Publications

November 2011 (Revised August 2012)
Background Note

Customer Visits for Entrepreneurs

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Provides practical guidelines for conducting customer visits to explore and validate demand for an entrepreneurial offering. Reviews conditions under which visits will yield superior insights, compared to other research methods. Describes criteria for selecting visit... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Entrepreneurship

Research Summary

Wearing a Red Hat ¨C The Impact of Activist Industrial Policy on Software Development in China

The idea that the government should steer economic development by strategically hand-picking and managing certain industries is controversial but appeals to many developing countries that are eager to upgrade their industries. In this paper, I study China's recent... View Details

March 2009
Case

Baosteel Group: Governance with Chinese Characteristics

By: Lynn S. Paine and G.A. Donovan

The new outsider-dominated board of directors of China's state-owned Baosteel Group must decide whether to modify the Group's structure. With the completion of a pending acquisition, the Group will control four publicly listed steel-producing subsidiaries, and board... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Governing and Advisory Boards; State Ownership; China

August 2014
Article

Incentives in a Stage-Gate Process

By: Raul O. Chao, Kenneth C. Lichtendahl and Yael Grushka-Cockayne

Many large organizations use a stage‐gate process to manage new product development projects. In a typical stage‐gate process project managers learn about potential ideas from research and exert effort in development while senior executives make intervening go/no‐go... View Details

Keywords: Stage-Gate Process; Production; Operations; Product Development; Innovation and Invention

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December 2003 (Revised April 2004)
Case

Sherif Mityas at A.T. Kearney (A): Negotiating a Client Service Predicament

By: Ashish Nanda

Sherif Mityas, recently promoted as project manager at A.T. Kearney, faced a client service challenge in his very first project experience. Mityas had been working closely for six weeks with the management team of the U.S. subsidiary of a Japan-headquartered consumer... View Details

Keywords: Management; Conflict of Interests; Business Subsidiaries; Trust; Consumer Products Industry; Japan; United States

Article

An Integrated Decision-Making Approach for Improving European Air Traffic Management

By: Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Bert De Reyck and Zeger Degraeve

We develop a multistakeholder, multicriteria decision-making framework for Eurocontrol, the European air traffic management organization, for evaluating and selecting operational improvements to the air traffic management system. The selected set of improvements will... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Framework; Operations; Performance Improvement; Government Administration; Air Transportation Industry; Europe

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February 2005 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Phase Zero: Introducing New Services at IDEO (A)

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Laura Feldman

Focuses on whether world-renowned product design firm IDEO's new customer service fits with the firm's strategic position and organization capabilities. Over the course of IDEO's 13-year history, an increasing share of revenues are a result of "Phase 0"... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Service Operations; Product Design; Infrastructure; Customer Focus and Relationships; Innovation and Invention; Service Industry; Boston; United States

December 2004 (Revised October 2005)
Case

Intel Research: Exploring the Future

By: Alan D. MacCormack and Kerry Herman

It is 2004 and David Tennenhouse, the director of Intel Research, is reviewing the organization he has built since 2000. Intel Research was charged with exploring new and disruptive technologies that lay off the "silicon roadmap" that drove most of Intel's R&D efforts.... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Research and Development; Performance Evaluation; Venture Capital; Technology Networks; Semiconductor Industry; United States

2021
Book

Better, Simpler Strategy: A Value-Based Guide to Exceptional Performance

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee

In nearly every business segment and corner of the world economy, the most successful companies dramatically outperform their rivals. What is their secret? In Better, Simpler Strategy, Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee shows how these... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Strategic Planning; Value; Analysis; Competitive Advantage; Performance Effectiveness

Jackie Lane is an Assistant Professor in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School and a co-Principal Investigator of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH) at the Digital Data Design Institute (D^3) at Harvard. She... View Details

May 1997
Teaching Note

Managing Product Development: Matching Technology with Context, Instructor's Note

By: Marco Iansiti

This overview to Managing Product Development (MPD) both previews course material, cases, exercises, and lectures--and provides its conceptual and academic underpinnings. Additionally, this note links these materials to the activities students will be undertaking in... View Details

Keywords: Curriculum and Courses; Product Development; Knowledge Management; Performance; Projects; Management Practices and Processes; Opportunities; Strategy; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

04 Apr 2016
HBS Seminar

Shelley Correll, Stanford University

14 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Restarting Under Uncertainty: Managerial Experiences from Around the World

waters, with asymmetric and unpredictable shocks hitting throughout the value chain. In such an interconnected and uncertain world, entire production networks are at risk of disappearing. Many companies... View Details

Keywords: by Raffaella Sadun, Andrea Bertoni, Alexia Delfino, Giovanni Fassio, and Mariapaola Testa

Web

Field Course: Value Creation in Small and Medium Firms - Course Catalog

HBS Course Catalog Field Course: Value Creation in Small and Medium Firms Course Number 6453 Senior Lecturer Jason Pananos Spring; Q3Q4; 3.0 credits 12 2-hour Sessions Project Overview: VCSME is a field... View Details

January 1998 (Revised July 2019)
Case

Cafes Monte Bianco: Building a Profit Plan

By: Robert L. Simons and Antonio Davila

Alert: This case has been revised since its original publication; all amounts have been converted to euros and the dates have been updated to 2020. If you’ve taught with this case in the past, please note that changes may affect teaching plans and classroom use. Using... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Cash Flow; Investment Return; Profit; Financial Statements; Food and Beverage Industry; Italy

Web

The Institute for Cancer Care Innovation - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

measurement of the value of our cancer care delivery system. Key initiatives of the Institute include: Evaluating which value-based outcomes are most important to cancer patients and identifying which... View Details

19 Jan 2022
Blog Post

From Retail to HBS: How I’m Building a Career Path at the Intersection of Arts, Culture, and Business

at West Elm as a buyer, analyzing trends in the market and developing our Bedding and Bath products, before moving into buying at Bloomingdale’s (just like Rachel from Friends), where I View Details

Article

Towards a Single European Sky

By: Yael Grushka-Cockayne and Bert De Reyck

We describe an integrated decision-making framework and model that we developed to aid EUROCONTROL, the European air traffic management organization, in its vital role of constructing a single unified European sky. Combining multicriteria decision analysis with... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Analysis; Air Transportation Industry; Europe

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March 2006
Module Note

Managing Innovation in an Uncertain World: Module 3: Expanding Diversity

By: Alan D. MacCormack

Describes the third module of the 30-session Harvard Business School elective course Managing Innovation in an Uncertain World. The course helps students understand the challenges that uncertainty implies for innovation and how to overcome them. The course emphasizes... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Business Processes; Projects; Risk and Uncertainty; Product Development; Managerial Roles; Opportunities; Perspective; Expansion; Goals and Objectives