Publications

May 1994 (Revised August 1994)
Case

Motorola-Elma

By: Shoshana Zuboff and Janis Lee Gogan

Motorola's old automative electronics plant in Arcade, outside Buffalo, New York, faced the prospect of closure in the mid-1980s, but leading customers persuaded Motorola to give the plant a second chance. The new plant manager, Dennis Fiehn, recognized that existing... View Details

Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Business Exit or Shutdown; Customers; Leading Change; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Organizational Structure; Competitive Strategy; Expansion; Telecommunications Industry; New York (state, US)

07 May 2025
Video

Climate Rising: Advancing the Circular Economy with Lauren Rodriguez of Closed Loop Partners

October 2010 (Revised May 2011)
Case

Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.

By: Sunil Gupta and Kerry Herman

In September 2010, faced with increasing threat from social game companies such as Zynga, Ben Feder, the CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software. Inc., had to decide the long-term strategy of his video-game company. As a publisher of traditional video games for Xbox 360,... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Leadership Style; Marketing; Competitive Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

April 1995 (Revised July 1995)
Case

Power Play (B): Sega in 16-bit Video Games

Home video-game systems were pioneered by the U.S. company Atari in the mid-1970s. After going through boom and bust in the early 1980s, the industry was resurrected in the mid-1980s by the Japanese company Nintendo. With its 8-bit video-game system, Nintendo... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Competition; Video Game Industry; Japan; United States

13 May 2019
News

The Industrialist's Dilemma: Hubert Joly, Chairman and CEO of Best Buy

November 2016 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Augmedix

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Alexandra N. Rachlin

In April 2015, Ian Shakil and Pelu Tran, cofounders of Augmedix, are discussing how to grow their emerging health care startup. The company’s sole product, also called Augmedix, streams video of doctor-patient interactions to remote medical scribes, thus freeing... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Sales Management; Scaling; Hiring; Pricing; Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Sales; Technology; Health Industry; United States

03 May 2019
News

It’s All About Mindset

2021
Working Paper

The Origins of CE Marking: Standards, Business, and the European Market in the 1980s–1990s

By: Grace Ballor

Many products—from consumer electronics to machinery to children’s toys—bear the CE Mark, the symbol of conformity to the ‘essential requirements’ of European standards governed by the process of CE Marking. This working paper traces the development of the system of... View Details

Keywords: Business And Government; Market Liberalization; Standards; Markets; Trade; Integration; Business History; Globalization; Business and Government Relations; Europe; European Union

November 2017
Teaching Note

Amazon.com, 2016

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

Teaching Note for HBS No. 716-402. On January 28, 2016, Amazon announced record 2015 operating profits of $2.2 billion on $107 billion of sales, and the markets responded with cautious optimism. For years, founder and CEO Jeffrey Bezos had prioritized growth and... View Details

Article

Applying Human-Centered Design Principles to Digital Syndromic Surveillance at a Mass Gathering in India: Viewpoint

By: Ahmed Shaikh, Abhishek Bhatia, Ghanshyam Yadav, Shashwat Hora, Chung Won, Mark Shankar, Aaron Heerboth, Prakash Vemulapalli, Paresh Navalkar, Kunal Oswal, Clay Heaton, Sujata Saunik, Tarun Khanna and Satchit Balsari

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital health tools have been deployed by governments around the world to advance clinical and population health objectives. Few interventions have been successful or have achieved sustainability or scale. In India, government... View Details

Keywords: Digital Health Tools; Human-centered Design; Health Care and Treatment; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Design; Technology Adoption

Spring 2015
Article

Bitcoin: Economics, Technology, and Governance

By: Rainer Böhme, Nicolas Christin, Benjamin Edelman and Tyler Moore

Bitcoin is an online communication protocol that facilitates virtual currency including electronic payments. Since its inception in 2009 by an anonymous group of developers, Bitcoin has served tens of millions of transactions with total dollar value in the billions.... View Details

Keywords: Market Platforms; Online Technology; Currency

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December 2002
Article

Knowledge Seeking and Location Choice of Foreign Direct Investment in the United States

By: Juan Alcacer and Wilbur Chung

To what extent do firms go abroad to access technology available in other locations? This paper examines whether and when state technical capabilities attract foreign investment in manufacturing from 1987-1993. We find that on average state R&D intensity does not... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Acquisition; Foreign Direct Investment; Research and Development; Information Technology; Production; Geographic Location; United States

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January–February 2012
Article

Do You Need a New Product-Development Strategy?

By: Alan MacCormack, W. Crandall, P. Toft and P. Henderson

Many firms rely on a single new-product development process for all projects. But designing new products for different business contexts requires that a firm deploy different new-product development processes. Products designed for stable and mature end-user markets... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Product Development

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Since the first appearance of Thomas McCraw's contribution to Harlan Davidson's American History Series in 2000, American... View Details

March 2004 (Revised September 2005)
Case

RealNetworks Rhapsody

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Steven Carpenter

Examines RealNetwork's (Real's) strategy for the rapidly emerging online music market. In contrast to rivals who sell individual copies of songs, Real offers online music on a subscription basis. For a $10 monthly fee, subscribers to Real's Rhapsody service have... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Competitive Advantage; Distribution Channels; Music Entertainment; Ownership; Service Industry; Retail Industry; Music Industry

24 Mar 2008
Research & Ideas

Reducing Risk with Online Advertising

How can online advertising fraud be detected and prevented? What should we look at, where should we look, and what methods and tools should we use? These questions are relevant to anyone who buys online advertising. According to HBS professor Ben Edelman, an expert on... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Video Game; Web Services

May 2016 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Building the Digital Manufacturing Enterprise of the Future at Siemens

By: Willy Shih

This case describes the motivation for and the development of Siemens' digital manufacturing enterprise vision, which became the foundation for its implementation of Industrie 4.0. While the effort started with a purely defensive move by Anton Huber, head of the... View Details