Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(6,120)
- Faculty Publications (1,392)
- 2008
- Working Paper
Extending Producer Responsibility: An Evaluation Framework for Product Take-Back Policies
By: Michael W. Toffel, Antoinette Stein and Katharine Lee
Manufacturers are increasingly being required to adhere to product take-back regulations that require them to manage their products at the end of life. Such regulations seek to internalize products' entire life cycle costs into market prices, with the ultimate... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Wellsprings of Creation: How Perturbation Sustains Exploration in Mature Organizations
By: David James Brunner, Bradley R. Staats, Michael L. Tushman and David M. Upton
Organizations struggle to balance simultaneous imperatives to exploit and explore, yet theorists differ as to whether exploitation undermines or enhances exploration. The debate reflects a gap: the missing mechanism by which organizations break free of old routines and... View Details
- June 2008 (Revised August 2008)
- Case
The Suzlon Edge
By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Juliana Seminerio
With prices of oil, coal and gas at historically high levels, the wind industry had installed more than 20,000 MW of wind energy, representing a $37 billion investment in 2007. Besides high prices, wind energy represented a solution for consumers seeking an energy... View Details
- June 2008 (Revised April 2013)
- Case
Bernd Beetz: Creating the New Coty
By: Geoffrey Jones and David Kiron
Considers the creation of the world's largest fragrance company by Bernd Beetz, appointed chief executive of Coty Inc. in 2001. In 1990 the German consumer goods company Benkiser began acquiring fragrance and cosmetics brands with the intent of developing a beauty... View Details
- June 2008
- Case
From xiaonei to hainei: The Quest for the Social Networking Service Market in China
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Michael Shih-Ta Chen and Keith Chi-ho Wong
Wang Xing, the founder of Hainei.com, one of the fastest growing social networking service (SNS) providers in China, was preparing to raise funds from venture capitalists. Since late 2003, Wang had established several Internet startups in China. Xiaonei.com, which he... View Details
- June 2008 (Revised October 2008)
- Case
AREVA T&D
By: Ananth Raman, Vincent Marie Dessain, Ane Damgaard Jensen and Gudrun Urfalino Kristinsdottir
The case explores the rapid and highly effective turnaround at AREVA's transmission and distribution (T and D) business by focusing on the division's operations. The division was struggling in 2004 when newly-appointed CEO Philippe Guillemot and his team improved... View Details
- June 2008 (Revised July 2008)
- Case
How Serial Entrepreneurs Build and Manage a Board of Directors in a Venture-Backed Start Up
By: Michael J. Roberts, William A. Sahlman and Sasha Novakovich
This case includes structured interviews with four serial entrepreneurs about the way in which they built and used their boards in each of their companies and what they have learned through that process. These entrepreneurs were asked similar questions, such as "How do... View Details
- June 2008
- Case
Starbucks Coffee Company in the 21st Century
By: Nancy F. Koehn, Marya Lisl Hill-Popper Besharov and Katherine Miller
The case explores the opportunities and challenges confronting Starbucks in the early 21st century. For more than 15 years, Starbucks has grown swiftly and successfully, helping create a large, dynamic market for specialty coffee, building one of the world's most... View Details
- summer 2008
- Article
Corporate Social Responsibility Through an Economic Lens
By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Robert N. Stavins and Richard H.K. Vietor
Business leaders, government officials, and academics are focusing considerable attention on the concept of "corporate social responsibility" (CSR), particularly in the realm of environmental protection. Beyond complete compliance with environmental regulations, do... View Details
- May 2008 (Revised September 2009)
- Case
IBM's Dynamic Workplace
IBM already competed for talent by being a best workplace. It was one of the first companies to provide paid vacations, health insurance, sick leave, job sharing, and domestic partner benefits. Its human resources portfolio included a full array of progressive policies... View Details
- May 2008 (Revised August 2009)
- Case
Intel NBI: MXP Digital Media Processor
By: Willy C. Shih and Thomas Thurston
"Gila" was a high-performance image processor project housed in Intel's New Business Initiatives (NBI) group. NBI was an incubator for corporate entrepreneurs, and it had an established methodology for ensuring a degree of autonomy while these ventures got started. But... View Details
- May 2008
- Article
Coerced Confessions: Self-Policing in the Shadow of the Regulator
By: Jodi L. Short and Michael W. Toffel
As part of a recent trend toward more cooperative relations between regulators and industry, novel government programs are encouraging firms to monitor their own regulatory compliance and voluntarily report their own violations. In this study, we examine how regulatory... View Details
- 2008
- Report
Survey Questionnaire on Environmental Management Practices: Summary of Results by Industry and Practices
By: Magali Delmas and Michael W. Toffel
This document provides a summary of the results of a survey on Environmental Management Practices (EMP) conducted by the University of California at Santa Barbara during October and November 2003. The survey was sent to 3255 facilities in 8 industrial sectors: pulp,... View Details
- April 2008 (Revised July 2011)
- Background Note
Strategic Decline
By: David J. Collis and Jan W. Rivkin
This note first documents the facts around the sustainability of competitive advantage. It then observes that the demise of a previously successful strategy, in the first instance, often comes from some change in the external environment. It, therefore, characterizes... View Details
- March 2008 (Revised December 2011)
- Case
IBM Values and Corporate Citizenship
IBM's transformation into a globally integrated enterprise (GIE) began with a conviction about what should never change. Since its founding in 1911, the company operated under a set of principles articulated by founder Thomas Watson and became known for a strong... View Details
- March 2008
- Article
When Growth Stalls
By: Matthew S. Olson, Derek C. M. van Bever and Seth Verry
This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading.
An abrupt and lasting drop in revenue growth is a crisis that can strike even the... View Details
- February 2008 (Revised September 2008)
- Case
Apple Inc., 2008
By: David B. Yoffie and Michael Slind
In January 2007, three decades after its incorporation, Apple Computer shed the second word in its name and became Apple Inc. With that move, the company signaled a fundamental shift away from its historic status as a vendor of the Macintosh personal computer (PC)... View Details
- February 2008 (Revised November 2015)
- Case
Danaher Corporation
By: Bharat Anand, David J. Collis and Sophie Hood
Between 1985 and 2007, Danaher has been one of the best-performing industrial conglomerates in the U.S. This case examines the corporate strategy of this diversified, global corporation. It describes the firm's portfolio strategy and the Danaher Business System—a... View Details
- February 2008
- Case
Cincom Systems, Inc.
By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen
Tom Nies, charismatic CEO of Cincom Systems, is considering a public offering of his software enterprise, but the 1987 stock market crash checks his plans. Nies reflects that capital for expansion will keep Cincom at the frontier of technological development in a... View Details
- January 2008
- Background Note
Convertible Arbitrage
By: Joshua Coval and Erik Stafford
The goal of this simulation is to understand how convertible bonds can be viewed as a portfolio of simpler securities and to introduce an over-the-counter market. The convertible bonds that are available during the simulation are at-the-money and in-the-money so that... View Details