Since 1959, the McKinsey Foundation for Management Research has presented awards recognizing the two best articles published each year in Harvard Business Review.
The awards, judged by an independent panel of business leaders and scholars, commend outstanding works that are likely to have a major influence on executives worldwide.
HBR wishes to thank this year’s panel of judges for their hard work on behalf of the 2007 awards:
Vikram Akula
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
SKS Microfinance
Hyderabad, India
Antonio Borges
Vice Chairman
Goldman Sachs International
London
Beth Comstock
President, Integrated Media
NBC Universal
New York
Robert J. Dolan
Dean and Stephen M. Ross Professor of Business
Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Kathleen M. Eisenhardt
Stanford Warren Ascherman Professor
Department of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University
Stanford, California
Helene Gayle
President and Chief Executive Officer
CARE USA
Atlanta
Charles F. Knight
Chairman Emeritus
Emerson Electric
St. Louis
Susan Lyne
President and Chief Executive Officer
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
New York
Sheryl Sandberg
Vice President, Global Online Sales and Operations
Mountain View, California
Jonathan Schwartz
Chief Executive Officer and President
Sun Microsystems
Santa Clara, California
Loh Khum Yean
Chief Executive
SPRING Singapore
Singapore
“Cocreating Business’s New Social Compact”
February 2007
First-Place Winner
Cocreating Business’s New Social Compact
Moving beyond decades of mutual distrust and animosity, corporations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are learning to cooperate with each other. Realizing that their interests are converging, the two sides are working together to create innovative business models that are helping to grow new markets and accelerate the eradication of poverty. Brugmann and Prahalad call this new phase of business cocreation.
Increasingly, corporations and NGOs realize that they need each other to achieve their respective goals in developing countries. Companies require NGOs’ local knowledge and community-based marketing techniques to set up successful enterprises. NGOs need the business discipline corporations bring to their operations. In cocreation, companies and NGOs become key parts of each other’s capacity to deliver value.
The authors explore the implications of cocreation for managers and identify the powerful new rules of company-NGO engagement. The resulting collaboration, they write, “offers the promise of more than just access to better products at more affordable prices; it gives people at the bottom of the pyramid, who until now were unable to enjoy the benefits of globalization, a chance to create new livelihoods and gain economic and social influence.”
Jeb Brugmann is a Toronto-based consultant who works with companies to develop business models for the underserved segments of emerging markets.C.K. Prahalad is the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate Strategy at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in Ann Arbor. This is his 14th article for HBR and his fourth McKinsey Award.
“Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership”
September 2007
Second-Place Winner (Tie)
Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership
For two decades, the “glass ceiling” was the defining metaphor for the failure of organizations to promote women to top leadership positions. It perfectly captured the frustration of a goal that was within sight but somehow unattainable.
But times have changed, write Alice Eagly and Linda Carli, and the glass ceiling metaphor has outlived its usefulness. There is still a problem: Only 2% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. But the glass ceiling fails to address the real roots of the issue. Eagly and Carli explain that a more fitting metaphor is the labyrinth, which acknowledges the complex challenges women face throughout their careers, such as resistance to their leadership styles, the demands of family life, and vestiges of prejudice at all levels. This metaphor also implies that there is a viable way to the center—that goals are attainable.
Organizations that adopt this thinking will understand and address the barriers to women’s progress with greater success. “If one has misdiagnosed a problem,” the authors write, “then one is unlikely to prescribe an effective cure.”
Alice H. Eagly is a professor of psychology and holds the James Padilla Chair of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois; she is also a faculty fellow at Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research.Linda L. Carli is an associate professor of psychology at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
“Leading Clever People”
March 2007
Second-Place Winner (Tie)
Leading Clever People
In every company there exists a handful of employees whose ideas, knowledge, and skills give them the potential to produce great value. In an economy driven by ideas, attracting these smart, creative employees and leading them to achieve their fullest potential is crucial. Therein lies the problem: If these “clever people,” as Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones call them, have one defining characteristic, it’s that they do not want to be led.
In interviewing more than 100 leaders and their highly creative employees, Goffee and Jones found that the psychological relationships between them are very different from the ones leaders have with traditional followers. Those relationships can be shaped by several characteristics that clever people share: They know how much they’re needed, they are indifferent to corporate hierarchy but love intellectual status, they are well-connected, and they expect instant access to top management. Clever people flourish under benevolent guardians who understand them, not traditional bosses who try to tame them. Leaders who recognize this will watch their companies thrive.
Rob Goffee is a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School.Gareth Jones is a visiting professor at Insead in Fontainebleau, France, and a fellow of the Centre for Management Development at London Business School. Goffee and Jones are also the founding partners of Creative Management Associates, an organizational consulting firm in London. This is their fifth article for HBR and their second McKinsey Award.