Publications

July 2011 (Revised September 2012)
Case

Intraoperative Radiotherapy for Breast Cancer (A)

By: Willy Shih

"This trial is going to take longer." Those were words that Michael Kaschke, CEO of Carl Zeiss AG, was not surprised to hear as he nurtured the intraoperative radiotherapy business inside his company's microsurgery unit. But he also didn't expect it to take 13 years to... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Business History; Disruptive Innovation; Emerging Markets; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Research and Development; Safety

March 1980 (Revised July 1985)
Case

Parker Brothers (A)

Focuses on the decision required of Parker Brothers regarding the necessity and advisability of recalling a new product that may have been related to the death of two children. View Details

Keywords: Safety; Risk Management; Product; Consumer Products Industry

21 Oct 2002
Research & Ideas

The Parable of the Bungled Baggage And the Unhappy Customer

presentation to their top management group. I was going to give the presentation right at the airport. First class flight from Boston to that... View Details

Keywords: by W. Earl Sasser

May 2018 (Revised February 2019)
Case

The Powers That Be (Internet Edition): Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Julia Kelley and Nathaniel Schwalb

As of early 2018, five U.S. technology companies—Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft—were among the largest companies in the world. Similarly, three Chinese technology firms—Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, or BAT—had emerged as global players due in part to the... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Business Ventures; Customers; Analytics and Data Science; Safety; Corporate Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Technology Industry

October 2010
Case

The Cleveland Clinic: Improving the Patient Experience (Abridged)

By: Ananth Raman, Anita L. Tucker and Rachel Gordon

Healthcare has traditionally focused on medical outcomes and financial performance. The big question is always, "How much is it going to cost?" What would happen though if healthcare also considered question of "How does the patient feel?" This case looks at the... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Ethics; Health Care and Treatment; Six Sigma; Performance Improvement; Safety; Value Creation

14 May 2018
Blog Post

Women Making a Comeback: Diane Flynn Reboots Promising Careers

friends took advantage of HBS Career & Professional Development's offer of free, one hour, one-on-one coaching sessions. "My coach sent me away with a huge notebook I spent the entire return flight from Boston View Details

14 Jul 2020
Blog Post

Creating Inclusive Recruiting Events in a Time of Innovation

organizations with diversity because diverse teams have proven to be more successful and innovative. Making diversity a priority therefore helps your team succeed in your current work and in future projects as you recruit new impactful... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

Blog

In-Person Programs: Q&A with Portfolio Directors

After a long hiatus, HBS programs have started to return to campus. Vicki Good and Lisa Hughes, portfolio directors for the Advanced Management Program (AMP) and the Program for Leadership Development (PLD)... View Details

August 2005 (Revised August 2006)
Case

Grupo Martica

Grupo Martica commissions a computer security expert to conduct an audit of its systems, network, and processes. This audit reveals that Martica is quite vulnerable, and the company's de facto CIO must decide what steps to take to improve security. He wonders how... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Information Infrastructure; Information Technology; Information Infrastructure; Complexity

01 Apr 2021
Blog Post

An Aerospace Engineer Provides a Lift for Underrepresented Innovators and Entrepreneurs

see opportunities for innovation all around her. One of the biggest customer complaints had to do with airplane windows. “That was a huge no-go item. If they saw any protrusion in the seal around a window, they would have View Details

31 May 2016
HBS Case

Who Owns Space?

have carried out resupply missions to the International Space Station, and both Blue Origin and SpaceX have safely landed rockets back on Earth after flights into space, a key step toward lowering the cost... View Details

Keywords: Re: Matthew C. Weinzierl; Aerospace

04 Mar 2014
First Look

First Look: March 4

particular context such as a workplace. First explored by pioneering organizational scholars in the 1960s, psychological safety experienced a renaissance starting in the 1990s and continuing to the present.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

30 Aug 2010
Research & Ideas

Turning Employees Into Problem Solvers

research has focused on the underuse of incident-reporting systems. After all, the thinking went, a system used to collect and report incidents will only help an organization learn from its mistakes and lead View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Health

02 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

Food Stamp Entrepreneurs: How Public Assistance Enables Business Bootstrapping

startup funds—and what allowed them to take the risk of launching a company." Curiosity eventually led to his doctoral dissertation: a series of studies showing a definitive link between the social... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

10 Apr 2014
Blog Post

HBS FIELD 2 - A good sneak-peek into consulting

a trip to Malaysia. I was incredibly lucky. We were going to work with the global partner AirAsia X (our client), one of the most successful airlines in the world which, to the... View Details

Keywords: Consulting

April 2019 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Voatz

By: Mitchell Weiss and Maddy Halyard

Nimit Sawhney scrolled through the tweet stream on his phone, unsure of what to make of it on August 6, 2018 or how to respond. Voatz, the Boston-based startup he co-founded and led, provided a mobile-voting platform. In March of 2018, had successfully piloted the new... View Details

Keywords: Mobile App; Business Startups; Voting; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Safety; Cybersecurity