Operations: General Operations

9 Results

 

Can Decades of Military Overspending be Fixed?

Costs tend to rise in all organizations unless managers and their staffs have the motivation and skill to control them. Professor emeritus J. Ronald Fox analyzes this phenomenon during 50 years of US military overspending. Open for comment; 4 Comments posted.

Location, Location, Location: The Strategy of Place

Business success in one geographic location doesn't necessarily follow a company to a new setting. Professor Juan Alcácer discusses the importance of taking a long-term strategic view. Open for comment; 12 Comments posted.

Capturing Benefits from Tomorrow’s Technology in Today’s Products: The Effect of Absorptive Capacity

Daniel Snow

It seems clear that firms with an existing R&D function are better able to use related outside research than firms without an R&D function. But can specific products also "absorb" a firm's knowledge of related technologies? Using patent data and the example of automobile carburetors, Daniel Snow studied how companies may adapt a component of a "radical innovation" technology for their own current-technology products. He also poses a far-reaching question for companies: Can they capture the returns of these inventive activities? Read More

American Auto’s Troubled Road

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. Read More

Real Estate: The Most Imperfect Asset

Arthur I. Segel

Real estate is the largest asset class in the world—and also the most imperfect, says Harvard Business School professor Arthur Segel. He discusses trends toward institutionalization, environmentalism, and globalization. Read More

Why IT Does Matter

HBS professors F. Warren McFarlan and Richard L. Nolan respond to the much-discussed assertion by Nicholas Carr that company investments in IT are less and less likely to produce competitive advantage. Read More

The Future of IT Consulting

Richard L. Nolan

A new Harvard Business School working paper traces the evolution of IT management consulting and trends for the future. Read our e-mail interview with professor Richard Nolan and HBS Interactive Senior Vice President Larry Bennigson. Read More

Whence IT Value?

Spending on information technology on the part of U.S. manufacturers is finally starting to pay off in increased productivity. Why now? Have IT investments, growing steadily since the 1970s, suddenly crossed a magic threshhold? HBS Professor Andrew McAfee believes the answer lies neither in magic nor in the growing power of computers themselves. Productivity gains, he writes in this article from the online journal Exec, may have more to do with the evolution of computing from PC "islands" to integrated networks that bridge distances and bring people together. Read More

Building Effective R&D Capabilities Abroad

Planning R&D facilities in the new global economy calls for a complex decision making process, based in part on whether a particular site is intended to tap local knowledge or to support a company's manufacturing and marketing abroad. HBS Professor Walter Kuemmerle offers a look at two contrasting foreign-based R&D decisions in this excerpt from his article in World View: Global Strategies for the New Economy (HBS Press). Read More