Publications

January 1995 (Revised November 2021)
Case

Portfolio Planning at Ciba-Geigy and the Newport Investment Proposal

By: David J. Collis and Elizabeth Wynne Johnson

Covers the history of portfolio planning at CIBA-GEIGY, a leading Swiss chemical and pharmaceutical company, beginning with the introduction of the process in the mid-1980s. The discussion extends to the application of portfolio planning techniques to a specific... View Details

Keywords: Investment Portfolio; Corporate Strategy; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Chemicals; Chemical Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Switzerland

August 2001
Case

Finnigan Corporation

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and Barbara Feinberg

Finnigan Corp., headquartered in San Jose, CA, was the world's leading producer of mass spectrometers, holding a 45% market share of instruments used for chemical analysis in pharmaceutical product development, environmental testing, genetic testing, and other... View Details

Keywords: Business Exit or Shutdown; Financial Crisis; Machinery and Machining; Technology Industry; San Jose

Find at Harvard

19 Sep 2023
HBS Case

How Will the Tech Titans Behind ChatGPT, Bard, and LLaMA Make Money?

engines has put their intellectual property in this situation of being copyrighted but also public. What do those creators do about their data? You can say it's copyrighted, and say other people can't use it, but you can't really run... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Technology; Information Technology

November 1995 (Revised January 1998)
Case

Transformation of Pratt & Whitney North Haven (B)

By: H. Kent Bowen, Linda A. Hill, Andrew P. Burtis, Sylvie Ryckebusch and John Schiavone

As part of the restructuring effort underway at the Pratt & Whitney North Haven plant, Ed Northern and a group of Japanese consultants are transforming the manufacturing process from a batch process to a single-piece flow, and are organizing the machines and workers in... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Business Processes; Production; Machinery and Machining; Human Resources; Product; Connecticut

29 Jun 2010
First Look

First Look: June 29

explore three distinct channels through which FDI affects establishment performance: (i) production linkages, (ii) financial linkages, and (iii) multinational networks. Our analysis shows that while multinational-owned establishments... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

25 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

The Importance of Teaming

completely for every case or client? What if you're a member of a temporary project team formed to solve a unique production problem? Or you're part of a group of managers with a mix of individual and shared responsibilities? How do you... View Details

Keywords: Re: Amy C. Edmondson

31 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

Where Can Digital Transformation Take You? Insights from 1,700 Leaders

is not for the fainthearted. Most of us know how to drive—we have the basics—but we recognize we are ill-prepared to race against world-class competitors. While data and digital technologies were once enablers of efficiency and cost-cutting, today, they’re the View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

December 2012 (Revised November 2014)
Case

W.R. Grace & Co.: Dealing with Asbestos Torts

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Sarah L. Abbott

A manufacturer of building products and specialty chemicals, W. R. Grace & Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001 in response to a flood of lawsuits alleging that its products contained asbestos, and had caused hundreds of thousands of people to contract... View Details

Keywords: Bankruptcy Reorganization; Business Failures; Environmental Regulations; Class Action Lawsuits; Natural Environment; Valuation; Health Disorders; Capital Structure; Restructuring; Lawsuits and Litigation; Chemicals; Crisis Management; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Legal Liability; Construction Industry; Chemical Industry; United States

November 1992 (Revised December 1992)
Case

Deere & Co. (A): The Computer Aided Manufacturing Services Division - A Window to the World (Abridged)

By: Robert H. Hayes

The Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) Services Division of John Deere has just received approval to sell their software and computer systems to external customers. These tools, initially developed for internal use, have been widely used throughout Deere. Still,... View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Machinery and Machining; Technological Innovation; Markets; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Outcome or Result; Computer Industry; Manufacturing Industry

Find at Harvard

14 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Curiosity, Not Coding: 6 Skills Leaders Need in the Digital Age

eye. Roundtable executives described learning what they need to know through regular meetings (both in-depth and more informal) with engineers developing and deploying digital tools for operations and customer-facing functions, for... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards; Technology

03 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

When Showing Know-How Backfires for Women Managers

negatively associated with their departments’ performance. Implications beyond retail and gender While Feldberg’s research focused on a bricks-and-mortar grocery chain, its findings apply to other fields. Women engineering managers,... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

February 2010
Case

Amyris Biotechnologies: Commercializing Biofuel

By: Gary P. Pisano and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

In 2009, Amyris Biotechnologies was building a plant in Brazil that used synthetic biology to convert sugarcane into both renewable fuels and renewable chemicals. The Amyris' marketing team was investigating the commercial interest for both types of products, while the... View Details

Keywords: Renewable Energy; Chemicals; Risk Management; Product Marketing; Product Development; Production; Environmental Sustainability; Commercialization; Biotechnology Industry; Brazil

07 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Digital Transformation: A New Roadmap for Success

encourages the psychological safety necessary for cultivating a growth mindset among employees. To nurture that sense of shared purpose, as well as customer-centric thinking, participants described how they sent cross-functional or cross-level teams to observe... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

06 Sep 2006
Lessons from the Classroom

Mixing Students and Scientists in the Classroom

Despite earning two engineering degrees at Stanford, HBS associate professor Lee Fleming says he always knew he "wanted to study more than electrons." Even so, the former professional musician and bike racer, who worked at... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg; Education

23 Nov 2021
Book

What It Takes to Build an Organizational Culture That Wins

Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft who assumed the reigns of the software giant at a juncture when growth had plateaued and ennui enshrouded the mission. Nadella undertook a speedy cultural transformation at the same time he engineered a shift... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

14 Feb 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: February 14

transactional media marketplace and hoped that two new marketing analytics products would give it a more predictable revenue stream. But sales were behind forecast. DataXu’s large brand and advertising agency clients found the new View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

December 1991 (Revised February 1992)
Case

Dayton Electric Corp.

By: Steven C. Wheelwright

Concerns a product redesign decision for one of the company's most successful motor products, its rectified power, medium D-C motor, the RPM. A one-year redesign program has proposed a design that comes close to meeting its stated cost and performance goals, but at the... View Details

Keywords: Product Design; Strategic Planning; Research and Development; Business Divisions; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Product Development; Technological Innovation; Machinery and Machining; Manufacturing Industry; Ohio