Design thinking - Publications - Faculty & Research

31 May 2017
What Do You Think?

Can Amazon Do What Walmart Couldn’t, Stop the 'Wheel of Retailing'?

categories, including those served by Walmart. Amazon’s success raises questions about the future of retailing. Is an “Amazon 2.0” even now in the early stages of design and introduction? Is the wheel of retailing any longer a valid or... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Retail

Web

Commercialization of the Polarizer - Edwin H. Land & Polaroid | Harvard Business School

charismatic style of presentation along with Polaroid's inviting advertising literature and product packaging bolstered sales. The company's colorful, easy-to-read promotional kits for its glare-free desk lamps, crafted by industrial View Details

Web

2024 Reunion Presentations - Alumni

Weinstein, and the Sackler family. But we rarely think about the many people who supported their unethical or criminal behavior—business partners, employees, investors, news organizations, and others. And whether we’re aware of it or not,... View Details

14 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Restarting Under Uncertainty: Managerial Experiences from Around the World

As economies reopen after forced shutdowns caused by COVID-19, managers around the world are faced with a dual challenge: keep the workforce safe while preserving business viability in an evolving and volatile market. How should businesses start to View Details

Keywords: by Raffaella Sadun, Andrea Bertoni, Alexia Delfino, Giovanni Fassio, and Mariapaola Testa

03 May 2010
Research & Ideas

What Is the Future of MBA Education?

analytical knowledge to more of what we call "doing" (skills) and "being" (a sense of purpose and identity) must occur. Business schools need to think innovatively about how best to use the resources available to them. For example, there... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education

Aug 2013
Conference Presentation

Brokerage Spaces: How Informal Networks Transform Formal Structure In The Pursuit Of Complex Tasks

By: Ranjay Gulati and Luciana Silvestri

Keywords: Ambiguity; Cognition; Collaboration; Networks; Organizational Design; Cognition and Thinking

Citation

06 Aug 2018
Research & Ideas

Supersmart Manufacturing Tools are Lowering Prices on TVs, Bulbs, and Solar Panels

components that support IoT will almost certainly face this pressure. Again, we’ll see this primarily at the level of intermediate goods, and that will pass through to lower selling prices on a range of products. On the design tool side,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Manufacturing; Electronics

11 Jul 2012
Research & Ideas

The Future of Boards

eight experts and practitioners, all with ties to HBS, to examine the state of boards today, what lies ahead, and what needs to change in the context of an increasingly global world that has seen the complexity of corporations increase to a dizzying degree. “I do View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

30 Oct 2005
Research & Ideas

Tuning Jobs to Fit Your Company

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, professor Robert Simons wrote about how organizations can design jobs for maximum performance. In this excerpt, Simons discusses what he terms the four basic "spans" of a job—control,... View Details

Keywords: by Robert Simons

28 May 2019
News

3-Minute Briefing: Tom Hulme (MBA 2007)

use digital tools to take the friction out of bringing together a diverse set of people to co-create and iterate. That became OpenIDEO. We now have a couple hundred thousand people collaborating online for the social good. Most businesses start with the executives... View Details

Keywords: April White

01 Dec 2022
News

Case Study: Your Call Is Important to Us

verticals while the sales and marketing organization expands, but there might be a happy medium—going just slightly deeper, for example, instead of taking on a whole new set of problems, end-to-end. Which approach do you think the... View Details

Keywords: Computer Systems Design and Related Services; Computer Systems Design and Related Services

2010
Other Unpublished Work

Fashioning an Industry: Cognitive Processes and the Construction of Worth in the Institutionalization of a New Industry

By: Mukti Khaire

This inductive study of the high-end fashion industry in India explores how the worth of a new industry is constructed. Interviews with entrepreneurs and constituents of the field revealed that the worth of the industry was constructed through framing by early... View Details

Keywords: Market Design; Framework; Entrepreneurship; Value; Cognition and Thinking; Industry Structures; Fashion Industry; India

Citation

04 May 2007
What Do You Think?

How Do Managers Think?

Summing Up Can managers acquire ways of thinking or ways of learning from doctors? Managers can learn from an understanding of how doctors think. But whether the lessons are profound or even totally applicable was a matter of discussion... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

08 Oct 2010
What Do You Think?

Will Transparency in CEO Compensation Have Unintended Consequences?

constant reminder of the enormity of the leak that it hastened actions that would otherwise have taken longer and been much less effective in stopping the leak and dealing with the cleanup. Now comes a little-publicized provision of the Dodd-Frank legislation View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

07 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

How the U.S. Army Develops Leaders

high turnover, waning commitment, missed recruiting goals, and officer retention nightmares. By studying the development of professional identity over time within the Army's career structure, we hoped to identify a conceptual leverage point potentially capable of... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

06 Nov 2013
What Do You Think?

Is Top-Down Resource Allocation on the Rise?

organization is still important for the best results. A number of factors were cited in determining the mix of inputs, responsibilities, and decisions associated with an RAP designed to maintain organizational agility over its life cycle.... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

01 Sep 2016
News

Clay Christensen on Competing Against Luck

outlines—the “theory of jobs to be done”—and how that concept might play out in the auto industry. —Dan Morrell Your theory essentially reframes how managers think about their products or services—as a sort of job that the customer is... View Details

01 Mar 2004
Lessons from the Classroom

Mission to Mars: It Really Is Rocket Science

more effectively design and measure complex projects and organizations. Sean Silverthorne: What drew you to the NASA/JPL Mars program as potential case material? Alan MacCormack: First, it was an ideal context in which to explore one of... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

07 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

The Organizational Model for Open Source

foundations with formal boards and designated roles and responsibilities. Now there is a wide range of foundations that are emerging. At one end of the continuum are nonprofit foundations that act as little more than legal shells to hold... View Details

Keywords: by Mallory Stark

15 Nov 2018
News

Don’t Be Afraid of AI

Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on SoundCloud More Skydeck episodes Terminator 3 clip: Warner Bros. Pictures © 2003. Dan Morrell: I think one of the biggest mainstream crossovers that artificial intelligence has had on the modern era is the... View Details