Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,666)
- Faculty Publications (145)
- February 2010
- Case
Amyris Biotechnologies: Commercializing Biofuel
By: Gary P. Pisano and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
In 2009, Amyris Biotechnologies was building a plant in Brazil that used synthetic biology to convert sugarcane into both renewable fuels and renewable chemicals. The Amyris' marketing team was investigating the commercial interest for both types of products, while the... View Details
- 2009
- Chapter
Self-regulatory Institutions for Solving Environmental Problems: Perspectives and Contributions from the Management Literature
By: Andrew A. King and Michael W. Toffel
Scholars of management have long considered how institutions can help resolve market imperfections and thereby improve human welfare. Most previous research has emphasized the use of for-profit firms. Such institutions cannot effectively address many environmental... View Details
- July – August 2009
- Article
Organizational Ambidexterity: Balancing Exploitation and Exploration for Sustained Performance
By: Sebastian Raisch, Julian Birkinshaw, Gilbert Probst and Michael Tushman
Organizational ambidexterity has emerged as a new research paradigm in organization theory, yet several issues that are fundamental to this debate remain controversial. We explore four central tensions here: Should organizations achieve ambidexterity through... View Details
- April 2009
- Journal Article
Perspectives on the Productivity Dilemma
By: Paul S. Adler, Mary Benner, David James Brunner, John Paul MacDuffie, Emi Osono, Bradley R. Staats, Hirotaka Takeuchi, Michael Tushman and Sidney G. Winter
For more than a century, operations researchers have recognized that organizations can increase efficiency by adhering strictly to proven process templates, thereby rendering operations more stable and predictable. For several decades, researchers have also recognized... View Details
- January 2009 (Revised June 2010)
- Case
Cisco Systems (2001): Building and Sustaining a Customer-Centric Culture
By: Ranjay Gulati
Customer centricity has been an important part of the culture at Cisco Systems since its inception. While part of this is attributable to values put in place by the founders and retained by subsequent management, it is also closely interwoven with its organizational... View Details
- November 2008
- Case
Syngenta International AG: Tropical Sugar Beet
By: Ray A. Goldberg and Alwin R. Kopse
Syngenta has developed a new sugar beet crop especially useful to tropical climates that enable double cropping to take place and provide both food and energy from the soil. Thus both the governments of Colombia and India are enthused about the new technological... 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
- December 2007
- Article
The Malleability of Environmentalism
By: Kimberly A. Wade-Benzoni, Min Li, Leigh L. Thompson and Max Bazerman
In this paper, we predict and find that self-perceptions of environmentalism are changed by subtle manipulations of context and, in turn, affect environmental behavior. In Study 1, we found that people exhibit greater positive assessments of their environmental... View Details
- November 2007
- Case
Antegren: A Beacon of Hope
By: Joshua D. Margolis, Thomas J. DeLong and Terence Heymann
The CEO of Biogen Idec faces a set of difficult decisions regarding a promising drug for Multiple Sclerosis that is headed for early approval by the FDA. The first in a series focuses on operational decisions triggered by the drive for early approval. Sparks discussion... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Optimal Reserve Management and Sovereign Debt
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
Most models currently used to determine optimal foreign reserve holdings take the level of international debt as given. However, given the sovereign's willingness-to-pay incentive problems, reserve accumulation may reduce sustainable debt levels. In addition, assuming... View Details
- December 2006 (Revised October 2007)
- Case
Embrapa
By: David E. Bell and Mary L. Shelman
Brazil's national agricultural research corporation, Embrapa, has developed an integrated crop and livestock production system that will allow farmers and ranchers to intensify production and improve profitability. Broad adoption of the technology would provide the... View Details
- March 2005
- Article
Sovereign Debt As a Contingent Claim: A Quantitative Approach
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
We construct a dynamic equilibrium model with contingent service and adverse selection to quantitatively study sovereign debt. In the model, benefits of defaulting are tempered by higher future interest rates. For a wide set of parameters, the only equilibrium is one... View Details
- 2005
- Working Paper
Nominal versus Indexed Debt: A Quantitative Horse Race
By: Laura Alfaro and Fabio Kanczuk
The main arguments in favor of and against nominal and indexed debt are the incentive to default through inflation versus hedging against unforeseen shocks. We model and calibrate these arguments to assess their quantitative importance. We use a dynamic equilibrium... View Details
- September 2003 (Revised June 2005)
- Case
Learning from LeapFrog: Creating Educational and Business Value
By: Lynda M. Applegate, Christopher Dede and Susan Saltrick
Explores the success factors leading to one's company's rise to the number three ranking in the aggressively competitive toy industry. LeapFrog has made the strategic decision to exploit its educational model in two industry sectors: consumer toys and educational... View Details
- 2001
- Working Paper
Contextuality Within Activity Systems
By: Michael E. Porter and Nicolaj Siggelkow
Research on the interactions among activities in firms and the extent to which these interactions help create and sustain competitive advantage has rapidly expanded in recent years. In this research, the two most common approaches have been the complementarity... View Details
- 2001
- Chapter
Publicly Funded Science and the Productivity of the Pharmaceutical Industry
By: Rebecca Henderson and Ian Cockburn
U.S. taxpayers funded $14.8 billion of health related research last year, four times the amount that was spent in 1970 in real terms. In this paper we evaluate the impact of these huge expenditures on the technological performance of the pharmaceutical industry. While... View Details
- November 1999 (Revised June 2006)
- Case
DLJdirect: "Putting Our Reputation Online"
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Gillian Morris
Online broker DLJdirect faced two decisions during the fall of 1999: what customer segments should it target and how much should it spend on marketing? Unlike its competitors, who focused either on day traders or more mainstream investors, DLJdirect differentiated its... View Details
- November 1992 (Revised April 1995)
- Case
Advertising Council Earth Share Campaign: Strategy, Execution, and Final Campaign
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Jayne D. Kramer
In the several years preceding 1992, there had been a dramatic rise in the public's concern for environmental issues. Yet the Roper Organization reported that fewer than one in ten Americans made personal efforts to help solve environmental problems on a regular basis.... View Details
- April 1988 (Revised October 1996)
- Case
Home Depot, Inc., The
Home Depot, founded in 1978, pioneered the warehouse retailing concept in the home center industry. The company's niche strategy resulted in rapid growth in sales. By 1986, however, the company began experiencing deteriorating profitability. Students are asked to... View Details
- Research Summary
By: Boris Groysberg
Professor Groysberg's research focuses on the challenges of managing professional service firms. In particular, his work investigates how a firm can be systematic in achieving a sustainable competitive advantage by leveraging its employees. In a number of related... View Details