Publications

May 2004 (Revised December 2004)
Case

Slingshot Technology, Inc. (A)

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Elizabeth Collins

Slingshot Technology Inc. (STI) is a privately held software start-up founded in 1995 focused on identifying emerging spaces in the IT services industry and partnering with vendors selling promising but unproven technologies in those spaces. The vendors used STI to... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Private Ownership; Opportunities; Partners and Partnerships; Entrepreneurship; Applications and Software; Intellectual Property; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry

06 Jan 2022
News

The Post-Pandemic Office Should Be a Clubhouse

October 2002 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Intermountain Health Care

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer, Amy C. Edmondson and Laura Feldman

Intermountain Health Care (IHC), an integrated delivery system based in Utah, has adopted a new strategy for managing health care delivery. The approach focuses management attention not only on the facilities where care takes place but also on physician decision making... View Details

Keywords: Ethnicity; Innovation Strategy; Cost Management; Information Technology; Organizational Structure; Technology Adoption; Performance Improvement; Problems and Challenges; Adoption; Change Management; Cost vs Benefits; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Utah

May 1997
Teaching Note

Product Development Process, Organization and Improvement, Instructor's Note

By: Marco Iansiti

Explores how development projects fit (or do not fit) within a firm's development strategy and its wider competitive goals. Module materials, and this note, focus on two broad approaches to process design (sequential and flexible) that were originally introduced in the... View Details

Keywords: Goals and Objectives; Management Practices and Processes; Product Development; Performance Improvement; Competition

03 Jan 2011
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Articles of 2010

dispersed around the globe. But the one theme that has attracted the most HBS Working Knowledge readers over our 11-year history is how to improve personal leadership skills. A third of the articles on this page relate to improving work... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

September 1992 (Revised August 2004)
Case

Martin Marietta: Managing Corporate Ethics (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine

Senior managers at Martin Marietta are considering two questions: how to assess the company's seven-year-old ethics program; and how to deal with employees' fear of retribution--real or imagined--for alerting the corporate ethics office to potential problems. The case... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Resignation and Termination; Employees; Law; Business or Company Management; Programs

Research Summary

Current Research

Professor Gardner’s research investigates two primary research questions, both particularly relevant to the management of professional service firms: (1) How are project teams able to most effectively use their members’ expertise in order... View Details

2011
Working Paper

The Contingent Effect of Absorptive Capacity: An Open Innovation Analysis

By: Andrew A. King and Karim R. Lakhani

Technological advancement and innovation requires the integration of both external knowledge and internal inventiveness. In this paper, we unpack the concept of absorptive capacity and separately explore the effect of different types of prior experience on the capacity... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Performance Capacity; Technology Adoption

SSRN

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05 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

How New BofA Executives Learn its ’Deep Smarts’

Editor's note: How does an organization hold on to its wealth of accumulated knowledge when the knowledge-holders depart? It's a very real dilemma made even more critical as Baby Boomers begin their mass exit into retirement. The new book... View Details

Keywords: Re: Dorothy A. Leonard; Banking

September 2016
Article

The Effect of Target Difficulty on Target Completion: The Case of Reducing Carbon Emissions

By: Ioannis Ioannou, Shelley Xin Li and George Serafeim

Targets are an integral component of management control systems and play a significant role in achieving desirable performance outcomes. We focus on a key environmental performance objective—reduction of carbon emissions—as a setting in which to examine how target... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Target-setting; Management Accounting; Management Accounting And Control Systems; Control Systems; Sustainable Development; Environment; Goals and Objectives; Climate Change; Management Systems; Accounting; Environmental Sustainability

Article

'Matter Battles': Cognitive Representations, Boundary Objects, and the Failure of Collaboration in Two Smart Cities

By: Tiona Zuzul

In this paper, I present a longitudinal study of two smart city projects that brought together experts from diverse knowledge domains. Both projects structured collaboration around the development of boundary objects that could integrate actors’ expertise. In both... View Details

Keywords: Smart Cities; Interpersonal Conflict; Boundary Objects; Cooperation; Failure

SSRN

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Research Summary

Vicarious Learning in Organizations

To advance the study of how individuals learn through their interactions with others, Professor Myers has adopted a vicarious learning theory lens. Vicarious learning allows individuals to learn from the outcomes of others’ experiences, rather than solely their own... View Details

Keywords: Learning And Development; Learning; Health Industry

29 Jun 2015
HBS Case

Consumer-centered Health Care Depends on Accessible Medical Records

insurance company as well as one about IBM Watson Health, to explore advances by other players in the integrated patient data market. Note to readers: John Quelch invites Working Knowledge readers to comment... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Health; Technology

05 Jul 2022
Op-Ed

Hear Me Out: Introverts Can Be Loud and You Might Like Microsoft Teams

We've been encouraging readers to share feedback and observations about Working Knowledge articles by email, resulting in a slew of thoughtful responses. Here are a few comments from June, published with permission: Re: "Extroverts, Your... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

May 1997
Teaching Note

Managing Product Development: Matching Technology with Context, Instructor's Note

By: Marco Iansiti

This overview to Managing Product Development (MPD) both previews course material, cases, exercises, and lectures--and provides its conceptual and academic underpinnings. Additionally, this note links these materials to the activities students will be undertaking in... View Details

Keywords: Curriculum and Courses; Product Development; Knowledge Management; Performance; Projects; Management Practices and Processes; Opportunities; Strategy; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

18 Dec 2020
News

Making Doctors Effective Managers and Leaders

July 2002 (Revised December 2002)
Case

Mercer Management Consulting (A)

By: Thomas J. DeLong and Michael Echenberg

Insurance giant Marsh & McLennan acquires management consulting firms Temple, Barker & Sloane (TBS) in 1987 and Strategic Planning Associates (SPA) in 1990 and sets out to merge the two. The merger proceeds slowly and painfully. Following the February 1990 merger,... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Decision Making; Organizational Culture; Personal Development and Career; Horizontal Integration; Consulting Industry