Continuous Improvement - Publications - Faculty & Research

17 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

Many Small-Business Employees May Be Close to Losing Health Insurance

additional relief—and soon—providers and policymakers should expect much greater disruption in insurance coverage going forward.” Some 60 percent of small businesses offered health insurance before the pandemic. Through June 15, 95 percent of those View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Health

17 Jun 2019
Research & Ideas

What Hospitals Must Learn to Compete

Here, they discuss what it would take to improve the provision of care. Q: Say you’re settling into your seat for a short-haul flight, and your seatmate is a newly installed hospital CEO, determined to View Details

Keywords: by Alumni Bulletin Staff; Health

12 Sep 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, September 12, 2017

the hub economy will continue to spread across more industries, concentrating more power in the hands of a few. As an example, they take an in-depth look at the auto industry and how Apple and Alphabet/Google are poised to become the main... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

04 Jan 2021
What Do You Think?

How Do We Sustain Organization Diversity?

successes, the distraction of a later effort to improve gender diversity, the disproportionate number of Black employees laid off in a major downsizing, a drop in the number of Black candidates in the pipeline, and weak retention of those... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

06 May 2019
Research & Ideas

Consumers Blame Business for Global Health Problems. Can Business Become the Solution?

Every public health crisis—whether it’s the availability of highly addictive opioids or junk food marketing to children—prompts consumers to question how far companies will go for profit. It’s not an unwarranted concern. After all, cigarette makers once used... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Health

19 Jul 2016
First Look

July 19, 2016

markets continued to underperform. Indeed, some analysts had suggested that Walmart retreat to its U.S. home base to improve performance. Many feared that this was the end of the 50+ year inexorable rise of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

10 Nov 2011
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Making Lincoln Center Cool Again

and subscriptions. By 2010, for example, nearly 75 percent of Lincoln Center's $53.5 million operating revenue—excluding revenue from facilities operations—came from contributors. Attendance continued to decline for the youngest Americans... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Entertainment & Recreation

25 Mar 2014
First Look

First Look: March 25

anti-inflationary stance, while the more recent decrease in bond risks after 1997 is attributed primarily to an increase in the persistence of monetary policy interacting with continued shocks to the central bank's inflation target.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

29 Sep 2009
First Look

First Look: September 29

endogenous vertical differentiation concerns. We discuss how our study helps improve our understanding of notions of strategy, business model, and tactics in the field of strategy. Download the paper:... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

28 Aug 2014
Op-Ed

Government Can Do More to Unfreeze Small Business Credit

Business Lending, gaps persist in certain areas of the small-business market, and regulatory overhang continues to create pressures on small business credit. Government Steps To Loosen Credit Three landmark pieces of legislation passed... View Details

Keywords: by Karen Mills; Banking

29 May 2006
What Do You Think?

How Important Is the “Service Sector Effect” on Productivity?

than they otherwise might. Whether this leads to a higher standard of living than that of their European counterparts is debatable. But there is growing evidence that providing pleasant work environments, aided to some degree by new technology, has spearheaded the... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Service

03 Oct 2005
What Do You Think?

What’s the Future of Globally Organized Labor?

competency and its ability to move up the value chain that will allow it to share the positive gains. If labor tries the old tactic of strikes, management will just outsource the staff from somewhere else ... " Globally organized labor may benefit from View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

12 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

Operations and the Competitive Edge

that once that need is accepted, and management commits to supporting the improvement effort and applying continual pressure, it will happen. We point out that while managers obviously need to accept the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

13 Nov 2006
Research & Ideas

Science Business: What Happened to Biotech?

Thirty years ago it appeared as if biotech would not only revolutionize healthcare, but also radically improve the very process of R&D itself. This hasn't happened. Though some firms such as Amgen have created dramatic breakthroughs,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Biotechnology

12 Jul 2004
Research & Ideas

Michael Porter’s Prescription For the High Cost of Health Care

is no villain here. Poor public-policy choices have contributed to the problem, but so have the bad choices made by health plans, hospitals, and the employers who buy their services. Decades of "reform" have failed, and attempts to reform will View Details

Keywords: by Michael E. Porter; Health

29 Jun 2009
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Leading Change

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: How do I build my business in this environment? What should leaders... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

19 Jan 2022
In Practice

7 Trends to Watch in 2022

As 2022 gets underway we asked our faculty to highlight some trends worth watching in the coming year. Ariel Stern: A new future for digital health care While 2020 and 2021 were years of rapid innovation and deployment of new health care technologies and delivery... View Details

Keywords: by HBS News

19 Jul 2004
Research & Ideas

Why Innovations Sit on the Shelf

Continued success in diagnostic systems relies heavily on product innovation and software engineering. But Ludwig found that the DIS division had lost its edge—a key competitor had improved its own products... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Beer, Russell Eisenstat & Derek Schrader

25 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

To Pay or Not to Pay: Argentina and the International Debt Market

Editor's note. Argentina is in the midst of a continuing saga regarding its 2002 default on its sovereign debt, a case that the US Supreme Court will decide soon. HBS finance professor Laura Alfaro, who served from 2010 to 2012 as... View Details

Keywords: by Laura Alfaro

18 Jun 2001
Research & Ideas

Caught in the Cogs: When Manufacturing and IT Meet

instead, it has become integrated with the whole manufacturing process—David Upton But once that decision has been made, "sitting" is far from the operative word for IT systems, which require the same kind of continuous View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner

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