Publications

02 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

Disruptors Sell What Customers Want and Let Competitors Sell What They Don’t

not going to compete by building a car manufacturing supply chain, a telephony network or a big retail footprint. We are going to use that available infrastructure to our advantage. These startups are like fleas on the backs of dinosaurs... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

08 Jun 2010
First Look

First Look: June 8

of information at their disposal. But they're unsure of how to sort through it and use it to make smart decisions. The result? They're struggling with profit-sapping supply View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

21 May 2024
Blog Post

IFC India: From Trash to Treasure: Inside a Waste Management Site in Mumbai

waste picker who collects them from local households. The business in turn cleans and strips the boxes down to resell them to local businesses who use them informally as transportation and stock storage. Alternatively, these boxes may end... View Details

01 Jun 2018
News

Digging Deep

operations, creating 400,000 direct manufacturing jobs since 2010. PwC predicts that in the years ahead “manufacturers in all industries will find themselves in a race to efficiently produce products at the point of demand.” BCG encourages companies to rethink their... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna

July 3, 2020
Article

Delivery Apps Need to Start Treating Suppliers As Partners

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Ian Macomber

Home delivery has shifted from a luxury service aimed at young urban professionals to a core part of many businesses, which is used by almost everyone. That upheaval has strained capacity of many delivery services and changed how they relate to the suppliers that they... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Supply Chain; Performance Capacity; Performance Efficiency; Entrepreneurship

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

25 Jun 2020
News

Covering All Corners

affected by the significant disruptions in global supply chains. Unfortunately, being on the developing side of the world means your shipments get deprioritized first. Your supply View Details

01 Dec 2022
News

3-Minute Briefing: Yla Eason (MBA 1977)

in June, when retailers had made their purchasing decisions in February. Sales is often about education. I asked chain retailers where they were selling dark pantyhose and makeup for brown skin, then cross-referenced that View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; entrepreneurship; diversity; leadership; Miscellaneous Manufacturing; Manufacturing

Teaching Interest

Overview

By: Michael W. Toffel

Professor Toffel teaches the required first-year MBA course Technology and Operations Management (TOM).

He also coordinates and teaches the Doctoral Seminar in Technology and Operations Management to help... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Operations; Supply Chain Management; Government Legislation; Non-Governmental Organizations; Multinational Firms and Management

01 Jun 2001
News

HBS Press Books in Brief

The Digital Enterprise: How to Reshape Your Business for a Connected World is an authoritative collection of cutting-edge Harvard Business Review articles, edited by HBR executive editor Nicholas G. Carr. Containing the latest thinking from leading minds in the new... View Details

Keywords: Information; Information

01 May 2012
First Look

First Look: May 1

occurs when supplier- and customer-facing IT are adopted together, suggesting the presence of complementarities in supply chain technology adoption. These results are consistent with the view that, by... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

May 2016 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Building the Digital Manufacturing Enterprise of the Future at Siemens

By: Willy Shih

This case describes the motivation for and the development of Siemens' digital manufacturing enterprise vision, which became the foundation for its implementation of Industrie 4.0. While the effort started with a purely defensive move by Anton Huber, head of the... View Details

December 2008 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Olam International

By: David E. Bell and Mary Shelman

In 20 years, Sunny Verghese had built Singapore-based Olam International from a small Nigerian export company into a $5 billion global leader in agricultural commodities with a core competence in Africa. Olam's growth had come by pursuing product and geographic... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Trade; Growth and Development Strategy; Supply Chain; Expansion; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Africa; Singapore

November 1999 (Revised June 2002)
Case

Debate Over Unbundling General Motors: The Delphi Divestiture and Other Possible Transactions, The

By: Malcolm S. Salter

Ever since General Motors (GM) announced in February 1997 its intention to divest Delphi Automotive Systems--its upstream parts manufacturing operations--Wall Street had called for further unbundling, and various stakeholders competed for their claim of value... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Supply Chain; Vertical Integration; Corporate Strategy; Corporate Governance; Auto Industry; United States

September 2008
Teaching Note

Chi Mei Optoelectronics (TN)

By: Willy C. Shih

Teaching Note for [608-123]. View Details

Keywords: Diversification; Information Technology; Market Entry and Exit; Standards; Industry Clusters; Supply Chain; Production; Experience and Expertise; Biotechnology Industry; Chemical Industry; Taiwan; Asia; Korean Peninsula; China

January 2025
Case

COMAC - Chinese Aviation Soars to New Heights

By: William C. Kirby and Daniel Fu

COMAC's C919 manifested the first challenge to the Boeing-Airbus duopoly since it came to dominate aircraft manufacturing in the 1990s. Beijing sought to export the C919 abroad in its quest to become a "transportation superpower." Was it a wise decision for COMAC to... View Details

Keywords: Aviation; Boeing; Airbus; Aircraft; State-owned Enterprise (SOE); Chinese Manufacturing; Airline Industry; Airports; Global Strategy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Supply Chain; Expansion; Aerospace Industry; China; United States; Europe

21 Jul 2022
News

How Sumner Feldberg Helped Transform Retail

mill stores were merely a fad. Instead, he bet on supermarket-style stores, with self-service, offering clothing, toys, beauty supplies and housewares. That idea became the basis for the family’s chain of... View Details

Keywords: Miscellaneous Store Retailers; Retail Trade

01 Jun 1997
News

HBS Alumni Association Board of Directors: President's Report

end, the School has started several new outreach initiatives, beginning with an effort to supply more information about the Alumni Association, the activities of the 110 worldwide HBS clubs, and the HBS... View Details

October 2022
Supplement

The SAH Group: The Time is Right, Spreadsheet Supplement

By: Juan Alcacer and Alpana Thapar

In January 2021, Jalila Mezni, CEO of the SAH Group, was preparing to present the company’s future growth plans to its board of directors. The Tunisian company was a leading producer and distributor of personal care and packaged hygiene products. In 2019, it expanded... View Details

Keywords: Growth Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Investment Decisions; Growth Management; Vertical Integration; Distribution; Competition; Strategy; Supply Chain; Presentations; Market Entry and Exit; Product Positioning; Consumer Products Industry; Pulp and Paper Industry; Health Industry; Tunisia