Kodak: A Parable of American Competitiveness
| Published: | February 6, 2012 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 15 Comments posted |
When American companies shift pieces of their operations overseas, they run the risk of moving the expertise, innovation, and new growth opportunities just out of their reach as well, explains HBS Professor Willy Shih, who served as president of Eastman Kodak's digital imaging business for several years.
Measuring the Efficacy of the World's Managers
| Published: | January 30, 2012 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 16 Comments posted |
Over the past seven years, Harvard Business School's Raffaella Sadun and a team of researchers have interviewed managers at some 10,000 organizations in 20 countries. The goal: to determine how and why management practices differ vastly in style and quality not only across nations, but also across various organizations and industries.
Published in 2011
Carbon Tariffs: Impacts on Technology Choice, Regional Competitiveness, and Global Emissions
| Author: | David F. Drake |
|---|---|
| Published: | November 22, 2011 |
| Paper Release Date: | October 2011 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Under current emissions regulation such as the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the Northeast US, imports entering the region fall outside the regulatory regime and incur no carbon costs. As a result, imports can compete within the carbon-regulated region with a new-found advantage, potentially altering the competitive balance between emissions-regulated and -unregulated firms. While implementing carbon tariffs—border adjustments— may appear to be a straightforward solution to this asymmetry, the potential for such a measure to be interpreted as a trade barrier, and thereby initiate a reciprocal tariff, has thus far stymied debate on the issue. This paper explores the impact of such border adjustments on firms' technology choice, regional competitiveness, and global emissions. The analysis shows that border adjustments (or lack thereof) play a vital role in determining firms' technology and production choices, both of which are fundamental operations management decisions that ultimately determine economic and environmental performance. Results have implications for each of the primary stakeholders: regulators making the policy decision regarding border adjustments; firms interested in understanding their competitiveness and location strategies under a border adjustment; and technology producers interested in assessing the potential impact of border adjustments on demand for cleaner technologies.
Transforming Manufacturing Waste into Profit
| Published: | October 3, 2011 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 15 Comments posted |
Every manufacturing process leaves waste, but Assistant Professor Deishin Lee believes much of this left-behind material can be put to productive—and profitable—use.
Why Manufacturing Matters
| Published: | March 28, 2011 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 42 Comments posted |
After decades of outsourcing, America's ability to innovate and create high-tech products essential for future prosperity is on the decline, argue professors Gary Pisano and Willy Shih. Is it too late to get it back? From HBS Alumni Bulletin.
Published in 2010
The New Face of Chinese Industrial Policy: Making Sense of Anti-Dumping Cases in the Petrochemical and Steel Industry
| Authors: | Regina Abrami and Yu Zheng |
|---|---|
| Published: | November 30, 2010 |
| Paper Release Date: | October 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The researchers set out to explain differences in China's antidumping actions against importers in the petrochemical and steel industries. During the study period, 66 percent of the country's antidumping cases targeted petrochemical imports, while steel imports were targeted only in 5 percent of the cases. Why did China's petrochemical and steel industries behave so differently in seeking trade protection? The answers put forward by researchers Regina Abrami (Harvard Business School) and Yu Zheng (University of Connecticut) point toward the structural nature of the industries themselves, and against arguments that antidumping actions in China have been driven by retaliation or national industrial strategy alone.
How IT Shapes Top-Down and Bottom-Up Decision Making
| Published: | November 1, 2010 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 15 Comments posted |
What determines whether decisions happen on the bottom, middle, or top rung of the corporate ladder? New research from professor Raffaella Sadun finds that the answer often lies in the technology that a company deploys.
From Russia with Love: The Impact of Relocated Firms on Incumbent Survival
| Authors: | Oliver Falck, Christina Guenther, Stephan Heblich, and William R. Kerr |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 14, 2010 |
| Paper Release Date: | June 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The relocation of the machine tool industry from the Soviet-occupied zone of postwar Germany to western regions is a unique laboratory for studying the impact of industrial structures on incumbent survival. Typically, geographic agglomerations of similar firms offer benefits to each member firm by reducing the transportation costs for material goods, specialized workers, and industry knowledge among the firms. Of course, tight geographic concentration comes with countervailing costs as firms compete for local inputs. In this paper, HBS professor William R. Kerr and coauthors study the impact of increased local concentration on incumbent firms by considering postwar Germany, when the fear of expropriation (or worse) in the wake of World War II prompted many machine tool firm owners to flee to western Germany, where they reestablished their firms.
