Publications

August 2019 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Essential Explorations at MUJI

By: Tomomichi Amano, Das Narayandas, Naoko Jinjo and Akiko Kanno

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

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

January 2019 (Revised July 2019)
Case

New Balance: Managing Orders and Working Conditions

By: Michael W. Toffel, Eileen McNeely and Matthew Preble

New Balance Athletics, Inc., a major U.S.-based athletic footwear and apparel brand, sources most of its footwear products from independent suppliers whose factories are located in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Monica Gorman, vice president of responsible leadership... View Details

Keywords: Footwear; Athletic Footwear; Manufacturing; CSR; Sustainability; Quality Management; Supply Chains; Operations; Management; Production; Working Conditions; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Labor and Management Relations; Supply Chain Management; Supply Chain; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

November–December 2019
Article

Pivoting Isn't Enough? Managing Strategic Reorientation in New Ventures

By: Rory McDonald and Cheng Gao

New ventures often experience deviations from their plans that oblige them to reorient in pursuit of better fit between their evolving products and their target customers. Yet research is largely silent on how managers explain such changes and justify their ventures in... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Reorientation; Technology Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Product Development Processes; Organizational Adaptation; Qualitative Methods (General); Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Product Development; Communication Strategy

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April 2013
Case

Managing with Analytics at Procter & Gamble

By: Thomas H. Davenport, Marco Iansiti and Alain Serels

Senior management at P&G has put a strong emphasis on using data to make "better, smarter, real-time business decisions." The Global Business Services (GBS) organization has developed tools, systems and processes to provide managers throughout P&G with direct access to... View Details

Keywords: Analytics; Data Management; Forecasting; Shared Services; Procter ＆ Gamble; Laundry Detergent; Information Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Information Technology; Mathematical Methods; Consumer Products Industry; North America

2013
Book

Managing Startups: Best Blog Posts

By: Tom Eisenmann

Harvard Business School Professor Tom Eisenmann annually compiles the best posts from many blogs on technology startup management, primarily for the benefit of his students. This book makes his latest collection available to the broader entrepreneur community. Divided... View Details

Keywords: Lean Startup; Startup; Prototyping; MVP; Minimum Viable Product; Freemium; SaaS; A/B Testing; Business Model

2008
Book

Managing Your Boss

By: John J. Gabarro and John P. Kotter

Managing your boss: Isn't that merely manipulation? Corporate cozying up? Not according to John Gabarro and John Kotter. In this handy guidebook, the authors contend that you manage your boss for a very good reason: to do your best on the job—and thereby benefit not... View Details

Keywords: Communication; Decision Making; Information Management; Managerial Roles; Negotiation Tactics; Performance Productivity; Personal Development and Career; Relationships; Personal Characteristics

October 2014
Case

Teckentrup: A Door to Managing Difference

By: Clayton Rose, Jerome Lenhardt and Daniela Beyersdorfer

For Kai Teckentrup, the owner and co-CEO of the German "Mittelstand" door manufacturer Teckentrup, balancing competitive pressures, demographic realities and values were at the heart of the diversity program that he had started and championed at the company. Beyond... View Details

May 1994
Case

Colgate-Palmolive: Managing International Careers

Colgate-Palmolive, the U.S.-based consumer products firm, has long emphasized international experience for its managers and has developed a comprehensive policy to manage expatriate assignments. The rise in dual-career families has made some managers reluctant to... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Multinational Firms and Management; Personal Development and Career; Experience and Expertise; Consumer Products Industry; United States

January 1993
Article

What Production Mangers Really Want to Know ... Management Accountants are Failing to Tell Them

By: S. M. McKinnon and W. J. Bruns Jr.

Keywords: Accounting; Management

February 2020
Supplement

Managing Blackout at Aluminum Bahrain B.S.C. (Alba) (B)

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Gamze Yücaoğlu and Youssef Abdel Aal

The case opens in 2017 as Tim Murray, CEO of Aluminum Bahrain (Alba), the largest single-site aluminum smelter in the world outside China and a major contributor to the Bahraini economy, was contemplating the recovery options as the company was facing the most severe... View Details

Keywords: Aluminum Industry; General Management; Cultural Change; Change Management; Crisis Management; Decision Making; Organizational Culture; Safety; Leadership; Emerging Markets; Bahrain; Middle East

March 2000 (Revised January 2001)
Case

Microsoft's Vega Project: Developing People and Products

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Meg Wozny

With a focus on Matt MacLellan and his careful development as a project manager under his boss and mentor, Jim Kaplan, the case describes the evolution of Microsoft's human-resource philosophies and policies and illustrates how they work in practice to provide the... View Details

Keywords: Human Resources; Competitive Advantage; Retention; Personal Development and Career; Organizational Design; Information Technology; Motivation and Incentives; Leadership Development

October 1992 (Revised December 1997)
Case

Sterling Chemicals, Inc.: Quality and Productivity Improvement Program

Describes the design and implemenation of a quality improvement program. Sterling Chemical's management hoped the program would improve teamwork and productivity at the plant. View Details

Keywords: Quality; Groups and Teams; Performance Productivity; Performance Improvement; Chemical Industry

2021
Working Paper

Accounting for Product Impact in the Interactive Media and Services Industry

By: DG Park, George Serafeim and Katie Trinh

We apply the product impact measurement framework of the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative (IWAI) in two competitor companies within the interactive media and services industry. We design a monetization methodology that allows us to calculate monetary impact... View Details

SSRN

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17 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Blue Skies, Distractions Arise: How Weather Affects Productivity

efficiency. In "Rainmakers: Why Bad Weather Means Good Productivity," the authors show that workers are especially productive on rainy days, simply because they're not tempted by the possibilities of a sunny day—a walk in the park, for... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

March 2021
Article

Targeted Price Controls on Supermarket Products

By: Alberto Cavallo and Diego Aparicio

We study the impact of targeted price controls for supermarket products in Argentina from 2007 to 2015. Using web scraping, we collected daily prices for controlled and non-controlled goods and measured the differential effects on inflation, product availability, and... View Details

Keywords: Prices; Controls; Price Dispersion; Economics; Price; Cost Management; Goods and Commodities; Retail Industry; Argentina

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May 2017
Teaching Note

Hilti Fleet Management (A) and (B)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Oliver Gassmann and Roman Sauer

These notes are meant to accompany Hilti Fleet Management (A): Turning a Successful Business Model on Its Head (717-427) and Hilti Fleet Management (B): Towards a New Business Model (717-465).
This case explores the introduction of fleet management in the... View Details