Future Focus - Publications - Faculty & Research

27 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

Employee-Suggestion Programs That Work

expedient work around? The nurses overwhelmingly chose to work around a problem, because that is what allows them to get their very demanding jobs done in the most efficient way. Tucker's future research will continue View Details

Keywords: by Paul Guttry

Dante Roscini

Dante Roscini holds the Professor of Management Practice Chair endowed by the MBA Class of 1952 at Harvard Business School. He joined the faculty in 2008 after a two-decades-long career in finance. He currently teaches the course Business, Government, and the... View Details

28 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

Why Manufacturing Matters

After decades of destructive outsourcing, America's ability to innovate and create high-tech products essential for future prosperity is on the decline, argue professors Gary Pisano and Willy Shih. They won the prestigious McKinsey Award... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson; Manufacturing

July 1993
Case

Air Miles Canada

By: Thomas O. Jones, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Roger H. Hallowell

Air Miles Canada both increases customer loyalty by rewarding shopping frequency at specified merchants, and enables its sponsors to develop a new, more complex understanding of their customers' (and potential customers') shopping habits, thus making future customer... View Details

Keywords: Programs; Customer Relationship Management; Information Management; Air Transportation Industry; Canada

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28 Jan 2008
Research & Ideas

Billions of Entrepreneurs in China and India

these processes are unfolding not just in the mainstream business sector but in society writ large and even in politics and civil society," says Khanna. Khanna's book Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India Are Reshaping Their View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

07 Jun 2004
What Do You Think?

How Important are Big Ideas?

them. This raises a new set of questions concerning the future of global competition. As Winfried Schoepf put it, "The big idea is the only thing with the ability to attract enough people around a new concept when real change is... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

16 Dec 2011
Research & Ideas

Reintroducing Intellectual Ambition to the Study of Business History

historians to move beyond incremental additions to the literature and instead return to tackling big subjects with major importance to the future of business. "Rehashing past controversies is not a sign of a vibrant discipline, but... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones & Walter Friedman

04 Aug 2009
First Look

First Look: August 4

Delphi debt, or to speculate on future Delphi bond prices. Purchase this case: http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/210002-PDF-ENG Denmark: Globalization and the Welfare State Harvard Business School Case 709-015 This case describes how... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2018
Book

Driving Digital Strategy: A Guide to Reimagining Your Business

By: Sunil Gupta

Disruption and transformation get a lot of hype and for good reason. Digital technologies have disrupted entire industries and incumbents have often struggled in this new world. Typical approaches used by legacy players such as using technology to improve efficiency,... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Information Technology; Transformation; Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Value Creation; Customer Focus and Relationships; Organizational Structure; Digital Strategy

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25 Feb 2025
Blog Post

Making a Broader Impact with Multiple Disciplines: Santosh Iyer (MBA 2020)

beyond human capability. I focus on commercializing science and building businesses around these transformative technologies to democratize access to high-quality surgical care for billions worldwide. My fascination with robotics and... View Details

2010
Report

State of the Region Report 2010: The Top of Europe Recovering—Regional Lessons from a Global Crisis

By: Christian H.M. Ketels

The 2010 State of the Region Report, the seventh in this series of annual evaluations of competitiveness and cooperation across the Baltic Sea Region, takes the Region's economic temperature in the first year after the full onslaught of the global crisis. The focus of... View Details

Keywords: Trends; Economic Growth; Financial Crisis; Policy; Performance Effectiveness; Competitive Strategy; Cooperation; Baltic Countries

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06 Nov 2012
Op-Ed

Stop Talking About the Weather and Do Something: Three Ways to Finance Sustainable Cities

The wrath of Hurricane Sandy has illuminated a fundamental question: How do we ensure that our cities are resilient in the face of inevitable future disasters? A destroyed city is not a sustainable city. I'm making the case that it's time to stop complaining about... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Construction; Real Estate; Energy; Utilities

09 May 2005
Research & Ideas

Hold or Fold? Sizing Up Business Risk

one this step is based on, is figuring out how you will know when to go for Options B or C and call it quits on the current game. To do this, we first assess what our best option seems to be based on: our satisfaction to date with the current game, our predictions... View Details

Keywords: by Eileen C. Shapiro & Howard H. Stevenson

15 Aug 2019
Blog Post

Stan Chang: “A Guided Experience into the World of Entrepreneurship”

An engineer by training, Stan Chang, MS/MBA 2020 candidate in the SEAS/HBS joint degree program, came to Harvard to “balance a business curriculum with an advanced engineering education. When I saw the curriculum here and the focus on... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Entrepreneurship

21 Mar 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Speaking of Corporate Social Responsibility

Keywords: by Hao Liang, Christopher Marquis, Luc Renneboog & Sunny Li Sun

09 Feb 2010
First Look

First Look: Feb. 9

Working PapersThe Architecture of Complex Systems: Do Core-Periphery Structures Dominate? Authors:Alan MacCormack, Carliss Baldwin, and John Rusnak Abstract Any complex technological system can be decomposed into a number of subsystems and associated components, some... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

May–June 2015
Other Article

HRM at a Crossroads: Comments on 'Evolution of Strategic HRM Through Two Founding Books: A 30th Anniversary Perspective on Development of the Field'

By: Michael Beer

I agree with Bruce Kaufman's evaluation of the HRM field and the danger to its relevance if change does not take place in the field's almost exclusive use of normal science, lack of focus on organizational change and development and indifference to the development of... View Details

Keywords: Management; Performance; Human Resources

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During times of economic turbulence, consulting, law, and accounting firms often start offering services and taking on clients they really shouldn’t, just to keep the lights on. This path is perilous. If a firm’s practices have a diffuse mix of clients and unclear... View Details

October 2014 (Revised November 2016)
Technical Note

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) vs. Customer Lifetime Return on Investment (CLROI)

By: Elie Ofek

This note presents two related measures for assessing the financial value of a customer to the firm. The first is the well-known measure of Customer Lifetime Value, or CLV for short. The second, which has received much less attention, treats the acquisition of a... View Details

Keywords: Customer Lifetime Value; Return On Investment; Segmentation; Social Networks; Customer Relationship Management; Marketing Strategy; Investment Return; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Media

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October 2018
Case

Zenefits Board of Directors (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

In early 2018, the time seemed right for Zenefits investor and director Lars Dalgaard to reflect on whether Zenefits had the right board of directors to shepherd the company through its next stages of growth. For the company whose name combined the words “benefits,”... View Details