Publications

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05 May 2003
Research & Ideas

How Bank of America Turned Branches into Service-Development Laboratories

physical facilities were prepared for. So the team decided to reconfigure the twenty Atlanta branches into three alternative models: Five branches were redesigned as "express centers," efficient, modernistic buildings where consumers could quickly View Details

Keywords: by Stefan Thomke; Banking; Financial Services

13 Mar 2005
Research & Ideas

Reinforcing Values: A Public Dressing Down

performance to improve, only to be bitterly disappointed. For some reason, the right things still don't happen. Why is change so hard? First of all, most people are reluctant to alter their habits. What worked in the past is good enough;... View Details

Keywords: by David A. Garvin & Michael A. Roberto

19 May 2003
Research & Ideas

Expensing Options Won’t Hurt High Tech

Business Review piece argued that options are an expense, plain and simple, and should be accounted for in that way. In this excerpt, the authors address what they call a fallacy: that expensing options will hurt young businesses.... View Details

Keywords: by Zvi Bodie, Robert S. Kaplan & Robert C. Merton

January 2008
Article

Mastering the Management System

By: Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton

Companies have always found it hard to balance pressing operational concerns with long-term strategic priorities. The tension is critical: World-class processes won't lead to success without the right strategic direction, and the best strategy in the world will get... View Details

Keywords: Framework; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Systems; Operations; Performance Improvement; Strategy

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2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 13 Platform Systems vs. Step Processes—The Value of Options and the Power of Modularity

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

This is the first chapter in Part 3. Its purpose is to contrast the value structure of platform systems with step processes from a technological perspective. I first review the basic technical architecture of computers and argue that every computer is inherently a... View Details

Keywords: Platform Systems; Step Processes; Computer Architecture; Modularity; Information Technology; Digital Platforms

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2013
Chapter

The Design of Online Advertising Markets

By: Benjamin Edelman

Because the market for online advertising is both new and fast-changing, participants experiment with all manner of variations. Should an advertiser's payment reflect the number of times an ad was shown, the number of times it was clicked, the number of sales that... View Details

Keywords: Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Online Advertising; Price; Market Design; Measurement and Metrics; Sales; Motivation and Incentives; Internet and the Web

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John P. Kotter is internationally known and widely regarded as the foremost speaker on the topics of Leadership and Change. His is the premier voice on how the best organizations actually achieve successful transformations. The Konosuke... View Details

June 2018
Case

Verona Group

By: Robert L. Simons and Sarah Abbott

Are a salesperson's struggles her own fault or the result of a problematic job design? Anna George works as a salesperson at Verona Group, a company that designs and wholesales high-end women's apparel. She had spent nearly 20 years in sales with another fashion label... View Details

Keywords: Jobs and Positions; Design; Analysis; Performance; Measurement and Metrics; Salesforce Management; Organizational Design

July 2011
Article

Kidney Paired Donation

By: C. Bradley Wallis, Kannan P. Samy, Alvin E. Roth and Michael A. Rees

Kidney paired donation (KPD) was first suggested in 1986, but it was not until 2000 when the first paired donation transplant was performed in the U.S. In the past decade, KPD has become the fastest growing source of transplantable kidneys, overcoming the barrier faced... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Success; Problems and Challenges; Programs; System; United States

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August 2018 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Fair Value Accounting at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (A)

By: Jonas Heese, Suraj Srinivasan, Francois Brochet and Christine Johnson

In May 2018, Berkshire Hathaway announced an unprecedented loss of more than $1 billion for the first quarter of 2018. Warren Buffett blamed this loss on the new accounting rules for equity securities which he criticized. In the case ‘Fair Value Accounting at Berkshire... View Details

Keywords: Equity Securities; FASB; Fair Value Accounting; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Financial Services Industry

07 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

XTV: Xerox’s Attempted Recovery From “Fumbling the Future”

his partners began reviewing the company's inventions. The first opportunity they uncovered was Advanced Workstation Products (AWP). Xerox's high-end printers actually were complex computer systems that contained extensive networking... View Details

Keywords: by Henry Chesbrough

07 Jun 2016
First Look

June 7, 2016

by performing automated evaluation of the quality of writing, sentiment estimation, and topic extraction. By analyzing 5,830 reviews from 57 hotels in Moscow, Russia, we find that (i) negative View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

09 Feb 2004
Research & Ideas

Got a New Strategy? Now Make it Happen

field organizations was growing. The senior team was slow to make decisions, and no one took responsibility for the performance of the developing businesses. A lack of openness lies behind many failures to implement strategy. Camp... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Beer & Russell A. Eisenstat

Linda A. Hill

Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and Faculty Chair of the Leadership Initiative. Hill is regarded as one of the top experts on leadership and innovation. Hill is... View Details

January 1991 (Revised January 1993)
Case

Xerox Corp.: The Customer Satisfaction Program

In August 1990 the president and executive vice president of Xerox are reviewing the progress made on its customer satisfaction program. The emphasis placed on the program, the success of the program to date, and the drive to achieve the corporate goals of customer... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry

03 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 3, 2009

forthcoming Abstract In this essay, we review the key features of the literature on innovation and organizational structure. We highlight the key areas where work has been undertaken, as well as the limitations of the literature to date.... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

June 2001 (Revised June 2001)
Case

Student Who Was Missing-in-Action, The

Assistant Professor Sam Benson was about to end the class session portion of his course with only student projects remaining. Then, he received a phone call from a student, George McHenry, who had missed 11 of 20 sessions. McHenry wanted to know what he needed to do to... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Higher Education; Decision Choices and Conditions; Learning; Education Industry