Publications

02 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

10 Trends to Watch in 2024

The lightning-fast ascent of generative AI isn’t the only sea change on the horizon for businesses in the new year. The global economy is in flux as war, climate change, trade issues, and infrastructure problems demand attention. Many companies continue to struggle to... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

29 Jan 2018
Book

How 'Teaming' Saved 33 Lives in the Chilean Mining Disaster

possible.” Duncan brought experience with long space ights to help solve concerns related to the miners’ physical and psychological survival in their small quarters. NASA engineers played a crucial role in the design of the escape capsule... View Details

Keywords: by Amy C. Edmondson; Mining

08 Nov 2010
Research & Ideas

How to Fix a Broken Marketplace

tackled the market for new medical residents, economists, and lawyers. (Forbes magazine named him one of the world's "seven most powerful new economists.") "Market design is the engineering part of game theory," Roth... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

January 2017 (Revised March 2017)
Case

Royal DSM: From Continuous Transformation to Organic Growth

By: William W. George, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Amram Migdal

Royal DSM CEO Feike Sijbesma was pondering the challenges of shifting DSM’s global organization from the constant transformations of the past 100 years to creating organic growth. When Sijbesma took the helm as CEO in 2007, he further pushed and completed the company’s... View Details

Keywords: Organic Growth; Organizational Change; M＆A; Mergers And Acquisitions; Divestment; Business Ventures; Business Divisions; Business Growth and Maturation; Restructuring; Change; Change Management; Transformation; Transition; Engineering; Chemicals; Mining; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Finance; Capital Markets; Financial Markets; Food; Globalization; Global Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Health; Nutrition; History; Leadership; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Management; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Practices and Processes; Management Style; Organizations; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Ownership; Public Ownership; Performance; Strategy; Adaptation; Consolidation; Corporate Strategy; Value; Value Creation; Biotechnology Industry; Chemical Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Mining Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Europe; Netherlands

03 Mar 2023
Research & Ideas

When Showing Know-How Backfires for Women Managers

combination of observations, interviews, and archival data in The Task Bind: Explaining Gender Differences in Managerial Tasks and Performance, recently published in Administrative Science Quarterly, to analyze 80 retail grocery stores... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Retail; Consumer Products

August 2023 (Revised September 2023)
Case

T.G.S. Transportation: Battery Electric or Hydrogen?

By: Willy C. Shih

Peter Schneider, the President of T.G.S. Transportation, Inc., faced a choice. His company operated drayage trucks that moved containerized cargo between the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland to customers across the State of California, with a focus on the... View Details

Keywords: Decarbonization; Clean Technology; Energy; Energy Policy; Renewable Energy; Environmental Sustainability; Truck Transportation; Transportation Industry; United States; California

Research Summary

Wearing a Red Hat ¨C The Impact of Activist Industrial Policy on Software Development in China

The idea that the government should steer economic development by strategically hand-picking and managing certain industries is controversial but appeals to many developing countries that are eager to upgrade their industries. In this paper, I study China's recent... View Details

February 2010 (Revised November 2013)
Case

Living PlanIT

By: Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson, Susan Thyne and Tiona Zuzul

Living PlanIT is a start-up company that has developed a new, innovative business model for sustainable urbanization. This model reflects the software and technology backgrounds of its founders, Steve Lewis and Malcolm Hutchinson, and is in vivid contrast to other... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; Development Economics; Entrepreneurship; City; Technological Innovation; Environmental Sustainability; Urban Development; Construction Industry; Green Technology Industry; Real Estate Industry; Portugal

04 Nov 2008
First Look

First Look: November 4, 2008

Sanwal of CMI's Engineered Products Division are responsible for formulating a strategy for the new product. A key issue is the price to charge for the pads. The case raises issues of analyzing market potential, aligning price with... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 2021 (Revised December 2021)
Case

Cedar Environmental: Innovation vs. Corruption in Lebanon?

By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Youssef Abdel Aal

The case follows Ziad Abi Chaker, founder and CEO of Cedar Environmental, as he weighs options for how to grow the company in the face of growing economic and political instability in Lebanon in 2019.

Founded after the Lebanese civil war, Cedar... View Details

26 Jul 2023
Research & Ideas

STEM Needs More Women. Recruiters Often Keep Them Out

For mid-career STEM professionals looking to advance their skills and careers, certificate programs at elite universities can offer a fast track. And for universities, such programs are an important and growing revenue stream—and a recruitment tool for women and... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

21 Mar 2018
Research & Ideas

Why Artificial Intelligence Isn't a Sure Thing to Increase Productivity

necessary? Choudhury and his fellow researchers were interested in finding out whether having a background in computer science and engineering (CS&E) would improve patent workers’ ability to use the... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Technology; Information

March 1994 (Revised October 1994)
Case

Reading Energy

By: Forest L. Reinhardt

Reading Energy builds facilities that produce energy from nontraditional fuels. A privately held, entrepreneurial organization, it has spent six years developing a plan to build a waste-to-energy plant in the town of Robbins, Illinois. The plant would burn municipal... View Details

Keywords: Energy Generation; Wastes and Waste Processing; Business and Community Relations; Business Plan; Agreements and Arrangements; Contracts; Risk and Uncertainty; Government and Politics; Environmental Sustainability; Business Strategy; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; Illinois

Find at Harvard

05 Sep 2023
Book

Thriving After Failing: How to Turn Your Setbacks Into Triumphs

Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson experienced her first big-stakes professional failure when she was just starting out in her academic career, some 30 years ago, after a decade working in engineering and consulting. Little... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

February 2016 (Revised May 2016)
Case

Astroscale, Space Debris, and Earth's Orbital Commons

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Angela Acocella and Mayuka Yamazaki

An engineer and technology entrepreneur, Nobu Okada, had turned a mid-life crisis into a bold—some would say quixotic—quest to prevent a tragedy of the commons at the global scale. Namely, Okada believed the accumulation of debris in near-Earth orbital space posed a... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Global Range; Entrepreneurship; Crisis Management; Wastes and Waste Processing; Economics; Aerospace Industry