Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,902)
- Faculty Publications (1,051)
- Article
MIT Roundtable on Corporate Risk Management
By: Robert C. Merton
Against the backdrop of financial crisis, a distinguished group of academics and practitioners discusses the contribution of financial management and innovation to corporate growth and value, along with the pitfalls and unintended consequences of such innovation.... View Details
- September 2008
- Case
Pfizer Inc: Building an Innovation Center
By: Stefan H. Thomke and Ashok Nimgade
The case describes Pfizer's efforts to build and run an innovation center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As the center goes through different periods of leadership and strategic models, its relationship with the corporation and other research sites is explored. The case... View Details
- 2008
- Book
Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage
By: Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
In a world of stiffening competition, business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet most organizations struggle in this area--not with formulating strategy but with executing it, or putting their strategy into action. Owing to execution failures, companies realize... View Details
- July 2008 (Revised October 2012)
- Case
Affinity Plus (A)
By: Dennis Campbell and Peter Tufano
The executive team at Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union has pushed the concept of members first deeply throughout the organization, empowering employees to put member-owners' interests ahead of either the organization's interests or their own interests. As a result of... View Details
- 2008
- Other Unpublished Work
From Public Purpose to Financial Economics: The Linked Ecologies of Economics and Business in Twentieth Century America
By: Marion Fourcade and Rakesh Khurana
As the main producers of managerial elites, business schools represent strategic research sites for understanding the formation of economic practices and representations. This article draws on historical material to analyze the changing place of economics in American... View Details
- 2008
- Simulation
Strategic Innovation Simulation: Back Bay Battery
By: Willy C. Shih and Clayton Christensen
This online simulation allows students to play the role of a business unit manager at Back Bay Battery Company who faces the dilemma of balancing a portfolio of investment strategies across products in the rechargeable battery space. Players have to manage R&D... View Details
- April 2008 (Revised July 2011)
- Background Note
Strategic Decline
By: David J. Collis and Jan W. Rivkin
This note first documents the facts around the sustainability of competitive advantage. It then observes that the demise of a previously successful strategy, in the first instance, often comes from some change in the external environment. It, therefore, characterizes... View Details
- March 2008 (Revised December 2011)
- Case
IBM Values and Corporate Citizenship
IBM's transformation into a globally integrated enterprise (GIE) began with a conviction about what should never change. Since its founding in 1911, the company operated under a set of principles articulated by founder Thomas Watson and became known for a strong... View Details
- March 2008 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
Transforming AMFAM
By: Rakesh Khurana, Rajiv Lal and Cathy Ross
On a winter day in December 2007 at the American Family Mutual Insurance Company (AMFAM) headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, Dave Anderson and Jack Salzwedel remained in the conference room after the senior management meeting had concluded. Anderson, CEO of AMFAM since... View Details
- March 2008
- Case
Cambrian House
By: Peter A. Coles, Karim R. Lakhani and Andrew P. McAfee
Cambrian House builds internet-based products and services by relying entirely on its user community for all aspects of its innovation and new product development process. Users suggest ideas for new products and services and also participate in a monthly voting... View Details
- March 2008 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
Purolator Courier Ltd.
By: Rajiv Lal and Catherine Ross
On a fall day in September 2003, Robert Swanborough made his way down a thickly carpeted hallway in Purolator's headquarters in Toronto, Canada, toward a meeting with his two deputies. Several months earlier, Swanborough, then vice-president of Marketing, had been... View Details
- March 2008
- Article
Linguistic Network Configurations: Management of Innovation in Design-intensive Firms
By: Claudio Dell'Era, Alessio Marchesi and Roberto Verganti
In today's business and academic arenas, design is more and more viewed as an important strategic resource. In fact, over the last couple of years, we have seen a real explosion in business and research literature that see scholars and companies alike trying to... View Details
- March 2008
- Article
What Have We Learned from Market Design?
By: Alvin E. Roth
This essay discusses some things we have learned about markets, in the process of designing marketplaces to fix market failures. To work well, marketplaces have to provide thickness, i.e. they need to attract a large enough proportion of the potential participants in... View Details
Keywords: Risk Management; Market Design; Market Participation; Market Transactions; Failure; Safety
- March 2008
- Article
When Growth Stalls
By: Matthew S. Olson, Derek C. M. van Bever and Seth Verry
This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading.
An abrupt and lasting drop in revenue growth is a crisis that can strike even the... View Details
- February 2008 (Revised September 2010)
- Case
LeapFrog Enterprises
By: Lynda M. Applegate and Elizabeth Collins
Explores the success factors leading to the company's rise to the number three ranking in the aggressively competitive toy industry. LeapFrog has made the strategic decision to expand beyond the toy industry and enter the educational technology and services industry.... View Details
- 2008
- Article
Ambidexterity as a Dynamic Capability: Resolving the Innovator's Dilemma
By: Charles O'Reilly and Michael Tushman
How do organizations survive in the face of change? Underlying this question is a rich debate about whether organizations can adapt—and if so, how. One perspective, organizational ecology, presents evidence suggesting that most organizations are largely inert and... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Embracing Commitment and Performance: CEOs and Practices Used to Manage Paradox
By: Tobias Fredberg, Michael Beer, Russell Eisenstat, Nathaniel Foote and Flemming Norrgren
We tend to assume that great leaders must make difficult choices between two or more conflicting outcomes. In an interview study with 26 CEOs of top American and European companies (incl. IKEA, Campbell Soups, Nokia, H&M), we find that instead of choosing between... View Details
- January 2008
- Article
Mastering the Management System
By: Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
Companies have always found it hard to balance pressing operational concerns with long-term strategic priorities. The tension is critical: World-class processes won't lead to success without the right strategic direction, and the best strategy in the world will get... View Details
- January 2008
- Article
Putting Leadership Back into Strategy
In recent decades an infusion of economics has lent the study of strategy much needed theory and empirical evidence. Strategy consultants, armed with frameworks and techniques, have stepped forward to help managers analyze their industries and position their companies... View Details
- December 2007
- Background Note
Tools and Tactics for Transformation: Three "Whats" and Three "Hows"
By: James K. Sebenius and Stephen Friedman
Important transformation at Goldman Sachs, where one of the authors was Chairman, required analysis, political leadership, and management in order to fundamentally shift the strategy, people, and culture on a sustainable basis. After describing the actions needed to... View Details