Publications

October 2007 (Revised January 2008)
Case

The Transformation of Thomson

By: David J. Collis and Troy Smith

Thomson, a French multinational, went through a decade of dramatic change in the early years of the 21st century. From a state-owned enterprise earning 97% of its revenue from television sets and other analog consumer electronics, Thomson had become a publicly traded... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Technology Industry; France

12 PM – 1:15 PM EST, 08 Nov 2021
Virtual Programming

Building Your Scaled Digital Organization

During this program led by HBS professor Karim R. Lakhani, learn how you can translate your HBS skill set to build or scale your organization using digitization, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) from a panel of HBS alumni who will share their extensive... View Details

Program

Driving Digital Strategy

program is eligible for the Digital Transformation Certificate. Learn More Key Benefits By the end of this course, you will emerge as a dynamic and future-ready leader, armed with the knowledge, tools, and... View Details

January 2020 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Huawei: A Global Tech Giant in the Crossfire of a Digital Cold War

By: William C. Kirby, Billy Chan and John P. McHugh

By 2020, Ren Zhengfei, CEO of Huawei, had transformed the small telephone switch manufacturer he founded in 1987 into a $120 billion telecommunications company poised to lead the lucrative rollout of fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks. However, an emerging... View Details

Keywords: International Strategy; Government And Business; Digital Infrastructure; Political Risk; Information Technology; Infrastructure; Business and Government Relations; Government and Politics; Information Infrastructure; Technology Industry; China; United States

10 May 2021
News

Q&A: Are Businesses Doing Digital Strategy Wrong?

April 2015 (Revised June 2016)
Case

The Transformation of NCR

By: David Collis, Raffaella Sadun and Matthew Shaffer

During his tenure as CEO since 2005, Bill Nuti had moved NCR Corporation (originally National Cash Register) from its historical competence in hardware to become a provider of hardware and software for managing transactions across a range of industries and payments... View Details

Keywords: NCR; Hardware; Software; Acquisitions; Financial Services; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Expansion; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Transformation; Acquisition; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry

November 2021
Article

Corporate Strategy and the Theory of the Firm in the Digital Age

By: Markus Menz, Sven Kunisch, Julian Birkinshaw, David J. Collis, Nicolai J. Foss, Robert E. Hoskisson and John Prescott

The purpose of this article is to reinvigorate research in the intersection of corporate strategy and the theory of the firm in light of the rapid advancement of digital technologies. Using the theory of the firm as an interpretive lens, we focus our analysis on the... View Details

Keywords: Digitalization; Multi-business Firm; Scale And Scope; Theory Of The Firm; Corporate Strategy; Technological Innovation; Competitive Advantage; Organizational Design; Theory; Research; Digital Transformation

Find at Harvard

March 2020
Module Note

Business Model Transformation in the Platform Age

By: Feng Zhu

Although some digital platforms are highly successful, most firms today are still traditional product- or service-based firms. To take advantage of the opportunities created by platform business models, traditional firms can work with existing platforms to become their... View Details

Keywords: Platforms; Platform Businesses; Platform Disruption; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Transformation; Digital Platforms