Publications

October 2006
Case

Lean at Wipro Technologies

Wipro Technologies, a rapidly growing software services firm based in India, decided to use principles from the Toyota Production System (also known as lean) to fundamentally change their operating model. Looks at why Wipro chose to use lean and how they went about... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Advantage; Applications and Software; Operations; Information Technology Industry; India

January 2005 (Revised August 2006)
Case

Lean Forward Media

By: Teresa M. Amabile and Victoria Winston

Jeff Norton and Michelle Crames, the co-founders of Lean Forward Media, face several options for producing the world's first interactive DVD film for children. Their vision is to build a company whose products simultaneously entertain children, engage them actively in... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Early Childhood Education; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Management Practices and Processes; Risk Management; Partners and Partnerships; Opportunities; Creativity

Find at Harvard

25 Feb 2013
Research & Ideas

Lean Strategy Not Just for Start-Ups

Entrepreneur-in-Residence Eric Ries, lean start-up thinking entails launching as quickly as possible with a "minimum viable product," a bare-bones creation that includes just enough features to allow for useful feedback from... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services

29 Jun 2021
Cold Call Podcast

Procter & Gamble’s Lean Innovation Transformation

Keywords: Re: Emily Truelove; Consumer Products

22 Jan 2001
Research & Ideas

Control Your Inventory in a World of Lean Retailing

Manufacturers generally classify products in terms of broad product lines, developing a single marketing strategy and production plan for each line. That makes sense for... View Details

Keywords: by Frederick H. Abernathy, John T. Dunlop, Janice H. Hammond & David Weil; Consumer Products

2013
Book

Managing Startups: Best Blog Posts

By: Tom Eisenmann

Harvard Business School Professor Tom Eisenmann annually compiles the best posts from many blogs on technology startup management, primarily for the benefit of his students. This book makes his latest collection available to the broader entrepreneur community. Divided... View Details

Keywords: Lean Startup; Startup; Prototyping; MVP; Minimum Viable Product; Freemium; SaaS; A/B Testing; Business Model

May 2018
Supplement

Video Supplement to Toyota Motor Manufacturing, U.S.A. case (693-019): An updated video of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, Georgetown, KY site showing seat installation

By: Willy C. Shih

This is an updated video of the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky (TMMK) assembly facility in Georgetown, KY. It is meant to be paired with the 693-019 Toyota Motor Manufacturing U.S.A. case, but with higher quality video. The vidoe shows a line tour of Assembly Two... View Details

Keywords: Manufacturing; Manufacturing Strategy; Lean Management; Toyota Production System; Just-in-time; Lean Production; Automotive Industry; Automobile Manufacturing; Automotive; Automotive Supply Chain; Production; Operations; Logistics; Auto Industry; United States

2022
Book

Productive Tensions: How Every Leader Can Tackle Innovation's Toughest Trade-Offs

By: Chris Bingham and Rory McDonald

Why is leading innovation in nascent business environments so distressingly hit-or-miss? More than 90% of high-potential ventures don’t reach their projected targets. Surveys show that 80% of executives consider innovation crucial to their growth strategy, but only 6%... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Innovation and Management; Organizational Culture; Leadership Style; Decision Making

July 2020
Case

Kathy Fish at Procter & Gamble: Navigating Industry Disruption by Disrupting from Within

By: Emily Truelove, Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

When Kathy Fish, Procter & Gamble’s Chief Research, Development & Innovation Officer, and a 40-year company veteran, stepped into her role in 2014, she was concerned that the world’s leading consumer packaged goods company had lost its capability to produce a steady... View Details

Keywords: Female Protagonist; Organizational Change; Organizational Behavior; Culture Change; Digital; Innovation; Lean Startup; Experimentation; Metrics; Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG); Leadership; Leading Change; Change Management; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Disruption; Innovation and Invention; Digital Transformation

September 2018
Article

Do Experts or Crowd-Based Models Produce More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia

By: Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu

Organizations today can use both crowds and experts to produce knowledge. While prior work compares the accuracy of crowd-produced and expert-produced knowledge, we compare bias in these two models in the context of contested knowledge, which involves subjective,... View Details

Keywords: Online Community; Collective Intelligence; Wisdom Of Crowds; Bias; Wikipedia; Britannica; Knowledge Production; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Dissemination; Prejudice and Bias

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22 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Bringing ‘Lean’ Principles to Service Industries

unlocking the power of thousands of software engineers."—Bradley Staats Staats suggests that the use of lean principles at Wipro could have qualities of a "Trojan Horse initiative." From the outside, View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Computer

September 2015 (Revised March 2016)
Case

Intuit: Turbo Tax PersonalPro - A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Joseph Fuller and Michael Roberts

The case provides a vehicle for teaching about both corporate intrapreneurship and the use of lean startup methods. It tells the story of a product manager within Intuit who develops an idea for a new product that spans two of the company's existing business... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Business or Company Management; Applications and Software; Accounting; Product Development; Financial Services Industry

2022
Article

Becoming a Learning Organization While Enhancing Performance: The Case of LEGO

By: Thomas Borup Kristensen, Henrik Saabye and Amy Edmondson

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to empirically test how problem-solving lean practices, along with leaders as learning facilitators in an action learning approach, can be transferred from a production context to a knowledge work context for the purpose... View Details

Keywords: Performance Efficiency; Learning; Organizational Change and Adaptation

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October 2018 (Revised May 2019)
Teaching Note

Intuit: Turbo Tax PersonalPro - A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs

By: Joseph Fuller, Shikhar Ghosh and Monica Baraldi

Teaching Note for HBS No. 816-048. The case tells the story of a product manager within Intuit who develops an idea for a new product that spans two of the company's existing business units—professional tax software, sold to accountants, and the consumer focused... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Business or Company Management; Applications and Software; Accounting; Product Development; Financial Services Industry

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Rapid Response: Inside the Retailing Revolution

knowledge of what sells and what doesn't, flexible manufacturing capabilities that can respond appropriately to demand, lean rather than fat and costly inventories, and the rapid replenishment of stock. "The old way was to gear planning... View Details

Keywords: by James E. Aisner; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

14 Apr 2009
First Look

First Look: April 14, 2009

Bradley R. Staats and David M. Upton Abstract While the concepts of lean production are frequently applied in service organizations, there is little work that rigorously has examined implementing View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Article

From TV to Web: Content Strategies for Ads That Drive Online Sales

By: Thales S. Teixeira

Consumers have become avid media multitaskers, moving seamlessly between their TVs and digital devices. Shorter TV commercials have reduced both the quantity and quality of consumer attention during prime-time viewing hours. In this new media environment, can TV... View Details

Keywords: TV Advertising; Multitasking; Infotainment; Television; Prime Time; Advertising; Online Advertising; Advertising Industry

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March 2020
Case

SRS and the Defense Innovation Unit: Rethinking Procurement

By: Paul A. Gompers and David Lane

SRS and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) follows the process by which SRS, a lean maker of remotely-operated submersible vehicles, navigates the DIU’s acquisition process. Set up in 2015 to speed the U.S. military’s access to promising commercial technologies, the DIU... View Details

Keywords: Procurement; Defense Innovation Unit; Business Startups; Acquisition; Technological Innovation; Investment; Commercialization; United States