Adapted from the July-August 2025 edition of the magazine, this round-up features recent research your company needs to know. The findings were pulled from academia, consultancies, and other vetted sources, and include studies on why you should lead with…

Many companies are appointing chief AI officers (CAIOs) to lead their AI initiatives, but this approach often fails, because the role is too broad and misaligned with organizational needs. Instead, successful AI adoption comes from a distributed leadership…

New research finds that, after a fatal school shooting, people shop and dine out less, and they avoid public spaces in the impacted U.S. county. This leads to measurable drops in local spending to the tune of $5.4 million in the six months post-shooting,…

A fast-moving, celebrity-backed brand uses its cultural credibility to push into crowded shelves.

A conversation with the University of Texas’ Andrew Brodsky on improving our online—and offline—interactions.

When you step into the CEO role, the pressure to have all the answers is real. But no one expects you to solve everything overnight. Taking the time to ask the right questions during your first 100 days can help you build a stronger foundation of trust, alignment…

In today’s volatile environment, leaders face high‑stakes decisions amid economic shocks, ethical dilemmas, and public scrutiny. Strong leadership requires more than expertise—it demands everyday courage: consistent, values‑aligned actions taken despite doubt…

Expert advice to help you move forward and upward.

Firms around the world are struggling to adjust their supply chains and operations to the chaotic trade war unleashed by the Trump administration. Some firms have developed a dynamic stress-testing system to assist them. It uses a combination of AI and human…

Blindspots aren’t occasional stumbles—they’re the default until you surface them. In this HBR Executive Masterclass, author and leadership psychologist Martin Dubin shows why even seasoned executives misread themselves more than the market—and what to do…

Misaligned communication habits—whether around response times, preferred channels, or writing style—can lead to missed deadlines, frustrated colleagues, and lost productivity. As digital tools proliferate and AI-generated writing becomes more common, it’s…

At the executive level, your words carry more weight and come with greater responsibility. That’s why strategic editing is a critical senior leadership skill. It’s knowing what to say (and what to leave out), how to say it, and when silence is more powerful.…

Ambitious entrepreneurs are increasingly turning to AI to drive growth, innovation, and efficiency. They have used AI to compete with major players, showing that small teams can achieve outsized impact. Entrepreneurs aiming to hire more than 20 employees…

Communication “leak points”—specific transition moments where critical meaning evaporates—require systematic intervention. There are three leak points that are most common in organizational messaging. The first leak point is where visionary thinking often…

Researchers at Vlerick Business School’s Centre for Financial Leadership and Digital Transformation have worked with CFOs and finance leaders to understand how finance can lead in the AI era. Their latest study, building on a 2023 digital-maturity diagnostic…

In this week’s edition of The HBR Executive Agenda, editor at large Adi Ignatius connects with Dambisa Moyo, an economist who sits on the boards of Chevron, Condé Nast, and Starbucks, about how AI could upend the global economy, and what boards need to understand…

To create top-performing teams, you need team emotional intelligence. Team EI is a set of habitual routines or norms that together meet the core social needs that are activated when people enter teams. These include the need to feel genuinely accepted, known…

The improv technique “Yes, and…” can be a powerful way to run more collaborative, creative, and productive meetings—when used intentionally. It works by validating a teammate’s contribution (“yes”) and building on it (“and”), helping teams generate ideas…

Companies aren’t generating ROI on their AI investments because they’re still thinking about AI as a siloed, piecemeal solution instead of the data, software and process foundation for a completely different way to power a business. It’s time to stop throwing…

A conversation with IMD’s Amit Joshi on weighing the risks and rewards of new technology.