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April 2020 (Revised August 2020)
Case

CredEx Fintech: Business Model Transformation During the Digital Era

By: Laura Huang, Raphael Amit and Xu Han

Founded in 2010, CredEx has been a fast and constant innovator in the microfinance industry in China. Tang Xia, CEO and co-founder of CredEx, has led the company through a number of profound business model innovations in response to external environment changes, which... View Details

Keywords: Digitization; Fintech; Business Model; Innovation and Invention; Transformation; Microfinance; Organizational Change and Adaptation

24 Oct 2023
Cold Call Podcast

How the United States Air Force Accelerated AI Adoption

Keywords: Re: Maria P. Roche

May 1990 (Revised July 1996)
Case

Ingvar Kamprad and IKEA

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Ashish Nanda

Traces the development of a Swedish furniture retailer under the leadership of an innovative and unconventional entrepreneur whose approaches redefine the nature and structure of the industry. Traces IKEA's growth from a tiny mail order business to the world's largest... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development; Innovation Strategy; Leadership; Management Succession; Distribution; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Expansion; Value; Retail Industry

April 2003
Article

Exploitation, Exploration, and Process Management: The Productivity Dilemma Revisited

By: Mary J. Benner and Michael L. Tushman

We develop a contingency view of process management's influence on both technological innovation and organizational adaptation. We argue that while process management activities are beneficial for organizations in stable contexts, they are fundamentally inconsistent... View Details

Keywords: Management; Problems and Challenges

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Emily Tedards is a Doctoral Student in the Organizational Behavior program at Harvard Business School and a Doctoral Fellow for the Reimagining the Economy Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School. Emily is interested in interorganizational networks, alliances, and the... View Details

Ryan L. Raffaelli

Ryan Raffaelli is the Marvin Bower Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He created and teaches the MBA course "Leadership: Execution and Action Planning" (LEAP) and serves... View Details

Keywords: publishing industry; advertising; consulting; information technology industry; grocery; nonprofit industry; retailing; consumer products; federal government

Research Summary

Overview

I am interested in the individual experience of learning in organizational settings, particularly how employees learn to learn from the challenging work they do. I am currently researching the role of reflection for raising awareness of learning opportunities that... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Learning And Development; Learning Organizations; Intrinsic Motivation; Reflection; Goal Setting; Performance Measurement; Innovation; Job Design; Biotechnology Industry; Consulting Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

February 1996
Background Note

Managing for Creativity

By: Teresa M. Amabile

Organizational stimulants and obstacles to creativity are summarized. The management tasks of supporting creativity and encouraging innovation are described as a delicate balance between over-control and chaos. A technology used to assess the climate for creativity is... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Culture; Creativity; Motivation and Incentives; Technology

Jeff Polzer is the UPS Foundation Professor of Human Resource Management in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. He studies how people collaborate in teams and across organizational networks to accomplish their individual and collective... View Details

Derrick Bransby

Derrick studies how teams accomplish complex work in novel contexts. His dissertation advances the idea of disciplined flexibility: a strategy teams use to navigate uncertainty... View Details

2021
Book

The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Shalene Gupta

Trust is the most powerful force underlying the success of every business. Yet it can be shattered in an instant, with a devastating impact on a company’s market cap and reputation. How to build and sustain trust requires fresh insight into why customers, employees,... View Details

2012
Book

The Architecture of Innovation: The Economics of Creative Organizations

By: Josh Lerner

Innovation is a much-used buzzword these days, but when it comes to creating and implementing a new idea, many companies miss the mark—plans backfire, consumer preferences shift, or tried-and-true practices fail to work in a new context. So is innovation just a... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Innovation Strategy; Innovation and Management; Organizational Structure; Microeconomics

2017
Supplement

Uncommon Schools (B): Seeking Excellence at Scale through Standardized Practice

By: John J-H Kim and Sarah McAra

The (B) case provides an update to the (A) case by illustrating how charter school management organization Uncommon Schools responded to the disparity in its students’ 2013 standardized test results. In 2015, CEO Brett Peiser and his management team decided to align... View Details

Keywords: Charter Schools; Nonprofit Organizations; Strategy; Teaching; Talent And Talent Management; Innovation; Education; Early Childhood Education; Middle School Education; Organizational Structure; Performance Consistency; Growth and Development Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Education Industry

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Research Summary

Overview

By: Goran Calic

What makes some organizations more innovative than others? Innovation follows from strategy and structure. A good strategy allows individuals to impose their own imagination towards organizational goals in a coordinated way. Good structure adds incentives that... View Details

November 1989 (Revised June 1993)
Case

Managing Xerox's Multinational Development Center

Describes a manager's role in developing a staff group responsible for enhancing the efficiency of Xerox's worldwide logistics and inventory management systems. Illustrates a range of management strategies for upward and lateral influence in a complex organizational... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management

May 2009
Case

Tokyo Electron Ltd.

By: Willy C. Shih and Andrew A. King

Tokyo Electron Ltd. operates in a constrained innovation environment, defined by modular boundaries that are long standing in the industry that it serves, the global semiconductor manufacturing industry. While the original motivation for these boundaries was division... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Markets and Industries; Governance Controls; Technological Innovation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Boundaries; Manufacturing Industry; Semiconductor Industry

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22 May 2012
First Look

First Look: May 22

http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/11-100.pdf Open Innovation and Organizational Boundaries: The Impact of Task Decomposition and Knowledge Distribution on the Locus of Innovation... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Collective Genius

Why can some organizations innovate time and again, while most cannot? You might think the key to innovation is attracting exceptional creative talent. Or making the right investments. Or breaking down organizational silos. All of these things may help--but there's... View Details

1994
Article

The Delicate Balance in Managing for Creativity

By: T. M. Amabile

Organizational stimulants and obstacles to creativity are summarized. The management tasks of supporting creativity and encouraging innovation are described as a delicate balance between over-control and chaos. A technology used to assess the climate for creativity is... View Details

Keywords: Management; Creativity