Product Engineering - Publications - Faculty & Research

January 1995 (Revised November 2021)
Case

Portfolio Planning at Ciba-Geigy and the Newport Investment Proposal

By: David J. Collis and Elizabeth Wynne Johnson

Covers the history of portfolio planning at CIBA-GEIGY, a leading Swiss chemical and pharmaceutical company, beginning with the introduction of the process in the mid-1980s. The discussion extends to the application of portfolio planning techniques to a specific... View Details

Keywords: Investment Portfolio; Corporate Strategy; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Chemicals; Chemical Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Switzerland

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Great American Business Leaders of the 20th Century - Leadership

Edward T. Bedford Corn Products Refining Company, 1906–1930 Edward J. Bednarz Pinkerton's, 1967–1979 Olive Ann M. Beech Beech Aircraft Corporation, 1950–1968 Eugene N. Beesley Eli Lilly & Company, 1969–1973 Hernand Behn International... View Details

22 Aug 2016
Research & Ideas

Master the One-on-One Meeting

are requesting the meeting. Perhaps you are the CEO and want to have a 1:1 with a lead engineer to get a better understanding of a product challenge: Make sure the engineer’s manager knows why you want to... View Details

Keywords: by Julia B. Austin

13 Mar 2019
Blog Post

There's No Quick Shortcut to Success: Zorpads Takes Off

shoes, or C) make her shoes tighter due to the inserts," Smith explains. "She came up with the problem for us." Wiegele, who has a background in air and water filtration thanks to his engineering work at SpaceX, used his... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products / Retail; Consumer Products / Retail

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Accounting & Management - Faculty & Research

the board appoints Marcel Cobuz—ex-LafargeHolcim executive with deep innovation experience—as TITAN’s first non-family CEO. Cobuz co-creates a four-pillar roadmap: sharpen the core cement portfolio, accelerate low-carbon products and... View Details

Web

Podcast - Business & Environment

Rising In the latest episode of Climate Rising from Harvard Business School, Karen Pflug, Chief Sustainability Officer of Ingka Group (IKEA), shares how IKEA is embedding circularity throughout its business model. She discusses how IKEA is redesigning iconic View Details

November 1995 (Revised January 1998)
Case

Transformation of Pratt & Whitney North Haven (B)

By: H. Kent Bowen, Linda A. Hill, Andrew P. Burtis, Sylvie Ryckebusch and John Schiavone

As part of the restructuring effort underway at the Pratt & Whitney North Haven plant, Ed Northern and a group of Japanese consultants are transforming the manufacturing process from a batch process to a single-piece flow, and are organizing the machines and workers in... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Business Processes; Production; Machinery and Machining; Human Resources; Product; Connecticut

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14 May 2013
Blog Post

The Self-Discovery Process

After spending two very busy but very productive months in my career search process, I am amazed at the evolution I have experienced. I have done several exercises to define my career vision. I have attended many company presentations to... View Details

Keywords: Consulting

25 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

The Importance of Teaming

completely for every case or client? What if you're a member of a temporary project team formed to solve a unique production problem? Or you're part of a group of managers with a mix of individual and shared responsibilities? How do you... View Details

Keywords: Re: Amy C. Edmondson

30 Nov 2016
HBS Seminar

Melissa Valentine and Michael Bernstein, Stanford University

19 Sep 2023
HBS Case

How Will the Tech Titans Behind ChatGPT, Bard, and LLaMA Make Money?

engines has put their intellectual property in this situation of being copyrighted but also public. What do those creators do about their data? You can say it's copyrighted, and say other people can't use it, but you can't really run... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Technology; Information Technology

December 2012 (Revised November 2014)
Case

W.R. Grace & Co.: Dealing with Asbestos Torts

By: Stuart C. Gilson and Sarah L. Abbott

A manufacturer of building products and specialty chemicals, W. R. Grace & Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001 in response to a flood of lawsuits alleging that its products contained asbestos, and had caused hundreds of thousands of people to contract... View Details

Keywords: Bankruptcy Reorganization; Business Failures; Environmental Regulations; Class Action Lawsuits; Natural Environment; Valuation; Health Disorders; Capital Structure; Restructuring; Lawsuits and Litigation; Chemicals; Crisis Management; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Legal Liability; Construction Industry; Chemical Industry; United States

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Help - Alumni

Current qualifying programs include: Advanced Management Program (AMP) Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) General Management Program (GMP) Joint Program with Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering & Applied Sciences (MS/MBA:... View Details

31 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

Where Can Digital Transformation Take You? Insights from 1,700 Leaders

is not for the fainthearted. Most of us know how to drive—we have the basics—but we recognize we are ill-prepared to race against world-class competitors. While data and digital technologies were once enablers of efficiency and cost-cutting, today, they’re the View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

29 Jun 2010
First Look

First Look: June 29

explore three distinct channels through which FDI affects establishment performance: (i) production linkages, (ii) financial linkages, and (iii) multinational networks. Our analysis shows that while multinational-owned establishments... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

14 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Curiosity, Not Coding: 6 Skills Leaders Need in the Digital Age

eye. Roundtable executives described learning what they need to know through regular meetings (both in-depth and more informal) with engineers developing and deploying digital tools for operations and customer-facing functions, for... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards; Technology

03 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

When Showing Know-How Backfires for Women Managers

negatively associated with their departments’ performance. Implications beyond retail and gender While Feldberg’s research focused on a bricks-and-mortar grocery chain, its findings apply to other fields. Women engineering managers,... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

January 2004
Article

Corporate Venturing: The Origins of Unilever's Pregnancy Test

By: Geoffrey Jones and Alison Kraft

The relative ability of different sizes of firm and organisational designs to develop and sustain dynamic capabilities in innovation and create new businesses remains a matter of contention. While Chandler among many others has emphasised the pre-eminent role of large... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Organizational Design; Technological Innovation; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Brands and Branding; Multinational Firms and Management; Product Development; Product Launch; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Great Britain

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21 Jun 2023
Blog Post

Building a Better World: The Harvard Builders Club

2022) and Tomer Avni (MS/MBA 2022) We – Yarden and Tomer – are graduates of Harvard’s MS/MBA Engineering Sciences program. The program was founded in 2018 by Harvard Business School and Harvard John A. Paulson School of View Details

February 2010
Case

Amyris Biotechnologies: Commercializing Biofuel

By: Gary P. Pisano and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

In 2009, Amyris Biotechnologies was building a plant in Brazil that used synthetic biology to convert sugarcane into both renewable fuels and renewable chemicals. The Amyris' marketing team was investigating the commercial interest for both types of products, while the... View Details