Publications

August 2024 (Revised November 2024)
Case

Commonwealth Fusion Systems: Born at Scale

By: Joshua Lev Krieger, Jim Matheson, Kyle Myers, Gunnar Trumbull and Richard Vietor

This case study chronicles the journey of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) on its ambitious mission to commercialize fusion energy and become the world’s leading provider of fusion power plants. Emerging from a “special arrangement” with MIT's Plasma Science and... View Details

Keywords: Nuclear Energy; Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurial Finance; Energy Generation; Commercialization; Science-Based Business; Technological Innovation; Market Entry and Exit; Energy Industry

October 2018 (Revised August 2023)
Case

Safecast: Bootstrapping Human Capital to Big Data

By: Ethan Bernstein and Stephanie Marton

On March 11, 2011, at 2:46pm, a 9.1-on-the-Richter-scale, six-minute long earthquake unleashed a tsunami that ravaged the Tohoku region of Japan, damaging the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power facility and releasing sufficient radioactive material into the air and ocean... View Details

January 2017 (Revised December 2020)
Case

Turkey and Russia: Dangerous Liaisons

By: Rawi Abdelal, Esel Çekin, Eren Kuzucu and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in November 2015, after the Turkish military’s shooting down of a Russian military airplane over the Turkish-Syrian border. The incident threatened to undermine the countries’ political and economic ties, and starting from late 2015, the dialogue between... View Details

Keywords: Business ＆ Government Relations; Politics; Natural Gas; Natural Resources; Nuclear Power; Business and Government Relations; Energy Policy; Infrastructure; Energy; Strategy; International Relations; Russia; Turkey

04 Apr 2018
Op-Ed

Op-Ed: Why Private Investors Must Fund 'New Nuclear' Power Right Now

Drbouz In June 2016, I gave a TED Talk called We Need Nuclear Power to Solve Climate Change. The talk discussed the world’s realistic options for reducing fossil CO2 emissions soon enough to contain climate change’s more severe effects. To my surprise, that talk has... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Lassiter; Energy; Green Technology

2014
Book

Great Power, Peace, and American Primacy: The Origins of a New International Order

By: Josh Baron

This book explains the period of great power peace in the last fifty years and outlines the path to perpetuating it. Drawing on the Realist tradition and challenging conventional wisdom about the causes of American primacy, Baron explores contributions to peace made by... View Details

Keywords: Globalization; International Relations; Power and Influence; Conflict and Resolution; United States

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January 2024
Case

BWX Technologies

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Yuan Zou and Aldo Sesia

Rex Geveden and Robb LeMasters, CEO and CFO of BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT), were concerned that investors and analysts did not fully appreciate the company's transformation from a nuclear reactor provider to the US Navy and Canadian utilities to a multi-product line... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Communication Intention and Meaning; Business and Shareholder Relations; Valuation; Diversification; United States; Canada

Research Summary

Team, Individual, and Organizational Learning From Experience in Two High-Hazard Industries

High-hazard industries such as nuclear power and chemical process plants must learn and improve without sole reliance on trial-and-error. Considerable attention and resources are placed on learning from operating experience, including exchange of best practices, peer... View Details

February 2023 (Revised November 2024)
Case

Ronald Reagan: Changing the World

By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun

This case traces the rise of Ronald Reagan from small town Illinois to two-term president of the United States. An unlikely candidate for the world’s most powerful job, the case describes the different roles that Reagan filled over his life: radio announcer, Hollywood... View Details

Keywords: Politics; Entertainment; Personal Characteristics; Business And Government; Values And Beliefs; Mission And Purpose; Decision Making; Government Administration; Management Style; Power and Influence; United States

July–August 2014
Article

How the Other Fukushima Plant Survived

By: Ranjay Gulati, Charles Casto and Charlotte Krontiris

In March 2011, Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was devastated by three reactor explosions and two core meltdowns in the days following a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami that produced waves as high as 17 meters. The world is familiar with Daiichi's fate; less... View Details

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06 Jul 2010
Research & Ideas

Renewable Energy: Winds at Our Back?

When American energy entrepreneur Jim Gordon envisioned the first offshore wind farm lining the horizon a few miles off the coast of the eastern United States, he perhaps did not factor in blowback from almost every angle. Gordon's nearly 10-year battle to gain... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

June 2012 (Revised February 2014)
Case

Low-Carbon, Indigenous Innovation in China

By: Richard H.K. Vietor

For the past seven years or so, the Chinese government has been powering ahead with industrial policies to promote low-carbon energy technologies—wind, solar, electric batteries and vehicles, nuclear power, and even carbon capture and sequestration. In 2009, the... View Details

Keywords: Energy; Renewables; Carbon; Environment; Industrial Policy; Competitiveness; Environmental Sustainability; Policy; Renewable Energy; Competition; Globalized Markets and Industries; Energy Industry; China

January 2018
Case

Blue Harbour's Activism at Babcock & Wilcox

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Quinn Pitcher

The case describes Blue Harbour Group's investment in Babcock & Wilcox and its transformation into BWX Technologies. In 2004, activist hedge fund Blue Harbour Group invested in Babcock & Wilcox, an energy and construction company. Blue Harbour developed an investment... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Investment Activism; Leading Change; Energy Industry; Construction Industry; United States

Book Review

Negotiating with Iran: Cultural and Historical Insights

By: James K. Sebenius

In a vitally important relationship famously caricatured as the "Mad Mullahs" v. the "Great Satan," the fraught negotiating history and future of Iran and the United States demands historical, cultural, and psychological insight if there is to be any prospect of... View Details

Keywords: National Security; Negotiation; Power and Influence; Iran; United States

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Read Now

05 Jul 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Learning Tradeoffs in Organizations: Measuring Multiple Dimensions of Improvement to Investigate Learning-Curve Heterogeneity

Keywords: by Francesca Gino, Richard M.J. Bohmer, Amy C. Edmondson, Gary P. Pisano & Ann B. Winslow; Health

June 2023 (Revised November 2024)
Case

Albert Einstein: Changing the World

By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun

This case traces the rise of Albert Einstein from a small town in Germany to a towering intellectual leader who revolutionized the field of physics. The case describes his early education and his penchant for individual thinking and non-conformity. A committed... View Details

Keywords: Science; Research; Personal Characteristics; Mission and Purpose; Success; Work-Life Balance; Higher Education; Power and Influence

10 Apr 2013
Research & Ideas

Learning Curve: Making the Most of Outsourcing

and licensed to practice radiology in the United States. The data set included 2.7 million scans read by the radiologists for 1,431 customers over a 30-month period. Nearly 85 percent of the scans were CT; roughly 10 percent were ultrasound; and X-ray, MRI, and View Details

Keywords: by Paul Guttry; Health

29 Jul 2014
First Look

First Look: July 29

involves designing, launching, and managing teams. And yet teams are fickle. Even as teams become more common at all levels of organizations, a shocking number of them fail to live up to their potential or even to deliver at all. Teams remain the most flexible and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Forthcoming
Book

How to Be Bold: The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage

By: Ranjay Gulati

What leads people to speak truth to power, share bold new ideas, or put their lives on the line? Most of us chalk it up to personality, presuming that our heroes are naturally fearless. But what if courage isn’t simply a matter of personality? What if it’s something... View Details