Operations
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—The shifting consumer market for video entertainment may be causing sweeping changes in the video rental market but Netflix has still left an indelible mark with its revolutionary patented business model that includes open-ended rentals for a fixed fee.
Rather...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—Americans buy new cell phones every 18 months, Europeans buy them every 15 months, and the Japanese every 9 months. Global replacement rates for digital cameras range between two and three years. And U.S. businesses replace their PCs every four years. Where do...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—As the factory hums along, turning out digital satellite receivers, managers gleefully note a burst of orders from Asia posted at 4 a.m. Before they can relay this good news, however, operations reports an equipment failure in the middle of a manufacturing run...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—Digital piracy costs music, movie, and software industries billions of dollars in profits. With decentralized peer-to-peer online networks offering covert means for people to swap files, digital goods producers are waging a global war against such networks and...
The Story of Change in the Life Cycle of the American Beer Industry
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—TWENTY YEARS AGO, the number of brewing firms in the United States was only around 40. It looked like an open-and-shut case of industry concentration. Management guru Michael Porter, in his...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—It may not be as poetic as Hamlet's famous line, but "to build or to buy" is a question that becomes more crucial for manufacturing executives every day. Should your company keep control of its supply chain and manufacturing facilities when it needs to expand—...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—It's a problem that plagues nearly all companies that sell goods: the dual questions of how many items to produce, and how much to charge for them. In a world where customer demand is unpredictable and buying behavior can be tweaked in strange ways - even in...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—Medical Technologies with high "social value" — those that have the potential to reduce costs, improve health care, and improve access to care — can play an important role in helping safety-net providers use their resources more efficiently to better serve...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—The single biggest factor contributing to the astronomically rising cost of healthcare is the emergence of expensive new technology. Science is finding more effective ways of treating diseases and extending life, but at a substantial cost. How much are we—and...
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—In the business world, women who are aggressive, assertive, and confident but who can turn these traits on and off, depending on the social circumstances, get more promotions than either men or other women, according to a recent study coming out of the...