Publications

January 2025 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Mercado Libre: The Best Is Yet to Come

By: Krishna G. Palepu, Fernando Fragueiro, Carla Larangeira and Mariana Cal

In 2024, Marcos Galperín, CEO and co-founder of Mercado Libre, reflected on its 25-year rise as Latin America’s largest marketplace, fintech leader, and most valuable public company. With operations spanning 18 countries and a robust ecosystem combining e-commerce,... View Details

September 17, 2021
Article

AI Can Help Address Inequity—If Companies Earn Users' Trust

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Kannan Srinivasan, Param Singh and Nitin Mehta

While companies may spend a lot of time testing models before launch, many spend too little time considering how they will work in the wild. In particular, they fail to fully consider how rates of adoption can warp developers’ intent. For instance, Airbnb launched a... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Algorithmic Bias; Technological Innovation; Perception; Diversity; Equality and Inequality; Trust; AI and Machine Learning

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May 2020
Case

Schlumberger's WesternGeco Division

By: John R. Wells, Sneha Biswas and Benjamin Weinstock

In October 2017, Maurice Nessim, President of WesternGeco, a business unit of Schlumberger, faced a difficult decision. In the face of falling oil prices and increasing pressure on costs, did it make sense to sell off the company’s specialized fleet of seismic survey... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Decision Making; Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry

18 Sep 2007
First Look

First Look: September 18, 2007

Synthesis Author:Carliss Y. Baldwin Abstract This paper constructs a unified theory of the location of transactions and the boundaries of firms. It proposes that systems of production can be viewed as... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Career Coach

Craig Husa

assisted in securing over $8.0 billion in financing for utility-scale wind and solar facilities on six continents. Craig was also CEO of General Software (acquired by Phoenix Technologies Ltd, NASDAQ:... View Details

Keywords: Clean Technology; Clean Technology; Clean Technology; Clean Technology; Clean Technology; Clean Technology; Clean Technology; Clean Technology; Clean Technology; Clean Technology; Clean Technology; Clean Technology

August 2001 (Revised October 2001)
Case

What a Great Idea

By: Myra M. Hart and Susan Harmeling

Charles "Chic" Thompson has created a successful business as a professional speaker, consultant, and author of two books on creativity. He is challenged to institutionalize his knowledge and brand in an organization that will outlive his involvement. This case examines... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Management; Entrepreneurship; Management Teams; Organizational Design; Technological Innovation; Technology Adoption; Service Industry; Education Industry

2014
Working Paper

Team Scaffolds: How Meso-Level Structures Support Role-based Coordination in Temporary Groups

By: Melissa A. Valentine and Amy C. Edmondson

This paper shows how meso-level structures support effective coordination in temporary groups. Prior research on coordination in temporary groups describes how roles encode individual responsibilities so that coordination between relative strangers is possible. We... View Details

Keywords: Fluid Personnel; Team Scaffolds; Team Effectiveness; Role-based Coordination; Multi-method; Health Care and Treatment; Analytics and Data Science; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Organizational Structure; Outcome or Result; Performance Effectiveness; Groups and Teams; Networks; Behavior; Balance and Stability; Health Industry

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15 Aug 2019
Blog Post

Stan Chang: “A Guided Experience into the World of Entrepreneurship”

best program for me.” Stan had already gained an impressive amount of experience at Microsoft where he worked on operating systems and with online payments technology, responsibilities that “shaped my view... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Technology

25 Oct 2011
First Look

First Look: October 25

specific assumptions about fairness principles or priority criteria, our method offers the designer the flexibility to select his desired criteria and fairness constraints from a broad class of allowable constraints. The method then... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

25 May 2015
Blog Post

RapidSOS Wins the HBS New Venture Competition

directly into 911’s existing system. The technology is universally compatible with every dispatch center across the United States. The result is a system that dramatically increases the information... View Details

October 1996 (Revised January 1997)
Case

MacTemps: Building Commitment in the Interim Workforce

MacTemps is a provider of temporary workers skilled in computer graphics and database management. Unlike many temporary agencies that treat temps as a commodity, MacTemps has attempted to build relationships with temps through offering benefits and training. This case... View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Organizational Design; Personal Development and Career; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry

25 Jul 2006
First Look

First Look: July 25, 2006

which in 2005 surpassed the NFL in viewership, and Berggren's options in developing a plan to exploit new opportunities for his organization. Challenges students to develop a business plan in an industry where new View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2003
Case

IBM Canada: Global Services (C)

By: Michael L. Tushman, David Kiron and Wendy Smith

Supplements the (A) case. View Details

Keywords: Leading Change; Technological Innovation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Management Teams; Information Technology; Organizational Structure; Information Technology Industry; Canada

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27 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

Employee-Suggestion Programs That Work

June 2012 working paper, Key Drivers of Successful Implementation of an Employee Suggestion-Driven Improvement Program. Tucker is an associate professor in the Technology and Operations Management unit,... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Guttry

04 Dec 2012
First Look

First Look: December 4

system can be broken apart into subunits (modules) that can be recombined in various ways. Modularity is important for organizations and the economy because the boundaries of View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

01 Mar 2022
What Do You Think?

Is It Time for More Reverse Mentoring?

(iStockphoto/Sanja Radin) Increasingly, I hear and read about questions such as: Why are my best tech people leaving our great company to work on something called crypto and Web3? What are the strategic... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

December 2010
Supplement

Rackspace Hosting (2000)

By: W. Earl Sasser, James L. Heskett and Tom Ryder

The leadership team of Rackspace, faced with accommodation of its service offering and dwindling financial reserves, decides to make customer focus the rallying cry of its new strategy. View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Planning; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Service Delivery; Strategy; Finance; Information Technology Industry