Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,198)
- Faculty Publications (153)
- July – August 2009
- Article
Restoring American Competitiveness
By: Gary P. Pisano and Willy C. Shih
For decades, U.S. companies have been outsourcing manufacturing in the belief that it held no competitive advantage. That's been a disaster, maintain Harvard professors Pisano and Shih, because today's low-value manufacturing operations hold the seeds of tomorrow's... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised December 2009)
- Case
eReading: Amazon's Kindle
By: Bharat N. Anand, Peter W. Olson Esq. and Mary Tripsas
In November 2007, Amazon introduced the Kindle, the first electronic reader with wireless functionality. The case describes the launch of the Kindle and provides information on representative players in the industry (or broader ecosystem) who are likely to be affected... View Details
- January 2009
- Article
From Regional Star to Global Leader
By: Nitin Nohria
Yang Jianguo was recently promoted from country manager for China to global head of product development at a staid French perfume maker. He was chosen for his technical smarts and his knowledge of emerging markets—a critical avenue for growth, given that sales in the... View Details
- November 2008 (Revised March 2018)
- Case
Transformation of COFCO in a Changing Environment
By: Ray A. Goldberg and Kefei Yang
China's COFCO, the country's leading edible oil and food importer and exporter and its largest food manufacturer, had in its 50-plus years of operation undergone four stages of transformation and was about to embark on a fifth. The global agriculture system was... View Details
- September 2008
- Teaching Note
Chi Mei Optoelectronics (TN)
By: Willy C. Shih
Teaching Note for [608-123]. View Details
- 2008
- Simulation
Strategic Innovation Simulation: Back Bay Battery
By: Willy C. Shih and Clayton Christensen
This online simulation allows students to play the role of a business unit manager at Back Bay Battery Company who faces the dilemma of balancing a portfolio of investment strategies across products in the rechargeable battery space. Players have to manage R&D... View Details
- May 2008 (Revised September 2009)
- Case
Radiohead: Music at Your Own Price (A)
By: Anita Elberse and Jason Bergsman
In October 2007, the British band Radiohead caused a stir when it announced it would allow customers to decide how much to pay for its new album, released exclusively as a digital download and available only from the band's own website. The pricing plan represented a... View Details
- April 2008 (Revised October 2008)
- Case
TD Canada Trust (A): The Green and the Red
By: Dennis Campbell and Brent Kazan
The case series illustrates the role of performance measurement and analytics in translating TD-Canada Trust's service model of "comfortable banking" into operational terms. In 2000, in a banking market where consumers and regulators were typically hostile to mergers... View Details
- March 2008 (Revised December 2011)
- Case
IBM Values and Corporate Citizenship
IBM's transformation into a globally integrated enterprise (GIE) began with a conviction about what should never change. Since its founding in 1911, the company operated under a set of principles articulated by founder Thomas Watson and became known for a strong... View Details
- March 2008
- Case
Shangri-La Hotels
By: Dennis Campbell and Brent Kazan
In November 2006, Symon Bridle, the newly appointed chief operating officer of Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, was thinking about a number of organizational issues that presented challenges to Shangri-La's rapid expansion strategy. There were three major issues at hand:... View Details
- January – February 2008
- Article
Managing the Impact of Employee Turnover on Performance: The Role of Process Conformance
By: Zeynep Ton and Robert S. Huckman
We examine the impact of employee turnover on operating performance in settings that require high levels of knowledge exploitation. Using 48 months of turnover data from U.S. stores of a major retail chain, we find that, on average, employee turnover is associated with... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Competition in Modular Clusters
By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and C. Jason Woodard
The last twenty years have witnessed the rise of disaggregated "clusters," "networks," or "ecosystems" of firms. In these clusters the activities of R&D, product design, production, distribution, and system integration may be split up among hundreds or even thousands... View Details
- October 2007 (Revised December 2007)
- Case
TiVo 2007: DVRs and Beyond
By: David B. Yoffie and Michael Slind
Tom Rogers, CEO of TiVo, had placed multiple strategic bets on his company. In September 2007, that strategy was due for a major test. TiVo was a maker of digital video recorder (DVR) products and a distributor of DVR technology. Rogers believed that macro-trends in... View Details
- December 2006 (Revised April 2014)
- Case
J. R. D. Tata
By: Nitin Nohria, Anthony Mayo and Mark Benson
J.R.D Tata, Chairman of the Indian conglomerate Tata & Sons, played a significant role in building India's economic infrastructure. Under his guidance, Tata & Sons built locomotives, steel refineries, airlines, chemical plants, and technology-based enterprises.... View Details
- May 2006 (Revised November 2006)
- Case
DVD War
By: David B. Yoffie and Michael Slind
In 2006, the DVD was the most popular storage medium in the entertainment and computer industries. The development of high-definition (HD) technology created a need for a format with greater storage capacity. Instead of agreeing on a single standard for a new HD disc,... View Details
- January 2006 (Revised March 2010)
- Case
Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and the Market for Digital Information Goods
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Andres Hervas and Jordan Mitchell
We study competitive interaction between two alternative models of digital content distribution over the Internet: peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing and centralized client-server distribution. We present microfoundations for a stylized model of p2p file sharing where all... View Details
Keywords: Price; Profit; Distribution; Competition; Internet and the Web; Information Infrastructure
- August 2005 (Revised December 2006)
- Case
Procter & Gamble: Electronic Data Capture and Clinical Trial Management
By: Robert S. Huckman and Mark J. Cotteleer
Considers whether the management of Procter & Gamble (P&G) Pharmaceuticals should adopt Web-based electronic data capture (EDC) as the default standard for the management of its clinical drug trials. Provides a detailed description of the existing paper-based process... View Details
- March 2005 (Revised June 2006)
- Case
Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Web Services Strategy
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Fernando Suarez
Microsoft and IBM have excluded Sun Microsystems from the board of the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I), an industry consortium that will shape the evolution of Web services standards. Sun managers must decide whether to join WS-I as a contributing... View Details
- May 2004
- Article
Disclosure Practices of Foreign Companies Interacting with U.S. Markets
We analyze the disclosure practices of companies as a function of their interaction with the U.S. markets for a group of 794 firms from 24 countries in Asia-Pacific and Europe. Our analysis uses the Transparency and Disclosure scores developed recently by Standard &... View Details
- February 2004 (Revised March 2006)
- Case
Pratt & Whitney: Engineering Standard Work
By: H. Kent Bowen and Courtney Purrington
As the engineering of state-of-the-art jet engines becomes more and more complex, Pratt & Whitney leaders face major competitive problems. Product development projects are not meeting the cost, quality, and lead-time targets. The leadership develops a design,... View Details