Publications

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September 2019 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Engineering an Inclusive Bioeconomy

By: Tarun Khanna, Raffaella Sadun and Susie L. Ma

In 2019, entrepreneur Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio was developing a project he hoped could generate and share wealth from the natural resources of the Amazon without destroying those resources. His idea, called Earth Bank of Codes (EBC), would create a library of the... View Details

September 2006 (Revised December 2006)
Case

Arizona Department of Public Health: The Challenges of Preparing for a Public Health Emergency

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Ajay Vinze, T. S. Raghu and Minu Ipe

In the post-9/11 era information technology enablement for emergency preparedness and response have taken on increased significance. Public health organizations like ADHS play a critical role in any statewide preparation for large scale emergencies. With issues like... View Details

Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Information Technology; Health Care and Treatment; Business Processes; Service Delivery; National Security; Health Industry; Public Administration Industry; Arizona

May–June 1996
Article

Ruling the Net

By: D. L. Spar and Jeffrey J. Bussgang

The Internet promises a radical new world of business. But for many companies, it has yet to deliver. Although doing business in cyberspace may be novel and exhilarating, it can also be frustrating, confusing, and even unprofitable. Debora Spar and Jeffrey Bussgang... View Details

Keywords: Information Services; Online Technology

25 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

How Disruptive Innovation is Remaking the University

universities. In this excerpt, they discuss the idea of a university's DNA. In the absence of a disruptive new technology, the combination of prestige and loyal support from donors and legislators has... View Details

Keywords: by Clayton M. Christensen & Henry J. Eyring; Education

October 2018
Case

Zenefits Board of Directors (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

In early 2018, the time seemed right for Zenefits investor and director Lars Dalgaard to reflect on whether Zenefits had the right board of directors to shepherd the company through its next stages of growth. For the company whose name combined the words “benefits,”... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Business Model; Corporate Accountability; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Leadership; Risk Management; Venture Capital; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States; California

13 Dec 2016
First Look

December 13, 2016

North-South freight transport suggest that if the cartel were broken, railroads would have passed through 50% of their cost savings from standardization, generating a 10% increase in trade on the sampled routes. The results demonstrate... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

Ranjay Gulati

Ranjay Gulati is the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration and the former Unit Head of the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. He is an expert on leadership, strategy, and organizational issues... View Details

Keywords: information technology industry; information technology industry; information technology industry; information technology industry; information technology industry; information technology industry; information technology industry; information technology industry

2020
Book

Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity

By: Joseph Allen and John D. Macomber

By the time you reach 80, you will have spent 72 years of your life indoors. Like it or not, humans have become an indoor species. This means that the people who design, build, and maintain our buildings can have a major impact on our health.
Ever feel tired... View Details

Keywords: Architecture; Real Estate Development; Air Pollution; Air Quality; Public Health; Productivity Gains; Buildings and Facilities; Health; Pollutants; Performance Productivity; Construction Industry

07 Jun 2004
What Do You Think?

How Important are Big Ideas?

Summing Up Judging from responses to the June column, big ideas rank high on a list including technology and intellectual property as sources of competitive advantage. But they are only a starting point,... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2020
Working Paper

Iterative Coordination and Innovation

By: Sourobh Ghosh and Andy Wu

Agile management practices from the software industry continue to transform the way organizations innovate across industries, yet they remain understudied in the organizations literature. We investigate the widespread Agile practice of iterative coordination: frequent... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Goals; Specialization; Coordination; Field Experiment; Software Development; Organizations; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Goals and Objectives; Integration; Software

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May 2024 (Revised July 2024)
Case

Lowe’s: Improving the Total Home Strategy

By: Elie Ofek, K. Shelette Stewart and Alicia Dadlani

In 2023, Marvin Ellison, CEO of Lowe’s, contemplated enhancements to the company’s Total Home Strategy to accelerate performance and grow market share. In the last five years since becoming CEO, Ellison had championed a turnaround of the company, completing a... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Competition; Brands and Branding; Business Strategy; Retail Industry; United States; North Carolina

2016
Book

Building the Future: Big Teaming for Audacious Innovation

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Susan Salter Reynolds

Machiavelli famously wrote, "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." That's what this book is about—innovation far more audacious... View Details

Keywords: Teaming; Innovation; Leadership; Groups and Teams; Innovation and Invention

Machiavelli famously wrote, "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." That's what this book is about—innovation far more audacious... View Details

22 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

Open Source Software: The $9 Trillion Resource Companies Take for Granted

What does it take to put a price tag on open source software (OSS), a resource so critical to the global economy that some 96 percent of commercial programs include some code created, tinkered with, or distributed for free by public-facing tech forums? A View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Information Technology; Information Technology; Information Technology

June 1998 (Revised April 2000)
Case

GM Powertrain

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Mikelle Eastley

Discusses a young MBA plant manager who is improving the operations of a small General Motors components plant in Fredericksburg, Virginia. At 29 years old, Joe Hinrichs is the youngest plant manager at GM, and in his new assignment, he is faced with the daunting... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Labor Unions; Problems and Challenges; Technological Innovation; Change Management; Machinery and Machining; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry; United States