Publications

May 1993
Case

Patient Transfusion Services Lab of Central Blood Bank

By: James L. Heskett

The vice president of the Lab and Clinical Services at Central Blood Bank is faced with the challenge of convincing a hospital to use economical shared patient transfusion testing services. View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Quality; Service Operations; Mathematical Methods; Customer Satisfaction; Health Industry

February 1996 (Revised November 2003)
Case

Indianapolis: Activity-Based Costing of City Services (A)

By: Robert S. Kaplan

A new administration in the City of Indianapolis is initially determined to privatize many municipal services. Before taking this action, however, the city managers want to know the current cost of performing these services with the municipal workers. Existing... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Public Sector; Activity Based Costing and Management; Service Delivery; Privatization; City; Indianapolis

2007
Other Unpublished Work

Professional Service Firms: A Breed Apart

By: John J. Gabarro, Thomas J. DeLong and Robert Lees

Keywords: Service Operations; Service Industry

February 2016 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Scaling Well by Doing Good: Motivating Talent at b.good

By: Francesca Gino, Paul Green Jr. and Bradley Staats

Boston-based fast-casual chain b.good was founded on the idea of healthy food, sourced locally, and prepared in-store. The founders had built a value-based business and worked hard to cultivate a sense of family—among employees, customers, and suppliers. In 2015, they... View Details

Keywords: Motivation; Values; Corporate Culture; Growth Strategy; Motivation and Incentives; Values and Beliefs; Growth Management; Organizational Culture; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Industry; Service Industry; New England

December 2014 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Compass Group: The Ascension Health Decision

By: Ryan W. Buell

In 2012, Compass Group (Compass) was on the verge of closing a $2 billion deal with Ascension Health (Ascension), one of the largest healthcare systems in the United States. Under the deal, Compass would provide foodservice management and cleaning services for 86 of... View Details

Keywords: Operations Strategy; Sectorization; Operational Focus; Customer Compatibility; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Operations; Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; Service Industry; Service Industry; United States

March 1999
Case

Australia's Telstra Corporation (C): Operating in Never-Never Land

By: W. Earl Sasser, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Carlos A. A Gonzalez

Supplements the (A) case. View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Service Operations; Telecommunications Industry; Australia

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Web

Compute Cluster - Research Computing Services

Compute Cluster and Data Storage Compute Cluster and Data Storage Compute Cluster 7ms Running Jobs Comprehensive guide to running programs and scripts on the HBSGrid, including how to choose your resources, monitor and troubleshoot your jobs, and View Details

02 Mar 2015
Research & Ideas

‘Retail Revolution’ Excerpt: The Scale of the Ecommerce Threat

book excerpt The Scale Of The Threat From Retail Revolution: Will Your Brick-and-Mortar Store Survive? By Rajiv Lal, José B. Alvarez and Dan Greenberg After years against the ropes, many retailers are fighting out of the corner:... View Details

Keywords: Re: Rajiv Lal; Retail

Web

Research Staff Services - Faculty & Research

Research Services Research Staff Services 1ms As part of the Division of Research and Faculty Development (DRFD), Research Staff Services (RSS) provides research support... View Details

23 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

Break Your Addiction to Service Heroes

your biggest buckets of cost and rethinking those strategically in ways that give your customers something they value," notes Frei, the UPS Foundation Professor of Service Management at Harvard Business School. Morriss (HBS MBA '04),... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg; Service

13 Aug 2021
Blog Post

Exploring Racial Justice with the Scaling Minority Businesses Course

Nimisha Ganesh is a Class of 2021 MBA graduate from Harvard Business School and the Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer of GenUnity, a civic leadership startup. Prior to HBS, she worked at Goldman Sachs and Kitamba, a U.S.-based... View Details

02 Feb 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Mobile Money: The Effect of Service Quality and Competition on Demand

Keywords: by Karthik Balasubramanian & David F. Drake; Banking

Spring 2014
Article

What Impact? A Framework for Measuring the Scale & Scope of Social Performance

By: Alnoor Ebrahim and V. Kasturi Rangan

Organizations with social missions, such as nonprofits and social enterprises, are under growing pressure to demonstrate their impacts on pressing societal problems such as global poverty. This article draws on several cases to build a performance assessment framework... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Performance Evaluation

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Read Now

May 2021
Supplement

Hello Alfred: Come Home Happy — Operating the Business Model Exercise, Instructor Version

By: Joseph B. Fuller and Christopher Payton

On a mission to "automate the on-demand economy," Harvard Business School classmates Marcela Sapone and Jessica Beck launched Hello Alfred in 2013 to provide subscribers with an "Alfred" to complete various chores for a monthly fee. In early 2016, the company has built... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Internet and the Web; Business Startups; Service Operations; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Service Industry; New York (city, NY); Boston

September 2014
Teaching Note

Entrepreneurial Finance Lab: Scaling an Innovative Start-up Financing Venture

By: Joan Farre-Mensa

The Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL) is a financial technology start-up that has developed a new tool that uses psychometric tests to aid banks in developing markets with credit scoring of business loan applicants. EFL's ultimate goal is to solve the financing gap... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurship; Financial Services Industry

11 Feb 2015
News

Dedicated to a public service mission

Western Pacific deployments during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, then joined the private sector at Caustic Soda and, more recently, Dow Solar. Outside the office, he has actively volunteered at his local church and a... View Details

Teaching Interest

Overview

By: Rob Markey

Managing Service Operations - MBA Elective Curriculum

World-class service organizations deeply understand the needs and behaviors of their customers, and design, manage, and improve their operating models accordingly. This course... View Details

Keywords: Customer Lifetime Value; Customer Centric Initiative; Customer Engagement; Service Management; Service Profit Chain; Service Design; Service Models; Service Excellence; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Customer Value and Value Chain; Service Delivery; Service Operations

1993
Chapter

Operation and Regulation in Financial Intermediation: A Functional Perspective

By: Robert C. Merton

Keywords: Financial Markets; Operations; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Government and Politics; Financial Services Industry

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Fall 2016
Article

The Impact of Supplier Inventory Service Level on Retailer Demand

By: Nathan Craig, Nicole DeHoratius and Ananth Raman

To set inventory service levels, suppliers must understand how changes in inventory service level affect demand. We build on prior research, which uses analytical models and laboratory experiments to study the impact of a supplier’s service level on demand from... View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Service Delivery; Supply Chain; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Retail Industry