Publications

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March 2010 (Revised May 2012)
Case

Bank of America: Mobile Banking

By: Sunil Gupta and Kerry Herman

In January 2010, Jen McDonald, head of Bank of America Corporation's (BAC) Digital Marketing group, was discussing the bank's mobile strategy with Douglas Brown, senior vice president, Mobile Product Development. BAC launched mobile banking in 2007 and within three... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Digital Marketing; Financial Services; Mobile Banking; Channels; Strategy; Banks and Banking; Marketing Strategy; Service Delivery; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Banking Industry; United States

September 2002 (Revised November 2002)
Case

Transformation at the IRS

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Frances X. Frei and Corey B. Hajim

Describes the service transformation occurring at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Plagued by a history of poor service, enormous complexity, and an insular employee base, the 100,000-person organization grapples with a turnaround process that attempts to change... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Service Operations; Organizational Structure; Taxation; Organizational Culture; Transformation; Public Administration Industry; United States

June 1977 (Revised September 1992)
Case

Sorenson Research Co. (Abridged)

By: Steven C. Wheelwright

Presents the issues facing a high volume, high margin (but lightweight) medical products business. The company is trying to improve its inventory control to reduce inventory investment and improve service. The present multi-site inventory system is described and major... View Details

Keywords: Business Earnings; Investment; Volume; Service Delivery; Supply Chain; Performance Improvement; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

05 May 2003
Research & Ideas

How Bank of America Turned Branches into Service-Development Laboratories

were being carefully monitored and measured. Design and production problems should be worked out off-line, in a lab setting without customers, before the service delivery is tested in a live environment. —Stefan Thomke To select and... View Details

Keywords: by Stefan Thomke; Banking; Financial Services

21 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

7 Successful Battle Strategies to Beat COVID-19

complications (surging waves) arise. In the Agile environment, the purpose of rapid development is to produce a minimal workable product at the end of each delivery cycle, or "sprint." This short runway approach allows a team to... View Details

Keywords: by Euvin Naidoo

21 Dec 2022
Blog Post

Climate Stories Episode #12: Vehicle to Everything - Claire Broido Johnson (MBA 2002), Chief Operating Officer of Fermata Energy

experimentation is everywhere. Just before Thanksgiving, the pizza delivery chain Domino's announced plans to put a fleet of 100 custom-branded Chevy Bolt electric cars on the road, growing to 855 by the end of 2023. Domino's called it... View Details

Web

Engineering Meets Advocacy: Driving Innovation in Women’s Health - Blog: Health Supplement

Practitioners Topics Topics Biotech/pharma Care Delivery Clinical Trials Digital Health Global Health Health Care Entrepreneurship Health Care Innovation Health Care Investment Health Care at HBS Insurance/payor Medical... View Details

2013
Working Paper

Increased Speed Equals Increased Wait: The Impact of a Reduction in Emergency Department Ultrasound Order Processing Time

By: Jillian Berry Jaeker, Anita L. Tucker and Michael H. Lee

We exploit an exogenous process change at two emergency departments (EDs) within a health system to test the theory that increasing capacity in a discretionary work setting increases wait times due to additional services being provided to customers as a consequence of... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Demand and Consumers; Service Delivery; Health Care and Treatment; Business Processes; Health Industry

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April 1992 (Revised June 1993)
Case

American Nursing Services, Inc.

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Roger H. Hallowell

P.K. Scherle, R.N., founder, president, and owner, struggles with her successful business and focuses on either growth or enhanced profitability. View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Service Delivery; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry

10 Nov 2015
First Look

November 10, 2015

employee at Google's London office, Markus Berger, was thinking whether he should quit his job and go after his dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Berger's idea was to create Dinr, a company that would offer an upscale food ingredient View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

07 Oct 2008
First Look

First Look: October 7, 2008

online grocer to address this question. In general, we find that as the delay between order completion and delivery increases, grocery customers spend less, order a higher percentage of "should" items (e.g., vegetables), and... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

18 Sep 2007
First Look

First Look: September 18, 2007

Deaconess Medical Center Harvard Business School Case 607-150 Describes the history of clinical computing at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital and the development, since the 1996 merger to form the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, of an information system designed to... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

May 2011
Article

Think Customers Hate Waiting? Not So Fast...

By: Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton

Managers typically look for ways to reduce wait time to increase customer satisfaction. New research suggests there's a better approach: showing customers a representation of the effort, whether literal or not, being expended on their behalf while they wait. (The... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Service Delivery; Consumer Behavior; Performance Effectiveness; Customer Satisfaction

Find at Harvard

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July 2001 (Revised February 2002)
Case

Enspire Learning

An MBA student founds an e-education business and must decide which customers to target and which products/services to produce. View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Internet and the Web; Service Delivery; Education; Business Startups; Planning; Web Services Industry; Education Industry