Scaling Service Operations - Publications - Faculty & Research

December 2019 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Impossible Foods

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred

Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown started the company out of concern over livestock production’s impact on climate change. Impossible’s mission is to end consumption of animals by 2035, and its strategy is to develop and market plant-based foods so similar to... View Details

Citation

Educators

Purchase

09 Jan 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, January 9, 2018

patient identification, enrollment, billing, and payment. Patients were prospectively identified and enrolled, and bundled payments were made at treatment start. Operational metrics tracked incremental effort for pilot processes and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 1984 (Revised August 1996)
Case

B.F. Goodrich-Rabobank Interest Rate Swap

By: Jay O. Light

A U.S. manufacturing organization and a Eurobank swap fixed and floating rate obligations to reduce their financing costs. View Details

Keywords: Financing and Loans; Cost Management; Production; Interest Rates; Credit Derivatives and Swaps; Financial Services Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States

Citation

Educators

Purchase

30 Jul 2013
First Look

First Look: July 30

scale of the relationship relative to location-specific and other effects. We find cluster presence to be significantly related to higher wages, with the effect being moderate but meaningful. This suggests that cluster presence enhances... View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

11 Dec 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, December 11, 2018

launch a new blockchain currency to facilitate financial services for unbanked and underbanked customers in emerging markets via their smartphone. Santos had to decide whether to go forward with the new plan despite regulatory risk,... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

24 Sep 2001
Research & Ideas

Why the Internet Doesn’t Change Everything

where rebels like Bishop Gaillot reside. There are pornography sites accessible to straitlaced Singaporeans, Liberian gambling dens, and secluded banking services run from the tiny island of Anguilla. There are networks of Burmese... View Details

Keywords: by Debora L. Spar

02 Feb 2010
First Look

First Look: Feb. 2

investment. Complex multinational business groups emerged controlling large investments in natural resources, processing, and services in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Nominal versus Indexed Debt: A Quantitative Horse Race... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

26 May 2003
Research & Ideas

What Your Competition is Telling You

and do it more efficiently, over time. Richard E. Beville should know. The chief operating officer of Lamont Digital Systems, a Greenwich, Conn., provider of digital telecommunications services, Beville started his career in the Bell... View Details

Keywords: by David Stauffer

22 Aug 2011
Research & Ideas

Getting to Eureka!: How Companies Can Promote Creativity

participants were given a situation involving a global context (strategizing about the future of a foreign wire service and advertising at an international sports competition). When asked to brainstorm in a local context (a US newspaper... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

25 Jan 2011
First Look

First Look: Jan. 25

historically important and increasingly popular mechanism for encouraging innovation. A central concern in designing innovation contests is how many competitors to admit. Using a unique data set of 9,661 software contests, we provide evidence of two coexisting and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

29 Mar 2010
Research & Ideas

Ruthlessly Realistic: How CEOs Must Overcome Denial

backroom stock for sale items missing from shelves, or even to scale and price produce items or grind A&P's bean coffees. Cleanliness and courtesy standards, freshness and quality standards, shelf-stocking and checkout standards, and... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Auto; Retail; Technology

15 Sep 2011
Research & Ideas

High Ambition Leadership

what products or services to offer by first looking inside. Contrary to most companies that begin by looking at markets and competition, these CEOs looked inside to define "who" the company was—where was the most powerful intersection... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

24 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 24, 2009

distribution services (GDSs)—such as SABRE—to reach travel agents. But GDSs held significant tactical advantages. For example, GDSs had signed long-term exclusive contracts with the corporate customers who were American's best customers.... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

27 Jan 2016
Research & Ideas

A Politician's Investment Portfolio Might Tip Off Corruption Potential

misconduct Minor is no stranger to the topic of risk preference. Before entering academia he launched his own investment firm. He constructed lawmakers’ risk preferences using data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks issues related to money and... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland

26 Sep 2006
First Look

First Look: September 26, 2006

expertise of South African generic drug manufacturer Aspen Pharmacare are shown to be ameliorating misguided policy decisions by the South African government; communications campaigns, operational synergies, alternative distribution... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

06 Aug 2013
First Look

First Look: August 6

today's managers need to harness technological advances, manage and lead a dispersed and diverse workforce, anticipate and react to constant competitive and geopolitical change and uncertainty, compete on a global scale, and operate in a... View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

20 Nov 2007
First Look

First Look: November 20, 2007

problem for the consortium is how much to raise its previous bid. A reasonable bid must be based upon how much value the private equity consortium can create through improvements in Hertz's global operations on the one hand, and a more... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

28 Aug 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, August 28, 2018

the City as having “poor” operating conditions with “high-risk” hygiene violations (using the same low score threshold as above)—and find a further 7% decrease in purchase intentions. Moreover, the presence of an alert reduces the... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

17 Dec 2001
Research & Ideas

Becoming the Next Real Estate Mogul

Kevin McCall (HBS MBA '81), president and CEO of Paradigm Holdings, LLC, a Massachusetts-based owner and operator of multi-tenanted office buildings. McCall described the process of locating and developing a property as completely... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Construction; Real Estate

March 2013 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Brazos Partners and the Tri-Northern Exit

By: Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Nathaniel Burbank

Randall Fojtasek, a partner at the Dallas-based Brazos Private Equity Partners, must decide whether now is the time to sell his firm's investment in Tri-Northern Distribution. Brazos, a middle-market leveraged buyout group, created the company two years earlier through... View Details