article thumbnail

Breaking the Death Grip of Legacy Technologies

Harvard Business Review

Technologies like 3-D printing, robotics, advanced motion controls, and new methods for continuous manufacturing hold great potential for improving how companies design and build products to better serve customers. Why are older incumbent firms slow to adopt new technologies even when the economic or strategic benefits are clear?

article thumbnail

Why Can’t U.S. Health Care Costs Be Cut in Half?

Harvard Business Review

Technological improvements in health care have given us the quality of life we enjoy today. Ford shifted the auto industry from craft to mass production, and the Japanese later took it a step further to lean production. The same can be said of other procedures that might lend themselves to mass or lean production.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

B-Schools Aren’t Bothering to Produce HR Experts

Harvard Business Review

companies were making progress on the operations front, but now they seem to have lost their way—and business schools are in a position to help set them right again. In the 1980s, our organizations learned a great deal about how to improve productivity, quality, and costs from Japanese practices. A few decades ago, U.S.

article thumbnail

Can Lean Manufacturing Put an End to Sweatshops?

Harvard Business Review

Workers specialize in simple, highly routinized operations. They are incentivized to complete operations as quickly as possible. Operations in a Connected World. The technologies and processes that are transforming companies. Managers hold virtually all decision-making authority. Insight Center. Sponsored by Accenture.

article thumbnail

Does Your Leadership Flunk the Testing Test?

Harvard Business Review

The organizational and operational benefits of targeted testing are not. "To do all of them at one time without testing the first one — you have to question what kind of strategy that is.". The strategic merits of bike sharing and department store "boutiquification" may be debatable. These pathologies are nothing new.

article thumbnail

The Coherent Conglomerate

Harvard Business Review

Every successful conglomerate we know of — GE, Honeywell, Tata and United Technologies Corporation among them — has prospered by doing two things. There is no universal answer. True success comes to those that create a unique system of capabilities that fits the way they have decided to compete.

Welch 8
article thumbnail

What You Won’t Hear About Trade and Manufacturing on the Campaign Trail

Harvard Business Review

Generally, what we see is the country where the final assembly of a product took place. Almost every sophisticated manufacturer uses some kind of lean production system that pulls raw materials in from a warehouse. A big reason is technological complexity. bound panels to Malaysia. This made the U.S.