HBR at 100

Introduction

by Adi Ignatius, editor in chief of Harvard Business Review

When Harvard Business Review first rolled off the presses a century ago, it became a welcome showcase of fresh ideas for the relatively new field of business management.

It was a heady time in the United States. The dust of World War I had just begun to settle, and American business was taking off. This was the dawn of the Roaring Twenties, a period of breakneck economic growth and social experimentation (which lasted until the Great Depression abruptly ended the fun, in 1929). Auto manufacturing and other consumer industries were booming, but the processes for effectively guiding these enterprises were only just beginning to emerge.

And so HBR came to be. The magazine, ...