Publications

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25 Oct 2016
Working Paper Summaries

'Be Careless with That!' Availability of Product Upgrades Increases Cavalier Behavior Toward Possessions

Keywords: by Silvia Bellezza, Joshua M. Ackerman, and Francesca Gino; Telecommunications

Article

When the Name Is the Game

By: Marco Bertini, John Gourville and Elie Ofek

In Romeo and Juliet, the fair maiden asks, "What's in a name?" When it comes to marketing next-generation products for the global marketplace, we have done extensive research and found that names can play an enormous role in a product's success. View Details

Keywords: Next-generation Products; Product Development; Brands and Branding; Marketing; Global Range

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01 Sep 2022
What Do You Think?

Is It Time to Consider Lifting Tariffs on Chinese Imports?

basic lesson in comparative advantage that we learned years ago in Economics 101. Would elimination of tariffs on Chinese product, much of it better suited for production in China, make at least a small... View Details

Keywords: Re: James L. Heskett

23 Sep 2013
News

Give Yourself 5 Stars? Online, It Might Cost You

May 2017 (Revised September 2018)
Case

Hilti Fleet Management (A): Turning a Successful Business Model on Its Head

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Oliver Gassmann and Roman Sauer

This case explores the introduction of fleet management in the construction industry by the premium power tools manufacturer Hilti in 2000. Following its customers’ needs, Hilti moved from selling power tools to leasing them as a service. The introduction of the new... View Details

01 Nov 2010
Research & Ideas

How IT Shapes Top-Down and Bottom-Up Decision Making

decision-making toward the bottom of the corporate ladder. Communication systems, such as e-mail and instant messaging applications, will push the decision-making process toward the top. And that means developing an IT strategy isn't all... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

01 Feb 2000
News

Better Mousetraps: At Product Design Fair, Student Ideas Get Real

Kresge Hall last December, is where students present their final projects - the culmination of a semester spent learning to design and develop products and services and get them to market. "Hopefully it is... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

13 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

What Would It Take to Unlock Microfinance's Full Potential?

we’re planning to run a randomized evaluation to understand the impact of these kinds of loans on livelihoods. But this is not a research-first project; it is a practice-first project. One of our principal motivations is to develop a set... View Details

Keywords: by Jen McFarland Flint; Financial Services

November 2014 (Revised March 2015)
Case

Disrupting the Meat Industry: Tissue Culture Beef

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Matthew G. Preble

Dr. Mark Post and his team at Maastricht University were perfecting their tissue culture beef product—made entirely from muscle grown in his lab—to give it the same taste, texture and appearance of a traditional beef hamburger. A previous iteration of this product had... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Beef Production; Environmental Impacts Of Food Production; Agribusiness; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Invention; Environmental Sustainability; Food; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Netherlands; United States; United Kingdom

18 Jul 2023
Interview

Jeffrey Rayport on Product Market Fit, Profit Market Fit and Whiplash, and More

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Doug Levin

This episode of "Lessons from Startup Life" podcast features Jeffrey Rayport, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Jeffrey specializes in teaching and researching growth-stage technology ventures and their scalability. Prior to... View Details

Keywords: Scaling And Growth; Start-up; Diversity; Equity; Inclusion; Technology; Business Startups; Product Marketing; Business Growth and Maturation

2006
Book

Service Productivity Management: Improving Service Performance Using Data Envelopment Analysis

By: H. David Sherman and Joe Zhu

Here is an in-depth guide to the most powerful available benchmarking technique for improving service organization performance—Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The book outlines DEA as a benchmarking technique, identifies high cost service units, isolates specific... View Details

Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis; Economics; Operations; Mathematical Methods

June 2018 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Sony

By: Stefan Thomke, Atsushi Osanai and Akiko Kanno

Sony used to be synonymous with "innovation" and "cool products." The case reveals how the company lost its edge and describes the leadership initiatives to restore its former glory. In 2012, Kazuo (Kaz) Hirai becomes CEO and successfully transforms Sony, including a... View Details

Keywords: Customer Experience; Product Differentiation; Transformation; Leadership Style; Technology Adoption; Leading Change; Electronics Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Video Game Industry; Japan

Article

What It Takes to Reshore Manufacturing Successfully

By: Willy C. Shih

The data on comparative labor and energy costs may seem compelling, but the process of bringing assembly work back to domestic factories from abroad is substantially more challenging than the economics alone would predict. This paper looks at some of the issues firms... View Details

Keywords: Manufacturing; Manufacturing Costs; Manufacturing Strategy; U.S. Competitiveness; Competitiveness; Labor Force Participation; Labor Management; Trade; Production; Management Practices and Processes; Manufacturing Industry; United States; China

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21 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Don’t Get Buried in Customer Data—Use It

To illustrate how Cisco uses these three layers, Cunningham cites a hypothetical example. Assume that for a given year, the average score for product reliability has slipped a bit. Drilling down to the bottom two layers of data, Cisco... View Details

Keywords: by Jean Ayers

May 2017
Case

Four Products: Predicting Diffusion (2017)

By: John Gourville

One job of product managers, marketers, strategic planners, and other corporate executives is to predict what the demand will be for a new product. This task is easier for certain classes of new products than for others. For new consumer package goods, for instance,... View Details

Keywords: Diffusion Processes; Product Adoption; Forecasting and Prediction; Product; Product Launch; Marketing