Publications

08 Mar 2021
In Practice

COVID Killed the Traditional Workplace. What Should Companies Do Now?

A year ago, COVID-19 forced many companies to send employees home—often with a laptop and a prayer. Now, with COVID cases subsiding and vaccinations rising, the prospect of returning to old office routines appears more possible. But will employees want to flock back to... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

20 Dec 2010
Research & Ideas

Panama Canal: Troubled History, Astounding Turnaround

transporting Asia-bound exports down to the Gulf and through the canal and shipping them out to Seattle by land. Conversely, eastern-bound cargoes no longer consisted of... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Transportation

28 Mar 2012
What Do You Think?

Are Factory Jobs Important to the Economy?

Summing Up: What Next, If Manufacturing Proves Not To Be A Creator Of Those Good "factory Jobs" Of The Past? Manufacturing is essential to the health of an economy. It both fuels and results from innovation. It is natural in the course of... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Manufacturing

July 2005 (Revised February 2011)
Case

Tanpin Kanri: Retail Practice at Seven-Eleven Japan

By: Rajiv Lal and Arar Han

Toshifumi Suzuki, chairman and CEO of Seven and I Holding Co., was widely credited as the mastermind behind Seven-Eleven Japan's spectacular rise. Although Seven-Eleven Japan began as a small licensee of U.S. convenience store chain 7-Eleven, Inc. (then Southland... View Details

Keywords: Framework; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Practices and Processes; Demand and Consumers; Distribution; Logistics; Technology; Retail Industry; Japan

16 Jun 2021
HBS Case

Cruising in Crisis: How Carnival Is Riding Out the COVID-19 Storm

year—and it’s still unclear when many ships will set sail again. "There was a lot at stake, with $20 billion in annual revenues and hundreds of thousands of passengers transported every year." Compounding... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Travel

23 Nov 2021
Book

What It Takes to Build an Organizational Culture That Wins

led a renewal of the company by discarding performance metrics that discouraged risk-taking, aligning employees behind a mission to empower customers, and proclaiming that the “C” in his title stood for culture. The book, forthcoming in... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

12 Jul 2022
Cold Call Podcast

Can the Foodservice Distribution Industry Recover from the Pandemic?

Keywords: Re: David E. Bell; Service; Food & Beverage

30 May 2005
Research & Ideas

Six Steps for Making Your Threat Credible

intimidate the local population, some captains took to sinking their ships as soon as they landed. Now there was no choice but to stay and fight. Scuttling the ships made the... View Details

Keywords: by Deepak Malhotra

04 Oct 2022
What Do You Think?

Have Managers Underestimated the Need for Face-to-Face Contact?

Fridge No More, Buyk, and JOKR have either gone bankrupt or suspended operations in the US in spite of $4 billion in venture capital investment last year. This brings to mind the failed investments in fast View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

09 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

Location, Location, Location: The Strategy of Place

consequences of what they are doing." Such snap decisions can result in geo-mistakes that sap energy out of an organization and cause it to lose focus on what it was doing well in the first place. Geographic expansion should provide... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

30 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

The Future of IT Consulting

communicating with warehouse computers, which in turn directly communicate with manufacturer computers, and, again in the chain, manufacturers' computers directly communicate with their supplier computers. In addition, computer-to-computer communications can track... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Consulting

April 2019 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Raksul

By: Scott Duke Kominers, Masahiro Kotosaka, Nobuo Sato and Akiko Kanno

Raksul, 2018 Forbes Japan "Startup of the Year," ran an e-commerce platform drawing upon thousands of individual suppliers. Launched as a business-to-business printing services marketplace, Raksul had recently expanded to operate both a logistics/delivery marketplace... View Details

Keywords: Marketplace Design; B2B; Platform Strategy; Printing; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Logistics; Advertising; Growth and Development Strategy; Industry Structures; E-commerce; Web Services Industry; Japan

2025
Working Paper

Exports in Disguise? Trade Rerouting During the U.S.-China Trade War

By: Ebehi Iyoha, Edmund Malesky, Jaya Wen and Sung-Ju Wu

This paper introduces a new measure of tariff evasion through rerouting and applies it to the 2018 U.S.–China trade war, focusing on Vietnam as a transit country. We use transaction-level trade data and define rerouting as the flow of a granular eight-digit Harmonized... View Details

Keywords: Trade; International Relations; Logistics; China; Viet Nam; United States

Read Now

04 May 2021
Book

Best Buy: How Human Connection Saved a Failing Retailer

to boost revenues: matching prices at Amazon, and speeding deliveries by shipping directly from stores. He also cut costs by reducing waste and streamlining processes. “We were... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail

27 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

How Remote Work Changes What We Think About Onboarding

employee begins, the hiring company must consider logistical equipment issues. For example, not only is the new employee working from home, but the company’s IT team is, too. Should equipment be shipped to... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg

January 2017
Case

Danaher Corporation, 2007–2017

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

On July 2, 2016, Danaher Corporation completed the spinoff of Fortive Corporation. The previous day, Danaher’s stock price had reached an all-time high. In 2015, Danaher had decided to split off its test and measurement, fuel and fleet management, and automation... View Details