ETL 42: HBR’s Amy Bernstein on Its Enduring Impact

Transcript: Amy Bernstein and Bob Buday

Bob Buday: Amy, it’s great to have you on our show, and congratulations on your promotion to Editor-in-Chief. It’s well deserved and I know that Harvard Business Review is in very good hands for the foreseeable future. It’s such an important publication for thought leaders and people who want to be considered as thought leaders, and it has a substantial impact in the way managers think.  So my first question is: why does HBR remain the most important management publication for managers and leaders worldwide?

Amy Bernstein: Thank you for that question. I think it’s a lot of things, but I think it starts with our editorial sensibility, which starts with the challenges that our subscribers are facing. We understand who turns to HBR and what kinds of information they need, and we have access to the smartest thinking in management, leadership, and business fromthe leading experts in business and the adjacent fields. We also talk to experienced leaders — the practitioners – and to consultants who are the best practice people.

We are looking for ideas that are not only insightful, but also very well evidenced. We need to see the research, and we need to see real examples. And then we need transparency. When does this framework or idea work? What are the pitfalls? What should our subscribers be looking out for? I believe we excel because we translate theory into practice. And I think that we will continue to succeed 100 plus years into doing this is that we don’t rest on our laurels. We are always looking for better ways to do what we do. We always are seeking deeper understanding of our subscribers.

The relationships we have with our authors are incredibly important. We need to be the first choice for the smartest thinkers when they want to introduce their new insights into the world, and when they want to reach the people who are making the most consequential decisions in business. And we don’t take that for granted because there’s a lot of competition out there.

HBR’s Secret Sauce

Bob: Comparing your circulation figures with other academic business or management publications, you can see a big gap between HBR’s circulation and the next leading brands. But you haven’t taken this standing for granted, and you continue to evolve the product. People want to know your secret sauce. Why haven’t other business journals reached the reverence, the acclaim, whatever term you want to use for it, that HBR has, despite years of trying?

Amy: Some have tried and some have put us explicitly in the crosshairs. That competition makes us keep looking for ways to improve. After 100 years I think that we have a critical mass of the best thinkers, and it is a constantly evolving group. We have proven ourselves over the long haul to be a very valuable source of insight, wisdom, and inspiration for leaders who are grappling with the kinds of challenges our audience is dealing with.

Our size and experience do work in our favor. We have global distribution, fabulous editors, and great product people. Our colleagues on the business side are super smart. We all work very well together, and we have the support of Harvard Business School.  That’s a tremendous leg up in the market.

HBR Press: Small but Mighty

Bob: Does having HBR press, the book imprint, bring a competitive advantage?

Amy: People who have brilliant ideas that they want to see change the world know that they need to put those ideas out in a variety of formats to have impact. Our unit of analysis is the idea – that is Adi Ignatius’s idea, not mine. Being able to offer our authors many ways to push their ideas into the world does give us an advantage, and we also happen to be excellent book publishers. We are small but mighty — Our editors really edit.

Bob: And they promote the books. Every year you publish books that are better than most, or maybe all of your book publishing competitors. Your list and the marketing they put behind it is so important for book authors.

Amy: Yeah, and kudos to Melinda Merino and Erika Heilman, who run the press. They are 100% committed to what they do. They love the ideas, but they also are savvy business people. Our press person, Julie Devoll, is kind of a miracle worker. She is able to whip up attention because she knows what levers to pull and when, and she has extraordinary credibility in the field. She’s got serious substance, and people know that.

Developing Authors’ Ideas

Bob: When do you look at your authors for HBR—both the magazine and the digital edition—has there been a big increase in competition for authors over the last 15 or so years?

Amy: The competition for our authors who are just looking to have impact with their ideas, has proliferated. For example, you can publish your ideas on LinkedIn simply by typing them in and hitting send. There are other very well-established media competitors, like Sloan Management Review. We don’t usually have trouble convincing authors to come to us because we deliver the kind of readership that they’re looking for. We are a two-sided platform, so when we’re doing it right, there’s a lot of reinforcement going on.

I think the real competition is for the author’s focus, time, and willingness to work with us, because, as you know, our editorial process is rigorous and iterative, and it’s rarely one and done. Most authors seem to appreciate what we bring to the party, which is the ability to translate ideas into practical and compelling packages.

Bob: I’ve worked with HBR editors since 1988. Your editors are not manuscript editors. They’re not polishing prose from some professor or consultant who tells you “don’t change a word, except, you know, the obvious typos.”  I’ve run into a few of these people myself. But I think one of the things that many people don’t understand is that your editors are developmental editors.

Amy: That is exactly what they are. And speaking from my own experience as a developmental editor, I love working on pieces with our contributors. When it works, it’s like the greatest little, short-term marriage, where the whole is much more valuable than the sum of the parts, because I know that the core idea, the valuable insight, isn’t mine. The author knows that my job is to give that idea or insight maximum impact. And when you have that kind of understanding the relationship may be tough and require very hard work, but it is so gratifying. We have not worked together, but you you’ve worked with some brilliant editors, so you know what I’m talking about.

Bob: I do. And what we do with our clients is we help them make the sausage on our end so that you folks don’t immediately reject the submission or proposal on your end. And working together with some of the smartest people in the world to push their thinking is a very delicate dance, as you know. Some refuse it, saying, “What I say is perfect. Don’t question or change a word.” And others say, “Help me shape this ball of putty, into something powerful.”

Amy: Yeah. And if people don’t want their manuscripts touched, then there are other ways to go to market.

Future Directions

Bob: Publish, as you say, on LinkedIn, and just push that post button. Many, I think, wind up doing that. So let’s talk about where HBR is going, especially with the digital edition, the podcast, the webinars, and things that, and maybe even things on the back burner that many of your readers or even non-readers would be surprised to see in the next couple years.

