Publications

September 2001 (Revised October 2002)
Case

Virgin Group, The: Filling in the Value Gap

By: Frances X. Frei, Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar and Corey B. Hajim

Chronicles the successes and failures of the Virgin Group. By examining these examples, students discover attributes of Virgin's overall service concept, which, at its core, competes on quality rather than on price. Students are challenged to consider how Virgin might... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Competition; Price; Business Conglomerates; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Market Entry and Exit

January 1994 (Revised May 1995)
Case

Xerox: Design for the Environment

By: Richard H.K. Vietor

In 1990, Xerox undertook an "Environmental Leadership Program" designed to make Xerox an industry leader in non-polluting operations, recycling, and products actually designed for the environment. This effort flowed naturally out of the system of total quality... View Details

Keywords: Product Design; Production; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Organizational Design; Environmental Sustainability

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

John A. Hartford

Under John Hartford’s management, A&P became a large integrated business empire. In 1937, he switched A&P to a supermarket operation from its base as a delivery store, which enabled him to offer even lower prices. By the... View Details

Keywords: Retail

01 Mar 2010
News

A Helping Hand for Health Care

The HBS Buffalo Club continued its tradition of sponsoring community leaders for HBS Executive Education courses by sending senior management teams from two of the area’s health-care providers to the School’s new Managing Health- care View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Health, Social Assistance; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services; Professional Services

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

August 2021 (Revised February 2023)
Supplement

Fair Park Covid-19 Mass Vaccination Site (B)

By: Willy Shih

This case is an opportunity to apply the methods of the Toyota Production System (TPS) to the analysis of an everyday service application: administering Covid-19 vaccines. It describes the start-up of a drive-up Covid-19 mass vaccination site at the Texas State Fair... View Details

Keywords: Operations Management; Operations Improvement; Operations And Processes; Toyota Production System; COVID-19 Pandemic; Operations; Service Operations; Health Pandemics; Service Delivery; Problems and Challenges; Goals and Objectives; Measurement and Metrics; Health Industry; United States

March 2019
Technical Note

Control or Flexibility? Structured Empowerment Offers Both—Lessons from Retail & Service Chains (Abridged)

By: Tatiana Sandino

This note explains how several retail and service organizations use a practice described here as “structured empowerment” to balance control and flexibility as they grow. I define structured empowerment as a practice that grants employees both (a) the power to make... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Standards; Employees; Service Delivery; Decision Making; Power and Influence; Retail Industry; Service Industry

December 2011 (Revised December 2011)
Case

Cancer Treatment Centers of America: Scaling the Mother Standard of Care

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Matthew Bird

The CEO of a private and growing national network of specialty care hospitals focusing on advanced-stage and complex cancer treatments reflected on the firm's past phase of growth before meeting with the company's Chairman and founder to discuss how to further scale... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Business Growth and Maturation; Medical Specialties; Service Delivery; Innovation and Invention; Health Industry

September 2007
Case

Collaborating to Improve

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer and Ingrid M. Nembhard

Madison Memorial Hospital is deciding between a variety of quality improvement strategies. Highlights quality improvement collaborative—organized programs popularized by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in which teams from multiple institutions work together to... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Performance Improvement; Quality; Groups and Teams; Cooperation; Integration; Health Industry

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

April 2005 (Revised August 2012)
Supplement

MedCath Corporation (B)

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Louisa Neissa

Supplements the (A) case. A rewritten version of an earlier case. View Details

Keywords: Medical Specialties; Market Entry and Exit; Service Delivery; Conflict and Resolution; Horizontal Integration; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

June 2009 (Revised April 2011)
Case

Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

By: Anita L. Tucker and Amy C. Edmondson

The case describes an organization's use of the science of improvement to transform their process quality from below average to the top 10% in their industry. The case outlines the protagonist's strategy of developing internal experts who are trained in a common... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Experience and Expertise; Leading Change; Measurement and Metrics; Service Delivery; Performance Improvement; Health Industry; Ohio

December 2015
Case

IDEO: Human-Centered Service Design

By: Ryan W. Buell and Andrew Otazo

The case describes IDEO, one of the world's leading design firms, and its human-centered innovation culture and processes. It is an example of what managers can do to make their own organizations more innovative. In reaction to a rapidly changing competitive landscape,... View Details

Keywords: Design Thinking; Innovation; Service Management; Service; Design; Service Delivery; Innovation and Management; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Peru