Publications

01 May 2020
News

The Business of Medicine in the Era of COVID-19

August 2007 (Revised June 2010)
Case

JetBlue Airways: Valentine's Day 2007 (A)

By: Robert S. Huckman, Gary P. Pisano and Virginia Fuller

Describes an operational crisis for JetBlue Airways during an ice storm in the eastern United States in February 2007 and chronicles the airline's immediate response. Provides detail concerning the history of the airline from its founding in 1999 through the February... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Crisis Management; Growth Management; Management Teams; Service Delivery; Air Transportation Industry; Eastern United States

1996
Article

Limits on Interest Rate Rules in the IS Model

By: William R. Kerr and Robert G. King

There has been a substantial amount of research on interest rate rules. This literature finds that the feasibility and desirability of interest rate rules depends on the structure of the model used to approximate macroeconomic reality. We employ a series of... View Details

Keywords: Inflation and Deflation; Macroeconomics; Interest Rates; Price; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Performance Expectations

Read Now

February 1996 (Revised November 2003)
Case

Indianapolis: Activity-Based Costing of City Services (A)

By: Robert S. Kaplan

A new administration in the City of Indianapolis is initially determined to privatize many municipal services. Before taking this action, however, the city managers want to know the current cost of performing these services with the municipal workers. Existing... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Public Sector; Activity Based Costing and Management; Service Delivery; Privatization; City; Indianapolis

February 2021
Article

Assessment of Electronic Health Record Use Between U.S. and Non-U.S. Health Systems

By: A Jay Holmgren, Lance Downing, David W. Bates, Tait D. Shanafelt, Arnold Milstein, Christopher Sharp, David Cutler, Robert S. Huckman and Kevin A. Schulman

Importance: Understanding how the electronic health record (EHR) system changes clinician work, productivity, and well-being is critical. Little is known regarding global variation in patterns of use.
Objective: To provide insights into which EHR... View Details

Keywords: Electronic Health Records; Health Care and Treatment; Online Technology; Health Industry; Information Technology Industry

November 2016 (Revised May 2017)
Case

Hyperloop One

By: William A. Sahlman, Ramana Nanda, Robert White, Allison Ciechanover and Jeff Huizinga

This case explores the attempt of Shervin Pishevar, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, to shepherd hyperloop, a futuristic pod-in-tube transportation technology, from concept to transformative reality via Hyperloop One and Sherpa Capital, both companies he... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Startup; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Finance; Transportation; Product Development; Innovation and Invention; Transportation Industry

2008
Chapter

Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard

By: Robert S. Kaplan

David Norton and I introduced the Balanced Scorecard in a 1992 Harvard Business Review article. The article was based on a multi-company research project that studied performance measurement in companies whose intangible assets played a central role in value... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Management Systems; Measurement and Metrics; Performance Improvement; Strategy

January 2009
Article

Team Familiarity, Role Experience, and Performance: Evidence from Indian Software Services

By: Robert S. Huckman, Bradley R. Staats and David M. Upton

Much of the literature on team learning views experience as a unidimensional concept captured by the cumulative production volume of, or the number of projects completed by, a team. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that teams are stable in their membership... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Learning; Performance Improvement; Projects; Groups and Teams; Familiarity; Information Technology Industry; India

21 Jan 2009
First Look

First Look: January 21, 2009

current trouble, as pointed out by Andrew Lo, can be attributed to the failure of risk managers and their models to account for highly improbable events—the so-called fat tails of the distribution. But, as View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Winter 2021
Article

Can Staggered Boards Improve Value? Causal Evidence from Massachusetts

By: Robert Daines, Shelley Xin Li and Charles C.Y. Wang

We study the effect of staggered boards (SBs) using a quasi-experiment: a 1990 law that imposed an SB on all Massachusetts-incorporated firms. The law led to an increase in Tobin's Q, investment in CAPEX and R&D, patents, higher-quality patented innovations, and... View Details

Keywords: Staggered Board; Entrenchment; Life-cycle; Tobin's Q; Innovation; Profitability; Investor Composition; Governing and Advisory Boards; Investment; Innovation and Invention; Institutional Investing; Value

SSRN

March 2015
Case

West Coast Chill

By: William A. Sahlman, Robert F. White and Stephanie Puzio

The fall of 2010 marked the 20th year that Mitchell Joseph, a fourth generation beverage executive, serial entrepreneur, and the founder of the Joseph Company (the "Company"), had been working on developing the technology for a self-chilling can. Mitchell was at an... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

18 Dec 2020
News

Making Doctors Effective Managers and Leaders

2008
Chapter

A New Generation of Pension Fund Management

By: Robert C. Merton

In talking about pension plans at this point in American economic and corporate history, we need to discuss three linked issues: the defined-benefit (DB) corporate plans that worked for our parents; the defined-contribution (DC) plans we're getting today because... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Investment Funds; Compensation and Benefits; Risk Management; Retirement; United States

18 Aug 2009
First Look

First Look: August 18

these two relationships may operate in a circular fashion. Second, we consider whether advertising these benefits of charitable giving—asking people to give in order to be happy—may have the perverse consequence of decreasing charitable giving, crowding out intrinsic... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2009
Working Paper

Input Constraints and the Efficiency of Entry: Lessons from Cardiac Surgery

By: David M. Cutler, Robert S. Huckman and Jonathan T. Kolstad

Prior studies suggest that, with elastically supplied inputs, free entry may lead to an inefficiently high number of firms in equilibrium. Under input scarcity, however, the welfare loss from free entry is reduced. Further, free entry may increase use of high-quality... View Details

Keywords: Government Legislation; Health Care and Treatment; Medical Specialties; Market Entry and Exit; Welfare; Health Industry; Pennsylvania

Read Now

30 Jun 2009
First Look

First Look: June 30

theorists differ as to whether exploitation undermines or enhances exploration. The debate reflects a gap—the missing theoretical mechanism by which organizations break free of old routines and discover new ones. We propose that the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

September 2017
Article

Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing to Estimate Cost of Care at Multidisciplinary Aerodigestive Centers

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Jordan A. Garcia, Bipin Mistry, Stephen Hardy, Mary Shannon Fracchia, Cheryl Hersh, Carissa Wentland, Joseph Vadakekalam and Christopher J. Hartnick

Time-driven activity-based costing was used to estimate the cost of care for patients with laryngeal cleft seen between 2008 and 2013 at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary Pediatric Aerodigestive Center. Retrospective chart review was performed to identify clinic... View Details

Keywords: Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Activity Based Costing and Management; Health Care and Treatment

September 1996 (Revised May 1997)
Case

Mobil USM&R (C): Lubricants Business Unit

By: Robert S. Kaplan

The general manager of a Lubricants Business Unit in Mobil's U.S. Marketing and Refining division launched a project to develop a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) for his unit. The purpose was to provide focus for all employees of the unit, enabling it to operate on an... View Details

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard; Employees; Customization and Personalization; Performance Evaluation; Measurement and Metrics; Management Teams; Projects; Energy Industry; Mining Industry; United States