Publications

15 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

A Mass Crisis Can Overwhelm Health Care. Liberia Found a Solution.

people, including those who've been recently unemployed, to create a cohort of testers, screeners, and contact tracers that could help build the infrastructure to respond to the crisis and deal with some of the unemployment that we are... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Health

April 1995 (Revised December 1997)
Case

Silicon Graphics, Inc. (A)

By: Marco Iansiti and Ellen Stein

Based on a Silicon Valley company that has developed the capability to compete in a rapidly growing, highly turbulent environment. This capability hinges on its flexible and rapid development process, which the case characterizes in detail. Focuses on the development... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Information Infrastructure; Product Launch; Managerial Roles; Expansion; Design; Applications and Software; Computer Industry; Electronics Industry; California

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January 1998 (Revised March 1998)
Case

Staples (C)

By: Myra M. Hart, Marco Iansiti and Barbara Feinberg

The search for appropriate hardware and software to support the launch of a new large-scale retail operation forces the management team to define their goals at a very detailed level and to make all underlying assumptions explicit. View Details

Keywords: Goals and Objectives; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Business Startups; Management Teams; Retail Industry

October 2012 (Revised August 2013)
Case

Global Unichip Corporation (A)

By: Willy Shih and Chen-Fu Chien

Global Unichip Corporation (GUC) is a design services company that acts as a front-end to TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor foundry. In so doing, it masked the complexity of the latest process technologies, and reduced the entry barriers for small firms to... View Details

12 Jul 2010
Research & Ideas

Rocket Science Retailing: A Practical Guide

Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses in supply chain management, service operations, and the investor's perspective on operations to MBA students and executive education participants. Fisher, the UPS Professor of Operations and View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Retail; Auto

27 Apr 2010
First Look

First Look: April 27

contribution is positively associated with proxies for quality of accruals and governance. Next, we investigate the implications of accruals' predictive value for accrual-based market anomalies. We find that portfolios formed on stock return predictions using View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

20 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Markets or Communities? The Best Ways to Manage Outside Innovation

infrastructure to host the marketplace. The numbers are simply staggering: in the space of one year, over 50,000 applications and over 1 billion downloads. Apple has shown the way in how to build a market of external innovators. Of... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

December 2001 (Revised June 2002)
Case

Shenzhen Stock Exchange

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Guoqing Chen, David Kiron and Iris T. Li

The second largest stock exchange in China, shows a surprising sophistication. This case describes the company's growth and underlying technology. View Details

Keywords: Networks; Internet and the Web; Business Growth and Maturation; Infrastructure; Financial Services Industry; China

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06 May 2019
Research & Ideas

Consumers Blame Business for Global Health Problems. Can Business Become the Solution?

measures. The Global Reporting Initiative captures ESG information from over 80 percent of the world’s largest corporations. Every company wants to be known as a good global citizen, and ESG reporting helps by demonstrating transparency... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Health

May 2014 (Revised July 2016)
Case

RCA: Color Television and the Department of Justice (A)

By: Willy C. Shih and Gregory Dieterich

This case examines the early history of the color television receiver market and the global consequences of an historic 1958 consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice that opened RCA's patents to licensing by domestic competitors royalty-free. This externality... View Details

Keywords: Intellectual Property; Patents; Rights; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Business History; Information Technology; Information Infrastructure; Communications Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Electronics Industry; United States; Japan

June 2010
Teaching Note

Cisco Business Councils (2007): Unifying a Functional Enterprise with an Internal Governance System (TN)

By: Ranjay Gulati and Marlo Goetting

Teaching Note for 409062. View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; System; Business Units; Corporate Strategy; Infrastructure; Growth and Development; Decision Making; Restructuring; Resource Allocation; Information Technology Industry

March 1993 (Revised June 1995)
Case

Singapore TradeNet: The Tale Continues

By: Lynda M. Applegate, John L. King and Boon-Siong Neo

Continues the story of Singapore Network Services Pte. Ltd. (SNS), which was created to initiate and manage the creation of value-added networks for trade and other aspects of commerce in the island nation of Singapore. SNS built on its TradeNet experience to develop... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Information Infrastructure; Internet and the Web; Profit Sharing; Partners and Partnerships; Trade; Business and Government Relations; Web Services Industry; Singapore

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May 2024
Supplement

gWorks (B)

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

In January of 2019, Joe Heieck, CEO of gWorks, was deciding whether to proceed with his acquisition of Data Tech, that was a business roughly the same size as gWorks. gWorks, which provided geospatial software to small city and rural county governments, was acquired by... View Details

31 May 2023
Research & Ideas

With Predictive Analytics, Companies Can Tap the Ultimate Opportunity: Customers’ Routines

used that information to predict how often and when a customer may request a car as part of their routine. The model could drill into specific kinds of routines, too: The model identifies seven clusters of typical ridesharing routines in... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Transportation

November 2020 (Revised September 2021)
Case

HP Instant Ink: (Self) Disrupting the Consumer Printing Market

By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg and George Gonzalez

Seeking to disrupt the consumer printing market (before being disrupted by others), and in response to customer pain points, in 2013 HP Inc. launched an ink replenishment service called Instant Ink, where customers pay a monthly subscription fee based on the number of... View Details

Keywords: Printing; Ink; Subscription Model; Customers; Information Infrastructure; Service Delivery; Business Model; Disruption; Growth and Development Strategy

January 2018 (Revised January 2020)
Case

STRIVR: Changing the Game in Virtual Reality

By: Rajiv Lal, Matt Denison, Robert Higgins and Scott Johnson

The CEO of a growing virtual reality company that trains athletes must decide whether or not to stay in sports or expand into other areas. View Details

15 Jul 2015
Research & Ideas

Amazon Prime Day: The Logic Behind a Retailer’s Made-up Holiday

able to collect hundreds of terabytes of data on the shoppers. Given that the company already makes close to $1 billion in advertising, that is information the company can then quickly turn around and sell to advertisers for an even... View Details

Keywords: Re: Sunil Gupta; Retail

November 2016 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Formlabs: Selling a New 3D Printer

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Olivia Hull and Amram Migdal

Headquartered in Somerville, Massachusetts, Formlabs manufactures 3D printers used to print everything from prototypes and models to jewelry, dental, and sculpture molds. As Formlabs prepares to ship its latest model, the Form 2, Head of Customer Development and... View Details

September 2004 (Revised June 2005)
Case

Otis Elevator: Accelerating Business Transformation with IT

By: F. Warren McFarlan and Brian DeLacey

Focuses on a major transformation of Otis Elevator's infrastructure. Led by the CEO, this transformation represents a remarkable long-term reengineering of all the processes of the firm to drive its operating costs down and service image up. The transformation is the... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Cost Management; Infrastructure; Business Processes; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Information Technology