minimal viable product - Publications - Faculty & Research

15 Jun 2009
Research & Ideas

GM: What Went Wrong and What’s Next

reluctance to take environmental issues seriously. But these were not overnight developments. Beyond that, did GM's financial controls become too powerful a force for the product engineers to overcome? Did the marketers not see what... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Auto

11 Oct 2006
What Do You Think?

How Do We Respond to the “Dependency Ratio” Dilemma?

"The only viable long term solution is for people (and their employers) to invest enough over the length of their working life . [It] is the only way in which the dependency ratio can be made irrelevant." Other suggestions... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

28 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Supply Chain Risk: Deal With It

the right times. They'd done it by implementing techniques and technologies at an unprecedented pace; among them, the lean production method introduced by W. Edwards Deming, just-in-time manufacturing, single-source suppliers, and global... View Details

Keywords: by David Stauffer

17 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

Why Business Should Support Employees Who Are Caregivers

personal caregiving obligations is an approach employers almost entirely overlook as a mechanism for maximizing employee productivity and minimizing turnover,” the authors write in the study, which was... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Health

17 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

Why a Blended Workforce May Be Key to Lasting Competitive Advantage

In recent years, companies have been anxious about the lack of skilled workers to fill pivotal jobs. But then came COVID-19 and a subsequent recession. The ensuing business turmoil and record-high unemployment may have temporarily distracted companies from their... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph B. Fuller

20 Feb 2008
First Look

First Look: February 20, 2008

groups: (1) a treatment group that receives all DrumNet services, (2) a treatment group that receives all DrumNet services except credit, or (3) a control group. After one year, DrumNet services led to an increase in production of... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

13 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

Why Your Company Wants to be a 'Cognitive Referent' (Hint: SpaceX)

Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. After all, 2007 was the year that Twitter was founded; Airbnb formed the following year. For startups jockeying for position in nascent markets, pressure is intense to come up with a View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Aerospace; Food & Beverage; Retail

10 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

John Kotter’s Plan to Accelerate Your Business

other more rational. In a typical organization—from the federal government to a pharmaceutical giant—a hierarchical operational structure meets daily demands through clear reporting relationships and responsibilities, Kotter writes. This structure View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

07 Jan 2002
Research & Ideas

How Marketing Can Reduce Worldwide Poverty

on-the-ground advocacy—to go get a free eye exam or a blood pressure check-up. Easy. Your basic principles of sales and promotion will carry the day. If your charge is minimizing smoking or drug use, well, your job becomes rather more... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

29 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

How Organizations Create Social Value

better focus on creating economic value by minimizing costs and maximizing efficiency. Companies can bring social value into alignment with their core competencies, improving motivation, loyalty, skill development, and even View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

04 Feb 2010
What Do You Think?

What’s the Best Way to Make Careful Decisions?

it, " the question should not be rational decision making OR intuition, but rather how to combine both." David Kendall said, "In the most difficult case of no-time and high-risk, reliance on 'rational intuition' may be a preferred way to View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

14 Jul 2022
Research & Ideas

When the Rubber Meets the Road, Most Commuters Text and Email While Driving

how automated cars might be designed to minimize major accidents. For their time-use study, the researchers conducted online interviews with about 400 knowledge workers, who make up a large percentage of commuters on today’s roadways and... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

15 Jul 2014
First Look

First Look: July 15

tied to their competitors via shared intermediary organizations. To test our theory, we examine every relationship between entrepreneurial firms and their venture capital investors in the minimally invasive surgical segment of the medical... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

22 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

The Hard Work of Failure Analysis

analyzing failure benefit in two ways. First, analyzing a failed drug sometimes reveals that the drug may have a viable alternate use. For example, Pfizer's Viagra was originally designed to be a treatment for angina, a painful heart... View Details

Keywords: by Amy Edmondson & Mark D. Cannon

13 Apr 2009
Research & Ideas

Kind of Blue: Pushing Boundaries with Miles Davis

product development terms, you might call this something like "jumping to the next S-curve." By the "S-curve" we mean the pattern that new innovations typically follow when they are introduced. At first a few people,... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Music

02 Dec 2010
What Do You Think?

Making Right Choices: Art or Science?

explores choices we make as consumers of products and services, many of which she has observed in her numerous experiments. Her definition of choice is "the ability to exercise control over ourselves and our environment. In order to... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

10 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Retailing Revolution: Category Killers on the Brink

the web. Given that the forecast for total retail sales over the next several years is flat to minimal growth after inflation, any sales that occur online will be at the expense of in-store sales. Clearly, bricks-and-mortar store View Details

Keywords: by Rajiv Lal & Jose B. Alvarez; Retail

04 May 2011
Research & Ideas

Is Web Surfing Distracting Your Workers?

according to new research. The researchers found that the students facing temptation were more apt to make mistakes and were less productive By banning web surfing, employers are essentially asking their workers to resist temptation until... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

19 Jul 2016
First Look

July 19, 2016

is a San Francisco–based data analytics company focused on agricultural applications. It was acquired by Monsanto in 2013. In 2015, Climate's decision support platform was used on 75 million acres of farmland in the U.S.; however, most of those acres were "free" acres.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

15 Nov 2016
First Look

November 15, 2016

Case 517-021 Brand Portfolio Strategy and Brand Architecture While companies choose to brand their products and services in many different ways, there are some central tenets that help define an optimal brand portfolio and associated... View Details