Publications

March 2015 (Revised January 2024)
Case

CV Ingenuity (A): How to Evaluate the Commercial Viability of New Health Care Technologies

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Andrew Otazo

Duke Rohlen (HBS MBA ’01) hoped to win over a prominent venture capital investor for Series B financing of his firm CVI that was creating a drug-eluting balloon (DES) to treat peripheral arterial disease. As a second-mover, Duke felt he was more likely to acquire... View Details

Summer 2014
Article

Designed for Workarounds: A Qualitative Study of the Causes of Operational Failures in Hospitals

By: Anita L. Tucker, W. Scott Heisler and Laura D. Janisse

Frontline care providers in hospitals spend at least 10% of their time working around operational failures, which are situations where information, supplies, or equipment needed for patient care are insufficient. However, little is known about underlying causes of... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain; Health Care and Treatment; Failure; Business Processes; Health Industry

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June 2021 (Revised October 2021)
Case

Nissan's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

By: Ananth Raman, William Schmidt and Ann Winslow

In January 2020, Ashwani Gupta took over as COO at Nissan Motor Corporation, and several weeks later, the COVID-19 pandemic began. Nissan’s Business Continuity Plan (BCP) had been key to the resilience of Nissan’s supply chain. It had enabled Nissan to recover from... View Details

Keywords: Operations; Supply Chain Management; Health Pandemics; Auto Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Japan; India

November 2023
Case

Gabon Special Economic Zone

By: John Macomber and Wale Lawal

Tropical rain forest covers about 80% of the West African nation of Gabon, part of the Congo Basin and the "lungs of the world." Gabon is one of the first nations to earn revenue from carbon sequestration...as long as the rain forest remains intact. There are... View Details

Keywords: Economic Development; Forestry; Wood; Carbon Credits; Supply Chain; Economic Growth; Developing Countries and Economies; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Government Administration; Business and Government Relations; Strategy; Forest Products Industry; Africa; Gabon

March 2024 (Revised March 2025)
Background Note

Physical Climate Risk

By: Michael W. Toffel, Spencer Glendon and Alison Smart

This note describes how managers can identify and manage their company’s physical climate risks, which can increase their operations and supply chain costs and risks, and affect demand for their goods and services. Can be paired with the video “Preparing business... View Details

Keywords: Resilience; Maps; Climate Risk; Climate Impact; Modeling And Analysis; Climate Change; Risk Management; Demand and Consumers; Supply Chain; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Disruption

March 2007 (Revised February 2010)
Case

Fabindia Overseas Pvt. Ltd.

By: Mukti Khaire and Prabakar (PK) Kothandaraman

Fabindia is a for-profit Indian retail company with the stated mission of providing employment to weavers and traditional handicraft artisans in rural India. Established in 1960 as an exporter of home furnishings, Fabindia has grown as a consumer-facing retailer of... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; For-Profit Firms; Growth and Development Strategy; Supply Chain; Mission and Purpose; Expansion; Retail Industry; India

09 Jun 2022
News

A Radical Treatment for Insulin Pricing

10 Mar 2014
News

Retail Woes: The Impact Of Online Shopping

01 Jun 2021
News

How the World Ran Out of Everything

April 2018 (Revised July 2018)
Case

Maersk: Betting on Blockchain

By: Rajiv Lal and Scott Johnson

In March 2018, international shipping giant Maersk is getting ready to debut a trade digitization platform. Maersk hopes the platform will help streamline global trade since shipping goods internationally is an extraordinarily complicated and inefficient process.... View Details

Keywords: Maersk; IBM; Blockchain; Shipping; Shipping Line; Trade; Bitcoin; Digitization; Container Shipping; Joint Ventures; Ship Transportation; Transportation Networks; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Applications and Software; Shipping Industry; Technology Industry

2024
Working Paper

Open Devices and Slices: Evidence from Wi-Fi Equipment

By: Do Yoon Kim, Roberto Fontana and Shane Greenstein

Prior studies suggest that openness shapes the introduction of new products. This study collects novel data on all routers and subcomponents introduced between 2000 and 2018. We characterize each firm's position in a supply chain as upstream component providers... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Product Development; Supply Chain

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07 Aug 2019
Video

Thinking secondhand first

Operations in an Omnichannel World

The world of retailing has changed dramatically in the past decade. This edited book examines the challenges and opportunities arising from the shift towards omni- channel retail. We examine these issues through the lenses of operations management, emphasizing... View Details

25 Jul 2006
First Look

First Look: July 25, 2006

paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/06-061.pdf Cross Functional Alignment in Supply Chain Planning: A Case Study of Sales & Operations Planning Authors:Rogelio Oliva and Noel Watson Author's Abstract... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

26 Jan 2013
News

The Next Boom

Article

The Re-Industrialization of the United States?

By: Willy C. Shih

Talk of "re-industrialization" in the United States has been supported by a seeming resurgence in manufacturing, but this is driven more by the end of labor arbitrage and increasing coordination costs of offshore manufacturing. Aggressive restructurings and significant... View Details