Publications

15 Jun 2009
Research & Ideas

GM: What Went Wrong and What’s Next

government. This is a great deal for Magna, but terrible for Chevrolet. GM's best small cars are engineered (and some are manufactured) by Opel in Europe. But it's not just about design and engineering. The supply chains and factory... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Auto

June 1999
Case

Matching Dell (A)

By: Jan W. Rivkin, Michael E. Porter, Charles E. Bruin, Markus Chappel, Thomas M Galizia and Laila J Worrell

After years of success with its vaunted "Direct Model" for computer manufacturing, marketing, and distribution, Dell Computer Corp. faces efforts by competitors to match its strategy. This case describes the evolution of the personal computer industry, Dell's strategy,... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Competitive Strategy; Industry Structures; Adoption; Computer Industry

11 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

Strategy Execution and the Balanced Scorecard

budget be driven from the revenue targets in the strategic plan. In The Execution Premium, we describe how a time-driven activity-based cost model provides the previously missing link between the revenue growth targets in a strategic plan and the authorization for... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

July 2011 (Revised June 2013)
Case

Foxconn Technology Group (A)

By: Robert G. Eccles, George Serafeim and Beiting Cheng

In 2010, Foxconn Technology Group, the largest and fastest growing multinational company in the Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) industry, came under public scrutiny after a string of employee suicides reached the international press. Although the company was... View Details

01 May 2017
Research & Ideas

Bad At Your Job? Maybe It's the Job’s Fault

any job to succeed, the supply of resources available to the worker must be in balance with the responsibilities of the job, says Simons. It’s a simple supply-and-demand lesson that should ring true for anyone who has taken an economics... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

11 Apr 2016
HBS Seminar

Pian Shu, Harvard Business School

Web

Strategy & IT - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

and customers; and across geography. It allowed firms, for example, to closely integrate globally distributed supply chains. See below for “Strategy and the Internet.” These first two waves gave rise to huge productivity gains and growth... View Details

24 Sep 2019
Blog Post

Launching a Career in Clean Energy

distribution operations of personnel and supplies for large-scale training exercises and deployments. It was a foundational experience that ultimately drove me to HBS—I realized that I could be, and wanted to be, a leader. What was your... View Details

Web

Marketing Awards & Honors - Faculty & Research

Supply Dynamics for Sequentially Released Products in International Markets: The Case of Motion Pictures," 2003, with Jehoshua Eliashberg) chosen as finalist for the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science "Long Term Impact Award," awarded... View Details

20 Oct 2010
Op-Ed

Export Competitiveness: Reversing the Logic

south seems to provide alternative export opportunities (Canuto et al., 2010). On the supply side, the almost unlimited labor supply at low wage levels (Lewis, 1954) in China and countries like Vietnam might... View Details

Keywords: by Christian Ketels

06 Jun 2007
Research & Ideas

Behavioral Finance—Benefiting from Irrational Investors

a follow-on offering, the price falls, in part because you're putting more supply on the market for a given level of demand," Baker says. "In the context of a merger, the acquiring company is often issuing shares to someone like... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

02 Oct 2006
Research & Ideas

Negotiating in Three Dimensions

means that key employees and colleagues both have and value more autonomy. It is also true externally with an increasing number of influential stakeholders outside the traditional chain of command. Newer and flatter organizational forms—strategic alliances, joint... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Blog

Leading Successful Digital Transformation

efficiency of supply chains, and chat bots are used to cut the cost of call centers. While it is always good to reduce costs and improve efficiency, focusing solely on efficiency implicitly assumes that the current operations and business... View Details

21 Jan 2022
Blog Post

Tipping Point: Investing in the Women of Kenya’s Coffee Farms

At one end of the global coffee supply chain are the diners who gather for brunch at the sidewalk tables outside Chloe’s Cafe in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood. Regulars there order the fluffy banana-walnut pancakes and steaming... View Details

January 2007 (Revised January 2010)
Case

Tom Muccio: Negotiating the P&G Relationship with Wal-Mart (A)

By: James K. Sebenius and Ellen Knebel

Describes the retailer-supplier negotiations of Tom Muccio, one of the earlier Proctor & Gamble (P&G) employees to be based in Bentonville, Arkansas, in negotiating the early operational components of the supplier-retailer partnership between P&G and Wal-Mart in the... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Process; Supply Chain Management; Partners and Partnerships; Conflict and Resolution; Bentonville

Professor WILLIAM E. FRUHAN, JR. is George E. Bates Professor, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. He received his BS degree from Yale University, and his MBA and DBA degrees from Harvard University. He has served as Senior Associate Dean and Director of... View Details

Keywords: medical supplies; medical supplies; medical supplies; medical supplies; medical supplies; medical supplies; medical supplies; medical supplies; medical supplies; medical supplies

May 1988 (Revised June 2023)
Case

National Cranberry Cooperative, 1996

By: Roy D. Shapiro

Describes the continuous flow process used to process cranberries into juice and/or sauce. Requires student to analyze process flows to determine where the bottlenecks are and to decide how, and whether, to expand capacity. Original version written by J.G. Miller and... View Details

Keywords: Logistics; Performance Capacity; Performance Improvement; Supply Chain; Mathematical Methods; Cost vs Benefits; Production