Publications

08 Mar 2017
Op-Ed

Op-Ed: Can the Proposed American Health Care Act Improve on 'Obamacare'?

value individual freedom, having the ability to answer this question will be seen as a benefit. However, if too many people do indeed opt out of purchasing plans, the potential downside is that, collectively, costs may rise. Risk pools of... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch, Dr. Gordon Moore, and Emily Boudreau

March 2018
Case

EKOL Logistics: Thinking Outside the Box

By: Willy C. Shih and Esel Çekin

This case describes Ekol, an intermodal transportation and logistics company, and how it manages capacity planning. Its busiest routes linked motor vehicle assemblers in Germany and Turkey with many of their parts suppliers, but it had also developed key links in... View Details

November 2012
Article

Does Management Really Work?

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

HBR's 90th anniversary is a sensible time to revisit a basic question: Are organizations more likely to succeed if they adopt good management practices? The answer may seem obvious to most HBR readers, but these three economists cast their net much wider than that. In... View Details

Keywords: Best Practices; Consulting Firms; Corporations; Cost Control; Employee Training; Executive Ability (Management); Executives—training Of; Hospitals—administration; Industrial Management—research; Productivity Incentives; School Management Teams; Work Environment; Management; Research

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The Institute for Cancer Care Innovation - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

existing models of cancer care delivery and reimbursement. Its programs are based around the principles of value-based health care delivery, which focuses on the outcomes and View Details

June 2014
Teaching Note

Lit Motors

By: Thomas Eisenmann

In mid-2012 Lit Motors had created both engineering and design prototypes and conducted initial customer tests on less than $750,000 of investment. Lit Motors' founder, Daniel Kim, had started the company to design and manufacture an efficient electric 2-wheeled... View Details

Keywords: Lean Startup; Prototyping; Electric Vehicle; Urban Vehicle; Customer Test; Gyroscope; Entrepreneurs; Development Stage Enterprises; Creativity; Disruptive Technologies; Consumer Surveys; Market Segmentation; Manufacturing Costs; Entrepreneurship; Auto Industry; United States; California

June 2013
Supplement

Union Corrugating Co. (A) (Spreadsheet Supplement)

This is the spreadsheet supplement for HBS Case 803065, containing Exhibit 3 as an Excel document. View Details

02 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

Disruptors Sell What Customers Want and Let Competitors Sell What They Don’t

Over the past two decades, entire industries have been disrupted by Internet competitors who "unbundled" their content and delivered it to consumers in new ways. Newspapers lost out to Google and Craigslist,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

10 Jun 2021
Blog Post

Managing Sustainable Advantage with Key ESG Cofounders, Anne-Marie Schoonbeek and Heleen van Poecke

also became very clear that measuring ESG performance is no longer a ‘nice-to-have' but is mission-critical, impacting company cost of capital, share-price, reputation and ability to attract View Details

08 Jul 2021
Blog Post

Managing Sustainable Advantage with Key ESG Co-Founders, Anne-Marie Schoonbeek and Heleen van Poecke

“It also became very clear that measuring ESG performance is no longer a ‘nice-to-have' but is mission-critical, impacting company cost of capital, share-price, reputation and ability to attract View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Technology

July 2007
Case

Kristen's Cookie Company (A) (Abridged)

By: Roger E. Bohn and Janice H. Hammond

The student is starting his or her own business, baking make-to-order cookies. Basic times of each operation are laid out and the student is asked to determine the consequences for the operating system. Serves as an exercise and review of concepts such as capacity,... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Growth Management; SWOT Analysis; Operations; Outcome or Result; Performance Capacity

Web

Chinese Competition and Emerging Technologies - A Chronicle of the China Trade

was transacted, but in many respects it signaled the beginning of the end for Augustine Heard & Co. The new invention reduced the time between orders and transactions, provided more up-to-date information on fluctuations in View Details

1987
Other Unpublished Work

Opening the Window: Needs Analysis and Long Term Effort to Pay for College

By: Dutch Leonard

Keywords: Higher Education; Human Needs; Cost

01 Mar 2023
News

Clearing the Air

the ambient atmosphere. The density of those molecules is much lower, so it’s a much more difficult energy-mass problem. And energy-mass challenges turn into cost problems in the end. So it’s really about... View Details

Keywords: April White and Dan Morrell; Illustrations by Richard Borge

2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 13 Platform Systems vs. Step Processes—The Value of Options and the Power of Modularity

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

This is the first chapter in Part 3. Its purpose is to contrast the value structure of platform systems with step processes from a technological perspective. I first review the basic technical architecture of computers and argue that every computer is inherently a... View Details

Keywords: Platform Systems; Step Processes; Computer Architecture; Modularity; Information Technology; Digital Platforms

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August 2017 (Revised September 2022)
Case

Fuyao Glass America: Sourcing Decision

By: Willy Shih

In today's global economy, what are the factors that go into production location choice? This case is set in the world's second largest automotive glass producer as it expands from China into the United States. To meet a very aggressive cost target, management is faced... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chains; Globalization Of Supply Chain; Manufacturing Footprint; Manufacturing; Manufacturing Strategy; Global Strategy; Supply Chain; Globalization; Supply Chain Management; Production; Logistics; Strategy; Auto Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States; China

01 Dec 1998
News

Year 2000 Computer Problem and You: Disaster for Some, Lessons for All

countries in our globally linked economy have barely begun to address the problem. Even if substantial progress is made in the United States by century's end, the global fallout from the explosion of the Y2K time bomb may be severe. A recent ABC News report predicted... View Details

11 Apr 2016
News

System Overload

Article

Beyond the Reach of the Invisible Hand: Impediments to Economic Activity, Market Failures, and Profitability

By: Dennis Yao

In this paper it is argued that failures of the competitive market are necessary conditions for supranormal profitability. Three fundamental causes of these market failures-production economies and sunk costs, transactions costs, and imperfect information-are developed... View Details

Keywords: Economics; Markets; Failure; Profit; Cost; Information; Market Transactions; Competition; Strategy; Production