Publications

September 2001 (Revised August 2005)
Case

Deaconess-Glover Hospital (C)

For nearly three months, John Carter, a vascular surgeon by training, had been studying a variety of clinical processes at Deaconess-Glover Hospital in Needham, Mass. Carter was looking for an opportunity to test the applicability of Toyota Production System... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Health Care and Treatment; Business Processes; Health Industry

April 2004 (Revised November 2004)
Background Note

Why Complex Systems Fail

Operationally excellent organizations create competitive opportunities for themselves that are not available to their peers. One view of the manager's competitive dilemma is to pick the right position for his organization, differentiating it, for example, as a... View Details

Keywords: Organizations; Complexity

28 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Making the Decision to Franchise (or not)

From neighborhood to neighborhood—even from block to block—customers have different tastes in the products they buy and the retail experience they find most enjoyable. As a business owner operating stores across multiple markets, is it... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

July 2000 (Revised November 2001)
Case

Catalyst Medical Solutions

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Richard M.J. Bohmer and Naomi Atkins

Faced with a drop in the NASDAQ, four eHealth entrepreneurs must decide between two distribution strategies for their new company's technology. The team, comprised of three full-time resident physicians and an MBA, has developed software to enable electronic... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Health Care and Treatment; Distribution; Strategy; Venture Capital; Applications and Software; Partners and Partnerships; Borrowing and Debt; Information Technology Industry; Service Industry

Find at Harvard

2016
Chapter

Ignore, Avoid, Abandon, and Embrace: What Drives Firm Responses to Environmental Regulation?

By: David F. Drake and Robin L. Just

A regulator's ability to incentivize environmental improvement among firms is vital in achieving long-term sustainability. However, firms can and do respond to environmental regulation in a variety of ways: complying with its intent; avoiding the regulation by... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Environmental Operations; Regulation; Cost vs Benefits; For-Profit Firms; Operations; Environmental Sustainability

Read Now

27 Sep 2024
Research & Ideas

Charting 'Cheapflation': How Budget Brands Got So Pricey

Surging inflation drove many consumers to cheaper brands or lower-quality products, but new data suggests that switching might not have saved them as much as they might have expected. During the most recent period of high inflation, prices of the least expensive View Details

Keywords: by Ana Elena Azpúrua

November 2012
Case

New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc. (Abridged)

By: H. Kent Bowen, Robert S. Huckman, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Matthew Preble

Considers whether New Balance, one of the world's five largest manufacturers of athletic footwear, should respond to Adidas' planned acquisition of Reebok—a transaction that would join the second- and third-largest companies in the industry. Highlights the unique... View Details

Keywords: Production; Competitive Strategy; Supply Chain; Brands and Branding; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Sports Industry; Retail Industry; Asia; United States

November 1990 (Revised October 1991)
Case

John Crane UK Ltd.: The CAD-CAM Link

Describes the improvement of manufacturing performance in a job shop through the application of a variety of techniques such as group technology, manufacturing cells, and CAD-CAM. As well as exploring the limitations and merits of these methods, the case explores the... View Details

Keywords: Small Business; Production; Information Technology; Performance Improvement; Manufacturing Industry; United Kingdom

17 Mar 2009
First Look

First Look: March 17, 2009

Working PapersFemale Empowerment: Impact of a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines Authors:Nava Ashraf, Dean Karlan, and Wesley Yin Abstract Female 'empowerment' has increasingly become a policy goal, both as an end to itself... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2009
Case

What People Want (and How to Predict It)

By: Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris

Historically, neither the creators nor the distributors of cultural products such as books or movies have used analytics -- data, statistics, predictive modeling -- to determine the likely success of their offerings. Instead, companies relied on the brilliance of... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Creativity; Customer Satisfaction; Forecasting and Prediction; Markets; Business Model; Publishing Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

Research Summary

Risk Management as a Function of Government

By: David A. Moss

Professor Moss's academic work in this area explores how and why governments manage private-sector risks. Based on historical and institutional research, he argues that risk management constitutes a critical function of government with far-reaching implications. ... View Details

02 Jan 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, January 3, 2018

countries and industries. In line with the model’s predictions, we find that integration and delegation covary positively, and that producers are more likely to integrate suppliers in input sectors with greater productivity variation.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Research Summary

Dissertation - Social Structure and Mechanisms of Collective Production:Evidence from Wikipedia

Andreea's dissertation research examines social networks in the setting of collective production, defined as collective action oriented towards production of collective goods - goods available for consumption by all members of a group whenever they... View Details

Research Summary

Managing Marketspace Service Interfaces

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport

Jeffrey F. Rayport is focusing on the strategic challenges that face businesses selling information-intensive products and services. A key strategic issue in such businesses is the dematerialization of information-intensive products and services as a consequence of... View Details

25 May 2011
HBS Case

QuikTrip’s Investment in Retail Employees Pays Off

according to market, QuikTrip uses the same store layout everywhere, along with limited product variety. "The reduced complexity that results from these decisions leads to higher employee productivity... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

26 Jun 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, June 26, 2018

hedonic products to enhance their enjoyment of future consumption occasions. Current approaches to becoming expert center on cultivating an analytic mindset. In the present research the authors explore the benefit to enthusiasts of moving... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

August 2019
Case

Twiggle: E-Commerce with Semantic Search

By: Shane Greenstein and Danielle Golan

Four years after being founded, in 2014, by former Google executives Amir Konigsberg (CEO) and Adi Avidor (CTO), Twiggle had developed a search enhancement that plugged into an online merchant’s existing framework. The company utilized advanced structuring and... View Details

Keywords: Search Technology; Customer Acquisition; Internet and the Web; Technological Innovation; Commercialization; Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Technology Industry; Israel

25 Sep 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, September 25, 2018

from Medical Device Recalls By: Ball, George P., Jeffrey T. Macher, and Ariel Dora Stern Abstract—When innovations are successfully commercialized into new products, they can create value for both consumers and firms. When products... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

2008
Article

The Gordon Research Conferences As Scientific Infrastructure

By: Arthur A. Daemmrich and Leah Shaper

Conferences serve as a crucial part of scientific infrastructure by offering participants the opportunity to announce novel findings, discuss research methods, and take part in a variety of networking activities. Presenting papers and learning about unpublished new... View Details

Keywords: Conferences; Interpersonal Communication; Infrastructure; Science-Based Business; Social and Collaborative Networks