Publications

2008
Working Paper

Collaborative Architectures for Innovation

By: Gary P. Pisano and Roberto Verganti

Collaborative innovation has become a hot topic in innovation today. Scholars, consultants, and the business press all urge companies seeking to boost innovative performance to become more "collaborative." Too often, however, companies fail to distinguish among the... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Governance Controls; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Social and Collaborative Networks

April 2009 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Supply Chain Partners: Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

Virginia Mason Medical Center (VM) hired Owens & Minor (O&M) as its alpha vendor for medical/surgical supplies in 2004. By 2005, O&M was performing Just-in-Time and Low Unit of Measure services for VM, but they believed the pricing model in the industry was outdated.... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Price; Distribution; Supply Chain Management; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

09 Nov 2021
Research & Ideas

The Simple Secret of Effective Mentoring Programs

companies would be better off making mentoring mandatory for all new workers since that would yield much higher productivity and performance gains, the researchers say. "You have to make the program apply to everyone, not just those who... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

11 Feb 2002
Research & Ideas

The Quiet Leader—and How to Be One

years ago. There were two things that prompted me to do so. One is that I had written a book called Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right (HBS Press, 1997) which is about big deal, high-stake, traumatic... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Teaching Interest

Overview

Globalization and Emerging Markets (Elective Course) The world order has changed significantly in the last two decades. The influence of western-style varieties of capitalism has been challenged by new forms of capitalism that rely less on private enterprise and on the... View Details

January 2017 (Revised August 2017)
Case

Mexico's Energy Reform

By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason

Energy—both petroleum and electricity—had been terribly managed for decades in Mexico. The two national monopolies—PEMEX and CFE—were inefficient, overstaffed, corrupt, rife with subsidies, and losing money. Finally, in 2012, President Enrique Peña Nieto announced his... View Details

Keywords: Energy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Performance Improvement; Energy Industry; Mexico

August 2003 (Revised March 2004)
Case

Waltz on the Danube

By: Arthur I Segel, Vincent Dessain and Anais Loizillon

Describes the intricate parts of an early real estate deal from the standpoint of the developer including feasibility analysis, market choice, acquisition of land, project development, design and construction issues, investment returns, and equity financing issues.... View Details

Keywords: Joint Ventures; Management; Property; Project Finance; Real Estate Industry; Germany; Hungary

07 Nov 2012
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Sir Alex Ferguson--Managing Manchester United

is a British soccer club manager who turns out to be as incredible a performer as any of the lot. For 26 years, Sir Alex Ferguson has kept his Manchester United soccer club either at or near the top of... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Sports; Entertainment & Recreation

27 Nov 2006
Research & Ideas

Manly Men, Oil Platforms, and Breaking Stereotypes

company's level of productivity (number of barrels), efficiency (cost per barrel), and reliability (production "up" time) came to exceed the industry's previous benchmark. Two of the company's newer platforms had been designed from the start to reflect the... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

April 1996
Case

Southern Pulp and Paper

A paper mill's paper machines are a bottleneck in the operation. The causes include poor scheduling, lack of investment, and ineffective process control. The plant manager is charged with improving this situation fairly rapidly and has a number of proposals for change... View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Performance Improvement; Infrastructure; Pulp and Paper Industry

04 May 2021
Book

Best Buy: How Human Connection Saved a Failing Retailer

store.” Instead, the sales associates—nicknamed “blue shirts” after Best Buy’s trademark royal-blue collared shirts—brought the injured T. rex to a service counter and performed “surgery” on the toy as they surreptitiously traded it out... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail

16 Aug 2016
First Look

August 16, 2016

Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51488 June 2016 American Journal of Managed Care When Doctors Go to Business School: Career Choices of Physician-MBAs By: Ljuboja, Damir, Brian W. Powers, Benjamin Robbins,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2003 (Revised May 2006)
Case

Eyeblaster: Enabling the Next Generation of Online Advertising

By: Elie Ofek

Eyeblaster management has to decide on the best course of action to sustain its momentum from enabling online rich media advertising. Pressure from competitors is forcing the company to re-evaluate its previous marketing strategy that focused primarily on getting... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Marketing Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Performance Evaluation; Digital Marketing; Growth and Development Strategy

April 2011
Article

Why Leaders Don't Learn from Success

By: Francesca Gino and Gary P. Pisano

We argue that for a variety of psychological reasons, it is often much harder for leaders and organizations to learn from success than to learn from failure. Success creates three kinds of traps that often impede deep learning. The first is attribution error or the... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Innovation and Management; Leadership; Failure; Success; Performance Evaluation; Prejudice and Bias

Find at Harvard

09 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 9, 2008

independent social rating agency and avoids selection issues by taking advantage of a natural experiment that arose when the agency expanded the scope of its ratings. We find empirical support for our hypotheses and present implications for View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

22 Aug 2022
Research & Ideas

Can Amazon Remake Health Care?

deploy to buy another company. So, this is actually a very small acquisition for Amazon—very, very small. This aside, the idea behind the business model of One Medical is twofold: to make health care easier to access, and through prevention and better primary care... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Health

August 2018
Background Note

Note on Hackathons

By: Ethan Bernstein

Organizations have often sought to meet the pressures of rapid change through novel ways of managing human capital to boost innovation and productivity. Hackathons have emerged as one of the latest approaches to do just that. How can those responsible for managing... View Details

Keywords: Hackathon; Crowdsourcing; Hack; Innovation; Productivity; Minimum Viable Product; Time; Transparency; Bootcamp; Design; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Management; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Technology; Technology Industry

September 2019 (Revised December 2022)
Supplement

Cooking Down a Storm: Changing Culture at Pasta Serafina (B)

By: Susanna Gallani, Francesca Gino and Raffaella Sadun

The case complements Pasta Serafina (A) by describing the aftermath of a town hall meeting in which management had publicly denounced the absenteeism problem and challenged the employees to find a solution. In spite of the initial mistrust against management, the fear... View Details

Keywords: Absenteeism; Employees; Behavior; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Employee Relationship Management; Problems and Challenges; Decision Making; Performance Evaluation