Core Notes Program – High Level OverviewSales Meeting
August, 2011
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New Product Line: Core Notes Program Roll-Out
Largest Revenue Opportunity
Lowest HBP Market Share
Opportunity for HBP to launch core notes program in major disciplines for traditional MBA curriculum
Study of average MBA syllabus signaled interesting opportunity for HBP penetration of a new content area
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New Product Line: Core Notes Program Roll-Out
Potential for Disruption Strategic Advantages for HBP
• Opportunistic response to 2 phenomena Disaggregation efficiencies generated by
digital technology Increasing dissatisfaction with practices
and culture of leading textbook publishers
• Ability for faculty to dispense with multi-vendor supply line
• Opportunity for customers to source all pedagogical content from HBP
• Offering in digital format only avoids high costs of physical production, inventorying and shipping allowing for low price point relative to traditional textbooks
• Exploiting HBS’ unparalleled brand power and HBP’s access to HBS faculty
• New revenue stream for HE
• Increased revenues from established products Liberates sizable share of student course materials
budget Facilitates adoption of more HBP content (cases,
articles, sims)
• Fortifies HBP’s reputation as dependable source of high-quality teaching materials serving widest range of pedagogical needs
• Addresses growing market challenges posed by aging HBS technical note collection
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Primary Elements of the Core Notes Project
Ten Core Notes for the higher education market available for use for the fall semester
2012
The Notes will cover core conceptual material in Operations Management, at a level
typical of first year MBA courses at top business schools
The objective is to supplant the current use of textbooks and other conceptual
materials that business school faculty assign to complement cases in operations
management
The last critical element in the HBP family of learning objects for a typical
syllabus
Modular approach: Professors will be able to assign the full set of available Notes in
place of a text book, or just the individual Notes they need
“Micro-transactions”
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Product Policy – Core Notes
Length: Approximately 15,000 words, or 30 pages
Some Notes will be shorter or longer, as required by the content
Accompanying Teaching Guide will be approximately 3-5 pages
Content: Approximately twenty pages of the note will constitute essential reading
The remaining ten pages will be optional material that the professor can assign
depending on student ability, interest, time, etc.
The essential reading will be as generic as possible, applicable to any type of
organizational context and international in perspective
Probable topics for short pieces of optional material are: optional side topics related to
material, more advanced math that supports the math in essential reading, sample
problems applied to real organizations, recent research trends on the topic, recent
business innovations on the topic
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Product Policy (continued) – Core Notes
The accompanying Teaching Guide will recommend a few discussion questions for class, and
also HBS cases and simulations that reinforce the material
For each case and simulation listed, there will be a description of how it applies to the
material in the Note.
For each Note, there will also be an accompanying PowerPoint slide deck to use in class,
Length will be 3-5 slides
For each Note, there might also be one or several accompany calculator/tools
Tools will be very simple, individual-user based
Goal of tools is the build intuition behind the relationship between parameters in a
model discussed in the essential text.
Tools could be embedded in the text.
Pricing: tbd, but likely based on current pricing model for cases and HBR articles
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Next Steps in Product Development Work
Release market research survey
Analyze survey data
Finalize detailed outline of topical coverage
From analyzed data and discussions with HBS faculty, develop a draft topic outline for each
Note
Recruit faculty authors for the Notes in addition to “Uber-editor” for the core note series
Recruit peer reviewers, expert teaching panel, and beta testers
Select interior designer and create a design template
A lot of work in a short period of time!
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Tentative Note Topics
Introduction to Operations Management and Its Link to Strategy and Finance
Process Mapping and Analysis
Constraint Management and Capacity Planning
Quality Management
Lean Systems: JIT (for example)
Sources and Consequences of Variability
Inventory
Forecasting
Supply Chain Management
Innovation Management, Product and Process Design
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Link to Educational Technology
Development of six supporting “mini-simulations” in operations management Potential topics include: quality management, constraint management, process
mapping Look and feel very similar to the operations management mini-simulation highlighting
process variability (car wash mini-sim) Simulations will be authored by core note authors
Additional supporting educational technology in the form of calculators and tools Potential topics include: