Publications

May 1990 (Revised July 1996)
Case

Ingvar Kamprad and IKEA

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Ashish Nanda

Traces the development of a Swedish furniture retailer under the leadership of an innovative and unconventional entrepreneur whose approaches redefine the nature and structure of the industry. Traces IKEA's growth from a tiny mail order business to the world's largest... View Details

Keywords: Restructuring; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development; Innovation Strategy; Leadership; Management Succession; Distribution; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Expansion; Value; Retail Industry

2012
Report

Better Outcomes, Lower Costs: A Conversation with Dr. Atul Gawande

By: Mark R. Kramer

In the face of increasing health care costs and uncertainty about health care quality in the United States, community-based collective impact initiatives driven by regional funders offers a new way to improve patient outcomes at the local level. Collectively,... View Details

Keywords: Community Foundations; Health Outcomes; Health Care and Treatment; Quality; Cost Management; United States

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July 2018
Case

Leading Open Innovation at BT

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Jean-François Harvey and Johnathan R. Cromwell

This case focuses on the genesis and development of the open innovation unit at BT, the strategic value of the unit, and its operating model. As the business environment becomes increasingly dynamic and firms are pressured to achieve faster innovation rates, there may... View Details

Keywords: Collaboration; Open Innovation; Inter-organizational Relationships; Organizational Culture; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United Kingdom; United States

11 Apr 2024
In Practice

Why Progress on Immigration Might Soften Labor Pains

Almost one-third of Americans consider immigration the most important “problem” that the United States faces, according to a new Gallup poll. And yet, companies say they need far more workers than the current system allows. Some business... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

November 1989 (Revised November 1991)
Case

Transformation at Ford

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Richard Pascale

In 1980 Ford was near disaster. The company lost billions of dollars between 1980 and 1982. By 1988 the company had been transformed into one of the most successful corporations in the United States. Describes what happened and then examines how it happened. The major... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Success; Transformation; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; United States

September 2016 (Revised February 2017)
Case

MyTime

By: Juliane Begenau and Robin Greenwood

Ethan Anderson, the CEO of San Francisco–based e-commerce company MyTime, must decide on the company's growth strategy. MyTime’s first product was a website and mobile app that offered consumers a convenient way to book appointments with local merchants throughout the... View Details

Keywords: Customer Valuation; Discounted Cash Flow; Software; Valuation Methodologies; Subscriber Models; Financial Management; Corporate Finance; Growth and Development Strategy; Valuation; Applications and Software; Information Technology Industry; North and Central America

14 Mar 2016
Working Paper Summaries

The Role of Incentive Salience in Habit Formation

Keywords: by Leslie John, Katherine L. Milkman, Francesca Gino, Bradford Tuckfield, and Luca Foschini; Health

September 2001
Case

Charitableway

By: James E. Austin and Elizabeth Kind

In early 2001, Charitableway, an ePhilanthropy application service provider that enabled the collection of charitable donations online; faced major strategic decisions relating to its alliance with United Way of America to foster workplace giving online. One of the... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

2023
Article

Balancing Risk and Reward: An Automated Phased Release Strategy

By: Yufan Li, Jialiang Mao and Iavor Bojinov

Phased releases are a common strategy in the technology industry for gradually releasing new products or updates through a sequence of A/B tests in which the number of treated units gradually grows until full deployment or deprecation. Performing phased releases in a... View Details

Keywords: Product Launch; Mathematical Methods; Product Development

19 Jul 2017
Research & Ideas

Why Government 'Nudges' Motivate Good Citizen Behavior

A tiny nudge can motivate big change. (Source: dziewul) Most governments aren’t subtle when they want citizens to do something. The United States spends close to $1 billion annually on advertising--trying to convince citizens to do... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

August 3, 2022
Article

How Will Amazon Approach U.S. Primary Care?

By: Robert S. Huckman and Bradley Staats

Amazon has a playbook for reinventing businesses that it enters. It includes simplifying processes, experimenting to determine which new approaches work best, and continuously recombining its existing assets to come up with a better way to do things. It is likely to... View Details

Keywords: Amazon; Health Care; Technology; Primary Care; Health Care and Treatment; Information Infrastructure; Health Industry; Technology Industry; United States

May 2021
Case

Career at a Crossroads? (A)

By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green

A career professional at a major consumer goods company, Kym Lew Nelson is hoping to negotiate a promotion to vice president, which would make her one of the senior-most African American women in the organization. But when Nelson’s white German boss arrives in the... View Details

Keywords: Culture; Negotiation; Race; Gender; Organizational Culture; Prejudice and Bias; United States

September 1984 (Revised February 1989)
Case

Benetton (A)

By: James L. Heskett

The world's largest manufacturer of woolen outerwear garments seeks to extend its retailing network to the United States from its base in Europe. A number of issues concerning marketing, manufacturing, and logistics strategy are raised by the proposed move along with... View Details

Keywords: Logistics; Brands and Branding; Networks; Production; Marketing Strategy; Globalization; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States; Europe

15 Jul 2013
Research & Ideas

Five Imperatives for Improving Health Care

anything we do to improve quality becomes almost irrelevant if we can't finance the system to deliver it." Hence the imperative to focus on value, the quality of outcome achieved per unit of cost spent by the system. "There's a... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

24 Jan 2005
Research & Ideas

Rethinking Activity-Based Costing

Activity-based costing, ABC, would seem to be an accurate way for managers to assign costs to the customers and products that use a department's services. But real-world use has shown ABC loses power in large-scale operations, and can be... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & Steven R. Anderson

September 2020
Article

Dignity, Inequality, and the Populist Backlash: Lessons from America and Europe for a Sustainable Globalization

By: Rawi Abdelal

The greatest challenge to the sustainability of our current era of globalization comes from within the United States. Most Americans have come to reject globalization. We must discern the lessons from the parts of the developed world where the backlash is also... View Details

Keywords: Populism; Backlash; Dignity; Globalization; Economic Systems; Equality and Inequality; Policy; Values and Beliefs; United States; Europe

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December 2017 (Revised January 2018)
Case

NatureSweet

By: Jose Alvarez, Forest Reinhardt and Natalie Kindred

This case describes the business model and workplace philosophy of NatureSweet, a privately owned, vertically integrated greenhouse grower and marketer of fresh tomatoes with sales across the United States and $329 million in 2016 revenues. CEO Bryant Ambelang treated... View Details

2020
Working Paper

Dignity, Inequality, and the Populist Backlash: Lessons from America and Europe for a Sustainable Globalization

By: Rawi Abdelal

The greatest challenge to the sustainability of our current era of globalization comes from within the United States. Most Americans have come to reject globalization. We must discern the lessons from the parts of the developed world where the backlash is also... View Details

Keywords: Pandemics; Populism; Dignity; Globalization; Economic Systems; Equality and Inequality; Policy; Values and Beliefs; United States; Europe; France; Germany