Publications

23 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

How to Brand a Next-Generation Product

notice a new name.” Like Apple, most consumer-centric companies deal with the dilemma of how to brand the next- generation of an existing product. Product upgrades make up the majority of corporate research and development activity.... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

March 2020
Article

Synergistic Value in Vertically Integrated Power-to-Gas Energy Systems

By: Gunther Glenk and Stefan Reichelstein

In vertically integrated energy systems, integration frequently entails operational gains that must be traded off against the requisite cost of capacity investments. In the context of the model analyzed in this study, the operational gains are subject to inherent... View Details

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15 Aug 2007
Op-Ed

3 Steps to Reduce Financial System Risk

Regulatory authorities face 2 challenges that need to be addressed forcefully if they are to contain a new source of systemic risk in international finance. First, the increasing migration of complex market activities to supervisory... View Details

Keywords: by Mohamed El-Erian; Financial Services; Banking

07 Nov 2014
News

How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition

October 2015
Article

How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Companies

By: Michael E. Porter and James E. Heppelmann

The evolution of products into intelligent, connected devices is revolutionizing business. In a November 2014 article, "How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition," Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter and PTC president and CEO James... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Organizational Structure; Operations; Business Strategy

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August 1994
Case

Kyocera Corporation: The Amoeba Management System

Describes Kyocera's unusual approach to profit centers. The firm's basic units of operation are profit centers called "amoebas," which are sales or manufacturing units with full responsibility for their planning, decision making, and administration. Amoebas are... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Organizational Structure; Profit; Management Systems; Manufacturing Industry

August 1994
Case

Komatsu Ltd. (B): Profit Planning and Product Costing

Describes Komatsu's profit planning and product costing systems. Komatsu can boast a high degree of employee dedication to achieving its profit plan. Also explores the logic behind the design of a new cost system at Komatsu that is less accurate at the product level... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Cost Management; Profit

17 Nov 2009
News

Inventing a Better Patent System

27 Sep 2021
Blog Post

Working to Change the Food System

Using microbes to produce foods is nothing new. However, using microbes to replace commodity crops and serve as a pillar in our food production system is fairly uncharted waters. My partner Max is a... View Details

October 2014
Article

Hidden Structure: Using Network Methods to Map System Architecture

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin, Alan MacCormack and John Rusnak

In this paper, we describe an operational methodology for characterizing the architecture of complex technical systems and demonstrate its application to a large sample of software releases. Our methodology is based upon directed network graphs, which allows us to... View Details

Keywords: Architecture; Modularity; Dominant Designs; Complexity; Product Design; Software

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06 Sep 2005
Research & Ideas

When Product Variety Backfires

co-written by professor Dilip Soman of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, demonstrates that sometimes offering too many choices prompts the confused consumer to defer a purchase or run to the arms of a competitor with a less cluttered View Details

Keywords: by Poping Lin; Consumer Products

30 Apr 2018
Blog Post

HBS Grad Drives Lori Systems to Success

both "Best of Show" and first place in the productivity and utility category. "The experience has validated my application thesis that HBS would greatly expedite the relevancy I could have in an organization or View Details

January 2000 (Revised January 2006)
Teaching Note

Husky Injection Molding Systems (TN)

By: Jan W. Rivkin

Teaching Note for (9-799-157). View Details

Keywords: Product Positioning; Competitive Strategy; Leadership Style; Expansion; Manufacturing Industry; Canada

2012
Working Paper

Modularity and Organizations

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

Modularity describes the degree to which a complex system can be broken apart into subunits (modules) that can be recombined in various ways. Modularity is important for organizations and the economy because the boundaries of organizational units and corporations are... View Details

Keywords: Complex Systems; Information Hiding; Loosely-coupled Systems; Mirroring; Mirroring Hypothesis; Modules; Modularity; Near-decomposable Systems; Product Architecture; Option Value; Organizational Design; Complexity

24 Aug 2009
Research & Ideas

SuperCorp: Values as Guidance System

Strategic Value Of Values: A New Guidance System By Rosabeth Moss Kanter Any company can say it has values, but what Banco Real did was to embed them in business practice and make them credible to the skeptics inside and outside of their... View Details

Keywords: by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

June 1991 (Revised May 2002)
Case

Barco Projection Systems (A): Worldwide Niche Marketing

Deals with the issue of niche marketing in a worldwide market. Barco Projection Systems makes video, data, and graphics projectors for the industrial market. They have traditionally been the performance leader. In August 1989, Sony Corp. introduced a higher performance... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Globalized Markets and Industries; Product Marketing; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

October 2006 (Revised March 2007)
Case

The ColorMatch Hair Color System

By: Clayton M. Christensen and Matthew Beecher

Describes the challenge of finding the right market for a product. View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Innovation and Invention; Markets; Product; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry

2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 16 Capturing Value by Controlling Bottlenecks in Open Platform Systems

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the means by which firms capture value in open platform systems. I begin by arguing that the surplus value created by complementarities within a technical system will be split among the owners of the unique and essential... View Details

Keywords: Open Platforms; Bottlenecks; Flow Production; Value Capture; Disintermediation; Production; Management; Digital Platforms