Publications

30 Nov 2018
What Do You Think?

What’s the Best Administrative Approach to Climate Change?

Summing Up: Should a 'Montreal Protocol' for Administering Global Warming Be Pursued? Climate change and how to manage it is a daunting subject. Nevertheless, several readers of this month’s column were willing to venture a model or two for administering a system... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Energy

2008
Working Paper

The Architecture of Platforms: A Unified View

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and C. Jason Woodard

The central role of "platform" products and services in mediating the activities of disaggregated "clusters" or "ecosystems" of firms has been widely recognized. But platforms and the systems in which they are embedded are very diverse. In particular, platforms may... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Industry Clusters; Infrastructure; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms

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14 Apr 2014
Research & Ideas

Difficulties for Women Bridging Racial, Generational, and Global Divides

one reader in the comments section of Oprah.com. "Oprah—you should be ashamed of yourself!" “Let's replace our judgment with curiosity” Among scholars, it's called "intersectionality"—the obvious yet complex idea that gender interacts... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

24 Jun 2013
Working Paper Summaries

The Entrepreneurial Gap: How Managers Adjust Span of Accountability and Span of Control to Implement Business Strategy

Keywords: by Robert L. Simons

July 2001
Case

Bobbie D'Alessandro and the Redesign of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School

By: Linda A. Hill, Kristin Doughty and Ellen Pruyne

Bobbi D'Alessandro, the superintendent of the school system in Cambridge, MA, has just hired a new principal to lead a major redesign effort in the city's only high school. The need for reform had been evident since the late 1980s when school statistics highlighted... View Details

Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Performance Improvement; Change Management; Secondary Education; Selection and Staffing; Leading Change; Education Industry; Cambridge

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October 2024
Module Note

Purpose of the Firm

By: Debora L. Spar and Julia M. Comeau

Purpose of the Firm (PoF) is a short module designed to explore how, and under what circumstances, business leaders can harness the power of capitalism and markets to “make a difference in the world”—that is, to address a significant societal problem as a commercial... View Details

Keywords: Social Accounting; Purpose; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Enterprise; Mission and Purpose; Leadership

March 2020
Case

ZEISS Group: Organize by Customer Culture?

By: Willy C. Shih

How should ZEISS, the German manufacturer of precision optical and optoelectronic systems manage two historic businesses that operated fairly autonomously? The Industrial Quality Solutions (IQS) business sold measurement equipment to manufacturing companies in sectors... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Organizational Culture; Manufacturing Industry; Europe; Germany

February 2003 (Revised August 2005)
Case

UCB (A): Managing Information for Globalization and Innovation

By: F. Warren McFarlan and Brian DeLacey

This case presents a complex total MIS strategy case for a $3 billion European pharmaceutical/chemicals company based in Brussels. It covers corporate strategy alignment of IT portfolio, IT operations issues, and global coordination of IT. View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Operations; System; Corporate Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Globalization; Pharmaceutical Industry; Information Technology Industry; Brussels

November–December 2018
Article

Slack Time and Innovation

By: Ajay Agrawal, Christian Catalini, Avi Goldfarb and Hong Luo

Traditional innovation models assume that new ideas are developed up to the point where the benefit of the marginal project is just equal to the cost. Because labor is a key input to innovation when the opportunity cost of time is lower, such as during school breaks or... View Details

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Slack Time; Innovation and Invention; Labor; Projects; Complexity; Value

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2007
Working Paper

The Impact of Component Modularity on Design Evolution: Evidence from the Software Industry

By: Alan MacCormack, John Rusnak and Carliss Y. Baldwin

Much academic work asserts a relationship between the design of a complex system and the manner in which this system evolves over time. In particular, designs which are modular in nature are argued to be more "evolvable," in that these designs facilitate making... View Details

Keywords: Product Design; Adaptation; Software; Information Technology Industry

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December 1999
Case

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A4): Sun Peak: Helen Yang and Mark Walden on "Running Sun on Sun"

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Jane Roessner

SunPeak was the largest project Sun Microsystems, Inc. had ever undertaken: shifting Sun's entire business transaction system from a mainframe-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to a Sun-based system. Making the shift would be complicated and financially... View Details

Keywords: Projects; Transformation; Organizational Structure; Business Strategy; Complexity; Risk and Uncertainty; Success; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Technology Industry; Computer Industry

November 1997
Case

Colly Cotton Ltd.

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Tom Clay

Colly Farm is an entrepreneurial cotton farm complex that has to compete on a world market. In going public it has to satisfy the market that it can remain profitable in volatile times. View Details

Keywords: Earnings Management; Entrepreneurship; Going Public; Balance and Stability

18 Sep 2000
Research & Ideas

Getting It Done: Improving Nonprofit Performance

available during organizational development, and the conditions of its acquisition that all work together to create a powerful influence on management behavior and organizational culture." It is therefore imperative, Grossman argues, that the world of nonprofit... View Details

Keywords: by James E. Aisner

September 1971 (Revised September 1983)
Case

Gentle Electric Co.

By: W. Earl Sasser

Designed to illustrate various levels of complexity in determining optimum order sizes for a single item inventory policy. Students are asked to evaluate the impact of recent operational changes on the firm's ordering policy. Intended to follow the students' initial... View Details

Keywords: Change; Policy; Supply Chain; Complexity; Electronics Industry

11 Aug 2016
Cold Call Podcast

Why College Rankings Keep Deans Awake at Night

Brian Kenny: In September of 2013, President Obama sent shock waves through American higher education by announcing plans to create a federal rating system that would allow parents and students to easily compare colleges. He said he would... View Details

Keywords: Re: William C. Kirby; Education

17 Nov 2003
Research & Ideas

The Business Case for Diabetes Disease Management

analyze the complexities of disease management and check all avenues for potential business opportunities. The participants, almost all of them health professionals, sorted through the risks and benefits of disease management for... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

03 Jul 2012
Research & Ideas

HBS Faculty on Supreme Court Health Care Ruling

experts in the health care field, to provide their views on various facets of one of this country's most important and complex problems. Bill George Professor of Management Practice, former chair and CEO of Medtronic, and author of 7... View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty; Health

24 May 2004
Research & Ideas

The Watsons: IBM’s Troubled Legacy

upon which to dramatize the advantages of the American system of free enterprise." Foremost among the more than forty company exhibitors was the nation's largest industrial corporation, General Motors. Still smarting from the... View Details

Keywords: by Richard S. Tedlow

May 2025 (Revised June 2025)
Background Note

Social Enterprise in Latin America

By: Brian L. Trelstad and Karina Souza

This research note provides an overview of the social enterprise ecosystem in Latin America, exploring current dynamics across key markets, including country-specific insights on Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Central America. In a region characterized... View Details