Publications

Find at Harvard

Corporate accountability is never far from the front page and Harvard Business School trains many future business leaders. But how does HBS formally and informally ensure its members embrace proper business standards? Relying on his first-hand faculty... View Details

April 1993 (Revised May 1993)
Case

Northern Telecom (A): Greenwich Investment Proposal

By: Robert J. Dolan

The business products division has developed a business proposal asking for $50 million to fund the creation of a new telephone system for the small business market. The company's last entry into this marketplace lost $70 million. The new product would face 100... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Communication Technology; Market Entry and Exit; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Investment; Product Development; Telecommunications Industry; Canada

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October 2013 (Revised November 2015)
Case

Southwire and 12 For Life: Scaling Up? (A)

By: Jan W. Rivkin and Ryan Lee

Southwire, a leading maker of cable based in rural Georgia, has partnered with the local school system to staff a factory with at-risk high school students. The positive impact on student outcomes has been remarkable, and the factory makes a profit for the company. Now... View Details

Keywords: Partners and Partnerships; Production; Education; Business and Community Relations; Manufacturing Industry; Education Industry

2003
Chapter

Designing Sustainability at BMW Group: The Designworks/USA Experience

By: Michael W. Toffel, Natalie Hill and Kellie McElhaney

This case study describes how an industrial design company developed a Sustainability Management System (SMS) standard, designed and implemented an SMS throughout its business, and then became the first company in the world to achieve third-party SMS certification. The... View Details

Keywords: Design; Governance Compliance; Management Practices and Processes; Standards; Environmental Sustainability; United States

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Research Summary

Competitive Strategy

By: Michael E. Porter

Porter is engaged in a major new body of work on the theoretical foundations of competitive positioning and the underpinnings of sustainable competitive advantage. This research highlights the distinction between positioning and operational effectiveness; the... View Details

November 1997 (Revised December 2000)
Case

Corn Products International, Inc.

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Tom Clay

A firm that started in corn processing and moved up the value-added food chain decides to spin-off the original commodity part of the business. How does the new spin-off survive and how does it develop a strategy? Firms in the food system are separating out their... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Product Development; Service Delivery; Vertical Integration; Food and Beverage Industry

13 Oct 2015
Blog Post

LGBTSA Spotlight: Alterrell Mills

school. To be a successful general manager is to know your blind spots, and I wanted an opportunity to develop those areas with less career risk. As such, I was drawn to HBS’ learning environment because I thought it would be the best way for a psychology major to... View Details

04 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

Is Health Care Making You Better—or Dead?

coupled with this delivery system that was, wittingly or not, heartless. And I've been at it since then. I wrote Market-Driven Health Care, which was a very popular book. But the part of it that I thought was the most important, which is... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Health

March 1997 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Hospital Equipment Corporation

By: Clayton M. Christensen and Rory McDonald

Hospital Equipment Corp. is a very successful maker of hospital beds. Due to outstanding performance in new product development, it grew to dominate its primary market and is searching for other opportunities to grow through new product development. It discovers that... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Innovation and Management; Opportunities; Business Processes; Product Development; Technological Innovation; Expansion; Markets; Problems and Challenges; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; United States

July 2000 (Revised August 2005)
Case

Deaconess-Glover Hospital (A)

Chronicles the initial efforts to teach a health care organization to manage itself according to the principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS). Describes the decision and dilemmas that arose from the implementation experiment. Builds on Bowen and Spear's earlier... View Details

Keywords: Management; Service Delivery; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Massachusetts

2010
Working Paper

When Open Architecture Beats Closed: The Entrepreneurial Use of Architectural Knowledge

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

This paper describes how entrepreneurial firms can use superior architectural knowledge to open up a technical system to gain strategic advantage. The strategy involves, first, identifying "bottlenecks" in the existing system, and then creating a new open architecture... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Investment Return; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Design; Organizational Design; Competitive Advantage; Technology Industry

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Research Summary

Overview of Research

My research examines approaches to improving the performance of our health care delivery system with a primary focus on health information technology. Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of my program, my dissertation draws upon theories and insights from... View Details

October 1993 (Revised September 1994)
Case

Northern Telecom (A): Greenwich Investment Proposal (Condensed)

By: Robert J. Dolan

The business products division has developed a business proposal asking for $50 million to fund the creation of a new telephone system for the small business market. The company's last entry into this marketplace lost $70 million. The new product would face 100... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Communication Technology; Market Entry and Exit; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Investment; Product Development; Telecommunications Industry; Canada

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2025
Working Paper

Exports in Disguise? Trade Rerouting During the U.S.-China Trade War

By: Ebehi Iyoha, Edmund Malesky, Jaya Wen and Sung-Ju Wu

This paper introduces a new measure of tariff evasion through rerouting and applies it to the 2018 U.S.–China trade war, focusing on Vietnam as a transit country. We use transaction-level trade data and define rerouting as the flow of a granular eight-digit Harmonized... View Details

Keywords: Trade; International Relations; Logistics; China; Viet Nam; United States

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11 Nov 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Increased Speed Equals Increased Wait: The Impact of a Reduction in Emergency Department Ultrasound Order Processing Time

Keywords: by Jillian Berry Jaeker, Anita L. Tucker & Michael H. Lee; Health

April 1991 (Revised July 1992)
Case

Koito Manufacturing Ltd.

By: W. Carl Kester and Robert W. Lightfoot

Having acquired a 26% stake in Koito Manufacturing, a Japanese automotive parts supplier in the Toyota Group, T. Boone Pickens seeks a seat on Koito's board of directors. Koito's management resists, claiming Pickens is an unhelpful greenmailer, not a true long-term... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Debates; Corporate Governance; Production; Supply Chain; Performance Efficiency; Welfare; Auto Industry; Japan; United States

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