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The Dell Deal Explained: What a Successful Turnaround Looks Like

Harvard Business Review

How Dell went from dorm room startup in 1984, to the world''s largest PC maker in 2005, and then saw its stock plummet precipitously the next year, is the subject of a lengthy Harvard Business School case study by HBS professor Jan Rivkin. There are two basic patterns to a successful turnaround, Rivkin told me in a recent interview.

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The 4 Types of Small Businesses, and Why Each One Matters

Harvard Business Review

As Janet Yellen pointed out in a speech last year, “the opportunity to build a business has long been an important part of the American Dream.” A robust network of small suppliers is important to the long-term competitiveness of large U.S. corporations and for companies considering moving production back to the U.S.

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Strategy Lessons From Jean Tirole

Harvard Business Review

“Many of us who have wound up teaching strategy and doing research in strategy grew up learning game theory from Tirole’s textbook,” says Jan Rivkin, the chair of the strategy unit at HBS. As an example, Rivkin cites the notion of commitment, which Ghemawat wrote a book on. The Theory of Industrial Organization was just the first.

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How Companies Can Help Rebuild America’s Common Resources

Harvard Business Review

But these trends also had more negative consequences, as Jan Rivkin and Michael Porter have argued in their work as co-chairs of Harvard Business School’s U.S. Instead, businesses see them as in their longer-term strategic interests. In the long-term, the success of U.S. Competitiveness Project.