Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,908)
- Faculty Publications (612)
- June 2011 (Revised October 2012)
- Case
IBM China Development Lab Shanghai: Capability by Design
By: Willy Shih, Kamen Bliznashki and Fan Zhao
When IBM shifted from a traditional territory-based multinational organization to what it called a globally integrated enterprise, it established its headquarters for "Growth Markets" in Shanghai and "Established Markets" in New York. This positioned its China... View Details
- March 2011
- Case
MorphoSys AG: The Evolution of a Biotechnology Business Model
By: Gary P. Pisano, Ryan Johnson and Carin-Isabel Knoop
In the biotech world, the 18-year-old Munich-based company MorphoSys was a rarity: it was profitable. The company achieved this profitability not by developing and selling its own drugs, but by licensing access to its proprietary library of human antibodies. Recently,... View Details
- March 2011
- Case
United Cereal: Lora Brill's Eurobrand Challenge
By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Carole Carlson
The case, set within the European organization of a giant multinational breakfast foods company, describes a launch decision for a new cereal product. As the case evolves, the decision has major strategic and organizational implications for Lora Brill, European VP. The... View Details
Keywords: Subsidiaries; Market Entry; Multinational Corporations; Strategy; Business Subsidiaries; Managerial Roles; Multinational Firms and Management; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Marketing Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Product Launch; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Europe
- March 2011
- Module Note
Quantitative Analysis of Competitive Position: Customer Demand and Willingness to Pay
By: David J. Collis
This note is designed to provide strategists with tools to perform two critical customer-related analyses: determining willingness to pay — the estimation of how much a given customer would be willing to pay for a particular product or service; and demand estimation —... View Details
- February 2011 (Revised November 2012)
- Case
Product Development at OPOWER
By: Thomas Eisenmann and Rob Go
OPOWER, a software startup that helps utilities engage their customers in ways that reduce energy consumption, is scaling rapidly. The company's new head of product management has designed a system to address a point of constant tension: whether to build custom... View Details
- January 2011
- Case
Aardvark
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Alison Berkley Wagonfeld and Lauren Barley
Aardvark is an online social search service that allows users to pose questions and receive answers from other users in their extended social network. The case explores the process that Aardvark's founders used to design and develop their product based on intensive... View Details
- January 2011
- Case
AIC Netbooks: Optimizing Product Assembly
By: Steven C. Wheelwright and Sunru Yong
AIC Systems, located in Taichung, Taiwan, is a manufacturer of printed circuit boards, primarily for motherboards and video cards for personal computers. The firm is considered an original design manufacturer (ODM) and takes an active role in innovating and designing... View Details
- January 2011
- Case
Clean Edge Razor: Splitting Hairs in Product Positioning
By: John A. Quelch and Heather Beckham
After three years of development, Paramount Health and Beauty Company is preparing to launch a new technologically advanced vibrating razor called Clean Edge. The innovative new design of Clean Edge provides superior performance by stimulating the hair follicles to... View Details
- January 2011 (Revised October 2014)
- Case
Dropbox: 'It Just Works'
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Michael Pao and Lauren Barley
Dropbox is a venture-backed Silicon Valley startup, founded in 2006, that provides online storage and backup services to millions of customers using a "freemium" (free + premium offers) business model. The case recounts Dropbox's history from conception through... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
How Foundations Think: The Ford Foundation as a Dominating Institution in the Field of American Business Schools
By: Rakesh Khurana, Kenneth Kimura and Marion Fourcade
The question of institutional change has become central to organizational research (Powell, 2008). Recent scholarship has demonstrated, often through carefully researched cases, that institutions can and sometimes do change. According to this research, there are two... View Details
- November 2010
- Case
Spudnik, Inc.
By: William A. Sahlman and Elizabeth A. Kind
This case describes the plan to finance a revolutionary new television set manufacturing business in late 2009. Yatin Mundkur, a venture capitalist at Artiman Ventures, has recruited a team of veteran eecutives from the optical disk drive business, to design large... View Details
- October 2010
- Article
Organizational Designs and Innovation Streams
By: Michael Tushman, Wendy K. Smith, Robert Chapman Wood, George Westerman and Charles A. O'Reilly III
This article empirically explores the relations between alternative organizational designs and a firm's ability to explore as well as exploit. We operationalize exploitation and exploration in terms of innovation streams—incremental innovation in existing products as... View Details
- September 2010 (Revised December 2012)
- Case
Assembling Smartphones: Takt Time ≠ Cycle Time?
By: Willy Shih and Ethan Bernstein
The case was prepared to be used as part of a process review in the first year Technology and Operations Management course at HBS. It offers students an opportunity to discuss the context of a manufacturing process choice, and then examine actual production numbers... View Details
- September 2010 (Revised April 2012)
- Case
Better World Books
By: Michael I. Norton, Fiona Wilson, Jill Avery and Thomas J. Steenburgh
Better World Books, a young start-up, provides a socially conscious alternative to Amazon, collecting and selling used books to keep them out of the waste stream, while donating a portion of their profits to support global literacy efforts. The case presents an... View Details
- September – October 2010
- Article
The Effect of Product Variety and Inventory Levels on Retail Sales: A Longitudinal Study
By: Zeynep Ton and Ananth Raman
We examine the effects of product variety and inventory levels on store sales. Using four years of data from stores of a large retailer, we show that increases in product variety and inventory levels are both associated with higher sales. We also show that increasing... View Details
- August 2010
- Case
Flash Memory, Inc.
By: William E. Fruhan and Craig Stephenson
The CFO of Flash Memory, Inc. prepares the company's investing and financing plans for the next three years. Flash Memory is a small firm that specializes in the design and manufacture of solid state drives (SSDs) and memory modules for the computer and electronics... View Details
- July 2010
- Case
Monmouth, Inc.
By: Thomas R. Piper and Heide Abelli
The management of Monmouth Inc. is considering whether to acquire the Robertson Tool Company and the value and form that the acquisition should take. Value can be assessed using a variety of approaches including a DCF with WACC analysis, impact on EPS and market... View Details
- July 2010 (Revised March 2011)
- Case
A&M/Octone Records: All Rights or Nothing?
By: Anita Elberse, Elie Ofek and Caren Kelleher
In April 2008, after successfully transitioning Octone Records to Universal Music Group and relaunching the label as A&M/Octone Records, president and CEO James Diener is facing a new challenge. Diener and his executive team have trouble convincing a new, promising... View Details
- June 2010
- Teaching Note
Design Thinking and Innovation at Apple (TN)
By: Stefan H. Thomke
Teaching Note for 609066. View Details
- May 2010 (Revised August 2013)
- Case
Delta Electronics Hybrid Power Train
By: Willy C. Shih and Jyun-Cheng Wang
Delta Electronics, the world's largest manufacturer of switching power supplies, hoped to enter the market for gasoline-electric hybrid power trains for automobiles by being a major component and subsystem supplier. While most public awareness of hybrid vehicles fell... View Details