In Working Paper 1, A view of Ontario: Ontario's clusters of innovation, we reviewed the importance of clusters of traded industries to an economy's productivity, innovation, and standard of living. Professor Michael Porter of the Institute for Strategy and... View Details

In the 1970s, a series of unpleasant revelations about corporate conduct, culminating in the public disclosure about unsavory business practices abroad by more than 400 U.S. corporations, jarred popular perceptions concerning business ethics. Congress responded by... View Details

This presentation draws on ideas from Professor Porter's articles and books, in particular, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (The Free Press, 1990), "The Microeconomic Foundations of Economic Development," in The Global Competitiveness Report 1998,... View Details

In the information age, it is important that IT be addressed in an effective way accessible to practicing executives. Teaching IT to executives continues to change in concepts and content as IT penetrates deeply into every area of business. Driven by Moore's Law, the... View Details

UNEXT has signed agreements with Columbia, Stanford, Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, and the London School of Economics to create online business courses. The company is backed by Michael Milken and Larry Ellison and has four Nobel laureates on its advisory board. Describes... View Details

Project Achieve is a start-up providing information management solutions for schools. Its founders see a need for software both to manage the volumes of information necessary to administer a school and to connect parents, teachers, and students in a more effective way.... View Details

In the United States, genetically modified corn and soybeans are now widely grown and consumed. In Europe, however, they have been dubbed "Frankenstein foods," shunned by packaged food manufacturers, and subjected to a host of governmental restrictions. This case... View Details

General Motors' (GM) acquisition of Fisher Body is the classic example of market failure in the literature on contracts and the theory of the firm. According to the standard account, GM merged vertically with Fisher Body in 1926, a maker of auto bodies, because of... View Details

The newly appointed CEO of an important high-technology company in Thailand must lead the company through a complicated debt restructuring. Due to the collapse of the Thai currency, the company's debt burden, like that of most Thai companies, has skyrocketed because it... View Details

Documents the creation of a national before and after-school day care program aimed at bridging the gap between school and parents' work schedules. This high-growth, for-profit social enterprise organization operated in what was historically the domain of nonprofit or... View Details

Becton Dickinson's Global One-Company Operations Group must decide on the company's global policy on gifts, gratuities, and business entertainment. A central issue is whether the policy should be established centrally and made uniform worldwide or whether it should be... View Details

In this pioneering project to wire a school for the Internet and put computers in students' homes, Bell Atlantic combined its need for a beta site for a technology trial with the school reform efforts of the Union City, New Jersey public schools, under the leadership... View Details

Eight days after CSX announced it was going to buy Consolidated Rail (Conrail) for $88.65 per share, Norfolk Southern made a hostile $100 per share bid for Conrail. Over the next several months, the potential acquirers upped their bids while exchanging criticism in the... View Details

Chicago-based Stone Container Corp., a leading producer of cardboard containers and paper bags, proposes a large-scale pine forest management and utilization program in the La Mosquitia region of Honduras. A framework agreement with the government is strongly endorsed... View Details

Supplements the (A) case. View Details

Supplements the (A) case. View Details

Presents seven examples (i.e., incidents) of conflict concerning foreign direct investment. The incidents lay the framework for discussion of issues such as the jurisdiction of the WTO and the U.S. position, the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 and its political implications,... View Details

Comprises three pieces. The first piece, which forms the body of the case, is adapted from a speech delivered by the author before the Harvard Business School Political Forum in early 1995. Originally entitled "The Economic Foundations of American Social Policy:... View Details

Examines the antitrust treatment of private-sector standard setting in the U.S. Applicability of law and decision-making issues in high technology industries; Examination of cost-based facilitating theory; Approach to evaluate the reasonableness of a standard. View Details