Publications

January 2001 (Revised January 2004)
Case

Ninth House: e-Learning Software

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Frances X. Frei and Corey B. Hajim

Jeff Snipes, CEO of the Ninth House Network, a San Francisco-based E-Learning company, considers a strategy shift to address a recent slump in sales and to attract more customers. The revised strategy would require creating shorter, more directed content that could be... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Service Operations; Organizational Structure; Groups and Teams; Corporate Strategy; Organizational Culture; Learning; Sales; Service Delivery; Entrepreneurship; Service Industry; Service Industry; Service Industry; San Francisco

January 1994 (Revised May 1995)
Case

Xerox: Design for the Environment

By: Richard H.K. Vietor

In 1990, Xerox undertook an "Environmental Leadership Program" designed to make Xerox an industry leader in non-polluting operations, recycling, and products actually designed for the environment. This effort flowed naturally out of the system of total quality... View Details

Keywords: Product Design; Production; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Organizational Design; Environmental Sustainability

Educators

05 Jan 2016
News

Alumni Top Two New Lists of Rising Stars

through the Harvard i-lab; and 2017 MBA-MD candidate Brian Powers, who has coauthored more than 20 peer-review papers and is deputy editor of Healthcare: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation. In addition, the Chronicle of... View Details

Keywords: Forbes; Ambulatory Health Care Services; Ambulatory Health Care Services; Ambulatory Health Care Services; Ambulatory Health Care Services

11 Sep 2000
Research & Ideas

Riding the Internet Fast Track

professor Tom Eisenmann, who also serves on the board of OneMain.com, one of the nation's ten largest Internet service providers, and on the advisory boards of many Internet start-ups. Eisenmann's definition of the get-big-fast strategy... View Details

Keywords: by Peter Jacobs

01 Mar 2005
News

Better Care at Lower Cost

necessary, most patients are in and out in fifteen minutes, and services are covered by most health insurance plans. The clinics are what Christensen calls a “disruptive delivery mechanism.” Medical... View Details

Keywords: Educational Services; Educational Services; Educational Services

August 2021
Teaching Note

Fair Park Covid-19 Mass Vaccination Site (A) and (B)

By: Willy Shih

Teaching Note for HBS Case Nos. 622-003 and 622-004. View Details

Keywords: Operations Improvement; Operations And Processes; Toyota Production System; Operations; Service Operations; Health Pandemics; Service Delivery; Problems and Challenges; Goals and Objectives; Measurement and Metrics; Health Industry; United States

June 2010
Teaching Note

Playing with Fire at Sittercity (A) (TN)

By: Noam T. Wasserman and Rachel Gordon

Note: This mini-Teaching Note was created to provide a brief overview of the teaching plan for this case. Please see the upcoming, fuller Teaching Note for an extensive overview of the underlying research, pedagogical approaches, and other teaching issues. View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Service Delivery; Family Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Growth and Development Strategy; Expansion; Service Industry; Boston

Article

Can Big-Box Retailers Provide Local Health Care?

By: Robert S. Huckman

National retailers, most notably Walmart and Best Buy, are making big bets on their ability to fill this need for local health care. At first glance, these moves are a bit surprising given that these companies have not traditionally been focused on health care... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Local Range; Retail Industry; Health Industry

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2016
Working Paper

Cohort Turnover and Operational Performance: The July Phenomenon in Teaching Hospitals

By: Hummy Song, Robert S. Huckman and Jason R. Barro

We consider the impact of cohort turnover—the planned simultaneous exit of a large number of experienced employees and a similarly sized entry of new workers—on operational performance in the context of teaching hospitals. Specifically, we examine the impact of the... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Health Care Operations; Hospitals; Productivity; Empirical Operations; Service Delivery; Training; Performance Productivity; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States

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Article

Team Scaffolds: How Mesolevel Structures Enable Role-based Coordination in Temporary Groups

By: M. Valentine and A. C. Edmondson

This paper shows how meso-level structures support effective coordination in temporary groups. Prior research on coordination in temporary groups describes how roles encode individual responsibilities so that coordination between relative strangers is possible. We... View Details

Keywords: Fluid Personnel; Team Scaffolds; Team Effectiveness; Role-based Coordination; Multi-method; Service Delivery; Organizational Structure; Groups and Teams; Performance Efficiency

February 1999 (Revised November 1999)
Case

HealthPartners

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer and Nancy Dean Beaulieu

Presents the efforts by HealthPartners to create competition among health care providers in Minnesota on the basis of both quality and price. Also provides some insight into the strategies for changing physician behavior. View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Behavior; Competition; Health Industry; Minnesota

Web

Teaching Support for HBS Faculty | Baker Library

assignments, and learn how to cite their work. What we can help with Case Updates Classroom Presentations Course Materials (Course Reserves and Durable Links) Course Research Drop-Ins Custom Course Products Teach with Special Collections Purchase Requests & (HOLLIS)... View Details

Morton H. Meyerson

massive growth that, at one time, included the addition of 30,000 employees in less than eighteen months. Despite the whirlwind growth, Meyerson built a formidable management team and maintained a highly organized approach in the delivery... View Details

Keywords: Services

01 Jun 1998
News

Devtosh Khare

markets and economic trends in the region and to make some contacts with India's business leaders," he explains. "Then I'll be ready to go out on my own." He believes that India's service sector offers the most exciting business... View Details

Keywords: Orna Feldman photograph by Webb Chappell

02 Apr 2019
Research Event

Women Pay a Higher Career Price in Today's Always-On Work Culture

existential questions for companies that pride themselves in serving clients at any hour. This is especially true for professional services firms in management consulting, law, and finance, the research says. At these companies, top... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Service; Service

2014
Working Paper

The Diseconomies of Queue Pooling: An Empirical Investigation of Emergency Department Length of Stay

By: Hummy Song, Anita L. Tucker and Karen L. Murrell

We conduct an empirical investigation of the impact of queue management on patients' average wait time and length of stay (LOS). Using an Emergency Department's (ED) patient-level data from 2007 to 2010, we find that patients' average wait time and LOS are longer when... View Details

Keywords: Pooling; Queue Management; Strategic Servers; Social Loafing; Empirical Operations; Health Care; Fairness; Management Practices and Processes; Service Delivery; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

Read Now

01 Mar 2010
News

A Helping Hand for Health Care

The HBS Buffalo Club continued its tradition of sponsoring community leaders for HBS Executive Education courses by sending senior management teams from two of the area’s health-care providers to the School’s new Managing Health- care View Details

Keywords: Educational Services; Educational Services; Educational Services; Educational Services; Educational Services

August 2002
Case

MassEnvelopePlus

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Brooke Bartletta and Michelle Heskett

Describes the challenges Steve Grossman, a fourth-generation owner of a small commercial printing company, must face amid industry consolidation, technological changes, and his own run for public office. View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Family Ownership; Problems and Challenges; Leadership; Change Management; Information Technology; Personal Development and Career; Service Delivery; Service Industry; Massachusetts

Educators

August 2006 (Revised September 2007)
Supplement

Istituto Clinico Humanitas (C): Pronto Soccorso

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer

Follows on from the cases Istituto Clinico Humanitas (A) and (B). Describes the design and running of the new Humanitas Emergency Department. Istituto Clinico Humanitas has developed a very efficient operating system for dealing with elective (largely surgical)... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Customer Focus and Relationships; Health Industry; Italy