Publications

January 2004
Article

Corporate Venturing: The Origins of Unilever's Pregnancy Test

By: Geoffrey Jones and Alison Kraft

The relative ability of different sizes of firm and organisational designs to develop and sustain dynamic capabilities in innovation and create new businesses remains a matter of contention. While Chandler among many others has emphasised the pre-eminent role of large... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Organizational Design; Technological Innovation; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Brands and Branding; Multinational Firms and Management; Product Development; Product Launch; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Great Britain

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07 Jun 2004
Research & Ideas

The Competition of Countries

like companies, must find a means of creating total factor productivity if they are to grow. Some other countries, meanwhile, have grown quite slowly for decades, despite great locations and immense deposits of natural resources. In these... View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia Churchwell

January 2004 (Revised August 2005)
Case

Kikkoman Corporation: Consumer Focused Innovation

By: Rohit Deshpande and Hal Hogan

In May 2003, the president and CEO of Kikkoman Corp. sat in his Tokyo office weighing various options for strengthening the company's long-term growth. Kikkoman was the world's largest producer of soy sauce, largely due to its pioneering role since the 1950s as the... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Innovation Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning; Adaptation; Competitive Strategy; Japan

August 2002 (Revised February 2005)
Case

Gillette Company (A): Pressure for Change

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and James Weber

After years of strong performance with market-dominating brands, Gillette's performance slips and a new CEO is selected from outside the company to lead a turnaround. This case describes the business and financial situation he inherited and asks what he should do... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Performance Consistency; Product Positioning; Selection and Staffing; Change Management; Leading Change; Competitive Strategy; Planning; Retail Industry

Student-Profile

Anil Doshi

economists, operations management scholars, organizational theorists, and others studying topics ranging from open innovation to information technology to product innovation. I have borrowed freely from... View Details

14 Nov 2007
First Look

First Look: November 14, 2007

http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=208041 Teradyne: The Aurora Project Harvard Business School Case 397-114 Three cases deal with the introduction of a new product to Teradyne's line of semiconductor test... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

April 1999 (Revised August 1999)
Case

R&B Falcon

R&B Falcon is the world's leading offshore drilling contractor. Amid surging exploration budgets and increasing deepwater drilling activity, the company makes huge investments in several new state-of-the art $300 million ultra-deep-water drilling rigs. As day rates and... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Change Management; Industry Growth; Mining; Product Marketing; Mining Industry

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01 Mar 2004
News

Protecting against the Erosion of Brand Value

brands of premium cachet and the premium prices that come with it. “The same forces that cause the commoditization of products and services precipitate the commoditization of brands,” they continue. Fortunately, View Details

Keywords: Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information

July 2012 (Revised June 2018)
Case

MC Tool

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

Two partners acquired MC Tool in October 2007 for $5 million. The company was a machine shop that manufactured parts for a wide variety of applications in the energy, automotive, and industrial equipment industries. In their first year of ownership, the partners... View Details

Keywords: Capital Budgeting; Risk Management; Risk and Uncertainty; Problems and Challenges; Transformation; Production; Business Strategy; Manufacturing Industry; United States

01 Feb 2012
What Do You Think?

Is Support for Small Business Misplaced?

share of jobs provided by small businesses. Again, this is due in part to the lower productivity of such jobs. They conclude, as have some others, that a better strategy for job creation would be to attract large multinational... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Student-Profile

Hummy Song

and the productivity of the health care workforce. I am currently working on several projects that examine various operational and organizational factors that may affect worker productivity and quality of... View Details

Career Coach

Ron Peracchio

Development. Ron was also the Senior Director of Career Development at MIT's Sloan School of Management. In addition to his academic experience, Ron has held several corporate positions including Staffing manager for Lucent Software View Details

Keywords: Consulting; Education; Manufacturing; Clean Technology; Energy

14 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Keeping Your Balance With Customers

From product push to customer pull, technology has vastly reshaped the business transaction—and in turn, the customer's place in the value chain. Today, managing the customer relationship has become the... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton

June 2012 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Best Buy in Crisis

By: John R. Wells and Galen Danskin

In June 2012, Best Buy was in crisis. In 1996, Best Buy overtook Circuit City as the world's leader in consumer electronics retailing; however, 18 years later, Best Buy now found this position threatened. With $51 billion in revenues, it was still the biggest CE... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Forecasting and Prediction; Competitive Strategy; Ethics; Management Teams; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry