Publications

August 1999 (Revised October 1999)
Case

RCA Records: The Digital Revolution

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Cate Reavis

In 1995, Bertelsmann-owned RCA Records was considered a "tired and old" record label. By 1999, the company represented a number of the "hottest" acts in the music industry. Nevertheless, the company's position (as well as that of the entire music industry) was under... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Business Model; Competition; Corporate Strategy; Internet and the Web; Change Management; Marketing Strategy; Music Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

Find at Harvard

Today's business leaders are so obsessed with all things global and virtual that they risk neglecting the critical impact of physical place. It's a paradox of the Internet age: now that it's possible for businesses to be everywhere at once, they need to focus on... View Details

May 1986
Supplement

Gillette Co.: Dry Idea Advertising (C), Video

Designed for use in class as an epilogue to the story of the struggle to solve creative problems on Gillette's Dry Idea antiperspirant. The videotape announces the bake-off competition winner: BBDO. It also shows excerpts from interviews conducted a year and a half... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Consumer Products Industry

Jeremy Yang is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Marketing Unit at Harvard Business School. He teaches Marketing in the MBA required curriculum. He develops data products for... View Details

Keywords: consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products

Gary P. Pisano

Gary Pisano is the Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School where he has been on the faculty since 1988. From 2018-2023, Pisano was Harvard Business School’s Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Promotion and... View Details

Keywords: biotechnology; electronics; health care; manufacturing; pharmaceuticals

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

September 2011 (Revised July 2012)
Case

Building Watson: Not So Elementary, My Dear!

By: Willy Shih

This case is set inside IBM Research's efforts to build a computer that can successfully take on human challengers playing the game show Jeopardy! It opens with the machine named Watson offering the incorrect answer "Toronto" to a seemingly simple question during the... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Standards; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Mathematical Methods; Research and Development; Information Technology

July 2018
Case

LIXIL Group Corporation: Building a New Company in an Old Industry

By: Boris Groysberg and Akiko Kanno

In the spring of 2018, Kinya Seto, president and CEO of LIXIL Group Corporation, a major housing and building products and services company, called a meeting at the company’s head office in central Tokyo to discuss how to implement the new three-year strategic plan.... View Details

Keywords: Turnaround; Leadership And Change Management; Consolidation; Change Management; Leadership; Global Strategy; Business Model; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Japan

September 2013 (Revised August 2015)
Background Note

Leadership and Teaming

By: Ethan Bernstein

Small differences in the leadership of teams can have large consequences for the success of their efforts. Many initiatives fail not because of a fatal error in judgment or insufficient ideas, knowledge, motivation, or capabilities to deliver a solution. They fail... View Details

September 1994 (Revised May 1995)
Case

Time Life, Inc. (A)

By: David A. Garvin and Jonathan West

Time Life has historically been a continuity book publisher, selling 20-volume book series via direct mail. Now, however, music and video/TV divisions have been added, and the CEO is trying to craft a strategy that will align the divisions so they can produce... View Details

Keywords: Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Business Divisions; Horizontal Integration; Production; Creativity; Alignment; Advertising; Publishing Industry

19 Aug 2021
Op-Ed

Don't Ignore Your Employees' Misery—TAKE Control

employees’ dismay. If nothing else, the pandemic has taught us that one-size-fits-all approaches can be extremely counterproductive. In fact, numerous surveys and news articles suggest that employees have been just as productive working... View Details

Keywords: by Hise O. Gibson and MaShon Wilson

Article

What Do Nongovernmental Organizations Do?

By: Eric D. Werker and Faisal Z. Ahmand

Nongovernmental organizations are one group of players who are active in the efforts of international development and increasing the welfare of poor people in poor countries. Nongovernmental organizations are largely staffed by altruistic employees and volunteers... View Details

Keywords: Non-Governmental Organizations; Growth and Development; Welfare or Wellbeing; Poverty; Service Delivery; Crime and Corruption; Social Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Resource Allocation; Product Development; Framework

Find at Harvard

Read Now

Academic researchers now have free access to data from Teresa Amabile’s daily diary study of 200+ professionals working on 26 creative projects in 7 companies in 3 industries. These data cover topics such as motivation, emotion, work environment, creativity, and... View Details

04 Aug 2006
What Do You Think?

What Happens When the Economics of Scarcity Meets the Economics of Abundance?

commented, "The cost of creation is increasing in every creative area ." Len Bullard wrote, "As Yeom Tae Seon points out, scarcity based on digital format is only one domain. The other is scarcity of ideas and talent."... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

December 2014
Other Article

Private Equity, Jobs, and Productivity—Online Appendix

By: Steven J. Davis, John Haltiwanger, Kyle Handley, Ron Jarmin, Josh Lerner and Javier Miranda

Private equity critics claim that leveraged buyouts bring huge job losses. To investigate this claim, we construct and analyze a new dataset that covers U.S. private equity transactions from 1980 to 2005. We track 3,200 target firms and their 150,000 establishments... View Details

Keywords: Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Private Equity; Performance Productivity

Read Now

09 Oct 2020
HBS Seminar

Jeffrey L. Furman, BU, Questrom Sch of Business

Christina M. Wallace

A self-described “human Venn diagram” Christina Wallace has crafted a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products

October 2009
Case

Digital Chocolate

By: Linda A. Hill and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

Trip Hawkins founded Digital Chocolate in Silicon Valley in 2003 to develop outstanding games for mobile devices. By 2008, the company had expanded its operations into four countries, and Digital Chocolate was one of the top developers of soloplayer games for standard... View Details

Keywords: Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Innovation and Management; Leading Change; Product Development; Groups and Teams; Creativity; Telecommunications Industry; Video Game Industry