Robert S. Huckman
There are 8 articles for this faculty member.
Input Constraints and the Efficiency of Entry: Lessons from Cardiac Surgery
| Authors: | David M. Cutler, Robert S. Huckman, and Jonathan T. Kolstad |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 17, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | August 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Many professions rely on highly and variably skilled individuals. If a new firm is looking to enter a specific market, in addition to setting up a physical facility the company needs to hire or contract with specialized labor. In the short term, the supply of these specialists is relatively inelastic. From the point of view of economics, there remains a well-known potential for free entry to be inefficient when firms make entry decisions without internalizing the costs associated with the business they "steal" from incumbent firms. In 1996 Pennsylvania eliminated its certificate-of-need (CON) policy that had restricted entry by hospitals into expensive clinical programs, such as coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) programs—leading to an increase from 43 to 63 in the number of hospitals providing this service. HBS professor Robert Huckman and coauthors examine the welfare implications of entry in the market for cardiac surgery.
Fluid Teams and Fluid Tasks: The Impact of Team Familiarity and Variation in Experience
| Authors: | Robert S. Huckman and Bradley R. Staats |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 30, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | June 2009 (revised August 2009, November 2009) |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
In the context of team performance, common wisdom suggests that performance is maximized when individuals complete the same work with the same people. Although repetition is valuable, at least up to a point, in many settings such as consulting, product development, and software services organizations consist largely of fluid teams executing projects for different customers. In fluid teams, members bring their varied experience sets together and attempt to generate innovative output before the team is disassembled and its individual members move on to new projects. Using the empirical setting of Wipro Technologies, a leading firm in the Indian software services industry, this study examines the potential positive and negative consequences of variation in team member experience as well as how fluid teams may capture the benefits of variation while mitigating the coordination costs it creates.
Diagnosing the Public Health Care Alternative
| Published: | July 13, 2009 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Op-Ed |
With deep experience in health insurance reform, HBS faculty describe how improved competition in insurance plans could improve value for patients. Professors Regina E. Herzlinger, Robert Huckman, and Michael E. Porter take the pulse of a debate.
Broadening Focus: Spillovers and the Benefits of Specialization in the Hospital Industry
| Authors: | Jonathan R. Clark and Robert S. Huckman |
|---|---|
| Published: | May 7, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | April 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
What is the optimal scope of operations for firms? This question has particular relevance for the U.S. hospital industry, because understanding the effects of focus and spillovers might help hospitals determine how they should balance focusing in a single clinical area with building expertise in related areas. While some scholars argue that narrowing an organization's set of activities improves its operational efficiency, others have noted that seemingly unfocused operations perform at a high level and that a broader range of activities may in fact increase firm value. This study by HBS doctoral student Jonathan Clark and professor Robert Huckman highlights the potential role of spillovers—specifically complementary spillovers—in generating benefits from focus at the operating unit level.
Published in 2008
Variation in Experience and Team Familiarity: Addressing the Knowledge Acquisition-Application Problem
| Authors: | Robert S. Huckman and Bradley R. Staats |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 22, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Team familiarity helps team members successfully locate knowledge within a group, share the knowledge they possess, and respond to the knowledge of others. While team familiarity may help all teams to better coordinate their actions, it may play a particularly important role for teams with individuals looking to apply knowledge from their varied experience. This possibility leads to the question that provides the foundation for this paper: Does team familiarity moderate the relationship between variation in experience and performance? Prior research attempting to link variation in experience and performance has found effects ranging from positive to neutral to negative. Huckman and Staats explain these differential results by drawing on related work from learning, knowledge management, and social networking.
HBS Cases: JetBlue's Valentine's Day Crisis
| Published: | March 31, 2008 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Lessons from the Classroom |
It was the Valentine's Day from hell for JetBlue employees and more than 130,000 customers. Under bad weather, JetBlue fliers were trapped on the runway at JFK for hours, many ultimately delayed by days. How did the airline make it right with customers and learn from its mistakes? A discussion with Harvard Business School professor Robert S. Huckman.
Published in 2007
Team Familiarity, Role Experience, and Performance:Evidence from Indian Software Services
| Authors: | Robert S. Huckman, Bradley R. Staats, and David M. Upton |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 1, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
In contexts ranging from product development to service delivery, a significant amount of an organization's work is conducted by "fluid teams" that strive for innovative output. Fluid project teams exist only for the duration of a single project, and are comprised of members who may join or leave a team during the course of a project. In such settings, simple measures of cumulative output may not accurately capture team experience, particularly when changes in team composition are substantial over time. This study of an Indian software services firm, Wipro Technologies, considers an approach for capturing the experience held by fluid teams. It extends the concept of team fluidity in a way that allows for greater granularity in the measurement of team experience and a finer understanding of the determinants of team performance.
Published in 2005
From Turf Wars to Learning Curves: How Hospitals Adopt New Technology
| Q&A with: | Robert S. Huckman and Gary P. Pisano |
|---|---|
| Published: | June 13, 2005 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Turf wars and learning curves influence how new technology is adopted in hospitals. HBS professors Gary Pisano and Robert Huckman discuss the implications of their research for your organization.
