Publications

July 2000 (Revised August 2005)
Case

Deaconess-Glover Hospital (A)

Chronicles the initial efforts to teach a health care organization to manage itself according to the principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS). Describes the decision and dilemmas that arose from the implementation experiment. Builds on Bowen and Spear's earlier... View Details

Keywords: Management; Service Delivery; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Massachusetts

2012
Working Paper

Conflict Policy and Advertising Agency-Client Relations: The Problem of Competing Clients Sharing a Common Agency

By: Alvin J. Silk

What restrictions should be placed on advertising agencies with respect to serving accounts or clients that are competitors of one another in order to avoid conflicts in interest? In recent decades, the advertising and marketing services industry has undergone a number... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Service Delivery; Competition; Conflict of Interests; Policy; Practice; Advertising Industry; United States

Read Now

March 2010 (Revised May 2012)
Case

Bank of America: Mobile Banking

By: Sunil Gupta and Kerry Herman

In January 2010, Jen McDonald, head of Bank of America Corporation's (BAC) Digital Marketing group, was discussing the bank's mobile strategy with Douglas Brown, senior vice president, Mobile Product Development. BAC launched mobile banking in 2007 and within three... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Digital Marketing; Financial Services; Mobile Banking; Channels; Strategy; Banks and Banking; Marketing Strategy; Service Delivery; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Banking Industry; United States

September 2002 (Revised November 2002)
Case

Transformation at the IRS

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Frances X. Frei and Corey B. Hajim

Describes the service transformation occurring at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Plagued by a history of poor service, enormous complexity, and an insular employee base, the 100,000-person organization grapples with a turnaround process that attempts to change... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Service Operations; Organizational Structure; Taxation; Organizational Culture; Transformation; Public Administration Industry; United States

June 1977 (Revised September 1992)
Case

Sorenson Research Co. (Abridged)

By: Steven C. Wheelwright

Presents the issues facing a high volume, high margin (but lightweight) medical products business. The company is trying to improve its inventory control to reduce inventory investment and improve service. The present multi-site inventory system is described and major... View Details

Keywords: Business Earnings; Investment; Volume; Service Delivery; Supply Chain; Performance Improvement; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

01 Mar 2013
News

A Healthy Profit

organizations with which Antares has partnered). The goal is to significantly improve the delivery of such products and services by achieving a commercially robust, self-sustaining footing, thereby ensuring lasting social and economic... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Health, Social Assistance

18 Aug 2014
Research & Ideas

Have a Better Idea To Improve Health Care?

adoption of successful health care ideas, the Forum has launched the Health Acceleration Challenge, a competition meant to identify and promote proven innovations that, if more broadly disseminated, could increase the quality and access—and lower the cost—of health... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

April 2021
Supplement

Buy Online, Pickup in Store: Vice President of Store Operations Supplement

By: Antonio Moreno, Santiago Gallino and Amy Klopfenstein

In April 2019, Sylvarella VP of Store Operations Axley Vega must review an analysis of her department’s sales data to determine the impact of the company’s Buy Online, Pickup in Store (BOPS) program. BOPS implementation created significant problems for the store... View Details

Keywords: Operations; Service Delivery; Logistics; Infrastructure; Distribution Channels; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Analysis; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States; Canada

May 2010
Teaching Note

The Center for Creative Leadership (TN)

By: Srikant M. Datar and David A. Garvin

Teaching Note for [308013]. View Details

Keywords: Creativity; Leadership Development; Problems and Challenges; Organizations; Research; Programs; Design; Service Delivery; Business Education

01 Sep 2015
News

High Yields

100,000 jobs and $82 billion worth of value. Amazon famously entered the space in 2013, announcing plans to use drones for its 30-minute delivery service, but there’s plenty of startup activity, too. Hawk Aerial, launched last year by CEO... View Details

Keywords: Francis Storrs

01 Apr 2002
News

HBS Press Books in Brief

they can compete successfully in both the old and the new economies. Authors Philip Kotler, Dipak C. Jain, and Suvit Maesincee show how to build a complete marketing platform around the exploration, creation, and delivery of superior... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

16 May 2017
Blog Post

Making the Move into Digital Health and Software Engineering

at Instacart, a same-day grocery delivery service. My team’s job was to handle everything that related to the ordering process: we worked with Stripe, our payments API, built the discounts infrastructure, and created an infrastructure to... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Health Care

15 Aug 2024
Op-Ed

Post-CrowdStrike, Six Questions to Test Your Company's Operational Resilience

When cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike distributed a faulty software update in July, it impacted a staggering 8.5 million devices. The crisis rippled through commercial airline operations, package delivery logistics, ecommerce, and health... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson and Anita Lynch

28 Mar 2023
Blog Post

Novo Nordisk

to produce human insulin in genetically modified yeast cells: fermentation, recovery, and purification. The company also handles manufacturing and supply chain development, upscaling for production, assembly of delivery devices, packing... View Details

Web

IT Strategy: HBS IT Website Provides Easier Access to News and Support | Information Technology

engaging. In tandem, the IT Service Delivery team led an effort to build a new support portal to improve access to help information, support details, and service statuses. The teams ensured integration of the two sites was as seamless as... View Details

Summer 2017
Article

Measuring Consumer Preferences for Video Content Provision via Cord-Cutting Behavior

By: Jeffrey Prince and Shane Greenstein

The television industry is undergoing a generational shift in structure; however, many demand-side determinants are still not well understood. We model how consumers choose video content provision among over-the-air (OTA), paid subscription to cable or satellite, and... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Service Delivery; Consumer Behavior; Television Entertainment; Service Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

Find at Harvard

2008
Working Paper

The Effect of Labor on Profitability: The Role of Quality

By: Zeynep Ton

Determining staffing levels is an important decision in retail operations. While the costs of increasing labor are obvious and easy to measure, the benefits are often indirect and not immediately felt. One benefit of increased labor is improved quality. The objective... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Selection and Staffing; Service Delivery; Business Processes; Quality; Retail Industry