Publications

Find at Harvard

August 2023 (Revised September 2023)
Case

T.G.S. Transportation: Battery Electric or Hydrogen?

By: Willy C. Shih

Peter Schneider, the President of T.G.S. Transportation, Inc., faced a choice. His company operated drayage trucks that moved containerized cargo between the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland to customers across the State of California, with a focus on the... View Details

Keywords: Decarbonization; Clean Technology; Energy; Energy Policy; Renewable Energy; Environmental Sustainability; Truck Transportation; Transportation Industry; United States; California

08 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

A Balanced Scorecard Approach To Measure Customer Profitability

financial performance. Many companies have experienced profitless revenue growth. Scorecard measures of the incidence of unprofitable customers and the magnitude of losses from unprofitable relationships focus the organization on View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan

20 Aug 2021
Blog Post

Is the MBA Worth It? Hear What Recent HBS Grads Have to Say

full-time MBA experience once in your life. You want to make sure that you pick the right two years personally and professionally. I wouldn't worry so much about the financial component -- just focus on if the time in your life is right... View Details

05 Aug 2002
Research & Ideas

Understanding the Process of Innovation

pull this off? Focus instead on Big Idea Group's "process of innovation and value creation," says Christensen. Lack of creativity is rarely the reason for lackluster products and services coming out of the pipeline.... View Details

Keywords: by Loren Gray

26 Mar 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Mitigating the Negative Effects of Customer Anxiety Through Access to Human Contact

Keywords: by Michelle A. Shell and Ryan W. Buell; Health

Research Summary

Overview

The focus of Professor Gross’ research agenda is U.S. technological innovation, innovation policy, and the effects of technological change on economic activity. He is also interested in learning about what drives individual creative behavior. Methodologically, he is... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Technological Innovation; Innovation and Management; Technology Adoption; United States

24 Apr 2018
Op-Ed

Op-Ed: What Mark Zuckerberg Can Learn About Crisis Leadership from Starbucks

and bring the world closer together.” In a recent Harris poll, 88 percent of respondents think Facebook should be regulated, with 67 percent favoring requiring an opt-in feature before personal data can be used. #7: Go on offense, focus... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George; Technology; Food & Beverage

09 Feb 2016
First Look

February 9, 2016

and identity change interacted. We find instances in which urgent focus on design change consumed top management attention and crowded out identity change; in which experimentation in design made it... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

May 2021
Supplement

Hello Alfred: Come Home Happy — Operating the Business Model Exercise, Instructor Version

By: Joseph B. Fuller and Christopher Payton

On a mission to "automate the on-demand economy," Harvard Business School classmates Marcela Sapone and Jessica Beck launched Hello Alfred in 2013 to provide subscribers with an "Alfred" to complete various chores for a monthly fee. In early 2016, the company has built... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Internet and the Web; Business Startups; Service Operations; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Service Industry; New York (city, NY); Boston

22 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

Balancing the Future Against Today’s Needs

goal was to address "how we reinvent the business beyond the scope of current technology and market thinking," he says. To do this, George knew that managers needed some direction as to where to View Details

Keywords: by Paul Michelman

26 Jan 2016
First Look

January 26, 2016

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50422 forthcoming Ethical Innovation in Business and the Economy Managerial Responsibility and the Purpose of Business: Doing One's Job Well By: Hsieh, Nien-hê Abstract—Business managers... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2005 (Revised September 2006)
Case

Oracle vs. salesforce.com

By: David B. Yoffie and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

Explores the phenomenon of software becoming a service. Salesforce.com has catapulted into the lead for offering a customer relationship management (CRM) solution as a Web-based service. Siebel, the leader in CRM packaged software sales, has to devise a strategy to... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Competitive Advantage; Software; Web Services Industry; Information Technology Industry

2010
Working Paper

When Open Architecture Beats Closed: The Entrepreneurial Use of Architectural Knowledge

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

This paper describes how entrepreneurial firms can use superior architectural knowledge to open up a technical system to gain strategic advantage. The strategy involves, first, identifying "bottlenecks" in the existing system, and then creating a new open architecture... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Investment Return; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Design; Organizational Design; Competitive Advantage; Technology Industry

Read Now

Profile

Yaoxin Ding

backgrounds. We have great discussions inside and outside the classrooms, not just about careers, but about life. What do we really want to get out of life?” Even as Yaoxin maintains his focus on product View Details

September–October 2020
Article

When It's Time to Pivot, What's Your Story?: How to Sell Stakeholders on a New Strategy

By: Rory McDonald and Robert Bremner

To succeed, a new company must rally investors, staff, customers, and the media around a good story. But often that narrative turns out to be wrong, and entrepreneurs realize they need to change direction. How that shift is communicated can have a huge impact on a... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Strategy; Change Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Communication Strategy; Business and Stakeholder Relations

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

November 2009
Case

The HLB Turnaround

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Bhaskar Chakravorti and Laura Winig

Ford Pearson has recently taken over as CEO of HLB, a Chicago-based product design and development firm (and once one of the largest in the business), to help turn it around after a series of crises that had seriously threatened its survival. Pearson has personally... View Details

Keywords: Business Organization; Business or Company Management; Private Equity; Restructuring; Product Design; Corporate Finance

October 2012
Case

GSK's Acquisition of Sirtris: Independence or Integration? (Abridged)

By: Toby Stuart and James Weber

An executive from pharmaceutical company GSK must choose how much to integrate a recently acquired biotechnology firm, Sirtris. Moncef Slaoui, GSK's global head of R&D, championed the acquisition of Sirtris to gain access to its potentially revolutionary science.... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Resource Allocation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Research and Development; Science-Based Business; Integration