Publications

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January 2015 (Revised May 2023)
Technical Note

FIELD Global Immersion: Orchestrating a Compelling Presentation

By: Jill Avery

This note was written to help you organize and orchestrate your FIELD Global Immersion final project presentation to your global partner. It is designed to illustrate ways to make your final presentation persuasive, inspiring, and powerful — a presentation with... View Details

Keywords: Presentation Skills; Communication; Communication Intention and Meaning; Communication Strategy; Interpersonal Communication; Management Skills

Alison Wood Brooks is the O'Brien Associate Professor of Business Administration and Hellman Faculty Fellow in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School. She teaches a cutting-edge course in the MBA elective curriculum called "How... View Details

March 2008
Article

What Have We Learned from Market Design?

By: Alvin E. Roth

This essay discusses some things we have learned about markets, in the process of designing marketplaces to fix market failures. To work well, marketplaces have to provide thickness, i.e. they need to attract a large enough proportion of the potential participants in... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Market Design; Market Participation; Market Transactions; Failure; Safety

July 2024
Module Note

Organization: Managing the Corporation

By: David J. Collis

Ongoing management of the corporate portfolio is critical to realizing value in diversified companies. This requires designing and administering structures, systems, and processes appropriate for the set of businesses and the resources that underpin value creation... View Details

Keywords: Organization; Corporate Strategy; Business Conglomerates; Business or Company Management; Diversification; Value Creation

13 Nov 2008
Working Paper Summaries

The Effect of Labor on Profitability: The Role of Quality

Keywords: by Zeynep Ton

2008
Book

Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage

By: Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton

In a world of stiffening competition, business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet most organizations struggle in this area--not with formulating strategy but with executing it, or putting their strategy into action. Owing to execution failures, companies realize... View Details

Keywords: Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Operations; Performance; Strategic Planning; Business Strategy

21 May 2014
News

Harvard Historian Nancy Koehn On The Cashless Society

October 1992 (Revised October 1993)
Case

Lehigh Valley Industries (LVI)

By: Kim B. Clark

Describes a situation confronting a manufacturer of forged parts that has recently undergone a leveraged buyout. The company is under pressure to improve operating performance dramatically. Describes several options designed to improve performance, including adding... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Product; Production; Performance Improvement; Capital; Manufacturing Industry; Industrial Products Industry

11 Aug 2003
Research & Ideas

Why Budgeting Kills Your Company

keep a tight rein on costs—but the dynamics of the budgeting process often undermine this effort. "In tough times like these, any significant real cost growth feels imprudent and is hard to justify for most businesses," writes... View Details

Keywords: by Loren Gary

June 1994 (Revised September 1994)
Background Note

Commercializing Technology: Imaginative Understanding of User Needs

By: Dorothy A. Leonard

The transformation of technology into commercially successful products is a process fraught with risk and uncertainty, and increasing pressure on time to market is exacerbating the difficulties. This note first describes a study conducted by Hewlett-Packard to improve... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Communication Strategy; Customers; Design; Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Product Development; Research; Risk and Uncertainty; Commercialization; Technology Adoption

13 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

Managing the Family Business: Leadership Roles

families are due to their lack of governance and leadership. In the governance area, family members are not clear about the family's mission or core values; or they lack adequate rules and policies to guide behavior; or maybe they haven't developed a forum and View Details

Keywords: by John A. Davis

02 Nov 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Managing Functional Biases in Organizational Forecasts: A Case Study of Consensus Forecasting in Supply Chain Planning

Keywords: by Rogelio Oliva & Noel H. Watson

08 Sep 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Blinded by Experience: Prior Experience, Negative News and Belief Updating

Keywords: by Bradley R. Staats, KC Diwas & Francesca Gino

February 2019
Technical Note

Can Multiunit Organizations Remain Agile as They Grow?

By: Tatiana Sandino

This note discusses how multiunit organizations incorporate flexibility into their management control systems, some by authorizing all or a select number of their dispersed units to make input and process decisions, some by investing in data-analytic technologies to... View Details

Keywords: Management Control Systems; Flexibility; Management Systems; Business Units; Decision Making

July 2008 (Revised April 2009)
Case

Advanced Micro Devices: Competing in the Shadow of a Giant (A)

By: Willy C. Shih and Andrew A. King

As the only significant competitor to Intel Corporation in PC microprocessors, Advanced Micro Devices faced daunting investment choices. Not only did it have to fund microprocessor design teams, it also had to fund silicon process R&D, and it faced huge capital... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Operations; Partners and Partnerships; Competitive Strategy; Technology Industry

July 1989
Background Note

What Is Marketing?

An introductory note for MBA students on the nature of marketing and topics encountered in its study. Defines the topic then breaks marketing into two major conceptual pieces--the tools, tasks and variables of the marketer, and the marketing process. In the tools... View Details

Keywords: Marketing

March 2000
Case

Aspect Medical Systems

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer and Naomi Atkins

Entrepreneur Nassib Chamoun has created an innovative anesthesiology device that monitors patients' consciousness levels during surgery. This case tracks how Chamoun and his executive team built the infrastructure of the company and actively managed the adoption... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Entrepreneurship; Independent Innovation and Invention; Infrastructure; Product Design; Product Development; Problems and Challenges; Adoption; Competitive Strategy; Technology Industry

Article

Know Your Customers' 'Jobs to Be Done'

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan

Firms have never known more about their customers, but their innovation processes remain hit-or-miss. Why? According to Christensen and his coauthors, product developers focus too much on building customer profiles and looking for correlations in data. To create... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management