Publications

We investigate the role of deeply-rooted pre-colonial ethnic institutions in shaping comparative regional development within African countries. We combine information on the spatial distribution of ethnicities before colonization with regional variation in... View Details

Michael L. Tushman

Michael Tushman holds degrees from Northeastern University (B.S.E.E.), Cornell University (M.S.), and the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. (Ph.D.). Tushman was on the faculty of the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, from 1976 to 1998 where he was... View Details

December 2022
Case

Taylor Farms: Adding Value to Fresh Produce

By: José B. Alvarez, Forest L. Reinhardt, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Pedro Levindo

In October 2022, Bruce Taylor (HBS MBA, 1981), Chairman and CEO of Taylor Farms, the leading producer of salads and healthy fresh foods in the United States, wondered whether this was the right time for Taylor Farms to venture into the Controlled Environment... View Details

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Cost vs Benefits; Logistics; Environmental Sustainability; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

March 2022
Article

Where to Locate COVID-19 Mass Vaccination Facilities?

By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Vassilis Digalakis Jr, Alexander Jacquillat, Michael Lingzhi Li and Alessandro Previero

The outbreak of COVID-19 led to a record-breaking race to develop a vaccine. However, the limited vaccine capacity creates another massive challenge: how to distribute vaccines to mitigate the near-end impact of the pandemic? In the United States in particular, the new... View Details

Keywords: Vaccines; COVID-19; Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Performance Effectiveness; Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods

2012
Working Paper

Risky Business: The Impact of Property Rights on Investment and Revenue in the Film Industry

By: Venkat Kuppuswamy and Carliss Y. Baldwin

Our paper tests a key prediction of property rights theory, specifically, that agents will respond to marginal incentives embedded in property rights when making non-contractible, revenue-enhancing investments (Grossman and Hart, 1986; Hart and Moore, 1990). Using rich... View Details

Keywords: Property Rights; Property; Rights; Investment; Contracts; Revenue; Motivation and Incentives; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; United States

SSRN

April 1998
Case

Compaq, 1998

By: Steven C. Wheelwright and Matt Verlinden

In 1997, Compaq Computer Corp. had become a $25 billion powerhouse. It had accomplished its revenue growth projections, successfully made a number of strategic acquisitions, and increased its gross margins, principally by moving up market into servers, workstations,... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Transformation; Customer Relationship Management; Profit; Revenue; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Distribution Channels; Alliances; Customization and Personalization; Computer Industry

September 2019 (Revised May 2020)
Supplement

Keroche (F): Future Growth Plans

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pippa Tubman Armerding

This case describes Keroche co-founder Tabitha Karanja’s 2012 decision to invest in additional production capacity. In November 2012, with a loan from Barclay’s bank, Keroche began constructing a new state-of-the-art beer brewery using German technology. The new plant,... View Details

2007
Working Paper

Retail Market Structure and Dynamics: A Three Country Comparison of Japan, the U.K. and the U.S.

By: Jonathan Haskel, Ron S. Jarmin, Kazuyuki Motohashi and Raffaella Sadun

This paper compares structure and dynamics of the Retail Trade Sectors in Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. This is done using confidential establishment and firm level data for each country. By using micro data we are able to perform much more detailed comparisons than... View Details

Keywords: Industry Structures; Market Entry and Exit; Jobs and Positions; Size; Performance Productivity; Japan; United Kingdom; United States

November 2006
Article

Patent Citations as a Measure of Knowledge Flows: The Influence of Examiner Citations

By: Juan Alcacer and Michelle Gittelman

Analysis of patent citations is a core methodology in the study of knowledge diffusion. However, citations made by patent examiners have not been separately reported, adding unknown noise to the data. We leverage a recent change in the reporting of patent data showing... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Knowledge Sharing; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Information Technology; Prejudice and Bias; Change

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February 2001 (Revised November 2009)
Case

Amazon.com (D)

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dickson Louie and William A. Sahlman

At the end of 1999, Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos--just named Time Magazine's Man of the Year--ponders the next moves for his company. Having expanded into numerous categories in 1999, ranging from Z-shops to Auctions to E-cards as well as increasing the number... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Advantage; Expansion; Online Technology; Retail Industry

23 May 2014
News

Can You Crowdsource a Big Idea?

January 2014
Article

Fashioning an Industry: Socio-cognitive Processes in the Construction of Worth of a New Industry

By: Mukti Khaire

This study of the high-end fashion industry in India examines the process of construction of the worth of a new industry. Analyses of data from multiple sources revealed that framing by early entrepreneurs and the socio-cognitive processes that resulted from the... View Details

Keywords: Fashion And Creative Industries; Fashion Industry

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25 Apr 2012
News

Harvard Business School Holds 16th Annual Business Plan Contest

OCT TechNovation: Accessing the Ideas Cloud

Through a renewed focus on innovation and technology, NASA seeks to be an important catalyst for intellectual and economic expansion for the nation. Our inaugural TechNovation Speaker Forum gathered NASA employees from across the agency to listen to our special... View Details

Should Your Company Sell on Amazon? Reach Comes at a Price—Harvard Business Review

Selling on Amazon allows brands to reach millions of consumers—but that exposure comes with costs. They include smaller margins, more competition, the risk of commoditization, and less knowledge about customers.

In this article, the authors present a... View Details

Article

A Better Way to Assess Managerial Performance

By: Mihir Desai, Mark Egan and Scott Mayfield

Total shareholder return (TSR) has become the definitive metric for gauging performance. Unlike accounting measures such as revenue growth or earnings per share that reflect the past, TSR is based on share price and thus captures investor expectations of what will... View Details

Keywords: Total Shareholder Return; Buybacks; Core Operating Shareholder Return; Management; Operations; Performance; Measurement and Metrics

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Article

Optimal Taxation When Children's Abilities Depend on Parents' Resources

By: Alexander Gelber and Matthew Weinzierl

Empirical research suggests that parents' economic resources affect their children's future earnings abilities. Optimal tax policy therefore treats future ability distributions as endogenous to current taxes. We model this endogeneity, calibrate the model to match... View Details

Keywords: Taxation; Family and Family Relationships; Welfare

2009
Other Unpublished Work

Choice-based Measures of Conflict in Preferences

By: Katherine Baldiga and Jerry R. Green

We propose a family of measures of difference between ordinal preference relations. The difference between two preferences is the probability that they would disagree about the optimal choice from a random available set. It is in this sense that these measures are... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Measurement and Metrics; Mathematical Methods; Conflict of Interests; Welfare