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December 2012 (Revised April 2025)
Case

AmTran Technology Ltd.

By: Willy Shih, Jyun-Cheng Wang and Karen E. Robinson

As an original design manufacturer (ODM) of television sets and leading supplier to Vizio, a market leader in the U.S. for LCD flat panel TVs, AmTran Technology Ltd. uses what founder Alpha Wu describes as a "WE" model in which western companies perform sales,... View Details

March 2021
Article

Increasing the Level of Abstraction as a Strategy for Accelerating the Adoption of Complex Technologies

By: Willy C. Shih

Many new technologies are complex and embody high levels of technical sophistication, and applying them should require significant knowledge and experience. Yet, the rapid adoption and incorporation of these technologies into other innovations seems inconsistent with... View Details

Keywords: Abstraction; Technological And Scientific Innovation; Technological Progress; Diffusion Of Innovation; Technology Adoption; Technological Innovation; Complexity; Information Technology; Strategy

September 2012 (Revised April 2013)
Case

Digital Microscopy at Carl Zeiss: Managing Disruption

By: Willy Shih

Ulrich Simon, the head of the Microscopy business group at Carl Zeiss AG knew that his unit was facing a disruptive threat, so he chartered a special team to tackle the industrial segment. Given a high degree of autonomy, the project team developed an understanding of... View Details

Keywords: Modularity; High Technology Products; Emergent Strategy; Product Lines; Corporate Strategy; Digital Platforms; Disruptive Innovation; Technology Industry; Germany

January 2022 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Geely SEA: New Electric Vehicle Platforms

By: Willy C. Shih and Shu Lin

Kent Bovellan, the Chief Engineer and Head of the Vehicle Architecture Center for Geely Holding, the Hangzhou, China headquartered global automotive group, was debating the platform choice for an upcoming "D" segment midsized battery electric vehicle (BEV). He had led... View Details

Keywords: Product Innovation; Product Architecture; Product Engineering; Platform Design; Platform Strategy; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Product Design; Product Development; Cost Management; Decision Making; Competitive Strategy; Industry Structures; Auto Industry; China; Sweden

November 2023
Teaching Plan

Geely SEA: New Electric Vehicle Platforms

By: Willy Shih

Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 622-001. Kent Bovellan, the Chief Engineer and Head of the Vehicle Architecture Center for Geely Holding, the Hangzhou, China headquartered global automotive group, was debating the platform choice for an upcoming "D" segment midsized... View Details

Keywords: Product Innovation; Product Architecture; Product Engineering; Platform Design; Platform Strategy; Product Design; Product Development; Cost Management; Competitive Strategy; Industry Structures; Product Positioning; Auto Industry; China; Sweden

01 Jan 2006
News

14 Aug 2012
First Look

First Look: August 14

entails the risk of becoming dependent on outside owners of IP. To address this tension we propose the concept of "IP modularity." We argue that, by managing a system's modular structure in conjunction with its IP, firms can... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

20 Dec 2011
First Look

First Look: December 20

innovation in open systems is an important trend in the modern global economy. In general, distributed innovation is made possible by the modularity of the underlying product... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

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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Article

Reflections on the 2013 Decade Award: 'Exploitation, Exploration, and Process Management: The Productivity Dilemma Revisited' Ten Years Later

By: Mary Benner and Michael Tushman

This paper reflects on Benner and Tushman (2003): "Exploitation, Exploration, and Process Management: The Productivity Dilemma Revisited." Our paper received the Academy of Management Review's best paper award in 2003 and the decade award in 2013. We consider the... View Details

Keywords: Organizations; Innovation and Invention; Performance Productivity; Innovation and Management

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November 2012 (Revised May 2013)
Case

ASUSTeK and the Google Nexus 7 Tablet

By: Willy C. Shih and Jyun-Cheng Wang

Days after Jerry Shen introduced a new tablet computer at the Consumer Electronics Show, a Google meeting convinced him to go with a lower price point and co-branding as the Nexus 7. While his company would have a premier position at launch, companies like Samsung... View Details

Alan MacCormack is the MBA Class of 1949 Adjunct Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, a member of The Digital, Data, and Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard, and a core faculty member... View Details

Keywords: automotive; communications; computer; e-commerce industry; electronics; high technology; information technology industry; internet; semiconductor; software; telecommunications; venture capital industry

15 Jan 2008
First Look

First Look: January 15, 2008

Working PapersCompetition in Modular Clusters Authors:Carliss Y. Baldwin and C. Jason Woodard Abstract The last twenty years have witnessed the rise of disaggregated "clusters," "networks," or "ecosystems"... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

27 Mar 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test of the Mirroring Hypothesis

Keywords: by Alan D. MacCormack, John Rusnak & Carliss Y. Baldwin

December 2019
Case

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Shaping the Vaccine Manufacturing Ecosystem (Abridged)

By: Willy Shih

This case describes the efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to lower the cost of producing vaccines to prevent polio infections. It is an abridged version of HBS Case No. 620-021 with less emphasis on comparison between traditional and the new compact... View Details

Keywords: Vaccine; Manufacturing; Barriers To Entry; Production; Cost; Technological Innovation; Market Entry and Exit; Pharmaceutical Industry