Publications

27 Jan 2003
Research & Ideas

New Cluster Mapping Project Helps Companies Locate Facilities

twenty years, particularly in high tech, made the decision to move manufacturing offshore where costs are lower. You have argued that the location decision should involve much more than simple financial... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

04 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

Attention Medical Shoppers: What Health Care Can Learn from Walmart and Amazon

ER costs have dropped significantly. The Power Of Checklists Gawande also stressed the importance of implementing checklists in health care. (Gawande is the author of The Checklist Manifesto. Knowing that the View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

April 1983 (Revised October 1990)
Background Note

Textiles and the Multi-Fiber Arrangement

By: David B. Yoffie

What happens to an industry with millions of employees that loses its comparative advantage? This note examines this question by looking at the global textile and apparel industry. With the Multi-Fiber Arrangement coming up for renewal in December 1981, the United... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Cost vs Benefits; Developing Countries and Economies; Manufacturing Industry; Manufacturing Industry; United States; Europe

14 Jan 2015
Research & Ideas

Thriving in the Turbulence of Emerging Markets

business in India during the decades of the 1970s and 1980s. Bajaj Auto, the leading two-wheeler manufacturer in India, for a long period could do little to fight a slow-moving bureaucracy in a highly regulated country deeply suspicious... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones; Manufacturing; Manufacturing

02 Mar 2017
What Do You Think?

Is China About to Overtake the US for World Trade Leadership?

currency, triggering a chain reaction that some believe contributed to the Great Recession of 2008. Here’s their thinking: Although the depressed value of the yuan increased the cost of raw materials imported by China, it produced a huge... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Wallace R. Persons

During his twenty year tenure, Persons took Emerson from a small fan and motor maker with sales of $50 million to a large diversified industrial manufacturer with sales of over $900 million. Noted for continuously cutting View Details

Keywords: Fabricated Goods

28 Aug 2017
Research & Ideas

Should Industry Competitors Cooperate More to Solve World Problems?

Source: Cecilie_Arcurs George Serafeim has a startling suggestion to fix the world’s biggest environmental, social, and governance (ESG) problems such as water pollution, deforestation, and wealth inequality: encourage companies within industries to do less competing... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services; Manufacturing; Agriculture & Agribusiness; Mining

07 Jan 2015
Research & Ideas

The Quest for Better Layoffs

thirds of them thought the guy was an idiot, that he should have just sent the jobs to China, where he was going to build a factory anyway, or [to] Mexico, where the costs would be much less," Sucher recalls. "The other third... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Manufacturing

January 1980 (Revised August 1986)
Case

General Electric vs. Westinghouse in Large Turbine Generators (A)

By: Michael E. Porter

Describes the U.S. large turbine generator industry in early 1963, a period of severe price cutting and depressed industry conditions. Presents data to allow a structural analysis of the industry and an analysis of the strategies of the major players since 1946. The... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Customer Focus and Relationships; Machinery and Machining; Cost Management; Price; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Marketing Strategy; Industry Structures; Competition; Manufacturing Industry; United States

01 Apr 1998
News

Short Takes

Be Flexible In today's competitive and volatile business environment, depending on forecasting as the basis for planning and strategy has become a particularly risky way to operate. Especially vulnerable are manufacturing projects that... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons and Caroline Chauncey

03 Aug 2020
News

A Clean Start

could combine electricity and carbon dioxide and also be worth more than what it cost to make. After four months of weighing alternatives, he settled on formic acid: a commodity chemical and energy-rich electrofuel, or carbon-neutral... View Details

Keywords: Maureen Harmon

10 Jan 2008
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Operations Management

Sharpening Your Skills dives into the HBS Working Knowledge archives to bring together articles on ways to improve your business skills. Questions to be answered: Can "lean" productions methods improve service industries? How can a company's order management cycle... View Details

15 Sep 2003
Research & Ideas

The Lessons of New-Market Disruption

1990s—the Kittyhawk team pushed upmarket and targeted ultrathin laptop manufacturers. But these manufacturers were looking for breakthroughs in drive technology to improve cost per megabyte and capacity, not... View Details

Keywords: by Clark Gilbert; Technology

January 2003 (Revised January 2008)
Case

The British Motorcycle Industry at a Crossroads

By: Jan W. Rivkin

By 1975, the collapse of the British motorcycle industry is nearly complete. Only one British manufacturer, NVT, remains in operation. In this setting, the British government commissions the Boston Consulting Group to identify and evaluate strategic alternatives for... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Industry Structures; Business and Government Relations; Mathematical Methods; Competition; Manufacturing Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Great Britain