Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Working Knowledge
Business Research for Business Leaders
  • Browse All Articles
  • Popular Articles
  • Cold Call Podcast
  • Managing the Future of Work Podcast
  • About Us
  • Book
  • Leadership
  • Marketing
  • Finance
  • Management
  • Entrepreneurship
  • All Topics...
  • Topics
    • COVID-19
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Finance
    • Gender
    • Globalization
    • Leadership
    • Management
    • Negotiation
    • Social Enterprise
    • Strategy
  • Sections
    • Book
    • Podcasts
    • HBS Case
    • In Practice
    • Lessons from the Classroom
    • Op-Ed
    • Research & Ideas
    • Research Event
    • Sharpening Your Skills
    • What Do You Think?
    • Working Paper Summaries
  • Browse All
    First Look: June 16, 2015

    First Look

    16 Jun 2015

    The Boeing 787 Dreamliner's Journey To Flight

    Just as an eye-popping video of a Boeing Dreamliner taking off almost vertically lights up social media, a case study of the creation of the plane has been updated by authors Rory McDonald and Suresh Kotha: "Boeing 787: Manufacturing a Dream." The case emphasizes the roles of executive leadership and firm strategy in coordinating a global network of partners building the aircraft.

    Listening To Earnings Calls For Managerial Myopia

    Just what executives decide to talk about during earnings conference calls with investors and analysts can be an interesting insight when compared with related information such as, say, those executives' monetary incentives. The research paper Speaking of the Short-Term: Disclosure Horizon and Managerial Myopia was written by Francois Brochet, Maria Loumioti, and George Serafeim.

    The Executive Challenge Of Letting People Go

    The case study "Sarah Sullivan at Greater Marketing Solutions" introduces students to the difficult decisions around layoffs, and selling that decision to the organization's leadership. The case was written by Thomas DeLong, Paul McKinnon, and Rebecca McCue.

    —Sean Silverthorne
    LinkedIn
    Email
     

    Publications

    • June 2015
    • Review of Accounting Studies

    Speaking of the Short-Term: Disclosure Horizon and Managerial Myopia

    By: Brochet, Francois, Maria Loumioti, and George Serafeim

    Abstract—We study conference calls as a voluntary disclosure channel and create a proxy for the time horizon that senior executives emphasize in their communications. We find that our measure of disclosure time horizon is associated with capital market pressures and executives' short-term monetary incentives. Consistent with the language emphasized during conference calls partially capturing short-termism, we show that our proxy is associated with earnings and real activities management. Overall, the results show that the time horizon of conference call narratives can be informative regarding managers' myopic behavior.

    Publisher's link: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49245

    • June 2015
    • Harvard Business Review

    You Need an Innovation Strategy

    By: Pisano, Gary P.

    Abstract—Why is it so hard to build and maintain the capacity to innovate? The reason is not simply a failure to execute but a failure to articulate an innovation strategy that aligns innovation efforts with the overall business strategy. Without such a strategy, companies will have a hard time weighing the trade-offs of various practices-such as crowdsourcing and customer co-creation-and so may end up with a grab bag of approaches. They will have trouble designing a coherent innovation system that fits their competitive needs over time and may be tempted to ape someone else's system, and so they will find it difficult to align different parts of the organization with shared priorities. As Corning, a leader in glass and materials science, has found, an innovation strategy must address how innovation will create value for potential customers, how the company will capture a share of that value, and what types of innovation to pursue. Critics tend to discount "routine" innovation that leverages a company's existing technical capabilities and business model and extol "disruptive" innovation, but that is a simplistic view. A company's unique competitive circumstances should dictate the innovation portfolio it pursues. Because innovation cuts across functions, only senior leaders can set an innovation strategy. In doing so, they must recognize that the strategy, like the process of innovation itself, requires continual experimentation and adaptation.

    Publisher's link: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49244

     

    Working Papers

    Accounting Data, Market Values, and the Cross Section of Expected Returns Worldwide

    By: Chattopadhyay, Akash, Matthew R. Lyle, and Charles C.Y. Wang

    Abstract—Under fairly general assumptions, expected stock returns are a linear combination of two firm fundamentals-book-to-market ratio and return on equity. This parsimonious relation is pervasive, producing expected return proxies (ERP) that predict the cross section of out-of-sample returns in 26 of 29 international equity markets. The average slope coefficient on the ERP is a highly significant 1.05. In contrast, factor-model-based proxies fail to exhibit predictive power worldwide. Integrating the model with a dynamic information structure, we show analytically, and verify empirically, that the importance of return on equity in forecasting future stock returns depends on the quality of the accounting information. This extension also reconciles our model with alternative characteristic-based forecasters. These findings suggest that a tractable accounting-based valuation model provides a unifying framework for obtaining reliable proxies of expected returns worldwide.

    Download working paper: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49238

    Monitoring Global Supply Chains

    By: Short, Jodi L., Michael W. Toffel, and Andrea R. Hugill

    Abstract—Firms reliant on supply chains to manufacture their goods risk reputational harm if the working conditions in those factories are revealed to be dangerous, illegal, or otherwise problematic. While firms are increasingly relying on private-sector "social auditors" to assess factory conditions, little had been known about the accuracy of those assessments. We analyzed nearly 17,000 code-of-conduct audits conducted at nearly 6,000 suppliers around the world. We found that audits yield fewer violations when the audit team had been at that particular supplier before, when audit teams are less experienced or less trained, when audit teams are all-male, and when the audits were paid for by the supplier instead of by the buyer. We describe implications for firms relying on social auditors and for auditing firms.

