Publications

November 2011
Teaching Note

WrapItUp: Developing a New Compensation Plan (Brief Case)

By: W. Earl Sasser, Jr. and Rachel Shelton

Teaching Note for Product #4362 View Details

Keywords: Empowerment; Middle Management; Human Resource Management; Compensation; Incentives; Motivation; Management; Motivation and Incentives; Compensation and Benefits

01 Oct 2012
News

How to Master the Art of Productivity

January 2015 (Revised March 2017)
Case

Funding to scale Citizens Connect, Boston's 311 app, is both a blessing and a burden and tests two public entrepreneurs. In 2012, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts provides Boston's Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics with a grant to scale Citizens Connect across the... View Details

June 2021
Case

New Director Dilemmas: Blurring the Line Between Governance and Management

By: John J-H Kim

Keywords: Education; Education Industry

August 1999 (Revised January 2002)
Case

Brita Products Company, The

By: John A. Deighton

Clorox's Brita skillfully exploits a tide of water safety concerns, growing a home water (filtration) business from inception to a 15% U.S. household penetration in ten years. The dilemma in the case arises as the period of increasing returns seems to be drawing to a... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Acquisition; Retention; Safety; Natural Environment; Emerging Markets; Investment Return; Equity; Demand and Consumers; United States

February 1997
Article

Advantages of Time-Based New Product Development in a Fast Cycle Industry: An Empirical Analysis

By: S. Datar, C. Jordan, S. Kekre, S. Rajiv and K. Srinivasan

Keywords: Product; Research and Development; Business Ventures

Article

How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition

By: Michael E. Porter and James E. Heppelmann

Information technology is revolutionizing products. Once composed solely of mechanical and electrical parts, products have become complex systems that combine hardware, sensors, data storage, microprocessors, software, and connectivity in myriad ways. These "smart,... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Competition; Information Technology; Transformation; Information Technology Industry

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October 2006 (Revised March 2007)
Case

Production I.G: Challenging the Status Quo

By: Andrei Hagiu, Tarun Khanna, Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Masako Egawa and Chisato Toyama

In July 2006, Mitsuhisa Ishikawa wondered how he could further enhance the success and visibility of his animation production company headquartered in Tokyo, Production I.G. For the year ended May 2006, Production I.G. had sales of 5,439 million yen ($47.3 million),... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Competitive Advantage; Markets; Animation Entertainment; Going Public; Growth and Development Strategy; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Tokyo

April 2012
Supplement

Fresh & New Cleaners (B)

By: Janet Kraus, Brian McIntosh and Nick Plantan

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurship

January 1997 (Revised September 1997)
Case

Improving the Product Development Process at Kirkham Instruments Corp.

By: Clayton M. Christensen

Describes the efforts of a manufacturer of scientific instruments to implement new methods of managing new product development, which its executives had learned in a Harvard Business School seminar. The executives left the seminar excited to implement a new way of... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Product Launch; Innovation and Invention; Product Development; Manufacturing Industry; Technology Industry; United States

December 2009
Supplement

TruEarth Healthy Foods: Market Research for a New Product Introduction, Student Spreadsheet (Brief Case)

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Sunru Yong

Keywords: Market Research; Consumer Marketing; Brands; Research; Marketing; Product Launch; Brands and Branding

Research Summary

Designing Productive Zones of Privacy

By: Ethan S. Bernstein

A common theme that integrates my research and course development is how increasingly transparent workplaces can improve productivity and performance by putting up certain boundaries to observation. While the research above empirically and theoretically explores the... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Privacy; Field Experiments; Design; Organizational Design; Performance

October 2014
Case

Teckentrup: A Door to Managing Difference

By: Clayton Rose, Jerome Lenhardt and Daniela Beyersdorfer

For Kai Teckentrup, the owner and co-CEO of the German "Mittelstand" door manufacturer Teckentrup, balancing competitive pressures, demographic realities and values were at the heart of the diversity program that he had started and championed at the company. Beyond... View Details

July 1996
Article

New Product Development Structures: The Effect of Customer Overload on Post-Concept Time to Market

By: S. Datar, C. Jordan, S. Kekre, S. Rajiv and K. Srinivasan

Keywords: Product; Research and Development; Customers; Markets

April 2008
Case

Campbell and Bailyn's Boston Office: Managing the Reorganization

By: Anne Donnellon and Dun Gifford Jr

Ken Winston, the regional sales manager at a securities brokerage firm, has reorganized his generalist salespeople into Key Account Teams (KAT) to increase sales of specialized, higher-margin fixed income products. Winston is also implementing a new corporate... View Details

March 2022
Module Note

Navigating Nascent Industries and Product Categories

By: Rory McDonald

This Note introduces a module of cases used at Harvard Business School to teach fundamental concepts about navigating nascent industries and product categories. It elaborates a set of ‘innovation tensions’ that managers must address in these domains. In connecting the... View Details

Keywords: Nascent Industries; Product; Innovation and Management; Strategy

April 1988 (Revised March 1991)
Supplement

Boeing 767: From Concept to Production (B)

By: David A. Garvin

Updates the (A) case to the present day. The issue facing students is whether Boeing's approach to managing new airplane programs must be modified to fit with this new environment. View Details

Keywords: Production; Change Management; Product Development; Product Marketing; Situation or Environment; Air Transportation Industry; Manufacturing Industry

Article

Pricing and Production Flexibility: An Empirical Analysis of the U.S. Automotive Industry

By: Antonio Moreno and Christian Terwiesch

We use a detailed data set from the U.S. auto industry spanning from 2002 to 2009 and a variety of econometric methods to characterize the relationship between the availability of production mix flexibility and firms’ use of responsive pricing. We find that production... View Details

Keywords: Empirical Operations Management; Flexibility; Pricing; Automotive Industry; Production; Price; Management; Analysis; Auto Industry; United States

May 2017
Teaching Note

Hilti Fleet Management (A) and (B)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Oliver Gassmann and Roman Sauer

These notes are meant to accompany Hilti Fleet Management (A): Turning a Successful Business Model on Its Head (717-427) and Hilti Fleet Management (B): Towards a New Business Model (717-465).
This case explores the introduction of fleet management in the... View Details