Publications

December 2020 (Revised April 2021)
Case

IBM Watson at MD Anderson Cancer Center

By: Shane Greenstein, Mel Martin and Sarkis Agaian

After discovering that their cancer diagnostic tool, designed to leverage the cloud computing power of IBM Watson, needed greater integration into the clinical processes at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the development team had difficult choices to make. The Oncology... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Innovation Strategy; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Operations; Failure; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Health Care and Treatment; Product Development; Health Industry; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Houston; Texas

October 2023 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Loris

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Das Narayandas, Stacy Straaberg and David Lane

In December 2022, Loris’s executive team considered their go-to-market strategy. Loris was an artificial intelligence (AI) software startup for the customer service industry with two products on the market: 1) Agent Assist which provided customer service agents (CSAs)... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Applications and Software; Marketing Strategy; Sales; Technology Industry; United States

06 Feb 2023
Blog Post

African American Student Union Spotlight on HBCUs

about their experiences before and during the MBA program. Kristen Shipley (MBA 2024) Where is your hometown and which HBCU did you attend? My hometown is Baltimore, Maryland and I attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State... View Details

Profile

Brandon Graves

Coming to HBS is like Entering a new world in which the words “not possible” or “no” don’t exist. HBS fosters an environment that constructively challenges my self-imposed limits and assumptions. Conversations with section mates and professors have enriched my life in... View Details

31 Jan 2007
HBS Case

When Good Teams Go Bad

not-so-pretty picture of a frustrating and baffling decline in performance by the varsity boat at the United States Military Academy. "Teams should always be used judiciously" Polzer, whose... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons

11 Apr 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Teaching a ‘Lean Startup’ Strategy

doing that, and waste a lot of money on sales and marketing trying to sell that wrong product," says Tom Eisenmann, a professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School. "It takes a lot of time, time... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Technology; Computer

Myra M. Hart

Myra Hart's research focus is high potential entrepreneurship. She has taught MBA and executive programs, co-chaired the entrepreneurship unit, and led several HBS initiatives. As a founding memberView Details

Keywords: consumer products; e-commerce industry; education industry; real estate; retailing

07 May 2024
Blog Post

Opportunity to Offset Travel Emissions with Carbon Credits that Meet HBS Criteria

provides SDG Impact Ratings, where they rate the level of societal benefit the project is providing related to the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In addition to environmental goals, the SDGs include social and... View Details

Portrait Project

Yael Taqqu

I want to be a storyteller. At the end of each day, I want to be able to sit down and find the story, no matter how obscured it may be. Trace a story through the weeks, through the years. And in doing this, I want to break down that unhappy wall between the creatives... View Details

August 2017
Case

RoboTech: Storming into the U.S. Market

By: Christopher A. Bartlett, Rachel Gordon and John J. Lafkas

This case describes the challenges facing the CEO of a small, Singapore-based industrial robotics company that decides to diversify away from its core industrial robot business by leveraging its expertise into the medical-devices industry. It launches an innovative... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Diversification; Product Launch; Competitive Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Technology Industry; Singapore; United States

18 Dec 2017
Op-Ed

Why Employers Must Stop Requiring College Degrees For Middle-Skill Jobs

Credit: Pixsooz American companies have a problem. Over the past decade, they have begun to demand a bachelor’s degree in hiring workers for jobs that traditionally haven’t required one. This uptick in credentialing, or “degree inflation,” rested on the belief that... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Fuller

Richard L. Nolan

Professor Nolan earned his B.A. from the University of Washington in Production and Operations Research in 1962, and his M.B.A and Ph.D. in 1963 and 1966, respectively. Upon graduation in 1966, he joined Boeing Commercial Airplane Company as an Information... View Details

Keywords: aerospace; information technology industry; internet

March 2021
Case

VideaHealth: Building the AI Factory

By: Karim R. Lakhani and Amy Klopfenstein

Florian Hillen, co-founder and CEO of VideaHealth, a startup that used artificial intelligence (AI) to detect dental conditions on x-rays, spent the early years of his company laying the groundwork for an AI factory. A process for quickly building and iterating on new... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Digital Platforms; Entrepreneurship; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Cambridge

02 Oct 2006
Research & Ideas

Negotiating in Three Dimensions

in Jedda [Saudi Arabia] to discuss our plan. We needed the Americans with us. We needed the United Nations with us. We needed France with us because France was very close to the Christians and we needed the Vatican, which is a very... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

23 Aug 2006
Op-Ed

The Real Wal-Mart Effect

policies in the United States favor consumers and offer fewer protections to other interests than is par for the course elsewhere. Is such proconsumerism a good thing? The answer, at least in relation to... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat & Ken A. Mark; Retail

March 2023 (Revised May 2025)
Case

On

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Karolin Frankenberger and Sascha Mader

Founded in 2010, in just one decade, the Swiss company On had established itself as a main player in global sports footwear and apparel. Based on an unconventional strategy which one of the founders labeled as “obsessively distinct,” On grew its sales with a compound... View Details