Amy: It won’t surprise you or any of your listeners that the center of gravity for us, has moved to digital. It used to be that HBR was a magazine with a nice little web operation and a book publishing arm, and now we are a media organization with more than one kind of platform. We are moving into an even more integrated way of thinking about what we do and how we serve our subscribers.

One thing that we will be introducing quite soon is an offering for the C suite, which suddenly has gotten everyone’s attention. We’ve been serving the C suite for a very long time. We understand what senior executives are about. We talk to them. We talk to the people who talk to them. It’s sort of where we are, and have been for for 100 years. We also understand leadership. We are always thinking about how leaders can do a better job of inspiring and motivating their organizations toward a shared goal, how they can make positive change in the world. We have a moral compass. So we will be thinking across our platforms in a more integrated way, so that when people say HBR, it won’t matter what form the Insight takes, because it’s going to take a lot of forms, and it’s going to come to you, the subscriber, in ways that we hope will be even more useful in the moment that they need it. That is the goal.

Bob: And in ways that no print edition could ever do, right?

Amy: Well, we’re working on the May/June and July/August issue, and it’s the end of February. So the world’s moving very, very fast, and we’ve always leaned more toward timeless, but in the world in which our subscribers operate, timely has become more and more important, and we have to serve them. So that’s what I’m talking about. I have to say we don’t take we don’t take a breath very often. We have confidence, but what we don’t have is arrogance. We don’t assume that what we do today is going to be what we do tomorrow and a year from now. We know that there’s always a better way to serve the evolving needs of our audience.

Bob: You know that first-hand, because you worked for a unit of Time Inc.

Amy: I worked at Business 2.0.  Magazines come and go, but the needs of the people we serve only evolve. They’re never going to go away.

Bob: Time magazine, back when I started reading it in the in the late 60s, seemed unassailable as a media property — a fixture in the American home.

Amy: Absolutely. But as you know, when a media property starts to go south, it dives pretty fast. I remember as a child flipping through Life magazine and Look magazine, and I loved them. I wasn’t aware of anything when Look went under, but when Life magazine stopped mattering, and then when it finally died, it felt like we all lost a member of the family because it had brought us so much.

Remember how you would just sit there with the magazine in your lap and it would feel like you were taking a vacation just flipping through it?

Growing Readership and Influence

Bob: So for HBR’s immediate future, say the next two to three years, what kind of things do you think we’ll see more of that we are already seeing today, that you think are going to be really important to grow readership and influence?

Amy: I think we will see a more targeted approach to the information we deliver. Like everyone else, we’re experimenting with AI to figure out how it can enhance what we do. I think that in the next two to three years, people will talk less about the format and more about the information. Were newspapers about news or about the paper? We’re about the insight. Believe me — I love the magazine, I love our books, I love our website, but we need to think about serving our subscribers, and not so much about the platforms and the internal structures that have grown up over a century.

Bob: So you mentioned earlier that the unit of analysis is the insight, the idea.

Amy: Ideas can be big and small and still consequential, but people need ideas in different moments for different purposes, and a single idea can have many applications. In my mind, the challenge is how to take the brilliant idea and serve it to you, the subscriber, in a way that sort of addresses your immediate need, but also suggests a longer-term application so that you keep coming back to it. The idea continues to serve you, the subscriber, in the ways that you need when you need it. It’s a more proactive way of thinking about distribution and delivery.

Bob: Give us a hypothetical example, or even a real example.

Amy: You are already seeing it. We will acquire an idea for a magazine feature and publish it in the March/April issue, which is now on the stands. In many cases, we will invite the author to join us on IdeaCast, our marquee podcast. We might do a video. We might do webinars with the authors.  We will figure out what the industry calls derivative products — different ways of slicing and dicing the idea to create more value for the subscriber. We need to do more of that.

Competition From B2B Firms

Bob: Let’s turn to our final topic: the explosion of “ thought leadership content” from a wide range of B2B firms, from venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, to recruiters like Korn Ferry, to the firm Manpower, to Booz Allen and Strategy+Business. There has been an explosion of competition for good thinking. How does HBR stay ahead when so many people are now making the sausage of thought leadership and publishing it and making it free to access?  

Amy: Well, there are a lot of people who call themselves experts in the world, and there are a lot of reasons that people publish thought leadership. The way we maintain our competitive advantage is by being the most honest broker between the author – whether it’s an academic, consultant, or company leader — and our subscriber and audience. We are not trying to sell you anything except the magazine you hold in your hand or the subscription that gets you online access to the article, because we have to support ourselves. But what we’re not trying to do is sell you a million-dollar consulting contract or a product. We are always transparent, and we take the trust that our audience places in us very seriously. This means we own our mistakes, and it means we are always alert to the kind of the bank shot proposal that’s sort of a marketing piece in disguise. If you read an HBR article or listen to a podcast, or watch one of our videos, you won’t hear any hint that in order to make this idea work for you, you have to hire this author.

Bob: So, when you are at the end of your tenure as editor in chief of HBR, what do you want to be known for terms of your impact? Have you set any personal as well as organizational goals?

Amy:  Professionally, I want to leave HBR in even better shape than it is today. And I want our audience to view HBR as the single most useful resource it has at its disposal. We have outsized influence, and I really want to take good care of that. I want to take care of HBR and our subscribers and audience, and make sure that everyone feels as ifthey’ve done their best work and gotten the most useful information, and that the benefit has been unquestionable.

Bob: Amy, from everything I’ve heard from people who know you, you are the perfect person for the job. I wish you the best of luck.

Amy: Well, thanks, Bob. I sure appreciate it. I’m really lucky to have this opportunity. I love what we do, and I love the people I get to do my job with. My job is a dream job and I’m really excited to get up in the morning.