Distributed Systems - Publications - Faculty & Research

19 Apr 2010
Research & Ideas

The History of Beauty

largest, most professionally managed global companies find it hard to predict the success of product launches, and can stumble badly. One estimate is that 90 percent of new fragrance launches fail. Getting the word out to consumers, and getting product through the... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Beauty & Cosmetics

20 Aug 2008
Op-Ed

The Time is Right for Creative Capitalism

entrepreneurs saw the outlines of competition in their respective industries before other players and could thus act quickly to create and control what became the standards of rivalry in each young market.) The economic spoils of this View Details

Keywords: by Nancy Koehn

10 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

How to Get Companies to Make Investments That Benefit Everyone

since little of the upside tends to flow back onto corporate balance sheets. To that end, Nagle says, “Can we design systems and regulations to allow a company to get some of those benefits?” One model for the future: Free and open source... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

09 May 2017
What Do You Think?

Should Management Be Primarily Responsible to Shareholders?

School Professor Sumantra Ghoshal questioned whether shareholders are even “owners” in the common sense of that term. As he put it, “If the value creation is achieved by combining the resources of both employees and shareholders, why should value View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

March 2024 (Revised May 2025)
Case

Governing OpenAI (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Suraj Srinivasan and Will Hurwitz

In late November 2023, OpenAI’s new board of directors took stock of the situation. The company, which sought to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI)—computer systems with capabilities exceeding human abilities—was looking to regain its footing after a chaotic... View Details

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05 Feb 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 5, 2019

different forms of organization. Specifically, step processes reward technical integration, unified governance, risk aversion, and the use of direct authority, while platform systems reward modularity, View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

21 Jul 2009
First Look

First Look: July 21

stronger. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-051.pdf Quality Management and Job Quality: How the ISO 9001 Standard for Quality Management Systems Affects Employees and Employers (revised) Authors:David I. Levine and... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

05 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software

pixelfit Companies that contribute to open source software and use it in their own IT systems and applications can gain a competitive advantage—even though they may be helping their competitors in the short run. Open source software is... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Computer

11 Apr 2023
Research & Ideas

Is Amazon a Retailer, a Tech Firm, or a Media Company? How AI Can Help Investors Decide

Traditional investing classifications consider Walmart a consumer staples retailer, but the company owns more than 6,000 retail and distribution properties around the world—the portfolio dwarfs those of many commercial real estate firms.... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Consumer Products; Real Estate; Financial Services; Retail

23 Jun 2009
First Look

First Look: June 23

technology, three core principles have emerged that work together to ensure that complementary, interconnected products coexist and compete. These core principles are particularly important when applied to platforms, which have played a central role in enabling the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

07 May 2014
What Do You Think?

How Should Wealth Be Redistributed?

Summing Up Is Wealth Distribution a Problem Cause or Symptom? The passion and thought that went into this month's questions about wealth redistribution suggest that the topic is of more than passing interest. Some cautioned against hasty... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

13 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Merck CEO Ken Frazier Discusses a COVID Cure, Racism, and Why Leaders Need to Walk the Talk

unfortunately, there are some cases where it stimulated the immune system and not only it didn't confer protection, but actually helped the virus invade the cell because it was incomplete in terms of its immunogenic properties. We have to... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Pharmaceutical

26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

focus, setup minimization, etc. The products and services characteristic of our modern economy are far too complex for any one person to understand how they work. It is cognitively overwhelming. Therefore, organizations must have some mechanism for decomposing the... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

27 May 2014
First Look

First Look: May 27

distribution strategy for Glass, a wearable computer that projected information on a display viewable with an upward glance. Options, which were not mutually exclusive, included 1) continuing to sell Glass directly through online... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

14 Jul 2014
Research & Ideas

Pay Attention To Your ‘Extreme Consumers’

of the bell curve, says Avery, product designers can discover truly innovative breakthroughs. "Only by looking at consumers who fall within those tails of the normal distribution can you understand the extremes," she says. "And they often... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

29 Jul 2013
Research & Ideas

A Manager’s Moral Obligation to Preserve Capitalism

through the writings of Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek among other foundational thinkers. "Many economists think of it as a positivist system that does not impose morality upon society, but this is not the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

17 Jun 2011
HBS Case

KFC’s Explosive Growth in China

should develop a national footprint—supported by a company-owned distribution system since third-party suppliers didn't exist—instead of growing in geographic chunks through franchising. Su sourced products... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish; Food & Beverage

26 Apr 2022
Book

What Does Your Business Stand For? Why Building Trust Starts with Purpose

principles into every aspect of the organization. This purpose serves as a compass to guide all decisions, but also as an operating system that shapes all facets of the business, including its strategy, culture, and its public relations.... View Details

Keywords: by Ranjay Gulati

08 May 2012
First Look

First Look: May 8

isolation, and as a consequence avoid deviating much-for any given subset-from the expected overall distribution of judgments. For instance, an interviewer who has already highly recommended three applicants on a given day may be... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

15 Nov 2018
Book

Can the Global Food Industry Overcome Public Distrust?

JamesBrey Food is the largest segment of the global economy. It is also widely recognized as more critical for human health than any pharmaceutical drug on the planet. But significant changes in the industry are making people lose trust in many institutions involved in... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Agriculture & Agribusiness

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