Publications

October 1991 (Revised August 1993)
Case

Acid Rain: Burlington Northern, Inc. (A)

By: Forest L. Reinhardt

Burlington Northern (BN) hauls low-sulfur coal from the northern Great Plains to electric utilities in the Midwest. Acid rain legislation may affect the geographic scope of BN's markets. Railroad managers need to assess the economic effects of acid rain controls and... View Details

Keywords: Rail Transportation; Environmental Sustainability; Development Economics; Government Legislation; Natural Environment; Policy; Metals and Minerals; Industry Growth; Industry Structures; Rail Industry; United States

10 Apr 2006
Research & Ideas

American Auto’s Troubled Road

engineering and designing for 'buildability.'" Down The Road While U.S automakers retrench, Toyota is aggressively building American factories and, with other foreign automakers, adding billions of dollars to the U.S. economy while... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

06 Feb 2006
Research & Ideas

Sorting Out the Patent Craze

"standards," which are technical specifications that ensure that memory made by any company, so long as it meets the standard, will work as expected in any computer design. To this end, the Electronic Industries Association established a Joint Electron... View Details

Keywords: by Sara Grant; Technology

01 Nov 1999
Lessons from the Classroom

What’s Next & So What? Leading in the 21st Century

going to have the power and the passion to fundamentally change it. For example, almost half of Sony's profits now come from a guy who six or seven years ago was a lowly engineer in corporate R&D. He had to fight his way up the... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

November 1987 (Revised January 1988)
Case

Groen: A Dover Industries Company

By: Francis Aguilar

Describes the challenges facing the president of an old-line foodservice and food processing equipment manufacturing company as it attempted to accelerate sales and profit growth through the introduction of innovative products. The introduction of a "revolutionary"... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Labor and Management Relations; Machinery and Machining; Management Style; Management Teams; Performance Efficiency; Technological Innovation; Product Development; Organizational Culture

21 Dec 2010
First Look

First Look: December 21

price swings. Purchase this case:http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/711004-PDF-ENG Reverse Engineering, Learning, and Innovation Willy ShihHarvard Business School Note 611-039 This background reading looks at reverse engineering in the... View Details

11 Nov 2014
First Look

First Look: November 11

example, revenue from its jet engines is tied to reduced downtime and miles flown over the course of a year. After just three years, GE is generating more than $1.5 billion in incremental income with digitally enabled, outcomes-based... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

10 Jan 2005
Research & Ideas

The Knowledge Coach

organization viable. As they put it, "Deep smarts are the engine of your organization. You cannot progress without them, and you will manage more effectively if you understand what they are, how they are built and cultivated, and the... View Details

Keywords: by Dorothy Leonard & Walter Swap

September 2011
Case

Driving Profitable Growth at US Auto Parts

USAP faces extraordinary opportunities to change the way that automobiles are serviced in the US by selling parts at fair prices though online channels. View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Disruptive Innovation; Business Model; Internet and the Web; Business Strategy; Internet and the Web; Machinery and Machining; Cost Management; Auto Industry; Retail Industry; United States

March 1998 (Revised November 2004)
Case

FAG Kugelfischer-A German Restructuring

By: Stuart C. Gilson

A large German manufacturer of ball bearings and precision machinery experiences severe financial difficulty brought on by poor management practices, an ill-conceived acquisition of a former East German ball-bearings company, and an industry recession. The company... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Acquisition; Restructuring; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Machinery and Machining; Policy; Resignation and Termination; Management Practices and Processes; Performance Evaluation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Europe; Germany; United States

02 Feb 2007
What Do You Think?

Is There Too Little “Know Why” In Business?

implementation that we forget why we are here in the first place . 'Why' is just as important as the 'How'; they are not mutually exclusive." As Nari Kannan put it, "To survive and thrive, I think companies need to alternate between these two modes . There... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

25 Apr 2000
Research & Ideas

Adjusting the Fit for Government

private sector have to wait for government to become an engine of change?" Her organization, she said, works with countries at the invitation of civil society, the private sector and government. "You have to have all... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

May 2016 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Building the Digital Manufacturing Enterprise of the Future at Siemens

By: Willy Shih

This case describes the motivation for and the development of Siemens' digital manufacturing enterprise vision, which became the foundation for its implementation of Industrie 4.0. While the effort started with a purely defensive move by Anton Huber, head of the... View Details

02 Jan 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, January 3, 2018

regulations needed to be based on hard science and engineering knowledge. To achieve this, collaboration with the Swedish government was seen as instrumental and joint R&D was regarded as a means to share knowledge and costs. The... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

10 Nov 2015
First Look

November 10, 2015

scale, so Abay and her team considered a number of non-traditional ways to organize distribution and market the bank to promote growth. Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/116023-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 715-045 The German Export... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

18 Oct 2006
Research & Ideas

New at the Helm: A Talk with HBS Dean Light

Forty years ago, in September 1966, a young mission analyst named Jay Light left the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California and headed east to Harvard Business School. At JPL, Light used his undergraduate engineering physics... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson; Education

15 Feb 2011
First Look

First Look: Feb. 15

in Internet Search Engines Authors:Benjamin Edelman and Duncan S. Gilchrist Abstract In an online experiment, we measure users' interactions with search engines, both in standard configurations and in modified versions with improved... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2009 (Revised August 2009)
Case

Petrobras in Ecuador (A)

By: Aldo Musacchio, Lena G. Goldberg and Ricardo Reisen de Pinho

On October 18, 2007, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa announced his intention to migrate Petrobras' existing participation contracts to exploit oil reserves in Ecuador's Blocks 18 and 31 to servicing agreements under which Petrobras would be paid a production fee and... View Details

Keywords: Metals and Minerals; Globalized Firms and Management; Corporate Governance; Government Administration; Taxation; Contracts; Negotiation Process; Negotiation Tactics; Public Ownership; Business and Government Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; Brazil; Ecuador