System - Publications - Faculty & Research

Strategies for Two-Sided Markets

Many blockbuster products and services that have redefined the global business landscape are built around platforms that tie together two distinct groups of users in a network. Examples include credit cards that link consumers and merchants; operating systems that... View Details

July 2019 (Revised November 2019)
Case

Osaro: Picking the Best Path

By: William R. Kerr, James Palano and Bastiane Huang

The founder of Osaro saw the potential of deep reinforcement learning to allow robots to be applied to new applications. Osaro targeted warehousing, already a dynamic industry for robotics and automation, for its initial product—a system which would allow robotic arms... View Details

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May 2021
Article

Making Doctors Effective Managers and Leaders: A Matter of Health and Well-Being

By: Lisa Rotenstein, Robert S. Huckman and Christine K. Cassel

The COVID-19 crisis has forced physicians to make daily decisions that require knowledge and skills they did not acquire as part of their biomedical training. Physicians are being called upon to be both managers—able to set processes and structures—and leaders—capable... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Management; Leadership; Health Pandemics; Health Industry

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2012
Book

Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy

By: Amy C. Edmondson

Continuous improvement, understanding complex systems, and promoting innovation are all part of the landscape of learning challenges today's companies face. I show that organizations thrive, or fail to thrive, based on how well the small groups within those... View Details

Keywords: Change; Interpersonal Communication; Learning; Values and Beliefs; Innovation and Invention; Management; Performance Improvement; Groups and Teams; Research; Strategy; Complexity; Value

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08 Apr 2013
Research & Ideas

How to Demotivate Your Best Employees

beneficial for companies. But Larkin says corporate managers should manage them closely to make sure that employees aren't gaming the system and that the programs aren't fostering unintended negative effects. "Many award programs have... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Service

23 Jan 2023
Research & Ideas

After High-Profile Failures, Can Investors Still Trust Credit Ratings?

important lesson: getting it wrong can seriously damage their reputations and hurt their businesses. As economic fears mount and raise default concerns, a fresh analysis of new-and-improved credit rating agencies sounds a hopeful note about the reliability of their... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

Web

Topics - HBS Working Knowledge

Stagnation (12) Economic Systems (14) Economics (393) Economy (16) Education (118) Emerging Markets (14) Emotions (21) Employee Ownership (1) Employee Relationship Management (61) Employees (83) Employment (15) Energy Conservation (7)... View Details

Web

Accounting & Management Curriculum - Faculty & Research

Business Leaders (also listed under Technology & Operations Management) Suraj Srinivasan Spring 2026 Q4 1.5 Strategy Execution Robert Simons Spring 2026 Q4 1.5 Systems for Scaling Ventures (SSV) (also listed under Entrepreneurial... View Details

Web

Mid-US - Global

to himself a decade earlier to contribute to the ongoing evolution of the city he calls home. Living in metro Detroit and Flint, Hurd experienced firsthand the shortcomings of public transportation, sparking his passion for improving these View Details

24 Oct 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

Startup or Established Company? Which Is Best for You?

team.” Izzy Azeri & Dan Belcher, co-founders, Mabl They may also be too used to having teams of people and systems in place to cover the more mundane duties of running a company and don’t want to get their hands dirty. On the flip... View Details

Keywords: by Julia B. Austin

September 2001 (Revised October 2018)
Case

DIENA

By: Robert Simons and Indra Reinbergs

Requires students to draw a new organization structure diagram for a rapidly evolving business. A/S DIENA is a newspaper publisher founded during Latvia's 1990/91 struggle for independence from the USSR with a clear social mission to support democracy. With the help of... View Details

Keywords: Employee Ownership; Organizational Design; Marketing Strategy; Managerial Roles; Growth and Development; Economic Systems; Publishing Industry; Journalism and News Industry; Latvia

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Research Summary

How will Web 2.0 technologies contribute to 'Enterprise 2.0?'

Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, wikis, tags, RSS, and open APIs are clearly having an impact on the public Internet. Will they also be important additions to Intranets?

I believe that these tools are likely to have their largest impact inside companies. ... View Details

July 2025
Teaching Note

Greenwood Online: A Fin-Tech Service for Culture and Community

By: James Riley and Bernal Cortés

In 2020, Ryan Glover and Paul Judge launched Greenwood, a fintech startup designed to counter systemic racial discrimination in the American banking ecosystem by offering accessible financial services tailored to Black and Brown communities, but available to all.... View Details

Keywords: Purpose; Identity; Cultural Branding; Impression Management; Organization Behavior; Strategic Alignment; Start-up; Mission and Purpose; Decision Making; Decisions; Marketing Strategy; Organizational Structure; Banking Industry; United States

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July 2025
Case

Greenwood Online: A Fin-Tech Service for Culture and Community (A)

By: James Riley and Bernal Cortés

In 2020, Ryan Glover and Paul Judge launched Greenwood, a fintech startup designed to counter systemic racial discrimination in the American banking ecosystem by offering accessible financial services tailored to Black and Brown communities, but available to all.... View Details

Keywords: Purpose; Identity; Cultural Branding; Impression Management; Organization Behavior; Strategic Alignment; Start-up; Mission and Purpose; Decisions; Marketing Strategy; Organizational Structure; Banking Industry; United States

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November 2016 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Augmedix

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Alexandra N. Rachlin

In April 2015, Ian Shakil and Pelu Tran, cofounders of Augmedix, are discussing how to grow their emerging health care startup. The company’s sole product, also called Augmedix, streams video of doctor-patient interactions to remote medical scribes, thus freeing... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Sales Management; Scaling; Hiring; Pricing; Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Sales; Technology; Health Industry; United States

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April 2014 (Revised October 2015)
Case

Texas Teachers and the New Texas Way

By: Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, Luis M. Viceira, John D. Dionne and Nathaniel Burbank

In 2011 Britt Harris, the Chief Investment Officer for the $107.4 billion Teachers Retirement System of Texas (TRS), was considering whether to pursue strategic partnerships with a group of large private equity firms. After spending four years aggressively moving the... View Details

Keywords: Texas; TRS; Texas Teachers; Private Equity; Texas

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Article

Intermediary Functions and the Market for Innovation in Meiji and Taisho Japan

By: Tom Nicholas and Hiroshi Shimizu

Japan experienced a transformational phase of technological development during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We argue that an important, but so far neglected, factor was a developing market for innovation and a patent attorney system that was... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Patents; Innovation and Invention; Japan

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2010
Working Paper

Foreign Entry and the Mexican Banking System, 1997-2007

By: Stephen Haber and Aldo Musacchio

What is the impact of foreign bank entry on the pricing and availability of credit in developing economies? The Mexican banking system provides a quasi-experiment to address this question because in 1997 the Mexican government radically changed the laws governing the... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Credit; Banks and Banking; Financing and Loans; Foreign Direct Investment; Market Entry and Exit; Business and Government Relations; Banking Industry; Mexico

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July 2001 (Revised March 2003)
Background Note

Running and Growing the Small Company: Project-Paper Writing Recommendations

Students are required to do a team project. During the project, they are to do a benchmarking study of a business process to determine best practice or to study a single business process for the purposes of discovering improvement opportunities. The student teams are... View Details

Keywords: Analysis; Business Processes; Management Skills

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May 1999 (Revised March 2001)
Case

Marshall Industries

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport

Confounding predictions that the Internet would "disintermediate" commerce, making "middle man" companies all but obsolete, Marshall Industries, a leading electronics distributor, used the Internet and digital technologies to reinvent itself. Marshall continued to sell... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Supply Chain; Emerging Markets; Customer Focus and Relationships; Distribution Industry; Electronics Industry

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