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For Some Platforms, Network Effects Are No Match for Local Know-How

Harvard Business

Uber, like all transportation services, has never and will never offer a product that’s composed purely of digital “bits,” as companies do in media (Netflix and YouTube), music (Spotify), or advertisements (Facebook and Google). China’s WeChat has most evidently pursued this strategy.

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To Get More Done, Focus on Environment, Expectations, and Examples

Harvard Business

In 2008, I was designing advertising products at Google. For the first time in my young career, I was going to lots of meetings, and my job had become as much about convincing, cajoling, and coordinating as it was about designing. My manager told me about a team that was working on the Google Help Forum. Block as a team.

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The Right Way to Check Someone’s References

Harvard Business

But viewing reference checks as a formality is a mistake, according to Priscilla Claman, the president of Career Strategies, a Boston-based consulting firm and a contributor to the HBR Guide to Getting the Right Job. “You can’t rely on your hunch,” she says. ” Richard got the job and he starts at InkHouse next month.