Publications

13 May 2019
Research & Ideas

The Unexpected Way Whistleblowers Reduce Government Fraud

managers The study’s findings can be applied to customer-supplier contractual relationships in general, says Perez Cavazos, providing a lesson for managers about ways to repair the reputational damage caused by accusations of company... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Service; Construction

11 Nov 2013
Research & Ideas

A Smarter Way to Reduce Customer Defections

paper. Lost customers lead to untapped dollars. A McKinsey report estimated that reducing churn could increase earnings of a typical US wireless carrier by as much as 9.9 percent. It's no surprise then that executives in both the United... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail; Service

July–August 2012
Article

A Better Way to Tax U.S. Businesses

By: Mihir Desai

The article argues that U.S. taxation reform should reduce corporate taxes, incorporate an awareness of the global marketplace, and generate revenue-neutral incentives for innovation. According to the article, a reduction in corporate tax rates would be offset by a tax... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Taxation; Globalization; Labor; Innovation and Invention; United States

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08 Sep 2009
Research & Ideas

The Height Tax, and Other New Ways to Think about Taxation

Should tall people pay higher taxes than the rest of us? It is an idea that is bound to raise eyebrows, if not a smile. Yet the underlying notion is not entirely silly, grounded as it is in serious questions about why we tax the way we do... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

July 1991 (Revised May 1995)
Case

Samuel Slater, Francis Cabot Lowell, and the Beginnings of the Factory System in the United States

Deals with the coming of the mechanized textile industry to the United States, and with it, the nation's first factories. Considers the introduction of small spinning mills in Rhode Island, and the appearance of large integrated spinning and weaving mills in... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Business History; Production; Industry Growth; Manufacturing Industry; Rhode Island; Massachusetts

26 Jun 2017
Research & Ideas

How Cellophane Changed the Way We Shop for Food

spoil. Also vital to the adoption of self-service retailing: the invention of cellophane, and continual improvements to the product. As it turned out, the evolution of self-service retailing in the United States was directly tied to the... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Food & Beverage; Retail; Advertising

28 Aug 2023
Research & Ideas

The Clock Is Ticking: 3 Ways to Manage Your Time Better

Arthur Brooks: Reduce meetings to be happier at work The pandemic changed the way we manage our time in many ways—unfortunately, some of these are negative. The worst case is the expansion of time-wasting, unproductive work meetings.... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

March 2019 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Fetchr: A New Way of Last Mile Delivery

By: V.G. Narayanan and Eren Kuzucu

By mid-2016, five years of aggressive growth had transformed Fetchr from a small logistics startup to a 1,000-employee, full-fledged last-mile delivery company operating across four countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Already beneficiaries of the... View Details

15 Feb 2017
Op-Ed

What Africa Can Teach the United States About Funding Infrastructure Projects

investors, and builders can learn from the African experience, where public-private partnerships and deployments of new technologies are illuminating new ways to approach the task of funding infrastructure despite a scarcity of government... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Construction

March 2025
Case

Taylor Guitars: Making Employee Ownership Work the Taylor Way

By: Dennis Campbell, Petros Kusmu and Stacy Straaberg

In 2013, guitar manufacturer Taylor Guitars’ co-founders Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug were considering several exit options including selling to a competitor or to a private equity firm. The co-founders decided, instead, to embark on a seven-year process to transfer 100%... View Details

summer 1992
Article

Capital Choices: Changing the Way America Invests in Industry

By: M. E. Porter

Keywords: Change; Business Ventures; Investment; Decision Choices and Conditions; Capital; United States

Find at Harvard

06 Nov 2012
Op-Ed

Stop Talking About the Weather and Do Something: Three Ways to Finance Sustainable Cities

The wrath of Hurricane Sandy has illuminated a fundamental question: How do we ensure that our cities are resilient in the face of inevitable future disasters? A destroyed city is not a sustainable city. I'm making the case that it's time to stop complaining about... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Construction; Real Estate; Energy; Utilities

24 Sep 1992
Lecture

Capital Choices: Changing the Way America Invests in Industry

By: W. Carl Kester

Keywords: Capital; Investment; United States

08 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Silos That Work: How the Pandemic Changed the Way We Collaborate

Communication Networks during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Zuzul is an assistant professor in the Strategy Unit at HBS and specializes in how leaders and organizations navigate new industries and periods of dramatic change. A treasure trove of... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

20 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Markets or Communities? The Best Ways to Manage Outside Innovation

after identifying a structural weakness. “Apple has shown the way in how to build a market of external innovators.” According to Harvard Business School professor Karim R. Lakhani, Boeing's approach is an excellent example of how not to... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

November 2006 (Revised March 2010)
Case

Two Ways to Fly South: Lan Airlines and Southwest Airlines

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Tarun Khanna, Jorge Tarzijan and Jordan Mitchell

To maximize their effectiveness, color cases should be printed in color. Looks at the different business models of two highly successful and profitable airlines: Chilean-based Lan Airlines and U.S.-based Southwest Airlines. Lan Airlines pursues a hub-to-spoke... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Service Operations; Competitive Advantage; Air Transportation Industry; United States; Chile