Publications

2022
Book

Productive Tensions: How Every Leader Can Tackle Innovation's Toughest Trade-Offs

By: Chris Bingham and Rory McDonald

Why is leading innovation in nascent business environments so distressingly hit-or-miss? More than 90% of high-potential ventures don’t reach their projected targets. Surveys show that 80% of executives consider innovation crucial to their growth strategy, but only 6%... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Innovation and Management; Organizational Culture; Leadership Style; Decision Making

28 Jan 2021
News

Lessons from the U.S.’s Rocky Vaccine Rollout

January 2018
Supplement

BeiGene Supplemental PowerPoint

By: Willy C. Shih and Jimmy Zhang

BeiGene was a biopharmaceutical company founded on exploiting a temporal regulatory policy discontinuity. Because of regulatory challenges in China, most innovative new drugs launched there four to six years after their initial U.S. launches. This gave BeiGene a window... View Details

Keywords: Biotechnology; Pharmaceutical Company; Pharmaceuticals; China; Regulatory Environment; Business Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Situation or Environment; Pharmaceutical Industry; Biotechnology Industry; China

July 1987 (Revised October 1995)
Case

Phillips 66: Controlling a Company Through Crisis

By: Lynda M. Applegate

The downstream operations subsidiary of a major U.S. petroleum company is faced with major restructuring decisions and responds by developing an Executive Information System (EIS) which allows for increased responsiveness, wider span of control, and higher levels of... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Information Management; Governance Controls; Organizational Design; Crisis Management; Communication; Management Teams; Growth Management; Mining Industry; Energy Industry; United States

November 2002
Case

Siemens ShareNet: Building a Knowledge Network

By: Alan D. MacCormack, Sven Volpel and Kerry Herman

Describes the development of ShareNet, an innovative knowledge management system used by a division of Siemens. ShareNet attempts to capture the knowledge and experience of Siemen's many dispersed sales and marketing units around the globe, making it available to all.... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Investment Return; Revenue; Knowledge Acquisition; Knowledge Management; Sales

September 2020
Case

Drinkworks: Home Bar by Keurig

By: Sunil Gupta, Jonathan Levav and Julia Kelley

In the summer of 2018, Drinkworks CEO Nathaniel Davis needed to make a number of go-to-market decisions ahead of his company’s upcoming product launch. Formed through a joint venture between Keurig Dr. Pepper and Anheuser-Busch InBev, Drinkworks had developed an... View Details

Jan W. Rivkin is a Professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. In the past, he has served as Faculty Chair of the MBA Program, Senior Associate Dean for Research, and head of the Strategy Unit. His research, course development, and teaching focus on... View Details

Keywords: airline; computer; internet; music; transportation

May 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Cotopaxi: Managing Growth for Good

By: Andy Wu and Laura Huang

Cotopaxi, an innovative outdoor gear business targeting millennials, focuses on profit and social impact. This registered benefit corporation was formed by Davis Smith who coalesced his experiences as a Wharton MBA student along with professional knowledge from an... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Social Venture; Benefit Corporation; B-Corp; Retail; Consumer Products; Apparel; Social Impact; Social Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Product Positioning; Social Enterprise; Mission and Purpose; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry

April 1995 (Revised July 1995)
Case

Power Play (B): Sega in 16-bit Video Games

Home video-game systems were pioneered by the U.S. company Atari in the mid-1970s. After going through boom and bust in the early 1980s, the industry was resurrected in the mid-1980s by the Japanese company Nintendo. With its 8-bit video-game system, Nintendo... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Competition; Video Game Industry; Japan; United States

02 Mar 2007
What Do You Think?

What Is the Government’s Role in US Health Care?

Summing Up This month's exchange of ideas regarding U.S. healthcare reform ranged far and wide. Some of us were interested primarily in the issue of cost escalation and how to contain it. Others addressed issues of quality. For still... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Health

2008
Article

Market Leadership and Strategic Investments in Innovation: The Adoption of E-Business Capabilities

By: Kristina Steffenson McElheran

This study focuses on whether more-productive firms are more likely to adopt process innovations and why. The empirical context is the adoption of e-business practices among U.S. manufacturing plants in early 2000. Based on detailed data from the U.S. Census of... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Innovation Strategy; Leadership; Motivation and Incentives; Competitive Advantage; Technology Adoption; Manufacturing Industry; United States

2023
Working Paper

Advances in Power-to-Gas Technologies: Cost and Conversion Efficiency

By: Gunther Glenk, Philip Holler and Stefan Reichelstein

Widespread adoption of hydrogen as an energy carrier is widely believed to require continued advances in Power-to-Gas (PtG) technologies. Here we provide a comprehensive assessment of the dynamics of system prices and conversion efficiency for three currently prevalent... View Details

Keywords: Clean Tech; Decarbonization; Carbon Emissions; Learning By Doing; Environment; Energy; Environmental Management; Sustainable Cities; Price; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Transportation Industry; Europe; North America; South America; Africa; Asia

SSRN

Research Summary

Dissertation Summary

From a contractual viewpoint, the employment relations observed in the early 1960s in large unionized manufacturing firms in the U.S. and Japan represented two contrasting cases. Employment relations in the U.S. were based largely on explicit, elaborate, and... View Details

May 2014
Teaching Note

Gunfire at Sea (multi-media case)

By: Michael Tushman

This short video illustrates the challenges of leading innovation and change. This classic case (one of the oldest in the HBS system) retains its timeliness. The case describes how Lt. Sims develops a new form of gunfire at sea—continuous aim gunfire. While 3,000% more... View Details

Keywords: Leading Change; National Security; Innovation Leadership; Public Administration Industry; United States

2025
Working Paper

Crossing the Design-Use Divide: How Process Manipulation Shapes the Design and Use of AI

By: Rebecca Karp

Existing literature often separates research on the design of innovations from their implementation and use, neglecting the role of selection—how organizations choose which innovations to implement. Although scholars suggest scientific approaches for selecting novel... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Technology Adoption; Groups and Teams; Prejudice and Bias

Read Now

December 1994 (Revised June 1995)
Case

State Street Boston Corporation: Leading with Information Technology

A financial institution, State Street Boston Corp., is transformed from regional bank to global custodian and money manager. The corresponding evolution of the company's information systems is illustrated, focusing on the role attributed to information technology in a... View Details

Keywords: Expansion; Information Technology; Business Strategy; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; United States