Publications

Article

Lessons From Hollywood: A New Approach To Funding R&D

By: Gary P. Pisano and Andrew W. Lo

Companies find it increasingly difficult to justify long-term, risky R&D investments—particularly in science-based fields such as biotechnology, advanced materials, and energy. We argue in this article that the traditional venture model has limits for such investments... View Details

Keywords: Financial Innovation; Financial Strategy; Project Management; R＆D; Start-up; Innovation Strategy; Business Model; Research and Development; Financial Management; Risk Management; Strategy

Other Unpublished Work

Risk Aversion, Risk Premium and the Choice of Capital Projects

By: S. Datar, R. Banker and B. Gopi

Keywords: Risk Management; Cost vs Benefits; Infrastructure

2023
Working Paper

Scoring and Funding Breakthrough Ideas: Evidence from a Global Pharmaceutical Company

By: Joshua Krieger, Ramana Nanda, Ian Hunt, Aimee Reynolds and Peter Tarsa

We study resource allocation to early-stage ideas at an internal startup program of one the largest pharmaceutical firms in the world. Our research design enables us to elicit every evaluator’s scores across five different attributes, before seeing how they would... View Details

Keywords: Project Selection; Pharmaceuticals; Financing Innovation; Resource Allocation; Innovation and Invention; Research and Development

Read Now

May 1986 (Revised October 1986)
Case

Data Administration in Citibank Brazil (C): The Back-End Project

By: Shoshana Zuboff

Keywords: Information Management; Banking Industry; Brazil

March 2001 (Revised April 2001)
Case

MiCRUS: Activity-Based Management for Business Turnaround

By: Robert S. Kaplan, Jonathan B. Schiff and Stanley Abraham

MiCRUS is a new company, spun off from IBM as a joint venture between IBM and Cirrus Logic to produce semiconductor wafers at world-class costs for its two parent companies. The senior management team needs to overcome the bureaucratic, internally focused culture that... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Cost Management; Semiconductor Industry

15 Dec 2003
Research & Ideas

The New Global Business Manager

required three kinds of specialists: business managers, country managers, and functional managers, with a group of senior executives to coordinate the efforts of the specialists. In 2003, as globalization has become a much more pressing issue and the talents of global... View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia Churchwell

Research Summary

Managing in the Creative Economy

In the early 21st Century, especially in developed economies, work increasingly makes use of specialized knowledge, skill, and talent and creates value through transformation of symbols and other intangible materials to achieve outcomes different from what has been... View Details

October 2009
Teaching Note

Medisys Corp.: The IntensCare Product Development Team (Brief Case)

By: Anne Donnellon and Joshua D. Margolis

Teaching Note for 094059 View Details

Keywords: Project Management; Conflict Management; Interdepartmental Relations; Organizational Change And Transformation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management; Leadership; Organizational Structure; Projects; Conflict and Resolution; Product Development

21 Feb 2005
Op-Ed

Is Business Management a Profession?

executives is to imply that business management itself is a profession—but is it? Sociologists who study the professions have employed a wide range of perspectives and criteria for determining what makes an occupation a profession. For... View Details

Keywords: by Rakesh Khurana, Nitin Nohria & Daniel Penrice

1982
Article

Managerial Roles and Career Paths of Gatekeepers and Project Supervisors

By: R. Katz and Michael Tushman

Keywords: Management; Personal Development and Career

2003
Book

Connecting the Dots: Aligning Projects with Objectives in Unpredictable Times

By: Cathleen Benko and F. Warren McFarlan

Keywords: Projects; Goals and Objectives

Summer 2021
Article

The World Management Survey at 18: lessons and the way forward

By: Daniela Scur, Raffaella Sadun, John Van Reenen, Renata Lemos and Nicholas Bloom

Understanding how differences in management ‘best practices’ affect organizational outcomes has been a focus of both theoretical and empirical work in the fields of management, sociology, economics, and public policy. The World Management Survey (WMS) project was born... View Details

Keywords: Firm Objectives, Organization, And Behavior; Business Economics; Choice Of Technology; Management Of Technological Innovation And R＆D; Technological Change: Choices And Consequences; Management Practices and Processes

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15 Feb 2017
Op-Ed

What Africa Can Teach the United States About Funding Infrastructure Projects

could teach the richest nation on earth about how to finance infrastructure. But, there are important lessons in multiple examples of roads, power, ports, and water projects that actually get built, thanks to successful funding models.... View Details

Keywords: by John Macomber; Construction

05 Dec 2018
Research & Ideas

Why Managers Should Reveal Their Failures

their projects to potential investors. (The idea was to determine the effects of envy in a field setting, not whether those feelings affected the chances of winning funding.) Some entrepreneurs listened to what they thought was an audio... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Teaching Interest

Data Science for Managers

Served as a teaching fellow; assisted MBA students with classroom coding exercises.
Developed course materials, including new case studies, technical notes, and code notebooks students used to analzye case data.
Developed interactive web... View Details

February 2005 (Revised June 2007)
Case

Unilever in India: Hindustan Lever's Project Shakti--Marketing FMCG to the Rural Consumer

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Rohithari Rajan

With liberalization of India's economy and the opening up of markets to foreign multinationals such as Procter & Gamble, the Indian subsidiary of Unilever--Hindustan Lever Ltd. (HLL)--was under pressure to grow revenues and profits. HLL had a long and stellar record of... View Details

Keywords: Economy; Market Entry and Exit; Business Subsidiaries; Revenue; Profit; Market Participation; Programs; Rural Scope; Poverty; Multinational Firms and Management; Consumer Products Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; India

August 2024
Case

The Walt Disney Company: Management Guidance

By: Joseph Pacelli and James Weber

In November 2023, financial analyst Aurora Fee was forecasting The Walt Disney Company’s earnings and stock price, with the goal of providing an investment recommendation to her clients. Disney, one of the world’s largest media and entertainment companies, had just... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Accounting; Investment; Communication; Forecasting and Prediction; Business Earnings; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States

November 2016
Case

Anthony Starks at InSiL Therapeutics (A)

By: Gary Pisano and Vicki Sato

When Bruce Wayne hired Anthony Starks, he thought he had hit a home run by getting the most brilliant and passionate scientist-leader in the field to be his CSO. But a few months in, Wayne and Starks begin to clash over crucial forward-looking decisions about the... View Details

Keywords: Biotech; Silicon; Managing Innovation; Management Challenges; Managing People; Managing Organization; R＆D; R＆D Project Management; Platform; Venture Capital; Drug Discovery; management; Biotechnology Industry; California

March 1998 (Revised October 2001)
Case

Teradyne: Corporate Management of Disruptive Change

By: Joseph L. Bower

Two cases deal with the introduction of a new product to Teradyne's line of semiconductor test equipment. This case deals with the problems facing the head of a start-up division responsible for developing and bringing to market a new product based on technology deemed... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Disruption; Management; Market Entry and Exit; Product; Problems and Challenges; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Technology