Product Portfolio Management - Publications - Faculty & Research

08 Dec 2008
Research & Ideas

Thinking Twice About Supply-Chain Layoffs

one-standard-deviation increase in store labor brought about a 10 percent increase in profit margin. These findings ran contrary to the thinking of store managers that Ton interviewed. They consistently identified service quality as a top... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

25 Oct 2017
Research & Ideas

Will Machine Learning Make You a Better Manager?

have to be, say, United Airlines to take advantage of these tools. Managers can now purchase off-the-shelf products that can mine Twitter or Yelp and develop a detailed analysis of how sentiment is changing... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Information Technology

18 Sep 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, September 18, 2018

explicitly a function of current product offerings. The setting illustrates firms' dual incentives at work: A firm better differentiates products under a looser standard but may want to induce a tighter... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

25 Aug 2022
News

Harnessing the Tools of the Digital Age

It wasn’t necessary to understand the technology that powered the company’s washing machines, turbines, or jet engines. “But executives now need to understand the technologies behind their products and think about their implications on... View Details

Keywords: April White

01 Jun 2000
News

Social Capital Markets: Creating Value in the Nonprofit World

conditions of the distribution of capital on nonprofit management and organizational performance. He will also investigate how the availability of capital at various stages of an organization's evolution affects its growth. Jed Emerson... View Details

Keywords: Anne Kavanagh

01 Dec 2013
News

Single Mom at 15 Now Silicon Valley Star

Keywords: Computer and Electronic Product Manufacturing; Computer and Electronic Product Manufacturing

Web

2025 Reunion Presentations - Alumni

billion jobs will undergo significant transformation due to technology within the next decade. Notably, the ability to adapt to these evolving occupational demands varies widely among firms and countries, exerting substantial influence on View Details

01 Apr 1999
News

Q & A: Confronting New Technologies: When Doing Right Is Wrong

technologies seldom make sense to managers, given their corporate perspective. There are two reasons for this. First, customers exert tremendous influence over managers' decisions and the directions they pursue. Since customers cannot use these View Details

01 Dec 2006
News

Not a Regular Joe

Wilson was a principled and driven executive who transformed a small company called Haloid in Rochester, New York, into one that became synonymous with photocopying. Ellis, former managing partner of Greenwich Associates, offers a... View Details

Keywords: Lewis I. Rice; Joe Wilson; Xerox; Computer and Electronic Product Manufacturing; Computer and Electronic Product Manufacturing

October 2014
Supplement

Financial Policy at Apple, 2013 Powerpoint Supplement

By: Mihir Desai and Elizabeth A. Meyer

This is the PowerPoint supplement to the teaching note: Financial Policy at Apple, 2013 (A) - (B), number 215-022. View Details

Keywords: Apple; Steve Jobs; Forecast; Forecasting; Forecasting And Prediction; Shareholder Activism; Share Repurchase; Dividends; Financial Ratios; Preferred Shares; Cash Distribution; Corporate Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; Republic of Ireland

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October 2014
Teaching Note

Financial Policy at Apple, 2013 (A) and (B)

By: Mihir A. Desai and Elizabeth Meyer

This is the teaching note to HBS case 214-085: Financial Policy at Apple, 2013 (A). View Details

Keywords: Apple; Steve Jobs; Forecast; Forecasting; Forecasting And Prediction; Shareholder Activism; Share Repurchase; Dividends; Financial Ratios; Preferred Shares; Cash Distribution; Corporate Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; Republic of Ireland

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04 Jan 2021
What Do You Think?

How Do We Sustain Organization Diversity?

in new people? This is not as simple as it sounds. Inclusion is difficult. Research suggests that much of it does not lend itself to training. We can train managers to give “voice” to everyone in their organizations. What remains,... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

Will K. Kellogg

Kellogg invented corn flakes and created a breakfast cereal empire. Practicing pioneering advertising techniques, he managed to change the American breakfast style. Today, the Kellogg Company carries on the tradition of innovative... View Details

Keywords: Food & Tobacco

11 Apr 2017
Blog Post

Why I Love My Job: Andrew Grochal on His Path to CarGurus

side of the business, working closely with each department across the entire company including sales, customer success, engineering and marketing. I lead a team of product managers and we all collaborate... View Details

Keywords: Technology

2024
Book

Smart Rivals: How Innovative Companies Play Games That Tech Giants Can't Win

By: Feng Zhu and Bonnie Yining Cao

A fresh, research-based look at how companies can better compete, on their own terms, with tech giants. View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Product Design; Disruptive Innovation; Competitive Advantage

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20 Nov 2007
First Look

First Look: November 20, 2007

Research Agenda Author:Roberto Verganti Periodical:Journal of Product Innovation Management (forthcoming) Abstract Recent studies on design management have helped us to better... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

July 2010 (Revised August 2011)
Supplement

Erik Peterson at Biometra (B)

By: John J. Gabarro, Thomas J. DeLong and Jevan Soo

This one-paragraph case adds to the data presented in the (A) case. A redisguised and updated version of earlier case 494-006. View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Leadership; Management; Product Launch; Problems and Challenges

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07 Oct 2019
Sharpening Your Skills

How Companies Can Make Up with (Very) Unhappy Customers

JetBlue employees and more than 130,000 customers whose flights were cancelled, delayed, or diverted. How did the airline make it right with customers and learn from its mistakes? The Hidden Cost of a Product Recall View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail; Air Transportation

2010
Other Unpublished Work

Why Takeover Vulnerability Matters to Debtholders

By: Joan Farre-Mensa

Recent work documents that firms that are more vulnerable to takeover have higher borrowing costs. This paper investigates the reasons behind this stylized fact. My results show that firms with few antitakeover defenses face a higher cost of debt because lenders are... View Details