Publications

04 Apr 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, April 4

to develop Alfred’s routes and respond to customer requests in conjunction with other service providers, for example grocery delivery services, in what the founders describe as their "B2B2C" business model. Alfred won the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

19 Sep 2016
Research & Ideas

Why Isn't Business Research More Relevant to Business Practitioners?

disciplines, where academic research is leading to the development of a second skin that could improve drug delivery or alerting farmers and scientists on how to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from agricultural farming. Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

23 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

Break Your Addiction to Service Heroes

words, you also need a management plan for your customers. To return to our manufacturing metaphor, the special challenge of service delivery is that your customers routinely wander onto the shop... View Details

Keywords: by Deborah Blagg; Service

December 2010
Supplement

Rackspace Hosting (2000)

By: W. Earl Sasser, James L. Heskett and Tom Ryder

The leadership team of Rackspace, faced with accommodation of its service offering and dwindling financial reserves, decides to make customer focus the rallying cry of its new strategy. View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Planning; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Service Delivery; Strategy; Finance; Information Technology Industry

15 Aug 2024
Op-Ed

Post-CrowdStrike, Six Questions to Test Your Company's Operational Resilience

When cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike distributed a faulty software update in July, it impacted a staggering 8.5 million devices. The crisis rippled through commercial airline operations, package delivery logistics, ecommerce, and health... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson and Anita Lynch

November 2019
Case

DeepMap: Charting the Road Ahead for Autonomous Vehicles

By: Shane Greenstein and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded in 2016, DeepMap developed high definition (HD) mapping software and localization services for Level 4+ autonomous vehicles. Traditional navigational maps were accurate to a few meters, which was sufficient for drivers but not for machine-driven vehicles that... View Details

Keywords: Mapping Software; Autonomous Vehicles; Business Startups; Applications and Software; Technological Innovation; Technology Adoption; Service Delivery; Global Range; Resource Allocation; Strategic Planning; Technology Industry; Auto Industry

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Rapid Response: Inside the Retailing Revolution

get what they wanted. Choices were more limited, delivery time was measured in months, and warehouses were typically piled high with mountains of expensive inventory—often comprised of too many unpopular products and too few hot sellers.... View Details

Keywords: by James E. Aisner; Apparel & Accessories; Fashion; Consumer Products; Manufacturing; Retail

21 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

7 Successful Battle Strategies to Beat COVID-19

continuously update plans and actions against rapidly shifting challenges. 1. Pierce the fog of war Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general and military theorist, coined the term "fog of war." He understood that a strategy... View Details

Keywords: by Euvin Naidoo

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

January 2025 (Revised March 2025)
Case

Gavi and the 'Next' Pandemic

By: Tarun Khanna and Kerry Herman

In 2025, CEO Dr. Sania Nishtar and her team consider the lessons the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunizations (GAVI) learned from the pandemic. GAVI successfully brought COVID-19 vaccines to large swaths of the undeveloped and under-developed world by pooling... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Success; Innovation and Invention; Service Delivery; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Pharmaceutical Industry; Africa