The 10 Most Popular Stories of 2016

Startups often struggle to find their first customers—especially in the sharing economy, where survival depends on securing users on both the supply and demand sides. No surprise, then, that our readers flocked to a story about the early days of three wildly successful two-sided platforms. “How Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy Attracted Their First 1,000 Customers” was the most-read story on Working Knowledge in 2016.

Other popular topics among our readers included workplace communication, negotiation, white-collar crime, and, of course, the votes that rocked the world—both Brexit and Donald Trump attracted lots of attention. Here are the year’s 10 most popular research-related stories, columns, and op-eds on Working Knowledge:

1. How Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy Attracted Their First 1,000 Customers
   Thales Teixeira studies three of the most successful “platform” startups to understand the chicken-and-egg challenge of how companies can attract their first customers.

2. Donald Trump’s Winning Marketing Manual
   Donald Trump's upset election win offers six lessons for marketing professionals, says John A. Quelch.

3. When Negotiating a Price, Never Bid With a Round Number
   Investors who offer “precise” bids for company shares yield better outcomes than those who offer round-number bids, according to research by Petri Hukkanen and Matti Keloharju.

4. Bernie Madoff Explains Himself
   Eugene Soltes phoned convicted felon Bernie Madoff and asked him an important question: How would you explain your actions and misconduct to students? The recorded answer offers sobering lessons for anyone with business ambitions.

5. What’s a Boss Worth?
   Quite a lot, it turns out. Good bosses can have a multiplier effect that ups everyone’s game, according to research by Christopher Stanton.

6. Master the One-on-One Meeting

1. Why Brexit is a Big Deal

1. Skills and Behaviors That Make Entrepreneurs Successful

1. Resolve Your Toughest Work Problems With 5 Questions

1. The Truth About Authentic Leaders

Plus: The year’s most downloaded working papers

In addition to stories, columns, and op-eds, Working Knowledge also publishes summaries of the working papers published by Harvard Business School faculty—along with links to the full text of those papers. Here are the five most downloaded working papers of 2016:

1. The Great Training Robbery
   There is a widely held assumption in corporate life that well trained, even inspired individuals can change the system. This article explains why training fails and discusses why the “great training robbery” persists. Michael Beer, Magnus Finnstrom, and Derek Schrader offer a framework for integrating leadership and organization change and development, and discuss implications for the corporate HR function.

2. Becoming a Cognitive Referent: Market Creation and Cultural Strategy
   Rory McDonald describes the making of a "cognitive referent," which is a firm that customers, the media, analysts, and employees automatically associate with a new market category—think Starbucks and coffee.

3. Preparing the Self for Team Entry: How Relational Affirmation Improves Team Performance
   Despite their potential to perform at high levels and make decisions that are better than those of individual members, teams are often unable to capitalize on this potential. Julia J. Lee, Francesca Gino, Daniel M. Cable, and Bradley R. Staats show the importance of affirming team members’ self-concept prior to team formation.

4. Risk Management: The Revealing Hand
   Robert S. Kaplan and Anette Mikes explore the role, organization, and limitations of risk identification and risk management, especially in situations that are not amenable to quantitative risk modeling. They argue that firms can avoid the artificial choice between quantitative and qualitative risk management, allowing both to play important roles in surfacing and assessing risks.

5. Does “What We Do” Make Us “Who We Are”? Organizational Design and Identity Change at the Federal Bureau of Investigation
   Both the design and identity of the FBI changed greatly in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, write Ranjay Gulati, Ryan Raffaelli, and Jan Rivkin. Their study tracing the co-evolution of the Bureau’s organizational design and identity before the 9/11 attacks and through three subsequent phases finds that successful changes to organizational identity are likely to be delayed after a radical external shock: Management is likely to be constrained, appropriate design is probably unclear, or both.

A big thanks to our readers

Also popular in 2016: You, the readers! We at Working Knowledge are grateful for and proud of the thoughtful, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging comments you've contributed to our stories.

Take this story from earlier in December, which discussed the controversial tactic of using truthful statements for the purpose of deception. Reader responses to the story included surprising references to the 1st Earl of Balfour, the Book of Leviticus, and the 1966 sci-fi novel Colossus by D.F. Jones. In short, reader comments take our stories to new heights. Working Knowledge strives to be a conversation platform in addition to a publication, and of course we couldn’t do that without you.

So, we'd like to extend a big thanks to our readers! 

With that, we ask you to answer these two questions in the comments section below: 

1. In your opinion, what was the most significant business trend, idea, or event in 2016?

2. What is the most significant issue businesses will face in 2017?