Whether as managers or as academics, we study business to extract learning, formalize it, and apply it to puzzles we wish to solve. That’s why we go to business school, why we write case studies and develop analytic frameworks, why we read HBR. I believe deeply in the importance of that work: I’ve spent my career studying business as it is practiced in varied global settings.
A version of this article appeared in the September 2014 issue of Harvard Business Review.