Publications

Web

Reconceiving Products & Markets - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

William Lever in 1894 to combat cholera in Victorian England, today Lifebuoy is the world’s #1 selling germ protection soap—a win-win for Unilever and global health. The affordable soap’s unique formulation helps fight disease in the... View Details

May 2000 (Revised December 2018)
Supplement

SMA: Micro-Electronic Products Division (B)

By: Michael Beer and Michael Tushman

Focuses on the recommendations and implementation strategy suggested by the organizational development group for the division's problems. A rewritten version of an earlier case. View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Organizational Culture; Conflict Management; Corporate Strategy

May 2000 (Revised September 2000)
Exercise

Tyrell Web Developers Inc. (A)

By: Alan D. MacCormack and Andrew P. McAfee

An integrated exercise culminating in a team project to design and develop a Web site for a fictitious company. Allows instructors to establish a technical baseline for students prior to starting the team project. Students are asked to develop a personal web site which... View Details

Keywords: Web Sites; Software; Product Development; Design; Internet

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Web

Competitiveness & Economic Development - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

poorly understood. The Solution: Understanding Competitiveness Michael Porter defines competitiveness based on productivity and focuses on the microeconomic foundations of competitive advantage that underpin... View Details

Article

Henry Heinz and Late Nineteenth-Century Brand Creation: Making Markets for Processed Food

By: Nancy F. Koehn

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Markets; Food; History; Consumer Products Industry; United States

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June 2022
Case

PFA Pensions: The Climate Plus Product

By: Daniel Green, Victoria Ivashina and Alys Ferragamo

The case explores whether alternative investments play a unique role in achieving low carbon dioxide emissions at the portfolio level. This case is set in April of 2020 and follows Kasper Ahrndt Lorenzen, Chief Investment Officer, and Peter Tind Larsen, Head of... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Carbon Footprint; Alternative Assets; Alternative Investment Vehicles; Pension Fund Investing; Private Equity; Renewable Energy; Investment Portfolio; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Denmark

Program

Developing Yourself as a Leader—Virtual

Summary As high-performing emerging leaders develop their leadership style, it is imperative to have the skillset and knowledge to gain influence and increase impact across an... View Details

August 2010 (Revised August 2011)
Case

Developing an App for That

By: Hanna Halaburda, Joshua Gans and Nathaniel Burbank

At a time when ever-rising smartphone sales are driven as much by demand for devices that run must-have third-party "apps" as by the quality of traditional voice and data services, there is a myriad of challenges facing the software developer who is looking to choose... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Competitive Strategy; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Applications and Software; Digital Platforms; Banking Industry; Information Technology Industry

18 Nov 2014
News

Making the learning process fun for children

A passion for working in the entertainment industry to benefit children led Christina Hsu (MBA 2004) to the educational game company JumpStart, which develops new ways for kids to learn and have fun at the... View Details

27 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

The Hidden Cost of a Product Recall

steps could help most R&D-centric companies: Create recall recovery teams. A specialized group of managers with deep knowledge about a company’s products and the recall View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

September 2015 (Revised March 2025)
Technical Note

FIELD Global Capstone: Developing Customer Empathy

By: Jill Avery

The Design Thinking process begins with empathizing with potential customers. Empathizing, being aware of, interpreting, and understanding the thoughts of others, as well as being able to vicariously experience them oneself, requires the careful and deliberate study of... View Details

Keywords: Market Research; Design Thinking; Customer Behavior; Ethnography; Interviews; Surveys; A/B Testing; Experimentation; Marketing; Customer Focus and Relationships; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers

March 1993 (Revised July 1994)
Case

Gerber Products Company: Investing in the New Poland

By: Debora L. Spar

Examines Gerber Products Co.'s evaluation of Alima S.A., one of Poland's largest food processing plants, as a potential overseas investment in 1991. Factors that influenced Gerber's decision are discussed in detail: property rights, taxation issues, and Poland's... View Details

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment; Food and Beverage Industry; Poland

August 2021 (Revised February 2023)
Supplement

Fair Park Covid-19 Mass Vaccination Site (B)

By: Willy Shih

This case is an opportunity to apply the methods of the Toyota Production System (TPS) to the analysis of an everyday service application: administering Covid-19 vaccines. It describes the start-up of a drive-up Covid-19 mass vaccination site at the Texas State Fair... View Details

Keywords: Operations Management; Operations Improvement; Operations And Processes; Toyota Production System; COVID-19 Pandemic; Operations; Service Operations; Health Pandemics; Service Delivery; Problems and Challenges; Goals and Objectives; Measurement and Metrics; Health Industry; United States

January 1998 (Revised April 2001)
Case

Acer America: Development of the Aspire

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Anthony St. George

Follows the development, national launch, and global rollout of the Aspire, Acer's first new product developed outside of Taiwan. Implementing a very promising new PC concept proves challenging to Mike Culver and his U.S. team, who are plagued by coordination problems... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Organizational Design; Supply Chain; Problems and Challenges; Relationships; Business Subsidiaries; Product Launch; Computer Industry; United States; Taiwan

September 2006 (Revised October 2007)
Case

Shinsei Bank: Developing an Integrated Firm

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Masako Egawa

Tom Pedersen, newly appointed chief learning officer (CLO) of Shinsei Bank in Japan, pondered how he could facilitate development of an integrated culture and transformation of the organization. Shinsei Bank had not developed longstanding tradition or a strong... View Details

Keywords: Integration; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Talent and Talent Management; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Cooperation; Diversity; Japan

December 1999
Case

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A5): Solaris 7: Rich Green on Product Strategy and Culture Change

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Jane Roessner

Solaris, Sun Microsystems' version of the UNIX operating system, was an amorphous collection of capabilities that had accumulated over the years, a product the company vaguely wished it could market and sell better. Developing and marketing Solaris 7 would help... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Applications and Software; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Product Positioning; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Success; Change; Diversification; Technology Industry; Computer Industry

2014
Chapter

Negotiation Processes as Sources of (and Solutions to) Interorganizational Conflict

By: Elizabeth Long Lingo, Colin Fisher and Kathleen L. McGinn

We investigate how structural features of negotiations can affect interaction processes and how negotiations can be not only a solution to, but also a source of, inter-organizational conflict. Principals, agents, and teams face different sets of constraints and... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation; Conflict; Organizational Management; Organizations; Conflict Management; Negotiation Process; Theory

January 2004
Background Note

Why Developers Don't Understand Why Consumers Don't Buy

By: John T. Gourville

Looks at the psychological biases developers bring to the new product development process. Identifies three reasons why developers may do a poor job of identifying the demand for an innovative, new concept or product: (1) the self-selection bias, (2) differing initial... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Innovation and Invention; Knowledge Management; Product Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Product Development; Perspective; Prejudice and Bias