Publications

July 2013
Case

Novozymes: Establishing the Cellulosic Ethanol Value Chain

By: Willy Shih and Sen Chai

As the world's largest producer of industrial enzymes, Novozymes had invested heavily for many years to bio-engineer enzymes that could break down cellulose into fermentable sugar. In 2010, the company had launched what it thought would become a breakthrough product... View Details

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June 2014
Article

The Price of Wall Street's Power

By: Gautam Mukunda

Over and over again, executives make decisions that aren't in their companies' best interests, in response to pressure from Wall Street. Though many believe this happens because firms have a "fiduciary duty" to maximize shareholder returns, U.S. executives do not, as a... View Details

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November 2008 (Revised February 2009)
Case

Omron: Sensing Society

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Ethan S Bernstein

"Leading profitable growth is only part of the goal. We cannot live without breathing, but we do not live in order to take a breath,” said Omron's President and CEO, Hisao Sakuta, in 2008. Omron, a $7B global supplier of sensors, control system components, advanced... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Transformation; Competitive Advantage; Leadership; Goals and Objectives; Globalized Firms and Management; Innovation and Invention; Values and Beliefs; Mission and Purpose; Electronics Industry

October 2007
Article

Opinion: Place Your Bets on the Future You Want

By: Forest Reinhardt

This piece posits that success in a carbon-constrained world will be determined by innovation and acumen, requiring companies to make bold moves. View Details

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Innovation and Invention; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Leadership; Success; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Competitive Advantage

Connections Education (CE), now part of Pearson’s Online and Blended Learning business, was created in 2001 to develop a new, more flexible, and more personalized type of learning for students for whom the traditional classroom was not a good fit. In early 2017, CE... View Details

March 2025
Case

Hurtigruten: Sea Zero

By: Christian Kaps and Michael W. Toffel

Hurtigruten was deciding whether the next ship they built should be fully electric. But such a vessel's battery, the size of electric cars, needed to be charged on the ship's multi-day voyage along the Norwegian coast. Before making such a $250 million investment, the... View Details

Keywords: Energy Sources; Alternative Energy; Renewable Energy; Climate Change; Ship Transportation; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Sustainability; Innovation and Management; Green Technology; Investment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Shipping Industry; Tourism Industry; Transportation Industry; Travel Industry; Norway; Europe

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2018
Working Paper

Show or Tell? Improving Agent Decision Making in a Tanzanian Mobile Money Field Experiment

By: Jason Acimovic, Chris Parker, David F. Drake and Karthik Balasubramanian

When workers make operational decisions, the firm's global knowledge and the workers’ domain-specific knowledge complement each other. Oftentimes workers have the final decision-making power. Two key decisions a firm makes when designing systems to support these... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Decision Making; Training; Performance Improvement; Money; Mobile Technology; Developing Countries and Economies; Financial Services Industry

SSRN

17 May 2010
Research & Ideas

What Brazil Teaches About Investor Protection

dissertation, the World Bank, the International Corporate Governance Network, the OCDE, and so on were promoting this principle as a way to overcome the abuses of managers or controlling shareholders who... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Banking; Financial Services

Forthcoming
Article

Regulatory Incentives for Innovation: The FDA's Breakthrough Therapy Designation

By: Amitabh Chandra, Jennifer Kao, Kathleen L. Miller and Ariel Dora Stern

Regulators of new products confront a tradeoff between speeding a product to market and collecting additional product quality information. The FDA's Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD) provides an opportunity to understand if regulators can use new policy to... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Government Administration; Research and Development; Pharmaceutical Industry

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Program

Program for Leadership Development

Summary Innovative companies know that long-term success requires a pipeline of visionary leaders who can help build and secure a competitive edge. The Program for Leadership Development (PLD) prepares... View Details

22 May 2012
First Look

First Look: May 22

work-life balance and with their work in general. And the firm was better able to recruit and retain employees. Clients also benefited-often in... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Program

Advanced Management Program

Summary Market volatility, digital transformation, and innovation are changing the way companies compete in every industry—and increasing the demand for business leaders who are global changemakers. Whether... View Details

21 Feb 2012
First Look

First Look: Feb. 21

innovation only if the incumbent's market-assessment capabilities are strong. In doing so, the entrant acts preemptively to discourage the incumbent from pursuing the radical innovation View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2008
Article

It's Time to Make Management a True Profession

By: Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana

In the face of the recent institutional breakdown of trust in business, managers are losing legitimacy. To regain public trust, management needs to become a true profession in much the way medicine and law have, argue Khurana and Nohria of Harvard Business School. True... View Details

Keywords: Competency and Skills; Education; Ethics; Corporate Accountability; Management; Trust; Value Creation

December 1999 (Revised December 2000)
Case

Charles Schwab: A Category of One

By: Stephen P. Bradley and Thomas H. Esperson

Examines Charles Schwab's on-line discount brokerage firm and questions whether or not Schwab has effectively balanced the old and new world of stock trading, and has remained a leader between giants like Merrill Lynch and Internet pure plays like E-Trade. Also looks... View Details

Keywords: Financial Institutions; Banks and Banking; Technological Innovation; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry

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2016
Working Paper

Operations in the On-Demand Economy: Staffing Services with Self-Scheduling Capacity

By: Itai Gurvich, Martin Lariviere and Antonio Moreno

Motivated by recent innovations in service delivery such as ride-sharing services and work-from-home call centers, we study capacity management when workers self-schedule. Our service provider chooses capacity to maximize its profit (revenue from served customers minus... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Servers; On-demand Economy; Independent Capacity; Distributed Systems; Uber; Service Operations; Performance Capacity