Technology & Operations Management

- March 7, 2025
- Article
Leaders Can Move Fast and Fix Things

By: Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss

The assumption embedded in Silicon Valley’s famous “move fast and break things” ethos is that we can either make progress or take care of people, one or the other. A certain amount of wreckage is the price we have to pay for creating the future. The authors have spent the last decade helping business leaders clean up that wreckage, and one of their main lessons is that this tradeoff is false. The most successful change leaders solve problems at an accelerated pace while also taking responsibility for the success and wellbeing of their customers, shareholders, and employees: They move fast and fix things. Leaders who tackle big problems don’t need to slow down, they need to take a breath and take a few mission-critical steps before sprinting, including: 1) Make sure you’re solving the right problems; 2) Build more trust as you go; 3) Involve people you don’t know—and who know more than you do; and 4) Tell a better story.
- March 7, 2025
- Article
Leaders Can Move Fast and Fix Things

By: Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss

The assumption embedded in Silicon Valley’s famous “move fast and break things” ethos is that we can either make progress or take care of people, one or the other. A certain amount of wreckage is the price we have to pay for creating the future. The authors have spent the last decade helping business leaders clean up that wreckage, and one of...
- March 2025
- Case
Building an AI Factory at Procter & Gamble

By: Iavor I Bojinov, Karim R. Lakhani and Alexis Lefort
- March 2025
- Case
Building an AI Factory at Procter & Gamble

By: Iavor I Bojinov, Karim R. Lakhani and Alexis Lefort
- 2025
- Working Paper
Expert Patients’ Use of Avoidable Health Care

By: Amitabh Chandra, Pragya Kakani and Simone Matecna

We measure whether expert patients – those trained as physicians and nurses – have fewer emergency department visits and the reasons for these differences. Relative to similar patients physicians and nurses had 19.8% and 5.1% fewer ED visits, principally due to fewer avoidable visits. The differences in avoidable visits between physicians and other patients were largest for diagnoses commonly requiring prescriptions, which physicians often self-prescribed. Our results suggest that improving access to prescriptions for acute symptoms, more than improving patient education, may reduce avoidable health care.
- 2025
- Working Paper
Expert Patients’ Use of Avoidable Health Care

By: Amitabh Chandra, Pragya Kakani and Simone Matecna

We measure whether expert patients – those trained as physicians and nurses – have fewer emergency department visits and the reasons for these differences. Relative to similar patients physicians and nurses had 19.8% and 5.1% fewer ED visits, principally due to fewer avoidable visits. The differences in avoidable visits between physicians and...

About the Unit

As the world of operations has changed, so have interests and priorities within the Unit. Historically, the TOM Unit focused on manufacturing and the development of physical products. Over the past several years, we have expanded our research, course development, and course offerings to encompass new issues in information technology, supply chains, and service industries.

The field of TOM is concerned with the design, management, and improvement of operating systems and processes. As we seek to understand the challenges confronting firms competing in today's demanding environment, the focus of our work has broadened to include the multiple activities comprising a firm's "operating core":

the multi-function, multi-firm system that includes basic research, design, engineering, product and process development and production of goods and services within individual operating units;
the networks of information and material flows that tie operating units together and the systems that support these networks;
the distribution and delivery of goods and services to customers.

Recent Publications

Leaders Can Move Fast and Fix Things

By: Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss

March 7, 2025 |
Article |
Harvard Business Review (website)

The assumption embedded in Silicon Valley’s famous “move fast and break things” ethos is that we can either make progress or take care of people, one or the other. A certain amount of wreckage is the price we have to pay for creating the future. The authors have spent the last decade helping business leaders clean up that wreckage, and one of their main lessons is that this tradeoff is false. The most successful change leaders solve problems at an accelerated pace while also taking responsibility for the success and wellbeing of their customers, shareholders, and employees: They move fast and fix things. Leaders who tackle big problems don’t need to slow down, they need to take a breath and take a few mission-critical steps before sprinting, including: 1) Make sure you’re solving the right problems; 2) Build more trust as you go; 3) Involve people you don’t know—and who know more than you do; and 4) Tell a better story.

Citation

Building an AI Factory at Procter & Gamble

By: Iavor I Bojinov, Karim R. Lakhani and Alexis Lefort

March 2025 |
Case |
Faculty Research

Citation

Educators

Expert Patients’ Use of Avoidable Health Care

By: Amitabh Chandra, Pragya Kakani and Simone Matecna

2025 |
Working Paper |
Faculty Research

We measure whether expert patients – those trained as physicians and nurses – have fewer emergency department visits and the reasons for these differences. Relative to similar patients physicians and nurses had 19.8% and 5.1% fewer ED visits, principally due to fewer avoidable visits. The differences in avoidable visits between physicians and other patients were largest for diagnoses commonly requiring prescriptions, which physicians often self-prescribed. Our results suggest that improving access to prescriptions for acute symptoms, more than improving patient education, may reduce avoidable health care.

