From Manufacturing to Design: An Essay on the Work of Kim B. Clark

The interdisciplinary research of economist Kim Clark, former dean of Harvard Business School and now President of Brigham Young University-Idaho, occupies a unique place in management scholarship for three reasons. First, he tended to focus on little known and under-appreciated management groups such as manufacturing managers, product development managers, and product and process architects. Thus, he directly positioned himself outside the "traditional" management disciplines of strategy, finance, marketing, and organizational behavior. Second, he swam against the academic tide by recognizing the power of comparative and longitudinal field studies. Third, he sought frameworks beyond his own field in design theory, the engineering sciences, and finance. This paper reviews his research contributions over almost thirty years.

Architectural Innovation and Dynamic Competition: The Smaller "Footprint" Strategy

To study dynamic competition, Baldwin and Clark build upon a design principle in computer architecture known as Amdahl's Law. The authors show that firms can study the underlying cause-and-effect relationships in a complex architecture in order to identify "bottlenecks." Firms may then redesign the interfaces of key components to make them more modular. They can then outsource more activities without sacrificing performance or cost. As a result, firms can offer competitive products or services, while investing less, and so enjoy an "invested capital advantage" over competitors. Baldwin and Clark explain how the strategy works and then model its impact on competition through successive stages of industry evolution.

Exit Interview: HBS Dean Kim Clark

Kim Clark recently resigned his ten-year post as dean of Harvard Business School to assume the presidency of Brigham Young University-Idaho. In this Q&A with the HBS Alumni Bulletin, Clark discusses his experience.

At the Center of Corporate Scandal Where Do We Go From Here?

What’s at the heart of recent corporate misdeeds and scandals? Harvard Business School Dean Kim B. Clark looks at the causes and the potential remedies needed to restore public trust in institutions of business.

Does Spirituality Drive Success?

Is there a place for spirituality in the workplace? Executives from Silicon Valley to Boston tell how they twine their business leadership with religious and personal values.

A New Ecosystem for Business and Society