Hewlett Packard Enterprise: The Dandelion Program

Gary P. Pisano; Robert D. Austin

Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2016

Hewlett Packard Enterprise: The Dandelion Program

by Gary P. Pisano and Robert D. Austin

Abstract

This case describes Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s “Dandelion Program," which has developed a new service offering for the company’s clients by drawing on the special talents of people with autism. The company has deployed “pods” organized around 8 or 9 employees with autism, to function as high-performance mini-ecosystems, which have turned out to be 30% more effective than average service teams (in some areas). The case centers on questions of how to adapt this successful model to new demands in a different service domain, specifically, cybersecurity and defense-related areas. The case also explores how the company is innovating and refining its assessment and training processes in support of the program.

Keywords: leadership; training; organizational behavior; Technology; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Talent and Talent Management; Service Operations; Training; Diversity; Innovation and Invention; Technology Industry;

Language: English

Format: Print

20 pages

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Citation:

Pisano, Gary P., and Robert D. Austin. "Hewlett Packard Enterprise: The Dandelion Program." Harvard Business School Case 617-016, September 2016.

Working Paper | 2019

Long-Term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of US 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 po-tential 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 highly skewed nature of ﬁrm growth rates, we know far less about the persistence 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 paper attempts to address this gap in our empirical knowledge of ﬁrm growth using a dataset that spans 50 years, which al-lows 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 my 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.

Citation:

Dosi, Giovanni, Marco Grazzi, Daniele Moschella, Gary P. Pisano, and Federico Tamagni. "Long-Term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of US Manufacturers 1959-2015." Working Paper, May 2019. View Details

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