Publications

Research Summary

Overview

By: Willy C. Shih

Willy's research interests reflect the 28 years he spent in industry, during which he logged many questions on firm performance, relative competitiveness, and firm culture as an impediment to change. His primary interests today are in the drivers of industrial... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Technology; Competitiveness; Competitive Dynamics; Supply Chains; Production; Operations; Product Development; Supply Chain Management; Manufacturing Industry; Semiconductor Industry; Aerospace Industry; Auto Industry; United States; Asia; Europe

March 1997 (Revised July 1999)
Case

S1 Corporation

S1 is a fast growing subsidiary of the Samsung Group in South Korea that sells business security products. S1 has implemented a number of marketing initiatives that the company president would like to have evaluated. View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Price; Salesforce Management; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; South Korea

17 Oct 2012
Research & Ideas

America Needs a Manufacturing Renaissance

international competition means we should expect industries to come and go. Even if this is sometimes painful, it is, in fact, a healthy process by which resources flow to their most productive uses. When a commons erodes, however, it... View Details

Keywords: by Gary P. Pisano & Willy C. Shih; Manufacturing

February 1998 (Revised August 2006)
Case

House of Tata, 1995: The Next Generation (A)

By: Tarun Khanna, Krishna G. Palepu and Danielle Melito Wu

The Tata Group began the 1990s as a confederation of loosely coupled firms. This case considers the rise to prominence of the new CEO of Tata Group, Ratan Tata, and his attempts to strengthen the inter-relationships among the group companies at a time when critics... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Business Conglomerates; Organizations; Corporate Strategy; Consolidation; Business Strategy; Alignment; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

September 1993 (Revised June 1994)
Case

Hewlett-Packard: Singapore (A)

By: Dorothy A. Leonard

In the over 20 years since Hewlett-Packard (HP) set up a manufacturing site in Singapore to produce calculators, HP has invested managerial talent and resources in developing its licensor into a technology development partner. The case details the growth of high-volume... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Multinational Firms and Management; Market Entry and Exit; Competency and Skills; Research and Development; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Product Development; Computer Industry; Singapore

03 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

Why Fierce Competitors Apple and Amazon Became ’Frenemies’ Over eReaders

Technology and Operations Management unit at Harvard Business School. And why would Apple ever allow a Kindle app in its App Store in the first place? "We all know historically Apple often says no to apps that directly compete with... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Information; Publishing; Technology

01 Dec 1996
News

New Releases

noncompetitive technology development while contributing to national economic growth and global competitiveness. In Technology Fountainheads: The Management Challenge of R&D; Consortia, Professor Emeritus Ray Corey examines the... View Details

Student-Faculty-Profile

Michelle Shell & Ryan Buell

them. Ryan: At HBS, research literally meets practice. The questions we tackle arise from a deep understanding of both the extant theory and the real problems managers face. Michelle entered the doctoral program fascinated by impediments... View Details

Web

Anna Wang | MBA

Technology Innovation Fellowship we'll meet diverse individuals who can make anything possible. Tech areas of interest: Consumer technology, accessibility & democratization, product management Formative... View Details

01 Jun 2010
News

MBAs on a Mission

was typical for an HBS Leadership Fellow. The program catapults new grads into high-level positions at nonprofit and public-sector organizations, offering access to CEO-level management and decision-making. Meanwhile, organizations... View Details

Keywords: Sarah Auerbach;Deborah Blagg;Julia Hanna; Management; Management; Management; Management

June 2006 (Revised October 2007)
Case

Takashimaya in Transition

By: Rajiv Lal, Masako Egawa and Chisato Toyama

Takashimaya, the largest department store in Japan, was suffering from declining sales. CEO Koji Suzuki had succeeded in instituting changes to cut costs. However, Suzuki needed to come up with a strategy to increase sales, particularly in apparel, which comprised the... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Product Development; Sales; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Retail Industry; Japan

Find at Harvard

29 Nov 2004
Research & Ideas

Caves, Clusters, and Weak Ties: The Six Degrees World of Inventors

like MIT could not coalesce around DEC, as they did out in Silicon Valley with IBM and Stanford. Perhaps most importantly, our work and more recent work on knowledge diffusion demonstrates that knowledge flows along these collaborative relationships, even years after... View Details

Keywords: by Sara Grant; Publishing

September 1996
Case

Silicon Graphics, Inc. (B)

By: Marco Iansiti and Alan D. MacCormack

After the release of the "Challenge" computer in 1993, Silicon Graphics executives meet to discuss the follow-up project. Should they pursue an incremental improvement to the Challenge, or opt for a radically new design recently demonstrated at Stanford University? View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Technological Innovation; Management Practices and Processes; Product Development; Hardware; Computer Industry

15 Sep 2003
Research & Ideas

The Lessons of New-Market Disruption

it, picking the wrong customer will lead to failure. Aggressive revenue expectations can keep venture managers from choosing to target emerging markets, places where disruptive technologies are likely to find their initial success. As the... View Details

Keywords: by Clark Gilbert; Technology

February 2001 (Revised March 2001)
Case

Apax Partners and Dialog Semiconductor: March 1998

By: G. Felda Hardymon, Josh Lerner, Antonio Alvarez-Cano and Borja Martinez

Apax Partners is considering a complex buyout of a semiconductor manufacturer. The firms must assess in a compressed timeframe the complex technological, financial, and operational risks that the proposed transaction poses. View Details

Keywords: Market Transactions; Leveraged Buyouts; Restructuring; Time Management; Production; Risk Management; Financial Services Industry; Semiconductor Industry

01 Mar 2015
News

A Boomtown's Echo

is the Bakken formation, a 25,000-square-mile underground deposit that—thanks to a rise in fracking and new oil extraction technologies—has produced as much as 1 million barrels of oil and gas a day, or about the production equivalent of... View Details

Keywords: Oil and Gas Extraction; Mining

January 2010
Teaching Note

Transforming ASUSTeK: Breaking from the Past (TN)

By: Willy C. Shih

Teaching Note for [610041]. View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Transformation; Contracts; Production; Product Design; Customers; Competition; Management Practices and Processes; Value; Performance Effectiveness; Brands and Branding; Disruptive Innovation; Computer Industry; Electronics Industry