trucking - Publications - Faculty & Research

April 2020
Background Note

U.S. Food Retail During the Pandemic: March 2020

By: José B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred

This note, written in late March 2020 and mainly U.S. focused, looks at the unfolding impact of the coronavirus pandemic on food retailers and their suppliers. It allows student to consider the challenges facing food retail executives as they navigate urgent supply... View Details

Keywords: Coronavirus Pandemic; Risk and Uncertainty; Risk Management; Food; Supply Chain; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers; Trade; Crisis Management; Health Pandemics; Food and Beverage Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Retail Industry; United States

Citation

Educators

Purchase

February 2019 (Revised May 2021)
Case

Electric Car Wars, 2018

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

Electric cars had long been championed by environmentalists as a superior solution to the internal combustion engine (ICE), but, despite large government incentives and strong pioneering efforts by a few automakers over the years, electric and hybrid cars and light... View Details

Citation

Educators

Purchase

12 Sep 2023
Book

Successful, But Still Feel Empty? A Happiness Scholar and Oprah Have Advice for You

but may not be for everyone. Consider whether you have lots of interests. You might be happier with a “transitory” career that sees you “waiting tables in Denver, and now you are working for a moving company in Tucson. In a few years, you might be driving a long-haul... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

16 May 2023
HBS Case

How KKR Got More by Giving Ownership to the Factory Floor: ‘My Kids Are Going to College!’

wouldn’t work if the workers didn’t care and didn’t feel like the owners cared about them. Stavros and chief executive Dave Bangert dove in personally. “If people see me driving around in a truck or working in a factory all week, that... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

26 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

Why Japanese Businesses Are So Good at Surviving Crises

exposure to radiation was unlikely. Truck drivers were refusing to deliver supplies to the city. Niinami intuitively understood that reopening a convenience store there would bring back a sense of normalcy and create hope for the city’s... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

19 Jan 2023
Research & Ideas

What Makes Employees Trust (vs. Second-Guess) AI?

holds in higher stakes settings such as medical diagnosis and treatment or credit lending.” That finding may be useful across industries from transportation to medicine as AI evolves and the quality—and quantity—of data climbs, DeStefano says. Researchers are working... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

18 Jul 2023
Research & Ideas

Will Global Demand for Oil Peak This Decade?

Is the globe’s thirst for oil finally topping out? A major international energy watcher says yes, predicting last month that demand for global oil for transport will peak around 2026, plateau for all uses by 2028, and possibly hit a zenith by the end of the decade.... View Details

Keywords: by Alvin Powell, Harvard Gazette; Energy; Industrial Products; Auto; Green Technology

07 Jul 2019
HBS Case

Walmart's Workforce of the Future

investment that immediately improved its ecommerce infrastructure. Walmart has also piloted and invested in robots to perform a variety of functions, from unloading trucks to scrubbing floors to scanning shelves and bringing items out of... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

22 Feb 2018
Book

The New History of American Capitalism

recently when a series of actions, many profit-driven, others unwitting, accelerated financialization. Second, the new history of American capitalism targets the lived experience of people and groups as they assimilate—and reshape—the political economy they engage. No... View Details

Keywords: Manufacturing

31 Mar 2022
Op-Ed

Navigating the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ in Professional Services

used by D. Darryl Wyckoff to explain why the operating ratio—operating cost to revenue—was highest for mid-sized firms in his 1973 study of the trucking industry. It applies, perhaps with even greater power, in the human-capital-intensive... View Details

Keywords: by Ashish Nanda

16 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

Your Customers Have Changed. Here's How to Engage Them Again.

Maersk, a leader in shipping services, kept its sailors on ships to ensure their safety and continued cross-national shipping. Alibaba and JD.com employed mandatory health checks and use of safety equipment in its factories and delivery View Details

Keywords: by Rohit Deshpandé, Ofer Mintz, and Imran S. Currim; Retail; Service

21 Dec 2011
Research & Ideas

The Most Common Strategy Mistakes

define industries broadly, following the influential work of Theodore Levitt some decades ago. His famous example was railroads that failed to see that they were in the transportation business, and so they missed the threat posed by View Details

Keywords: by Joan Magretta

23 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

8 Strategies to Sustain Business Innovation

service’s heavy users, who were looking for a way to organize all their tweets into subjects. Nintendo consulted non-gamers to design its Wii console, to make it easy for everyone to use. When Honda asked owners of its Ridgeline pickup View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

09 Jan 2020
Book

Rethinking Business Strategy in the Age of AI

cases where a truck will need to be driven by a human or a cash register will need a person to operate it, but will you need as many humans? The answer is “no.” And will the unemployment rate increase at some point? I suspect it will.... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

15 Jun 2009
Research & Ideas

GM: What Went Wrong and What’s Next

strategy of the last decade has been to foster areas of specialization within its subsidiaries around the world—small cars in Europe, subcompacts in Asia, trucks and SUVs in North America—and this has started to yield great results. Now... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Auto

05 May 2008
Research & Ideas

Connecting with Consumers Using Deep Metaphors

varied the set of customers or consumers being studied were in other ways. It was as if we had identified a secret code of thought. The seven deep metaphors discussed in Marketing Metaphoria are those appearing most often across a variety of products ranging from the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Consumer Products

28 Nov 2005
Research & Ideas

Unilever: Transformation and Tradition

slaughter the animals some of whose parts ended up in Unilever's pies and sausages. Unilever made its own packaging, and transported its products on its own trucks and barges. It owned the distribution chain that delivered its frozen... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones; Consumer Products

14 Jun 2010
Research & Ideas

The Hard Work of Measuring Social Impact

distributing them on the ground with trucks and staff, all the while coordinating with other NGOs, governments, UN agencies, and the military. Despite all that, the organization alone has limited influence over what happens in the country... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

17 Aug 2021
Research & Ideas

Can Autonomous Vehicles Drive with Common Sense?

and helping the flow of traffic third. But you also need to know when to violate these rules and by how much in order to drive in ways that are more practical.” As an example, if a truck is parked in the middle of the road for long... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Auto

19 Oct 2021
Research & Ideas

Fed Up Workers and Supply Woes: What's Next for Dollar Stores?

and these are like 10,000 to 20,000 square feet, limited selection, low cost. And then, as the New York Times article points out, not a lot of staffing. The people who were in the store, depending on the shift, will unload the trucks and... View Details

Keywords: by Christine Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Retail

Publications