Publications

February 2010 (Revised January 2014)
Case

Tennant Company

By: Toby E. Stuart, Lynda M. Applegate and James Weber

Tennant, a leading producer of floor cleaning equipment, must determine how to create, finance, structure, staff, govern, measure, and manage a new venture for developing a fundamentally new product line. In 2005, Tennant Company had developed an innovative,... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Change Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Disruptive Innovation; Product Development; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Research and Development

19 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

15 Podcast Episodes That Grabbed Listeners in 2023

to innovate in the climate space, and shares his advice for those interested in careers in business and climate. Beyond Net Zero: How Seventh Generation Plans to Achieve Real Zero Carbon Ashley Orgain, chief impact officer at Seventh... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

30 Nov 2007
What Do You Think?

What Is Management’s Role in Innovation?

of their scarcest resources." Another senior executive will ask whether creativity scales. Can an innovator be more productive with the substantial resources that a large organization can provide? Or... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

16 Nov 2015
Research & Ideas

Does Competition Make Us More Creative?

much competition pushes them in the opposite direction. The findings could help organizations generate more innovative ideas, sharpen R&D, and even improve “bake-off” competitions between vendors used to award contracts. “You could... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Advertising

05 Jun 2023
What Do You Think?

Is the Anxious Achiever a Post-Pandemic Relic?

positions believe is vital to future innovation and success. It’s not that Gen Zers want to do nothing or even less. It’s just that they want to achieve in their own way and in their own sweet time. Who’s to say which of these formulas is... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

21 May 2024
News

A New Chapter

set for massive positive impact, and the demand is there; the only real impediment is bold philanthropy,” Wolf says. At HBS, Wolf studied with Clayton Christensen, whose theory of disruptive innovation describes a process by which a View Details

Keywords: Catherine O’Neill Grace; photo by Cayce Clifford

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

How To Make Restructuring Work for Your Company

question the status quo and consider alternative ways of doing business. This sense of "organizational unease" was encouraged by Humana's CEO-founder, who twice before had shifted the company's course to a brand-new industry. As the company's integrated View Details

Keywords: by Stuart C. Gilson

08 Mar 2016
First Look

March 8, 2016

opening up its innovation process in Silicon Valley: partnering with other organizations to integrate outside technology in its products and services; spinning out unexploited technology had proved... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

26 Nov 2008
Working Paper Summaries

The Sciences of Design: Observations on an Emerging Field

Keywords: by Sandeep Purao, Carliss Y. Baldwin, Alan Hevner, Veda C. Storey, Jan Pries-Heje, Brian Smith & Ying Zhu; Technology

28 Nov 2018
HBS Case

On Target: Rethinking the Retail Website

past. Measure success in narrow terms A successful customer interaction on Target.com was narrowly defined: Only when a customer searched for a product, received recommendations, and actually purchased the product would the company bother... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail

23 Apr 2024
In Practice

Getting to Net Zero: The Climate Standards and Ecosystem the World Needs Now

With each month clocking record-breaking temperatures across the planet, this Earth Day reflected the renewed urgency of regulators and businesses to find climate-change solutions. The US Securities and Exchange Commission recently adopted new rules that will mandate... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

June 2009 (Revised April 2019)
Case

Crosley

By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen

In October 1941, a top secret envoy from the U.S. military was sent to Crosley Corporation in Cincinnati, Ohio to request their assistance to construct a weapon that would drastically strengthen the defenses of U.S. troops: the proximity fuze. Such a fuze would allow... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; History; Production; National Security; Organizational Structure; Corporate Strategy; Research and Development; Product Development; Business and Government Relations; Creativity; Innovation and Invention; Ohio

November 2000
Case

WARDA: Leading a Rice Revolution in West Africa

By: Ray A. Goldberg, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Cate Reavis

The West Africa Rice Development Association, along with various national and international partners, was developing and transferring new rice technologies to farmers throughout West and Central Africa. While production in West Africa was growing faster than any other... View Details

Keywords: Private Sector; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; Government and Politics; Technological Innovation; Leadership; Performance Effectiveness; Problems and Challenges; Research and Development; Nonprofit Organizations; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Africa

Find at Harvard

2009
Chapter

Do Private Equity-owned Firms Have Better Management Practices?

By: Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen

We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from over 4,000 medium sized manufacturing firms across Asia, Europe and the US. These measures of managerial practice are strongly associated with firm-level performance (e.g. productivity,... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Management Practices and Processes; Production; Private Ownership; Performance Improvement; Performance Productivity

Read Now

December 2018
Case

Choosy

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Julia Kelley

Founded in 2017, Choosy is a data-driven fashion startup that uses algorithms to identify styles trending on social media. After manufacturing similar items using a China-based supply chain, Choosy sells them to consumers through its website and social media pages.... View Details