Sustaining Superior Performance: Commitments and Capabilities

Pankaj   Ghemawat; Gary P. Pisano

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Background Note | HBS Case Collection | July 1997

Sustaining Superior Performance: Commitments and Capabilities

by Pankaj Ghemawat and Gary P. Pisano

Abstract

Presents evidence on the unsustainability of many competitive advantages, reviews the typical threats to the sustainability, and discusses ways in which those threats can be combatted.

Keywords: Competitive Advantage;

Format: Print

20 pages

Educators Purchase

Citation:

Ghemawat, Pankaj, and Gary P. Pisano. "Sustaining Superior Performance: Commitments and Capabilities." Harvard Business School Background Note 798-008, July 1997.

About the Author

Gary P. Pisano

Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration
Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development

Technology and Operations Management

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Technical Note | HBS Case Collection | November 2019 (Revised April 2020)

The Life Sciences Revolution: A Technical Primer

Gary P. Pisano, William J. Anderson, Amitabh Chandra, Clarissa Ceruti and Stephanie Oestreich

For more than two decades, scientific advances have been driving profound changes in drug discovery and the drug industry itself. This case provides an overview and description of these technical and scientific advances. Written for the nonscientific reader, it may be used as companion reading for other case materials that require basic knowledge of the tools, techniques, and approaches used in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

Keywords: Science; Technological Innovation; Technology; Pharmaceutical Industry; Biotechnology Industry;

Citation:
Pisano, Gary P., William J. Anderson, Amitabh Chandra, Clarissa Ceruti, and Stephanie Oestreich. "The Life Sciences Revolution: A Technical Primer." Harvard Business School Technical Note 620-054, November 2019. (Revised April 2020.) View Details

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Article | Harvard Business Review (website) | April 1, 2020

How Hospitals Can Manage Supply Chain Shortages as Demand Surges

Richard M. Bohmer, Gary P. Pisano, Raffaella Sadun and Thomas C. Tsai

Citation:
Bohmer, Richard M., Gary P. Pisano, Raffaella Sadun, and Thomas C. Tsai. "How Hospitals Can Manage Supply Chain Shortages as Demand Surges." Harvard Business Review (website) (April 1, 2020). View Details

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Article | Industrial and Corporate Change | April 2020

Long-term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Manufacturers 1959–2015

Giovanni Dosi, Marco Grazzi, Daniele Moschella, Gary P. Pisano and Federico Tamagni

Firm growth is an essential feature of market economies, shaping together macroeconomic performance and the evolution of industry structures. As a potential indicator of organizational “fitness” within a competitive environment, firm growth is also a central concern to both the practice and theory of business strategy. Despite both its theoretical and practical importance, though, growth remains a poorly understood property of firms. While previous studies have documented the fat-tailed nature of firm growth rates, we know far less about the patterns of growth rates over long periods of time. For instance, do “fast growers” tend to maintain their relative growth rates advantages over long periods or is superior growth a transitory phenomenon? Is, as predicted by evolutionary and capability-based theories of the firm, the process of firm growth path-dependent or is it more akin to a random walk? The answers to these questions are central to building a robust theory of firm growth. This article attempts to address this gap in our empirical knowledge of firm growth using a dataset that spans 50 years, which allows the abandonment of the assumption, common to all incumbent studies, that the stochastic paths of all firms stem from the same generating process. These exploratory results indicate that growth rate persistence is there and may be even substantial for some firms, but it is rare. We also study the links between the micro-properties of firm growth within sectors and the patterns of aggregate growth of these same sectors. Indeed, we find circumstantial but widespread evidence that heterogeneity across firms correlates with industry dynamism.

Keywords: firm growth; Organizations; Growth and Development; Theory; Analysis; Production; Data and Data Sets;

Citation:
Dosi, Giovanni, Marco Grazzi, Daniele Moschella, Gary P. Pisano, and Federico Tamagni. "Long-term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Manufacturers 1959–2015." Industrial and Corporate Change 29, no. 2 (April 2020): 309–332. View Details

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Sustaining Superior Performance: Commitments and Capabilities

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