Ford - Publications - Faculty & Research

24 Apr 2017
Op-Ed

Op-Ed: Courage: The Defining Characteristic of Great Leaders

automate its factories, Mulally borrowed $23.5 billion, convincing the Ford family to pledge its stock and the famous Ford Blue Oval as collateral. His bold move paid off. Unlike its Detroit competitors,... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George; Auto; Food & Beverage

27 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

How the FBI Reinvented Itself After 9/11

rendered them obsolete. Similarly, Gulati references Kodak (which failed to react quickly enough to the public demand for digital photography—even though its own researchers played a role in inventing the technology) and automakers like View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

09 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

It’s Time to Reset Decision-Making in Your Organization

information is significant and avoiding information overload. David J. Collis, the Thomas Henry Carroll Ford Foundation Adjunct Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and Michael G. Rukstad, the late senior... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Sarah Abbott

15 Nov 2022
Op-Ed

Why TikTok Is Beating YouTube for Eyeball Time (It’s Not Just the Dance Videos)

the internet. We wrote a series of Harvard Business School case studies between 2009 and 2011 exploring viral videos—United Breaks Guitars, the JK Wedding Dance, and how Ford used influencers to launch the Fiesta car. What struck us right... View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

27 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

The Hidden Cost of a Product Recall

American emissions tests. Volkswagen estimated that fines, repairs, and legal costs would total more than $30 billion. And worse, the company ceded its command of America’s diesel car market—producing more than one-third of the models available in 2015—to companies... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Manufacturing; Consumer Products; Auto; Medical Devices & Supplies

14 Jul 2014
Research & Ideas

Pay Attention To Your ‘Extreme Consumers’

Embodiments Of Ethnography Another way designers can gain fresh insights into their products is by observing consumers whose physical impediments make using them difficult. Engineers with Ford wore bodysuits that mimicked the vision and... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

22 Jul 2002
Research & Ideas

Is Performance-Based Pricing the Right Price for You?

Other industries as diverse as consulting, trucking, and heavy industrial services are seeing the same trend. Before explaining the benefits, drawbacks, and application of performance-based pricing, let us describe an example involving a complex relationship between... View Details

Keywords: by Benson Shapiro; Manufacturing

20 Dec 2010
Research & Ideas

Panama Canal: Troubled History, Astounding Turnaround

(although the existence of the canal remained important), and the guarantee of the Neutrality Treaty, then the Panama Canal treaties start to look like a no-brainer and that is why Harry Truman first proposed "ditching the Big Ditch," andLyndon Johnson,... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Transportation

01 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Encouraging Dissent in Decision-Making

and everywhere in between, "fundamental but highly controversial issues often are not surfaced," former Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense, Ford Motor Company president, and World Bank president Robert S. McNamara (HBS MBA '39)... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons

02 Mar 2009
Research & Ideas

When Goal Setting Goes Bad

Bad "side effects" produced by goal-setting programs include a rise in unethical behavior, over-focus on one area while neglecting other parts of the business, distorted risk preferences, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation. One... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

05 Oct 2020
Book

Want to Be Happier? Make More Free Time

crucial projects we really need to get done. In fact, when we are distracted from a task, it can take 19 minutes to refocus on what we were doing, according to creativity expert Teresa Amabile, Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

20 Aug 2014
Research & Ideas

Why the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is a Social Media Blockbuster

emulated? Anything that can contribute to social capital. The content must be easy to create but not as easy as photographing one's morning cappuccino. For example, someone in Toronto snapped a selfie with the controversial mayor Rob Ford. Overnight, hunting Rob View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton

15 Jun 2009
Research & Ideas

GM: What Went Wrong and What’s Next

centers into more nimble operations that can sustain its renewed brands far into the 21st Century. Nancy F. Koehn, James E. Robison Professor Of Business Administration: General Motors was formed in 1908, the same year Henry Ford brought... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Auto

11 May 2016
Research & Ideas

Fix This! Why is it so Painful to Buy a New Car?

1989 about service in the auto industry, Ford Motor Co.: Dealer Sales and Service, puts it best: “Nothing much has changed over 25 years. The experience is still generally awful.” Sure, there have been pockets of customer-service... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Auto

25 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: Beauty Entrepreneur Madam Walker

Katherine Miller. When Koehn recently taught "Madam C.J. Walker" in her MBA course Entrepreneurial Leadership: Past, Present, and Future, her students in turn discussed Walker's rise against a historical backdrop dominated by hard-driving industrialists such... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Beauty & Cosmetics

25 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

What CEOs Do, and How They Can Do it Better

what the boss is doing all day. For all of the minute-to-minute monitoring of employee performance from the time of Henry Ford onward, it's amazing how little any of us really know about how CEOs of major companies spend their time.... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

17 Apr 2019
Research & Ideas

How Managers Stifle Creativity

Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration, Emerita, reflected on her research and its impact in an essay in Perspectives on Psychological Science, Educating Leaders Who Make a Difference in the World (pdf). More recently, she... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

27 Nov 2000
Research & Ideas

The Dynamics of Standing Still: Firestone Tire & Rubber and the Radial Revolution

Firestone's bottom-up capital budgeting process functioned flawlessly, quickly converting Ford and General Motors' demands into concrete commitments to radial production capacity. In a November 1972 Executive Committee meeting,... View Details

Keywords: by Donald N. Sull; Manufacturing; Transportation

27 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

IPO or M&A? How Venture Capital Shapes a Startup's Future

Ford v Ferrari. Only judges from the sound editing branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences vote in the category. Interest is confined to a small group of experts, much like a group of VCs used to talking to each other.... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

American Big Three and many other auto companies had done major benchmarking studies, and they and other companies had tried to implement their own forms of the Toyota Production System. There is the Ford Production System, the Chrysler... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

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