    Download working paper: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=45768

     

    Cases & Course Materials

    • Harvard Business School Case 415-028

    Aarti Grover and CMS Computers

    No abstract available

    Purchase this case:
    https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/415028-PDF-ENG

    • Harvard Business School Case 415-051

    Sarah Sullivan at Greater Marketing Solutions (GMS)

    Sarah Sullivan, the new managing director of Greater Marketing Solutions, faces the difficult challenge of letting seven professionals go within a short span of time. In doing so she faces two greater challenges: figuring out which individuals to let go and getting her leadership team on board with her plan.

    Purchase this case:
    https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/415051-PDF-ENG

    • Harvard Business School Case 315-062

    Responsibilities to Customers

    This note introduces the module on Responsibilities to Customers taught in Leadership and Corporate Accountability, a required course in the Harvard Business School MBA program. The note outlines the asymmetries inherent in the company-customer relationship and positions the economic, legal, and ethical responsibilities of companies to their customers as ways of addressing these asymmetries.

    Purchase this case:
    https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/315062-PDF-ENG

    • Harvard Business School Case 815-085

    Building an Integrated Biopharma Company: Crucell (A)

    By 2009, Crucell had become the largest biopharma company in the Netherlands and was a symbol of national pride. The case traces the evolution of the company from a university spin-off into a fully integrated company. Crucell's success, particularly in the vaccine space, had begun to attract the attention of much larger pharmaceutical companies. While there was much appeal to working with these companies, these relationships could also challenge Crucell's independence. This issue is highlighted by the decision of whether to partner with companies that wanted ownership of 10% to 20% of Crucell as part of the business development deals.

    Purchase this case:
    https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/815085-PDF-ENG

    • Harvard Business School Case 815-086

    Building an Integrated Biopharma Company: Crucell (B)

    The (B) case updates events at Crucell since 2009. In September 2009, Johnson & Johnson acquired 18% of Crucell for $400 million. This investment was part of a business development deal. Subsequently, in 2012, Johnson & Johnson acquired Crucell for $2.8 billion.

    Purchase this case:
    https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/815086-PDF-ENG

    • Harvard Business School Case 315-018

    MedCath Corporation (C)

    MedCath is a horizontally integrated chain of heart hospitals that partners with local cardiologists. It claims that its focus leads to better and cheaper results than those of an everything-for-everybody general hospital. Community hospitals generally vehemently oppose their entry into a new area. What options does MedCath have?

    Purchase this case:
    https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/315018-PDF-ENG

    • Harvard Business School Case 614-018

    Ford Motor Company: Blueprint for Mobility

    Mark Fields, Ford Motor Company's COO, had to ensure the company's current business model of building cars and trucks remained strong, while concurrently navigating the company into the rapidly expanding industry of personal mobility. Personal mobility required new technologies and business models that were untraditional at Ford, and Fields had to evaluate the traditional business model colliding with the new business model. To direct these new technologies and business models, Ford released its "Blueprint for Mobility," which established near-, mid-, and long-term goals to make mobility accessible and affordable to all. The case focuses on the launch of three mobility experiments (car sharing, parking, and on-demand ride sharing) and asks students to determine how Fields should balance these types of experiments with the company's traditional operations. Further, was Ford doing enough in the mobility space, and if so, was it moving fast enough? What new sources of revenue could Ford derive from mobility solutions?

    Purchase this case:
    https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/614018-PDF-ENG

    • Harvard Business School Case 615-048

    Boeing 787: Manufacturing a Dream

    This case traces the design and development of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Emphasis is on executive leadership and firm strategy in coordinating across a global network of partners in the production of a new aircraft.

    Purchase this case:
    https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/615048-PDF-ENG

    • Harvard Business School Case 515-713

    Marketing Exercise: Using Conjoint Analysis for Business Decisions

    No abstract available

    Purchase this case:
    https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/515713-PDF-ENG

      Trending
        • 25 Jan 2022
        • Research & Ideas

        More Proof That Money Can Buy Happiness (or a Life with Less Stress)

        • 25 Feb 2019
        • Research & Ideas

        How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence

        • 14 Mar 2023
        • In Practice

        What Does the Failure of Silicon Valley Bank Say About the State of Finance?

        • 17 May 2017
        • Research & Ideas

        Minorities Who 'Whiten' Job Resumes Get More Interviews

        • 15 Nov 2022
        • Book

        Stop Ignoring Bad Behavior: 6 Tips for Better Ethics at Work

    Sign up for our weekly newsletter

    Interested in improving your business? Learn about fresh research and ideas from Harvard Business School faculty.
    This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
    ǁ
    Campus Map
    Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
    Baker Library | Bloomberg Center
    Soldiers Field
    Boston, MA 02163
    Email: Editor-in-Chief
    →Map & Directions
    →More Contact Information
    • Make a Gift
    • Site Map
    • Jobs
    • Harvard University
    • Trademarks
    • Policies
    • Accessibility
    • Digital Accessibility
    Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College