Publications

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2007
Working Paper

Innovation through Global Collaboration: A New Source of Competitive Advantage

By: Alan MacCormack, Theodore Forbath, Peter Brooks and Patrick Kalaher

Many recent studies highlight the need to rethink the way we manage innovation. Traditional approaches, based on the assumption that the creation and pursuit of new ideas is best accomplished by a centralized and collocated R&D team, are rapidly becoming outdated.... View Details

Keywords: Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Groups and Teams; Research and Development; Performance Improvement; Management Practices and Processes; Partners and Partnerships; Competency and Skills; Framework; Competitive Advantage; Global Strategy; Opportunities; Cost

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2008
Article

Ambidexterity as a Dynamic Capability: Resolving the Innovator's Dilemma

By: Charles O'Reilly and Michael Tushman

How do organizations survive in the face of change? Underlying this question is a rich debate about whether organizations can adapt—and if so, how. One perspective, organizational ecology, presents evidence suggesting that most organizations are largely inert and... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Competency and Skills; Innovation and Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Performance Efficiency; Competitive Advantage

August 2002 (Revised February 2005)
Case

Gillette Company (D): Implementing Change

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter

How a strategic change agenda is implemented depends on leaders below the top in every function and geographic region translating the agenda into actions. But those actions do not always unfold as planned. This case examines the first 16 months of a turnaround from the... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Competitive Strategy; Strategic Planning; Change Management; Organizational Design; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Behavior; Leading Change; Retail Industry

10 Jan 2012
Working Paper Summaries

The Evolving Basis for Legitimacy of the World Trade Organization: Dispute Settlement and the Rebalancing of Global Interests

Keywords: by Arthur Daemmrich

Program

Mergers and Acquisitions

Summary Across the globe, mergers and acquisitions are reshaping the corporate and competitive landscape. To help companies gain a strategic advantage and expand market share, this M&A program takes you inside the process—from strategy... View Details

Program

Investment Management Workshop

Summary The Investment Management Workshop convenes the world's top principals, portfolio managers, and executives to explore the latest industry strategies and best practices. Focused on asset management, business strategy, business... View Details

Program

The Women's Leadership Forum

conditions Expand your organization's ability to innovate, capture new opportunities, and build advantage Develop and implement new strategies Negotiate skillfully inside and outside your company Become a more effective leader Address... View Details

Web

Technology & Operations Management - Doctoral

including operations research, operations management, economics, engineering, and organizational behavior. Doctoral students' research addresses managerially-relevant problems, integrating discipline-based theory with rigorous research... View Details

Crystal Guo

Crystal Guo is a doctoral student in the Health Policy Management PhD program at Harvard. Prior to pursuing her PhD, Crystal received her B.A. in English and Economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2019 and completed her Health Policy and Management,... View Details

Keywords: health care

July–August 2018
Article

How CEOs Manage Time

By: Michael E. Porter and Nitin Nohria

In 2006 Harvard Business School’s Michael E. Porter and Nitin Nohria launched a study tracking how large companies’ CEOs spent their time, 24/7, for 13 weeks: where they were, with whom, what they did, and what they were focusing on. To date, Porter and Nohria have... View Details

Keywords: CEOs; Executives; Time Management; Attitudes; Managerial Roles; Leadership; Performance Effectiveness; Strategy; Decision Making; Organizational Culture

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August 2008
Case

Du Pont: The Birth of the Modern Multidivisional Corporation

By: Richard S. Tedlow and David Ruben

Du Pont's realization in 1921 that its "U-form" corporate structure was ill-suited to its new diversification strategy led to a pioneering new kind of organization—the "M" or multidivisional form—that has been called the most important innovation of capitalism in the... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Alignment; Corporate Strategy

2007
Article

Three Perspectives on Team Learning: Outcome Improvement, Task Mastery, and Group Process

By: Amy C. Edmondson, James R. Dillon and Kate Roloff

The emergence of a research literature on team learning has been driven by at least two factors. First, longstanding interest in what makes organizational work teams effective leads naturally to questions about how members of newly formed teams learn to work together... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Organizational Culture; Performance Improvement; Practice; Groups and Teams; Research; Adaptation; Cooperation

November 1994 (Revised June 1996)
Case

Dennis Hightower: Walt Disney's Transnational Manager

By: Ashish Nanda

Describes the actions taken by Dennis Hightower as president of Disney Consumer Products in Europe and the Middle East from 1988 to 1994. Focuses on how he has established a regional office and knit local operations closer together, the benefits that the process has... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Change Management; Corporate Strategy; Personal Development and Career; Consumer Products Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Europe

January 1993 (Revised July 1993)
Case

Frito-Lay, Inc.: A Strategic Transition (Consolidated)

By: Lynda M. Applegate

The setting is a food manufacturing company that has stumbled in terms of its historic growth and profit achievements. In trying to recapture its momentum, the president has used information technology as one element in his program of transition. The case focuses on... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Information Technology; Growth and Development Strategy; Transition; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Food and Beverage Industry; Manufacturing Industry

Herman B. ("Dutch") Leonard is Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and the George F. Baker, Jr. Professor of Public Sector Management at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In... View Details

Keywords: education industry; federal government; health care; nonprofit industry; state government

November 1998 (Revised July 2000)
Case

Deere & Company: Sustaining Value

By: Malcolm S. Salter and Marlowe Dayley

The question facing Deere & Co. is whether or not to adopt some of the organizational technologies of private equity investors (decentralized equity holdings, use of leverage to control the disposition of cash flows, the externalization of the capital budgeting... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Decision Choices and Conditions; Cash Flow; Private Equity; Wealth; Adoption; Manufacturing Industry