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Publications
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(6,035)
- Faculty Publications (839)
- August 2012
- Case
Polar Sports, Inc.
By: W. Carl Kester and Wei Wang
Polar Sports, Inc. is a fashion skiwear manufacturing company in Littleton, Colorado. The company has a unique design for skiwear using a special synthetic material that improves insulation and durability. The ski apparel industry is highly competitive and the best way... View Details
- July 2012 (Revised August 2015)
- Case
SOHO China: Design, Development, and Social Harmony
By: Arthur I Segel and Mukti Khaire
Founded in 1995 by Zhang Xin and her husband Mr. Pan Shiyi, SOHO China has developed into a world-class real estate development firm that has consistently delivered high-quality projects known for their cutting-edge designs and investment potential. Despite the... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
The Determinants of National Competitiveness
By: Mercedes Delgado, Christian Ketels, Michael E. Porter and Scott Stern
We define foundational competitiveness as the expected level of output per working-age individual that is supported by the overall quality of a country as a place to do business. The focus on output per potential worker, a broader measure of national productivity than... View Details
- March–April 2012
- Article
The Rise and Fall of Small Worlds: Exploring the Dynamics of Social Structure
By: Ranjay Gulati, Maxim Sytch and Adam Tatarynowicz
This paper explores the interplay between social structure and economic action by examining some of the evolutionary dynamics of an emergent network that coalesces into a small-world system. The study highlights the small-world system's evolutionary dynamics at both... View Details
- June 2012 (Revised July 2013)
- Exercise
Competition Simulator Exercise: Instructions
In the Competition Simulator Exercise, students explore through trial and error some important economic foundations of competitive strategy and managerial economics. In particular, the nine simulator exercises let students explore horizontal differentiation with and... View Details
- 2012
- Discussion Paper
Labor Productivity and Quality Change in Singapore: Achievements in 1974-2011 and Prospects for the Next Two Decades
By: Koji Nomura and Tomomichi Amano
Labor productivity growth in Singapore that has grown at a rate of over 3.0 percent per year since 1970s considerably slowed down to 0.5 percent on average per annum in the latter half of the 2000s. The purpose of this paper is to ask, first, to what extent Singapore’s... View Details
- June 2012
- Article
Pricing to Create Shared Value
By: Marco Bertini and John T. Gourville
Many companies are in competition with their customers to extract as much value as possible from every transaction. Pricing is their weapon of choice, and consumers fight back by rooting out and disseminating pricing policies that seem unfair. The problem is that... View Details
- Article
Holdout in the Assembly of Complements: A Problem for Market Design
By: Scott Duke Kominers and E. Glen Weyl
Holdout problems prevent private (voluntary and self-financing) assembly of complementary goods—such as land or dispersed spectrum—from many self-interested sellers. While mechanisms that fully respect sellers' property rights cannot alleviate these holdout problems,... View Details
- April 2012 (Revised February 2017)
- Case
Dovernet
By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred
This case illustrates the implications of using stringent performance measurement systems to create performance pressure, motivate employee achievement, and sharpen a firm's competitiveness. It opens by describing the downsides of the ruthlessly competitive culture at... View Details
- April 2012 (Revised October 2013)
- Supplement
eBay, Inc. and Amazon.com (B)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Anant Thaker
A decade after BusinessWeek declared the competitive battle between eBay, Inc., and Amazon.com "a defining moment for e-commerce," Amazon established itself as the leader. eBay must decide what strategy to use in order to regain the upper hand: maintain its current... View Details
- April 2012 (Revised August 2013)
- Case
General Motors Technical Center India – Powertrain Engineering
By: Willy Shih, William Jurist, Brian McIntosh and Helen Wang
Prabjot Nanua was proud of the growing capabilities of the General Motors Technical Center India Powertrain Engineering group that he oversaw. Since 2003, engineers there had expanded the center's capabilities, developing a reputation within GM for completing... View Details
- April 2012
- Article
Bouncing Out of the Banking System: An Empirical Analysis of Involuntary Bank Account Closures
By: Dennis Campbell, F. Asis Martinez-Jerez and Peter Tufano
Using a new database, we document the factors that relate to the extent of involuntary consumer bank account closure resulting from excessive overdraft activity. Consumers who have accounts involuntarily closed for overdraft activity may have limited or no access to... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
Learning by Supplying
By: Juan Alcacer and Joanne Oxley
Learning processes lie at the heart of our understanding of how firms build capabilities to generate and sustain competitive advantage: learning by doing, learning by exporting, learning from competitors, users, and alliance partners. In this paper we focus attention... View Details
- April 2012
- Article
Local R&D Strategies and Multi-location Firms: The Role of Internal Linkages
By: Juan Alcacer and Minyuan Zhao
This study looks at the role of firms' internal linkages in highly competitive technology clusters, where much of the world's R&D takes place. The leading players in these clusters are multilocation firms that organize and integrate knowledge across sites worldwide.... View Details
- March 2012 (Revised January 2013)
- Case
Boston Children's Hospital: Measuring Patient Costs
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Mary L. Witkowski and Jessica A. Hohman
The case describes two pilot projects on applying activity-based costing to measuring the cost of treating patients. It presents process maps and financial data relating to the processes used during (1) an office visit to a plastic surgeon for three different diagnoses... View Details
- March 2012 (Revised February 2013)
- Background Note
The Hybrid Vehicle Market
By: Michael W. Toffel and Nazli Z. Uludere Aragon
This note describes the hybrid electic vehicle market, the results of different automaker strategies, and the environmental regulatory issues that can promote or inhibit market growth in the United States. Introduces students to the technologies and regulatory aspects... View Details
- March 2012 (Revised December 2014)
- Case
Schön Klinik: Measuring Cost and Value
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Mary L. Witkowski and Jessica A. Hohman
The case illustrates how a leading German hospital group has invested deeply in the measurement of patient-level outcomes and costs, the foundations of a health care value framework. The company launches a pilot project to use time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC)... View Details
- March 2012
- Article
Macroeconomic Policy and U.S. Competitiveness
By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Matthew Weinzierl
The United States is on a glide path to fiscal disaster, with experts projecting that the federal government will take in far less money than it spends-indefinitely. Our current fiscal policy is eroding competitiveness in several ways, and business conditions in the... View Details
- March 2012
- Article
New Project? Don't Analyze—Act
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger, Charles F. Kiefer and Paul B. Brown
In a predictable world, getting a new initiative off the ground typically involves analyzing the market, creating a forecast, and writing a business plan. But what about in an unpredictable environment? The authors recommend looking to those who are experts in... View Details
- 2012
- Other Unpublished Work
Selection, Reallocation, and Knowledge Spillover: Identifying the Sources of Productivity Gains from Multinational Activity
By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie X. Chen
The impact of multinational activity on host-country productivity has been a major topic of economic research. A positive impact can be attributed to knowledge spillovers from foreign multinational to domestic firms or a less stressed, alternative explanation—firm... View Details