Industry 4.0

3D printing and virtual warehousing has the power to improve the consumer offering and increase the efficiency of the supply chain by providing wider product variety with faster delivery while accessing scale manufacturing advantages and reducing inventory holding cost and production waste. This technology has the potential to fundamentally change global trade dynamics, consumer buying behavior and business strategy as it enables a shift away from the physical and into the virtual.

Over the last 10 years, advanced manufacturing has blossomed in a rural pocket of Mississippi. Led by Dean Nitin Nohria and Senior Associate Dean for Research Jan Rivkin, sixteen HBS faculty traveled there together last fall for a closer look.

In this interview from the Social Enterprise Initiative’s “Impact Insights,” HBS Professor Kash Rangan and co-founder of the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative, discussed the new HBS research initiative called “Impact Co-Laboratory”.

Written by Sonali Bloom, HBS ’17. This post was originally published on the Digital Initiative’s classroom blogging platform. Craigslist grew rapidly by leveraging hyper-local network effects — but now faces market share erosion as other platforms enter niche segments. Who will win, and how?

Written by Yuval Gonczarowski, HBS ’17. This post was originally published on the Digital Initiative’s classroom blogging platform. What started as a place for disgruntled employees to share their frustrations with the people upstairs anonymously, quickly became a money-making machine. 

In this talk from our 2017 Digital Transformation Summit, Mike Tushman the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration from Harvard Business School digs into the impact of crowds on incumbent firms.

As retail loses ground and e-commerce gains ever more headway, the ability of warehouses to manage fulfillment becomes more important than ever. Call it the arms race Jeff Bezos started. In this talk from our 2017 Digital Transformation Summit, Bruce Welty of Locus Robotics reveals the ins and outs of the warehouse of the future.

In this flash talk from our 2017 Future Assembly, John Deighton discusses how data is becoming a raw material akin to oil and explores which industries will be winners and losers in this digital transformation.

On March 9th, 2016 the Digital Seminar series hosted Katja Seim from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.