Contribution to Harvard Business Review ..

Harvard Business School established in 1908 has attracted me like thousands of others for many years. The case method of teaching which I use in my classes are adapted from the Harvard style of Management teaching .. (click here for brief history..)

An alumnus from my alma-mater, IIT Bombay, is the present Dean of Harvard Business school, Prof. Nitin Nohria. The curious and funny thing I have noticed is that Harvard does not work on the fixed term  or tenure for an administrative post.  Nitin Nohria who took over in 2010, is now serving more than 8 years as Dean of HBS.

Most of us have our cherished desires to get our article published in Harvard Business Review. As different from engineering papers or articles, Management articles are required to be more conceptual. Case studies describe cases which are good for understanding and unlike papers / articles which are more conceptual and exposes one to new ideas, thoughts, streams, perspectives etc..

Different media on which you can read HBR articles

While going through the necessary attributes of what gets published in HBR, I have come across the following points to be followed. 

1. Demonstration of expertise
2. Evidence of the existence of the idea by data or intense analytics
3. Originality of the idea
4. Usefulness/utility of the idea
5. Writing style - use of right precise words and avoiding decorative pieces in writing

the paper should have the authenticity of the rightful author or authors / rigorous citations to fall back on earlier management literature / disclosure of any financial grants, motivations etc in writing the article etc.

The Short pitch which needs to be sent to web_submissions@hbr.org should have the following points clearly mentioned :-

1. central message of the write-up
2. what is important / new / useful / counter intuitive in the new idea ?
3. why managers need to be aware of your idea and how can they apply the same in their work areas
4. what is the source of authority , what references / citations can you mention
5. what are your academic / professional / personal credentials and qualifications that make you eligible to come up with these new ideas / suggestions ?

Hopefully, these are my dreams and desires which I shall be concentrating in the coming days and months to get a stream of management articles published in Harvard Business Review. After listening to Prof. Das RamohanDas of Harvard BS, who is also on HBR Publishing last week at an IIMB conference, this is the beginning of my efforts in that direction..

Reading more and more articles from HBR, gives you an idea of the main ideas and themes they support, promote and entertain, what are the writing styles for articles, what reporting styles are important etc  .. how to conduct experiments and how to report the results of the experiment, how to open the article, how to write the important sections and how to wind up an article and so on ..

The learning can help you in the long run ..

George..