Heartport, Inc.

Gary P. Pisano; Shoshana  Dobrow

Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2000

Heartport, Inc.

by Gary P. Pisano and Shoshana Dobrow

Abstract

Heartport, an entrepreneurial medical device maker, has introduced several innovative systems for conducting less-invasive cardiac surgery. Despite initially high expectations, the company has struggled to get its technology adopted by cardiac surgeons. The company's newest CEO, the third in less than four years, must figure out how to turn around the fledgling company. This case describes Heartport's method of performing minimally invasive cardiac surgery as well as rival techniques for treating cardiovascular disease. Describes the evolution of the company, its product strategy, and its fortunes over the period 1991-99.

Keywords: History; Product Positioning; Knowledge Acquisition; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Technology Adoption; Health Care and Treatment;

Format: Print

27 pages

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Citation:

Pisano, Gary P., and Shoshana Dobrow. "Heartport, Inc." Harvard Business School Case 600-020, March 2000.

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.

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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Heartport, Inc.

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