Publications

October 1998 (Revised March 1999)
Case

US Office Products (A)

Growth by acquisition (rolling up or consolidating an industry) results in questions about integrating operations, corporate form, financial structure, and management for this company. View Details

Keywords: Integration; Business or Company Management; Acquisition

November 1988
Case

Honeywell Residential Division: New Product Development

By: Steven C. Wheelwright

Describes three different product development efforts at the Residential Controls division of Honeywell, Inc. Each of the three projects was for a different market and competitive environment. Each was tackled in a somewhat different way within the Honeywell... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Construction; Outcome or Result; Situation or Environment; Business Divisions; Product Design; Change Management; Construction Industry

Research Summary

Designing Productive Zones of Privacy

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

A common theme that integrates my research and course development is how increasingly transparent workplaces can improve productivity and performance by putting up certain boundaries to observation. While the research above empirically and theoretically explores the... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Field Experiments; Design; Organizational Design; Performance

February 2020
Teaching Note

Essential Explorations at MUJI

By: Tomomichi Amano and Das Narayandas

Launched as a private brand in 1980 to counter the increasingly brand-conscious consumer in Japan, MUJI offered beautifully designed, fairly priced, no-frills quality goods. The once modest private label brand with 40 products had expanded significantly by 2019 to more... View Details

Keywords: Product Portfolio Management; Brands and Branding; Product; Management; Change Management; Mission and Purpose; Retail Industry; Japan

May 1997
Teaching Note

Product Development Performance, Instructor's Note

By: Marco Iansiti

Focuses on what constitutes product development performance and how it is assessed. Performance, as explained in both the note and in the materials for this three-session module, refers to the performance of both the product and the organizational process producing it.... View Details

Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Infrastructure; Product Development; Production; Performance Evaluation

July–August 2017
Article

Why Outlet Stores Exist: Averting Cannibalization in Product Line Extensions

By: Donald Ngwe

Outlet stores are a large and growing component of many firms' retailing strategies, particularly in the fashion industry. Outlet stores offer attractive prices in locations far from central shopping districts. The main perspectives on why outlet stores exist can be... View Details

Keywords: Fashion; Industrial Organization; Outlet Stores; Price Discrimination; Retail; Channel Management; Luxury; Product Marketing; Price; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry

Read Now

March 2025
Case

Skylight: Hit Product or Scalable Company?

By: Rembrand Koning, Christina Wallace and Jeff Huizinga

Skylight, originally a digital frame startup aimed at connecting dispersed families, expanded with a second product—Calendar—to help families manage schedules. Despite significant potential, Calendar struggled with persistent technical issues and poor customer... View Details

Keywords: Culture; Software; Hardware; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Customer Satisfaction; Resource Allocation; Product Launch; Business Strategy; Expansion

October 1997
Article

Leveraging on Systemic Learning to Manage the Early Phases of Product Innovation Projects

By: Roberto Verganti

30 Jun 2024
News

Having a Woman Manager Can Improve Productivity With Mixed-Gender Teams, Harvard Study Finds

March 2022
Module Note

Navigating Nascent Industries and Product Categories

By: Rory McDonald

This Note introduces a module of cases used at Harvard Business School to teach fundamental concepts about navigating nascent industries and product categories. It elaborates a set of ‘innovation tensions’ that managers must address in these domains. In connecting the... View Details

Keywords: Nascent Industries; Product; Innovation and Management; Strategy

September 1990 (Revised March 1991)
Case

Mod IV Product Development Team

By: Anne Donnellon and Joshua D. Margolis

Focuses sharply on a crossfunctional product development team at Honeywell's Building Controls Division. Traces the history of teams at the division, which introduced them as a response to intensifying competition and the need for faster development. Reveals the... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Management Teams; Product Development; Organizational Structure; Groups and Teams; Competitive Strategy

May 1997
Teaching Note

Product Development Foundations, Instructor's Note

By: Marco Iansiti

As emphasized in the course overview, excellence in product development is built on three foundations: the activities aimed at generating, retaining, and integrating knowledge. They form the critical building blocks for the conceptualization and implementation of any... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Management; Product Launch; Infrastructure; Product Development

May 2003
Module Note

Managing Development Networks

By: Stefan H. Thomke

Describes the concepts and pedagogy for a module on understanding and managing product development networks between firms and within firms and among products themselves. Introduces students to the increasingly important role of networks in the development of new... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Resource Allocation; Research and Development; Networks; Design; Groups and Teams

April 2009
Journal Article

Perspectives on the Productivity Dilemma

By: Paul S. Adler, Mary Benner, David James Brunner, John Paul MacDuffie, Emi Osono, Bradley R. Staats, Hirotaka Takeuchi, Michael Tushman and Sidney G. Winter

For more than a century, operations researchers have recognized that organizations can increase efficiency by adhering strictly to proven process templates, thereby rendering operations more stable and predictable. For several decades, researchers have also recognized... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Innovation and Invention; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Operations; Business Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement; Performance Productivity; Adaptation

Article

Pricing and Production Flexibility: An Empirical Analysis of the U.S. Automotive Industry

By: Antonio Moreno and Christian Terwiesch

We use a detailed data set from the U.S. auto industry spanning from 2002 to 2009 and a variety of econometric methods to characterize the relationship between the availability of production mix flexibility and firms’ use of responsive pricing. We find that production... View Details

Keywords: Empirical Operations Management; Flexibility; Pricing; Automotive Industry; Production; Price; Management; Analysis; Auto Industry; United States

November 1993 (Revised October 1995)
Case

Sunrise Medical, Inc.'s Wheelchair Products

Sunrise's CEO must decide whether to intervene in a decision by a division, Guardian Products, to introduce a new lightweight standard wheelchair. Guardian wants to introduce the wheelchair to complement its line of commodity crutches, walkers, and other patient aids.... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Competition; Corporate Strategy; Business Divisions; Organizational Culture; Decision Making; Product Marketing; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

Teaching Interest

Supply Chain Management

By: Kris Johnson Ferreira

The Supply Chain Management (SCM) course builds on aspects of the first-year Technology and Operations Management (RC TOM) course. However, whereas RC TOM focuses primarily on developing and producing products and services, SCM emphasizes managing... View Details

27 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

The Hidden Cost of a Product Recall

significant, the researchers say. Competitors ramp up major innovation efforts in response to rival recalls. Large-scale new product development projects cost more, take longer to complete, and require specialized teams to View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

November 1990
Case

Techsonic Industries, Inc.: Humminbird - New Products

By: Melvyn A. Menezes

After several new product failures, the company began using customer input to help develop new products. In 1989, the fishing electronics industry is experiencing a downturn, and the company's sales and profits are slipping. The company, which has one product line... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Marketing Reference Programs; Product Development; Electronics Industry