility in organizing business activities. Indicates that strategic advantage will not come from specific innovations, but instead it will come from the organizational capability to harness IT to generate continuous waves of innovation.

Forbes
“The job training conundrum: An interview with John Hagel” November 14, 2012

“Do CEOs matter (anymore?)” August 15, 2012

“A new organizational learning goal: The accrual of awareness” May 1, 2012

“The Empowered Employee is Coming; Is The World Ready?” February 9, 2012

“How we can rebuild the American job factory” September 8, 2011

“Social power and the coming corporate revolution” September 8, 2011

“John Hagel: How to reinvent management” September 7, 2011

HRO Today
“Birds of a feather” December 15, 2014

Information Management
“How IT can ignite worker passion and drive results” March 7, 2013

InformationWeek
“Take Social Collaboration To Next Level” July 2, 2013

“Social analytics isn’t just for social networks” November 15, 2012

“Prove the benefits of social software: Expert advice” August 16, 2011

Journal of Interactive Marketing
“Net Gain: Expanding Markets through Virtual Communities” Winter 1999 – Examines the implications of a new virtual community business model. Adapted from keynote speech to Direct Marketing Association conference.

The Marketing Journal
“Tests for consumer focused companies” February 27, 2017

“The Big Shift in Platform Business Models” January 23, 2017

“The demise of advertising business models” September 4, 2016

“Robots can restore our humanity” August 16, 2016

“Harnessing the full potential of platforms” April 1, 2016

“The power of company narratives” February 24, 2016

“Scaling Trust: Marketing in a New Key” – An Interview with John Hagel III January 15, 2016

MIT Sloan Management Review
“The dark side of the digital revolution” January 29, 2016

“Four Ways Social Data Can Generate Business Value” October 9, 2013

Optimize Magazine
“The Shifting Industrial Landscape” (co-authored with John Seely Brown), April 1, 2005 – Indicates that the sources of sustainable competitive advantage are shifting and in the future will come from a capacity to work closely with other highly specialized companies around the globe to get better faster. Discusses the management techniques and new generations of information technologies that can help to build this form of strategic advantage.

“The Innovation/Productivity Quotient” (co-authored with John Seely Brown) February 2004 – Focuses on business innovation as the missing link required to generate productivity improvements from IT investment. Proposes that a combination of high tech, soft touch and loose coupling will be required to drive the next wave of business innovation. High tech refers to the emergence of new IT architectures providing more flexibility. Soft touch refers to the use of social software to help mobilize knowledge within and across enterprises. Loose coupling refers to a more modular way of organizing IT and human resources to enhance innovation capability.

“Step Into Action: Challenges and Benefits of Adopting Real Time Systems” March 2003 – Provides senior management with a balanced view of the real time enterprise concept, arguing that it is both too broad and too narrow. Makes the case for a focused approach to delivering business value through IT investments designed to deliver real time performance where it counts.

“Cut Loose from Old Business Processes” (co-authored with John Seely Brown) December 2001 – Suggests that a fundamentally new approach to management of business processes will be required to exploit the capabilities of new generations of information technology. Explores the role of an orchestrator in coordinating activities within business processes that span multiple enterprises.

Release 1.0
“Service Grids: The Missing Layer in Web Services” (co-authored with John Seely Brown) December 2002 – Focuses on the critical need for the emergence of service grids to expand and accelerate the adoption of Web services technology. Highlights some of the early companies offering service grid functionality in the market today.

Software Development
“From Tightly Bound to Loosely Coupled” (co-authored with John Seely Brown) September 2003 – Makes the case that more loosely coupled technology architectures enabled by Web services will require a fundamental re-thinking of business processes. Business managers have an opportunity to develop loosely coupled business processes to provide much more flexibility. Discusses the implications for the changing roles of IT managers as well.

Strategic News Service (SNS) Newsletter
“Flow and the big shift in business models” August 31, 2016

“Increased fragmentation and concentration caused by massive increases in data” and “The economic activity and institutional effects of massive increases in data” October 21, 2013

“Capability Leverage: A New Toolset and Mindset for Tomorrow” October 8, 2012

Wall Street Journal
“A Web that Supports Rather than Traps” March 3, 1996 – Proposes that economic webs represent a powerful new way to leverage the resources of others by creating appropriate economic incentives.

Wall Street Journal (CFO Journal)
“Manufacturers Reassess Role in Value Chain” December 10, 2015