Publications

May 1992
Case

Sunday River Ski Resort

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Martha Epstein

Sunday River is a ski area in Bethel, ME which has been run by entrepreneur Les Otten since 1980. The year before Otten purchased the area, it posted a loss of $235,000 on revenues of $541,000. Under Otten's leadership, however, Sunday River posted year after year of... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Competitive Advantage; Entrepreneurship; Success; Transformation; Tourism Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Maine

January 1995 (Revised September 1997)
Case

TV Guide (B)

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport

TV Guide, the nation's most profitable and largest magazine, attempts entry into the world of electronic publishing. The crux of TV Guide's strategy is to transform the magazine's content into a centralized database that can be accessed by new businesses, like... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Service Delivery; Information Technology; Marketing; Information Publishing; Service Industry; Publishing Industry

September 2016 (Revised August 2018)
Supplement

United Airlines: More Out-and-Back Flying?: Case Supplement #1

By: Ryan W. Buell, Willy C. Shih and Michael W. Toffel

This spreadsheet supplement accompanies 617-010 United Airlines: More Out-and-Back Flying? and is intended to provide students with an opportunity to apply analysis concepts with real operational data. View Details

Keywords: Service; Service Excellence; Service Management; Operating Systems; Operational Complexity; Operational Disruptions; Operational Efficiency; Operational Focus; Air Transportation; Operations; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Air Transportation Industry; United States

September 2000
Background Note

Professional Services Module One: Introduction to the Challenges Facing PSFs

By: Thomas J. DeLong, Ashish Nanda and Scot H. Landry

This initial module was meant to clarify how the course would be useful to students who would be starting PSFs, working for them as an employee or contractor, managing them, or hiring them from the client side. View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Selection and Staffing; Management; Service Delivery; Service Industry

October 1988 (Revised March 1989)
Case

Florida Power Light Quality Improvement (QI) Story Exercise (A)

Florida Power and Light (FPL) has developed a widely acclaimed quality improvement program (QIP). This exercise leads the students through the process that a division of FPL utilized in an attempt to "improve service." Specifically, the process requires students to... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Service Delivery; Performance Improvement; Business Processes; Utilities Industry; Florida

September 1998 (Revised June 1999)
Case

Discovery Health (A)

A South African health insurance company undertakes a redesign of its prescription drug coverage policy in light of its experiences with Prozac. View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Service Delivery; Insurance; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance Industry; South Africa

February 2016 (Revised February 2020)
Teaching Note

Oberoi Hotels: Train Whistle in the Tiger Reserve

By: Ryan W. Buell and Ananth Raman

Celebrated as one of the world's premiere luxury hotel brands, Oberoi Hotels attracts and serves some of the most quality sensitive guests in the world. The case considers the challenge of how an organization with a standardized service model can repeatedly delight... View Details

Keywords: Service Quality; Service Management; Service Quality Competition; Customer Management; Customer Service Excellence; Employee Empowerment; Employee Engagement; Employee Training; Hospitality; Hotel Industry; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Customer Satisfaction; Employees; Training; Quality; Accommodations Industry; India

11 Jun 2020
In Practice

Are Digital Organizations Better at Overcoming COVID?

Government leaders rushing to contain the COVID-19 pandemic in March gave companies little time to shift to an all-virtual workforce. Ready or not, many businesses had to become more digital. But true digital transformation takes far more than a Zoom account. Using... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

Spring 2019
Article

Fluid Teams and Knowledge Retrieval: Scaling Service Operations

By: Melissa A. Valentine, Tom Fangyun Tan, Bradley R. Staats and Amy C. Edmondson

To scale service operations requires retrieving knowledge across the organization. However, prior work highlights that individuals on the periphery of organizational knowledge networks may struggle to access useful knowledge at work. A knowledge repository has the... View Details

Keywords: Teaming; Teams; Groups and Teams; Knowledge Management; Service Delivery; Knowledge Use and Leverage

November 2015
Article

Influence of Experience and the Surgical Learning Curve on Long-term Patient Outcomes in Cardiac Surgery

By: Bryan M. Burt, Andrew W. ElBardissi, Robert S. Huckman, Lawrence H. Cohn, Marisa W. Cevasco, James D. Rawn, Sary F. Aranki and John G. Byrne

OBJECTIVE: We hypothesized that increased post-graduate surgical experience correlates with improved operative efficiency and long-term survival in standard cardiac surgery procedures.

METHODS: Utilizing a prospectively collected retrospective database,... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Value; Health Care and Treatment; Experience and Expertise; Health Industry

September 1998 (Revised July 1999)
Case

Discovery Health (B)

By: Samuel S. Chun and Shaun Matisonn

A South African health insurance company grapples with designing a financially viable coverage solution for a new prescription drug treatment for male impotence. View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Service Delivery; Insurance; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance Industry; South Africa

Web

U.S. Competitiveness Project - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

Delivery Project The Institute for Cancer Care Innovation MOC Network ICIC U.S. Cluster Mapping Project U.S. Competitiveness Project FSG Shared Value Initiative Social Progress Imperative AllWorld Network U.S. Competitiveness Project U.S.... View Details

Web

The Experience | Information Technology

experience. You can see when participants raise their hands, when they lean into the discussion, and when they’re not fully engaged. It’s online teaching and learning, on a whole new level. Seamless program delivery Behind the scenes, a... View Details

10 Jul 2000
Research & Ideas

IT Links for Boundaryless Companies

Doing Things Upton concluded his presentation with a look at two contrasting approaches to information technology development. One approach, what he referred to as the periodic project, involves a lot of time and a lot of planning, with value View Details

Keywords: by Kenneth Liss

Profile

Jason Flood

up-close experience of the United States’ health care system. “There were mind-boggling inefficiencies both in terms of delivery and coordination,” Jason says. “We had multiple doctors who failed to communicate to each other and ordered... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare/Biotech; Tech

01 Sep 2014
News

Making a Statement

Getting Behind Health Care Andrew M. Paul (MBA 1983) sees a powerful connection between the business side of health care and the benefits of better service delivery to patients. “By investing in companies committed to innovation, you can... View Details

08 Mar 2016
First Look

March 8, 2016

cultural model and undermine their own positions with inappropriate use of symbolic market-creation actions. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50701 Harvard Business School Case 916-026 Express Scripts: Promoting Prescription Drug... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2016
Case

Health Catalyst

By: Kevin Schulman and Suresh Balu

Dan Burton, Health Catalyst CEO (HBS Baker Scholar), and Tom Burton, Health Catalyst Senior Vice President of Product Development and cofounder, closed on a $41 million investment round. Their firm was one of the hottest companies in the health information technology... View Details

Keywords: Service Management; Strategy; Operations Management; Information Technology; Information Management; Entrepreneurship; Service Delivery; Competitive Strategy; Performance; Information Technology Industry; Health Industry

June 2002
Case

Tale of Two Airlines in the Network Age: Or Why the Spirit of King George III Is Alive and Well!

By: F. Warren McFarlan

Describes an airline service incident that ought not to have happened in the network age. Inadequate use of available technology creates service problems. A rewritten version of an earlier case. View Details

Keywords: Air Transportation; Information Management; Information Technology; Service Delivery; Problems and Challenges; Air Transportation Industry