Publications

January 2025
Teaching Plan

Knowledge Transfer: Toyota, NUMMI, and GM

By: Willy Shih

Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 625-003. New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) was a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors. It was an opportunity for GM to learn about the Toyota Production System, which was quite different from the mass production... View Details

Keywords: Culture Change; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Joint Ventures; Transformation; Selection and Staffing; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Sharing; Labor Unions; Management Systems; Performance Improvement; Production; Labor and Management Relations; Auto Industry; Japan; United States

July 2024 (Revised October 2024)
Case

Knowledge Transfer: Toyota, NUMMI, and GM

By: Willy Shih

New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) was a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors. It was an opportunity for GM to learn about the Toyota Production System, which was quite different from the mass production processes American automakers used at the... View Details

Keywords: Culture Change; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Joint Ventures; Transformation; Selection and Staffing; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Sharing; Labor Unions; Management Systems; Performance Improvement; Production; Labor and Management Relations; Auto Industry; Japan; United States

Educators

May 2022
Article

Coins for Bombs: The Predictive Ability of On-Chain Transfers for Terrorist Attacks

By: Dan Amiram, Evgeny Lyandres and Daniel Rabetti

This study examines whether we can learn from the behavior of blockchain-based transfers to predict the financing of terrorist attacks. We exploit blockchain transaction transparency to map millions of transfers for hundreds of large on-chain service providers. The... View Details

Keywords: Blockchain; Bitcoin; Accounting; AI and Machine Learning; National Security; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

Read Now

This study examines whether we can learn from the behavior of blockchain-based transfers to predict the financing of terrorist attacks. We exploit blockchain transaction transparency to map millions of transfers for hundreds of large on-chain service providers.... View Details

Jul 2012
Conference Presentation

The Evolution of Railroads as Modern Business Institutions and Its Impact on Knowledge Transfer and Engineering Education in pre-1949 China

By: Elisabeth Koll

2014
Book

Critical Knowledge Transfer: Tools for Managing Your Company's Deep Smarts

By: Dorothy A. Leonard, Walter Swap and Garvin Barton

When highly skilled subject matter experts, engineers, and managers leave their organizations, they take with them years of hard-earned, experience-based knowledge—much of it undocumented and irreplaceable. Organizations can thereby lose a good part of their... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Management

March 2011 (Revised June 2012)
Case

Office of Technology Transfer - Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences

By: Willy Shih, Sen Chai, Kamen Bliznashki and Courtney Hyland

Gordon Zong is trying to teach Chinese universities and research institutes how to do effective technology transfer and IP licensing, but he is trying to do it in an environment with weak property rights and an underdeveloped support infrastructure. As the managing... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Patents; Knowledge Management; Law Enforcement; Business and Government Relations; Research and Development; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; China

Educators

08 Sep 2015
Research & Ideas

Knowledge Transfer: You Can't Learn Surgery By Watching

wants to duplicate exactly what the other person is doing—despite the fact that they may be perpetuating mistakes made by a predecessor or simply following procedures that may be a bad fit for a person of a different personality and skillset. New research suggests the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

Web

Privacy - HBS Working Knowledge

About Us Linking Policy Privacy Policy Harvard Business School and HBS Working Knowledge understand that the privacy of its users is important. To that end, we have adopted the following policy with regard to the collection, use, and... View Details

2008
Chapter

Knowledge Work, Craft Work, and Calling

Social critics have often complained that industrial revolution management transfers control of a job away from workers, encourages human exploitation in pursuit of cost minimization, and alienates workers from their labor. But the arrangements of work that have been... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Working Conditions; Production; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Management Practices and Processes; Employees

2005
Book

Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Business Wisdom

By: D. Leonard and Walter Swap

Keywords: Information; Knowledge Dissemination

Ethnic migrant inventors may differ from locals in terms of the knowledge they bring to host firms. We study the role of first-generation ethnic migrant inventors in cross-border transfer of knowledge previously locked within the cultural context of their home regions.... View Details

Web

Productivity Tip: Stop Moving Your Star Workers | Working Knowledge

up the slack for the less skilled managers on other lines. The drag on the better production lines, they found, outweighs the improvement on the slower lines, so even though the transfer of workers ensured all orders were completed in... View Details

May 2016
Article

Return Migration and Geography of Innovation in MNEs: A Natural Experiment of Knowledge Production by Local Workers Reporting to Return Migrants

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury

I study whether return migrants facilitate knowledge production by local employees working for them at geographically distant R&D locations. Using unique personnel and patenting data for 1,315 employees at the Indian R&D center of a Fortune 500 technology firm, I... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Innovation and Invention

July 2018
Article

Global Collaborative Patents

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr

We study the prevalence and traits of global collaborative patents for U.S. public companies, where the inventor team is located both within and outside of the United States. Collaborative patents are frequently observed when a corporation is entering into a new... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Ethnic Networks; Migration; Technology Transfer; Mobility; Information Technology; Globalized Firms and Management; Diasporas; Patents; Ethnicity; Entrepreneurship; Research and Development; Foreign Direct Investment; Innovation and Invention; Globalization; United States