Publications

Rebecca Karp is an Assistant Professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. She teaches Strategy in the MBA required curriculum. Professor Karp is a field researcher and ethnographer. Her research examines how companies formulate and... View Details

03 Jul 2013
What Do You Think?

What Are the Limits of Transparency?

government organizations disclose information to general public without reservations and let them make use of the one relevant to them." Walter Blass was among those who would err on the side of more... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

February 2003 (Revised March 2006)
Case

Asociacion Colombiana de Industrias Plasticas (Acoplasticos)

By: Michael E. Porter and Willis M. Emmons III

Acoplasticos was established in 1961 as a lobbying group for Colombia's major plastics manufacturing companies. In the early 1980s, the organization shifted its focus toward improving the productivity of the Colombian plastics and rubber cluster, which also included... View Details

Keywords: Cooperation; Information Technology; Alliances; Research and Development; Business and Government Relations; Performance Productivity; Developing Countries and Economies; Manufacturing Industry; Chemical Industry; Colombia

January 2011 (Revised January 2012)
Supplement

The Case of the Unidentified Healthcare Companies2010 (CW)

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer, Ethan S Bernstein, Margarita Krivitski and Srinidhi Reddy

This case presents financial statements and selected rations for 14 unidentified healthcare organizations and asks that each set of financial information be matched with one of the following healthcare companies: a biotechnology firm, a community nursing company, a... View Details

Keywords: Financial Statements; Financial Management; Health Care and Treatment; Biotechnology Industry; Health Industry

April 2018
Article

Scope versus Speed: Team Diversity, Leader Experience, and Patenting Outcomes for Firms

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury and Martine R. Haas

How does the organization of patenting activity affect a firm’s patenting outcomes? We investigate how the composition of patenting teams relates to both the scope of their patent applications and the speed of their patent approvals by examining the main effects of... View Details

Keywords: Leader Experience; Micro-foundations Of Innovation; Scope; Speed; Team Diversity; Within-firm Data; Groups and Teams; Diversity; Patents; Leadership; Experience and Expertise; Outcome or Result

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Michael Porter is an economist, researcher, author, advisor, speaker and teacher. Throughout his career at Harvard Business School, he has brought economic theory and strategy concepts to bear on many of the most challenging problems facing corporations, economies... View Details

Keywords: information; information; information; information; information; information; information; information; information

October 2009
Article

Influence and Inefficiency in the Internal Capital Market

By: Julie Wulf

I model inefficient resource allocations in M-form organizations due to influence activities by division managers that skew capital budgets in their favor. Corporate headquarters receives two types of signals about investment opportunities: private signals that can be... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Resource Allocation; Business Processes; Capital Budgeting; Business Headquarters; Investment; Opportunities; Cost; Value; Motivation and Incentives; Equity

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March–April 2013
Article

Unlocking Innovation Through Business Experimentation

By: Stefan Thomke

There is a downside to businesses that focus heavily on standardization, optimization, and driving out variability: Such organizations leave themselves vulnerable to underinvesting in experimentation and variation, which are the lifeblood of innovation. Good... View Details

Keywords: Experimentation; Innovation Management; Learning And Development; Research; Innovation and Management; Business Processes

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30 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

The New Rules for Remote Work: Pandemic Edition

employee with young kids at home, or someone taking care of elder relatives, or a worker needing to focus on their own physical and mental health as a result of the situation will not be able to do a 40-hour workweek.” Wikimedia, the nonprofit View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

January 2011 (Revised January 2012)
Case

The Case of the Unidentified Healthcare Companies2010

By: Richard Bohmer, Ethan Bernstein, Margarita Krivitski and Srinidhi Reddy

This case presents financial statements and selected ratios for 14 unidentified healthcare organizations and asks that each set of financial information be matched with one of the following healthcare companies: a biotechnology firm, a community nursing company, a... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

January 2016
Case

Open Innovation at Fujitsu (A)

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey

This case study examines the open innovation journey at Fujitsu, a global information and communication technology company. The case ends with the location decision between Tokyo, Japan, downtown San Francisco or Sunnyvale, California, regarding establishing a small... View Details

February 1990 (Revised July 1990)
Case

Internal Revenue Service: Automated Collection System

By: Nitin Nohria

Describes how the IRS's collection operations changed from a largely manual system (COF) to an automated system (ACS). A central aspect of ACS was the electronic scheduling and maintaining of work. While with ACS the IRS accomplished significant improvements in the... View Details

Keywords: Sovereign Finance; Revenue; Information Technology; Taxation; Change Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Human Resources; Public Administration Industry; United States

Robert Simons is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School. For over 35 years, Simons has taught accounting, management control, and strategy execution courses in both the Harvard MBA and Executive Education Programs. For 2024/25, he is teaching a... View Details

Research Summary

Current working papers

Organizational restructuring: the influence of formal and informal structure on tie formation. This paper considers how changes in formal structure and a key element of informal structure – the embeddedness of employee... View Details

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

October 2005 (Revised January 2006)
Case

Augusta National Golf Club Controversy, The (A)

By: Herman B. Leonard, Marc J. Epstein and Melissa Tritter

The prestigious Augusta National Golf Club's secret membership is widely believed to exclude women. When feminist advocate Martha Burk receives a mysterious list of "members," she must decide how best to use this information in her efforts to crack the glass ceiling.... View Details

Keywords: Partners and Partnerships; Attitudes; Decision Making; Problems and Challenges; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Gender; Non-Governmental Organizations; Communication Strategy; Sports Industry

09 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Marketing a Country: Promotion as a Tool for Attracting Foreign Investment.

In examining the way governments choose a structure in which to conduct investment promotion activities we found that most of the organizational issues fell within the realm of the public-private choice of management of certain nontraditional government activities.... View Details

Keywords: by Louis T. Wells & Alvin G. Wint

July 1995 (Revised October 1995)
Background Note

Electronic Commerce: Trends and Opportunities

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Janis Lee Gogan

In a 1966 Harvard Business Review article, Felix Kaufman implored general managers to think beyond their own organizational boundaries to the possibilities of interorganizational systems (IOS)--networked computers that enable companies to share information and... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Trends; Opportunities