Publications

February 2019
Teaching Note

Haier in the U.S.: Transforming GE Appliances

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen

Chinese appliance company Haier's 2016 acquisition of iconic GE Appliances ushered in strategic and structural changes to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship at the U.S. company, and to help it grow. Haier, which had a model designed to bring the company closer... View Details

Keywords: Iconic Brands; Appliances; Digital; Innovation; Entrepreneur; Microenterprise; Management; Entrepreneurship; Transformation; Innovation and Management; Acquisition; Consumer Products Industry; United States; China

August 2012 (Revised May 2013)
Case

Milwaukee (A): Making of a World Water Hub

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Matthew Bird

Starting in 2007 Milwaukee leaders from different areas (large established companies, civic organizations, public sector, academia, and entrepreneurs) negotiated a path for converting the region into a global water hub to address economic and environmental concerns.... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Growth Management; Business or Company Management; Leading Change; Wisconsin

12 PM – 1 PM EDT, 14 Mar 2017
Webinars: Career

The Flip: How to Rethink Networking

Networking can be intimidating. It is not always easy, however, it can be beneficial if you change your perspective and "flip" your view of the situation. This requires flipping your perception of yourself, your jobs, and most importantly, your relationships. Rather... View Details

March 6, 2020
Article

Networking Doesn't Have to Be Self-Serving

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

How can individual leaders help to tackle big social problems? It can seem like an overwhelming, impossible task. But successful change agents have shown that networking and communication skills are key. They show up, in person, to investigate the issues and build... View Details

Keywords: Network; Self-serving; Social Issues; Networks; Communication; Leading Change

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Impact | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

Influencing practice and advancing the field for over 25 years. Through the work of the faculty, the Social Enterprise Initiative has built a foundation of knowledge that has both responded to and influenced the changing field of... View Details

Web

Privacy Notice | About

with the provision of any personal information to us. We may update our Privacy Notice from time to time and will post any changes on this page. We encourage you to check our website frequently to review the most up-to-date versions of... View Details

16 Nov 2021
HBS Case

How a Company Made Employees So Miserable, They Killed Themselves

under-discussed issue.” Learning from the missteps of France Télécom can help business leaders take a more compassionate approach to restructuring, even when competitive pressures make those changes necessary. Sometimes that means taking... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

April 2003 (Revised December 2006)
Case

ZARA: Fast Fashion

By: Pankaj Ghemawat and Jose Luis Nueno

Focuses on Inditex, an apparel retailer from Spain, which has set up an extremely quick response system for its ZARA chain. Instead of predicting months before a season starts what women will want to wear, ZARA observes what's selling and what's not and continuously... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Multinational Firms and Management; Competitive Advantage; Manufacturing Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Retail Industry; Spain

April 1995 (Revised July 1997)
Case

General Instrument (A)

A manufacturer of cable TV transmission equipment is faced with redesigning its network of international plants that make set-top converters and decoders. One possibility is to have each plant dedicated to manufacturing and engineering support for different product... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Manufacturing Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

October 2002 (Revised February 2011)
Case

Union Corrugating Company (A)

By: Paul W. Marshall and Julia Stevens

Lauri Union graduates from Harvard Business School and takes over her family's steel-corrugated roofing and siding manufacturing firm, which her mother has most recently run. The industry is mature, entry barriers to competitors are low, and the company is over 50... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leading Change; Family Business; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Culture; Family Ownership; Gender; Manufacturing Industry; Steel Industry; Industrial Products Industry

September 2010
Case

Bush Brothers & Company

By: Lena G. Goldberg and Chad Carr

The chairman and CEO of Bush Brothers grapples with leading and managing changes in strategy, governance and board composition, as well as succession, compensation and ownership issues, as he takes the family owned/family operated business into its fourth generation.... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Change Management; Decision Making; Selection and Staffing; Leading Change; Management Succession; Governing and Advisory Boards; Wages; Values and Beliefs; Growth and Development Strategy

Ramana Nanda is Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance and Academic Lead of the Institute for Deep Tech Entrepreneurship at Imperial College London. His research examines financing frictions facing new ventures, with an aim to help entrepreneurs with fundraising and... View Details

Keywords: banking; biotechnology; energy; financial services; green technology; microfinance; nonprofit industry; venture capital industry

26 Sep 2023
Book

Digital Strategy: A Handbook for Managing a Moving Target

to the new digital context. ” Enthusiasts and advocates of the digital revolution would submit that digital transformation changes everything, from product design to how value is built and captured in the market. In some cases,... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Information Technology; Technology

02 Apr 2024
Research & Ideas

Employees Out Sick? Inside One Company's Creative Approach to Staying Productive

changing daily, it took half a shift to thoroughly analyze the problem in order to address gaps. “You need to solve the problem quickly. You can’t wait to put the data in the system,” Tamayo says. How managers handled absenteeism... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Fashion

2009
Book

Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed and What to Do About It

By: Josh Lerner

In response to the financial crisis, governments are being far more aggressive in intervening to promote economic activity, a trend that shows little tendency of alleviating. This book looks at the experiences of governments in encouraging entrepreneurs and venture... View Details

Keywords: Economic Growth; Financial Crisis; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Policy; Business and Government Relations

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January 1994
Case

ABC Sales and Service Division: A Case Study of Personal and Organizational Transformation

By: D. Quinn Mills, Brock W. Orwig, Janet M. Pumo, Todd C. Stilson and Richard C. Wei

In the midst of dramatic changes in the information systems industry and declining profits at the ABC Co., the vice president in charge of the sales and service division, Jeff, and his managers attempt to transform their division. The transformation gets off to a good... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Transformation; Motivation and Incentives; Resignation and Termination; Communication; Business or Company Management; Information Technology Industry