Citation

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Novice Risk Work: How Juniors Coaching Seniors on Emerging Technologies Such as Generative AI Can Lead to Learning Failures

By: Katherine C. Kellogg, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Steven Randazzo, Ethan Mollick, Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Edward McFowland III, François Candelon and Karim R. Lakhani

March 2025 |
Article |
Information and Organization

The literature on communities of practice demonstrates that a proven way for senior professionals to upskill themselves in the use of new technologies that undermine existing expertise is to learn from junior professionals. It notes that juniors may be better able than seniors to engage in real-time experimentation close to the work itself, and may be more willing to learn innovative methods that conflict with traditional identities and norms. However, this literature has not explored emerging technologies, which are seen to pose new risks to valued outcomes because of their uncertain and wide-ranging capabilities, exponential rate of change, potential for outperforming humans in a wide variety of skilled and cognitive tasks, and dependence on a vast, varied, and high volume of data and other inputs from a broad ecosystem of actors. It has also not explored obstacles to junior professionals being a source of expertise in the use of new technologies for more senior members in contexts where the juniors themselves are not technical experts, and where technology is so new and rapidly changing that the juniors have had little experience with using it. However, such contexts may be increasingly common. In our study conducted with Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, we interviewed 78 such junior consultants in July-August 2023 who had recently participated in a field experiment that gave them access to generative AI (GPT-4) for a business problem solving task. Drawing from junior professionals’ in situ reflections soon after the experiment, we argue that such juniors may fail to be a source of expertise in the use of emerging technologies for more senior professionals; instead, they may recommend three kinds of novice AI risk mitigation tactics that: 1) are grounded in a lack of deep understanding of the emerging technology’s capabilities, 2) focus on change to human routines rather than system design, and 3) focus on interventions at the project-level rather than system deployer- or ecosystem-level.

Keywords: Rank and Position; Competency and Skills; Technology Adoption; Experience and Expertise; AI and Machine Learning

Citation

Read Now

Intenseye: Powering Workplace Health and Safety with AI (B)

By: Michael W. Toffel, Shane Greenstein and Sadika El Hariri

February 2025 |
Supplement |
Faculty Research

Intenseye used its $25 million series A funds to refine and expand its digital safety platform while refining its target markets and ideal customer profile. As the company implemented new approaches to create value for its clients, such as developing an AI-powered virtual assistant software, it continued to resist requests to allow facial recognition and to expand into productivity monitoring.

Citation

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Building a Generative AI-Powered MBA Course Scheduler

By: Iavor Bojinov and Annika Hildebrandt

February 2025 |
Exercise |
Faculty Research

Citation

Purchase

Preparing Business Leaders for an Era of Climate Instability: Understanding and Managing Physical Climate Risk

By: Michael W. Toffel and Spencer Glendon

February 2025 |
Tutorial |
Faculty Research

In this compelling video, Spencer Glendon, founder of Probable Futures and Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School, describes the profound implications of climate change for businesses, the economy, and societies around the world. Drawing from his background in systems engineering, economics, and asset management, Glendon underscores how a once-stable climate enabled the rise of predictable infrastructure, industry, and culture. Now, with escalating climate variability, he reveals that the assumptions underpinning our global systems subject to increasing risk. Using data from climate model projections and real-world examples, Glendon demonstrates the urgency for organizations to integrate an understanding of climate change into their decision-making to foster more resilient and adaptive strategies. This video serves as an essential resource for faculty aiming to engage students in understanding climate risks and the future of strategic, informed adaptation across sectors. This video can be paired with the "Physical Climate Risk" background note (624-059) written by Glendon with Michael Toffel and Alison Smart.

Keywords: Risk; Uncertainty; Modeling; Climate Change; Adaptation; Risk and Uncertainty; Risk Management

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Educating Students and Professionals on the Business Implications of Climate Change

By: Michael W. Toffel

2025 |
Article |
Global Focus: The EFMD Business Magazine

As climate change poses unprecedented challenges and opportunities, the private sector must play a pivotal role in both adaptation and mitigation efforts. This article discusses the new Harvard Business School Online course, Business and Climate Change, designed to equip participants—whether fulltime students or professionals—with practical tools to understand how companies are addressing climate-related risks and opportunities. After introductory coverage of climate science and government policies, the course introduces a range of managers from companies around the world and across different sectors to explain how they are enacting practical solutions to improve their climate adaptation and decarbonise their products, operations, and supply chains. With engaging videos, short readings, and exercises, the course seeks to enable future leaders to integrate climate solutions into core business strategies, product and service design, operational decisions, and more. Given the increasing demand from Gen Z and Millennials—and MBA students—for meaningful, impactful careers, the course addresses an urgent need to align business education with the realities of a changing planet.