Lessons from the Thrift Crisis

C. Y. Baldwin; B. C. Esty

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Chapter | Financial Services: Perspectives and Challenges | 1993

Lessons from the Thrift Crisis

by C. Y. Baldwin and B. C. Esty

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Financial Services Industry;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Baldwin, C. Y., and B. C. Esty. "Lessons from the Thrift Crisis." Chap. 2 in Financial Services: Perspectives and Challenges, edited by Samuel L. Hayes III, 35–64. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1993.

About the Authors

Carliss Y. Baldwin

William L. White Professor of Business Administration, Emerita

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Benjamin C. Esty

Roy and Elizabeth Simmons Professor of Business Administration

Finance

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Supplement | HBS Case Collection | September 2020

Eaton Corporation: Portfolio Transformation and The Cost of Capital

Benjamin C. Esty, Scott Mayfield and Daniel Fisher

In 2000, Eaton Corporation was broadly diversified industrial conglomerate. But its strategy was evolving and its focus was narrowing around “power management” and more recently on “intelligent power,” the use of digitally enable products and services designed to enhance efficiency and reliability. To implement this transition, Eaton had acquired more than 70 companies and divested another 50. Such active portfolio management required Eaton to regularly assess the prospects of each business unit—the profit and growth potential—and to explore opportunities to enhance its capabilities through acquisitions. In January 2020, Eaton got an offer from Danfoss, a Danish conglomerate, to buy its hydraulics business for $3.3 billion. Recently appointed CEO Craig Arnold must decide whether this deal makes sense strategically and financially. In particular, he must decide if $3.3 billion is a fair price for the firm’s hydraulics business.

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Conglomerates; Business Divisions; Cost of Capital; Corporate Finance; Value; Valuation; Industrial Products Industry; United States; Denmark; Republic of Ireland;

Citation:
Esty, Benjamin C., Scott Mayfield, and Daniel Fisher. "Eaton Corporation: Portfolio Transformation and The Cost of Capital." Harvard Business School Spreadsheet Supplement 221-704, September 2020. View Details

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Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2020

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 6 The Value Structure of Technologies, Part 1: Mapping Functional Relationships

Carliss Y. Baldwin

Organizations are formed in a free economy because an individual or group perceives value in carrying out a technical recipe that is beyond the capacity of a single person. Technology specifies what must be done, what resources must be assembled, what actions taken in order to convert stocks of material, energy and information into products and services of value to human beings. Technology is the guide, organizations are the means, value is the goal. The purpose of this chapter is to build a robust and versatile language that is capable of representing the value structure of large technical systems. The language is based on elements I have labeled functional components. The language is more abstract than the language of technical recipes and task networks, thus it is capable of hiding details. However, the language also makes it possible to “trace back” from each named functional component to a technical recipe and a corresponding task network. Finally, although the language itself is non-mathematical, the value structure it reveals can be used to specify equations and prove mathematical propositions about the value of technical systems. The plan of the chapter as follows. I first explain why it is difficult to value technologies using standard economic methods based prices, quanities and probabilities. I then describe a methodology that shows how functional components are combined through technology to create a particular artifact or technical system. The methodology uses symbolic notation to clarify relationships between and among functional components. I illustrate these relationships using an ancient technology—the technology for making a garment from pieces of cloth. I go on to describe commonly observed patterns within technical systems, including optional features; composite functions; and platforms.

Keywords: modularity; Technology; Organizations; Value Creation;

Citation:
Baldwin, Carliss Y. "Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 6 The Value Structure of Technologies, Part 1: Mapping Functional Relationships." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-039, September 2020. View Details

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Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2020

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 7 The Value Structure of Technologies, Part 2: Strategy without Numbers

Carliss Y. Baldwin

Functional analysis as set forth in the last chapter decomposes a technical system into functional components that do things to advance the system’s purpose and the goals of its designers. Functional analysis in turn can be used to construct value structure maps of technical systems. Such maps reveal targets of potential action and investment in the technical system where value may be created and captured. Value structure maps can be constructed without using numerical estimates based on prices, quanities and probabilities, thus they are an appropriate means of analyzing technical systems subject to radical uncertainty, complexity, and complementarity.

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate how value structure mapping combined with narratives can be applied to problems of strategy in large technical systems. I first argue that the salient points of value creation and value capture in a large technical system are the system’s bottlenecks. I then use value-mapping methodology to trace the evolution of bottlenecks of three large technical systems: early aircraft; high-speed machine tools; and container shipping. Finally, I distill the lessons of the case studies into four principles for creating and capturing value in large, evolving technical systems.

Keywords: modularity; value structure mapping; Value Capture; Technology; Organizations; Strategy; Value Creation;

Citation:
Baldwin, Carliss Y. "Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 7 The Value Structure of Technologies, Part 2: Strategy without Numbers." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-040, September 2020. View Details

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Lessons from the Thrift Crisis

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