How Hospitals Can Manage Supply Chain Shortages as Demand Surges

Richard M.J. Bohmer; Gary P. Pisano; Raffaella  Sadun; Thomas C. Tsai

Article | Harvard Business Review (website) | April 3, 2020

How Hospitals Can Manage Supply Chain Shortages as Demand Surges

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

Abstract

The best practices in supply chain and operations management can help health care providers cope with the surge in patients and the supply shortages. They will help them create a comprehensive strategy aimed at both the demand- and supply-side roots of the problem. The purpose of this article is to assist health care leaders and their organizations in anticipating and preempting problems rather than continuing to react to them.

Keywords: Hospitals; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Supply Chain Management; Operations; Management; Strategy;

Format: Electronic

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Citation:

Bohmer, Richard M.J., Gary P. Pisano, Raffaella Sadun, and Thomas C. Tsai. "How Hospitals Can Manage Supply Chain Shortages as Demand Surges." Harvard Business Review (website) (April 3, 2020).

Manufacturing accounts for more than three-quarters of U.S. corporate patents. The competitive shock to this sector emanating from China's economic ascent could in theory either augment or stifle U.S. innovation. Using three decades of U.S. patents matched to corporate owners, we quantify how foreign competition affects domestic innovation. Rising import exposure intensifies competitive pressure, reducing sales, profitability, and R&D expenditure at U.S. firms. Accounting for confounding sectoral patenting trends, we find that U.S. patent production declines in sectors facing greater import competition. This adverse effect is larger among initially less profitable and less capital-intensive firms.

Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2019 (Revised August 2020)

Engineering an Inclusive Bioeconomy

Tarun Khanna, Raffaella Sadun and Susie L. Ma

In 2019, entrepreneur Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio was developing a project he hoped could generate and share wealth from the natural resources of the Amazon without destroying those resources. His idea, called Earth Bank of Codes (EBC), would create a library of the genomic codes of all known species that could be tapped for discovery and innovation, from new medical interventions to more efficient manufacturing processes. He proposed to use blockchain technology to make the data both accessible and trackable so that its use could be monitored. Castilla-Rubio envisioned a time when a company in the U.S. could access a biological asset from the Peruvian Amazon, develop and commercialize a product based on the asset, and have a fraction of the resulting sales land directly in the bank account of various beneficiaries, including the Peruvian government and indigenous communities. Now he was facing major decisions about how to structure EBC to achieve his goals. Should he start at the top and build partnerships with national governments and inter-governmental organizations as the cornerstone of EBC? Or would it be better to forge ahead with a few stakeholders in an entrepreneurial project?

Keywords: Decision Making; Development Economics; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Intellectual Property; Emerging Markets; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Science; Genetics; Natural Environment; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Social Enterprise; Strategy; Strategic Planning; Technology; Ownership; Social Psychology; Trust; Society; Biotechnology Industry; South America; Amazon Basin;

Citation:

Khanna, Tarun, Raffaella Sadun, and Susie L. Ma. "Engineering an Inclusive Bioeconomy." Harvard Business School Case 720-356, September 2019. (Revised August 2020.) View Details

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We explore the impact of COVID-19 on employee's digital communication patterns through an event study of lockdowns in 16 large metropolitan areas in North America, Europe and the Middle East. Using de-identified, aggregated meeting and email meta-data from 3,143,270 users, we find, compared to pre-pandemic levels, increases in the number of meetings per person (+12.9 percent) and the number of attendees per meeting (+13.5 percent), but decreases in the average length of meetings (-20.1 percent). Collectively, the net effect is that people spent less time in meetings per day (-11.5 percent) in the post-lockdown period. We also find significant and durable increases in length of the average workday (+8.2 percent, or +48.5 minutes), along with short-term increases in email activity. These findings provide insight from a novel dataset into how the nature of work has changed for a large sample of knowledge workers. We discuss these changes in light of the ongoing challenges faced by organizations and workers struggling to adapt and perform in the face of a global pandemic.

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How Hospitals Can Manage Supply Chain Shortages as Demand Surges

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