America’s leading companies are thriving, but the prosperity they are producing is not being shared broadly among U.S. citizens. Jan W. Rivkin presents results of HBS's 2015 Alumni Survey on U.S. Competitiveness.
Superintendents find new, deeper ways to work with business beyond a financial gift.
This paper looks at some of the issues firms moving large assembly operations back to the U.S. have faced, along with recommendations for more successful implementations.
Southwire, a leading maker of cable based in rural Georgia, has partnered with the local school system to staff a factory with at-risk high school students.
By: Christian Ketels
A new framing of competitiveness clarifies the role of regions.
Policy steps for the president and Congress to follow in order to make American companies more competitive and their employees more prosperous.
Business leaders should not simply accept the business environment as a given, set by government. They can—and should—enhance the commons in ways that boost their own long-run profits.
Some of the world’s most original thinkers explain the competitiveness challenge America faces and point the way forward.
Over the last four decades companies have dispersed more and more of their activities across the globe. Data and analysis from Michael E. Porter and Jan W. Rivkin suggest that the U.S. is losing out on location decisions at an alarming rate, even for high value adding activities such as R&D that it should be able to attract.
Manufacturing matters to a nation’s economic prosperity, not because it is an important source of jobs (it currently represents only about 10% of US employment) but because manufacturing competence is often an integral part of innovation. By Professors Gary P. Pisano and Willy C. Shih.
Professors Michael E. Porter and Jan W. Rivkin frame the HBS project on U.S. competitiveness by defining "competitiveness," assessing the state of U.S. competitiveness, and pinpointing dynamics that threaten America's competitiveness.
By: William W. George
Starting in 2003, the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan region lagged the rest of the U.S. in job creation. Alarmed business and civic leaders coalesced around the Itasca Project, which set in motion a series of actions by groups of CEOs and politicians aimed at reversing these trends by creating jobs in all sectors of the economy.
By: William W. George
By 2008, Detroit's "Big 3"—Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Chrysler—were teetering, and two required federal government assistance to stay afloat. Within three years, remarkably, the Big 3 had turned around by improving competitiveness in quality, design, and cost, as well as through strong, decisive leadership on multiple fronts and improved union relations.
By: William W. George
In 2006, Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, began to lay the groundwork to establish Charlotte as the "new energy hub of America." The Envision Charlotte initiative builds on the Charlotte region's economic development "energy capital USA" initiative.
For decades, U.S. companies have been outsourcing manufacturing in the belief that it held no competitive advantage. That has been a disaster.