Publications

August 2021 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Fair Park Covid-19 Mass Vaccination Site (A)

By: Willy Shih

This case is an opportunity to apply the methods of the Toyota Production System (TPS) to the analysis of an everyday service application: administering Covid-19 vaccines. It describes the start-up of a drive-up Covid-19 mass vaccination site at the Texas State Fair... View Details

Keywords: Operations Improvement; Operations And Processes; Toyota Production System; COVID-19 Pandemic; Operations; Service Operations; Health Pandemics; Problems and Challenges; Goals and Objectives; Measurement and Metrics; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States; Texas

25 Aug 2009
News

An Ounce of Prevention

February 2010 (Revised April 2011)
Case

The Political Economy of Carbon Trading

By: Forest L. Reinhardt, J. Gunnar Trumbull, Mikell Hyman, Patia McGrath and Nazli Zeynep Uludere

Global climate change is an increasingly prominent political and business problem. Design of market-based systems to reduce carbon emissions has proven difficult. More broadly, national attempts to comply with the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol present both... View Details

Keywords: Policy; International Relations; Risk Management; Agreements and Arrangements; Business and Government Relations; Natural Environment; Pollutants; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Public Administration Industry

14 Aug 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Firm Competitiveness and Detection of Bribery

Keywords: by George Serafeim

fall 2008
Article

Toward a Theory of Behavioral Operations

By: Francesca Gino and Gary P. Pisano

Human beings are critical to the functioning of the vast majority of operating systems, influencing both the way these systems work and how they perform. Yet most formal analytical models of operations assume that the people who participate in operating systems are... View Details

Keywords: Management Systems; Operations; Mathematical Methods; Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Perspective; Theory

Find at Harvard

November 2024
Supplement

AlphaGo (C): Birth of a New Intelligence

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai

This case, the final of a three-part series, explores DeepMind's pivotal transition from mastering games to solving real-world scientific challenges. In December 2020, DeepMind's AI system AlphaFold 2 achieved a breakthrough by solving protein folding—a 50-year-old... View Details

Keywords: AI; Artificial Intelligence; Machine Learning; Research; Autonomy; Deep Learning; Drug Discovery; Healthcare Innovation; Neural Networks; Information Technology; Research And Development; Scientific Research; Technology Startup; AI and Machine Learning; Technological Innovation; United States

2010
Working Paper

The Architecture of Complex Systems: Do Core-periphery Structures Dominate?

By: Alan MacCormack, Carliss Y. Baldwin and John Rusnak

Any complex technological system can be decomposed into a number of subsystems and associated components, some of which are core to system function while others are only peripheral. The dynamics of how such "core-periphery" structures evolve and become embedded in a... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Product Design; Practice; Core Relationships; Software; Information Technology Industry

February 2011 (Revised June 2011)
Case

Stock Reform of Shenzhen Development Bank

By: Li Jin, Li Liao, Aldo Sesia and Jianyi Wu

Shenzhen Development Bank, China's first publicly traded company, was undergoing the non-tradable share reform. Its current controlling shareholder, private equity firm Newbridge Capital LLC, needs to negotiate with its diverse minority shareholders to find a... View Details

Keywords: Capital; Private Equity; Investment; Corporate Governance; Managerial Roles; Emerging Markets; Negotiation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Conflict of Interests; Banking Industry; China

2023
Working Paper

Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality

By: Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Edward McFowland III, Ethan Mollick, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Katherine C. Kellogg, Saran Rajendran, Lisa Krayer, François Candelon and Karim R. Lakhani

The public release of Large Language Models (LLMs) has sparked tremendous interest in how humans will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accomplish a variety of tasks. In our study conducted with Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, we examine... View Details

Keywords: Large Language Model; AI and Machine Learning; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement

SSRN

08 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: A Sense of Urgency

Management control systems and damage control experts serve a critical purpose. But don't let that blind you to an increasingly important... View Details

Keywords: by John P. Kotter

03 Dec 2014
HBS Seminar

Ginger Jin, University of Maryland

April 2019 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Handy: The Future of Work? (A)

By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Kieron Stopforth

Witnessing numerous lawsuits alleging that online platform companies misclassified workers as contractors when they were actually employees, Handy’s founders faced a series of decisions. Handy was an online platform business that enabled customers to book appointments... View Details

Keywords: Employment; Working Conditions; Entrepreneurship; Compensation and Benefits; Internet and the Web; Ethics; Fairness; Service Industry; United States

September 2023
Case

The Rise and Fall of FTX

By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese, Joseph Pacelli and Max Hancock

In November 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried's multi-billion-dollar crypto exchange, FTX, collapsed, wiping out investors and throwing the crypto industry into disarray. As FTX's founder and CEO, Bankman-Fried developed a reputation for his unerring business sense and... View Details

Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Crime and Corruption; Financial Statements; Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Failure; Restructuring; United States; Hong Kong; Bahamas

Research Summary

Innovations in Logistics: The Impact of Channel Coordination

By: Roy D. Shapiro

Roy D. Shapiro is studying innovative systems and management approaches that integrate and coordinate material and information flows through the supply chain so as to reduce or eliminate the redundant activities that tend to characterize these channels. His research... View Details

July 2014
Article

Winners in the Spotlight: Media Coverage of Fund Holdings as a Driver of Flows

By: David H. Solomon, Eugene F. Soltes and Denis Sosyura

We show that media coverage of mutual fund holdings affects how investors allocate money across funds. Controlling for fund performance, fund holdings with high past returns attract extra flows only if these stocks were recently featured in major newspapers. In... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Media; Investment Funds; Financial Services Industry

SSRN

Find at Harvard

2010
Working Paper

Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard

By: Robert S. Kaplan

David Norton and I introduced the Balanced Scorecard in a 1992 Harvard Business Review article (Kaplan & Norton, 1992). The article was based on a multi-company research project to study performance measurement in companies whose intangible assets played a central role... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Balanced Scorecard; Management Systems; Performance Improvement; Strategy

June 2023
Supplement

Clash of Two Giants Simulation Exercise

By: Feng Zhu and Marco Iansiti

Many markets are organized around platforms that connect consumers with complementary applications and services. These platforms are two-sided because both sides - consumers and those providing applications or services - need access to the same platform to interact. A... View Details

Keywords: Customer Acquisition; Platform Strategy; Technology Platform; Digital Platforms; Competitive Strategy; Network Effects

2022
Article

Pills in a World of Activism and ESG

By: Guhan Subramanian and Caley Petrucci

Easterbrook and Fischel’s The Economic Structure of Corporate Law advances their now famous passivity thesis, which posits that managers should remain passive in the face of an unsolicited tender offer for the company’s shares. Consistent with the broader... View Details

Keywords: Investment Activism; Governance Controls; Business and Shareholder Relations