Published in 2008
Local Industrial Conditions and Entrepreneurship: How Much of the Spatial Distribution Can We Explain?
| Authors: | Edward L. Glaeser and William R. Kerr |
|---|---|
| Published: | December 4, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | October 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Some places, like Silicon Valley, seem almost magically entrepreneurial with a new start-up on every street corner. Other areas, like declining cities of the Rust Belt, appear equally starved of whatever local attributes make entrepreneurship more likely. Many academics, policymakers, and business leaders stress the importance of local conditions for explaining spatial differences in entrepreneurship and economic development. This paper uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau to characterize these entry relationships more precisely within the manufacturing sector.
Mapping Polluters, Encouraging Protectors
| Published: | January 14, 2008 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Where are the biggest polluters? And what is your company doing to protect the environment? A new Web site—both a public service and a research tool—posts managers' data in real time, allowing a balanced view of industrial environmental performance. HBS professor Michael W. Toffel and senior research fellow Andrew A. King explain.
Published in 2007
What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns
| Authors: | Glenn Ellison, Edward L. Glaeser, and William Kerr |
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| Published: | May 23, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | April 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Most industries exhibit some degree of geographic concentration. Although many theories attempt to explain this agglomeration, empirical tests of these theories are difficult as they all predict similar outcomes within individual industries. This study considers how industries coagglomerate—that is, which industry pairs locate together—to form a tractable analysis. The authors specifically study the relative importance of proximity to suppliers and customers, to firms using similar labor, and the sharing of ideas for explaining agglomeration.
From Manufacturing to Design: An Essay on the Work of Kim B. Clark
| Authors: | Sylvain Lenfle and Carliss Y. Baldwin |
|---|---|
| Published: | April 12, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | March 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
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.
Published in 2006
American Auto's Troubled Road
| Published: | April 10, 2006 |
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| Feature: | Views on News |
Harvard Business School faculty dissect where U.S. auto makers went wrong, and how they might again get on the road to growth. From HBS Alumni Bulletin.
Published in 2005
Homers: Secrets on the Factory Floor
| Q&A with: | Michel J. Anteby |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 10, 2005 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Homers are things you make for personal use while on company time. Professor Michel Anteby says that although the practice might be illegal, some companies secretly endorse it. Here's why.
The Truck Driver Who Reinvented Shipping
| Published: | October 3, 2005 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Malcolm P. McLean (1914-2001) hit on an idea to dramatically reduce labor and dock servicing time. An excerpt from In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century by Harvard Business School's Anthony J. Mayo and Nitin Nohria.
New Learning at American Home Products
| Published: | April 25, 2005 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
In Alfred D. Chandler Jr's new history of the modern chemical and pharma industries, American Home Products follows a singular path to success. An excerpt from Shaping the Industrial Century.
Published in 2002
Unilever—A Case Study
| Published: | December 9, 2002 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
As one of the oldest and largest foreign multinationals doing business in the U.S., the history of Unilever's investment in the United States offers a unique opportunity to understand the significant problems encountered by foreign firms. Harvard Business School professor Geoffrey Jones has done extensive research on Unilever, based on full access to restricted corporate records. This recent article from Business History Review is the first publication resulting from that research.
Reinventing the Industrial Giant
| Published: | June 10, 2002 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
It's not easy to transform a trusty but ailing old stalwart. In an excerpt from their book, Changing Fortunes: Remaking the Industrial Corporation, HBS professor Nitin Nohria and co-authors Davis Dyer and Frederick Dalzell discuss how General Motors and Kodak are attempting precisely that.
In the Virtual Dressing Room Returns Are A Real Problem
| Published: | April 15, 2002 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
That little red number looked smashing onscreen, but the puce caftan the delivery guy brought is just one more casualty of the online shopping battle. HBS professor Jan Hammond researches what the textile and apparel industries can do to curtail returns.
Published in 2001
How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers
| Published: | November 26, 2001 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Toyota's reputation for sustaining high product quality is legendary. But the company's methods are not secret. So why can't other carmakers match Toyota's track record? HBS professor Steven Spear says it's all about problem solving.
