harvard case study on dabbawala

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Mumbai’s Models of Service Excellence

• Stefan Thomke

What the city’s dabbawalas can teach your company about quality

Reprint: R1211K

Think you need exceptional employees, advanced IT, or rigid controls to build a high-performance organization? The dabbawalas of Mumbai prove otherwise. Six days a week, these 5,000 self-managed, semi-literate workers deliver upwards of 130,000 lunches from customers’ homes to their offices with astonishing precision—negotiating the crowded city by train, bicycle, and handcart, without the aid of any technology or even cell phones. The 100-year-old service is legendary for its reliability: Despite monsoons, floods, riots, and terrorist attacks, mistakes by the dabbawalas are extremely rare.

Thomke, an HBS professor, studied the dabbawalas to find the keys to their success. He uncovered a unique system with four pillars: organization, management, process, and culture. A flat structure, consisting of autonomous units of 25 people each, is well suited to providing low-cost service. The tight schedule of the train lines over which meals are ferried regulates everyone’s work. Buffer capacity is built in to address extremely thin margins of error; each unit has extra workers who fill in wherever they are needed, and members are cross-trained in all activities. Variations that might derail the works are discouraged; the lunchboxes used, for instance, are all a standard size. A simple coding system helps workers quickly sort lunches and get them where they need to go. And democratic decision making and deep emotional bonds among workers promote a high degree of cooperation.

The dabbawalas show that with the right system, even ordinary workers can achieve the extraordinary.

In July 2005, Mumbai was battered by unusually heavy monsoon rains. In just 12 hours, more than 25 inches deluged India’s business capital. That, combined with record high tides, wreaked widespread havoc, bringing the city to a virtual standstill. As the water rose waist-high in many areas, people found themselves stranded at railway stations, in trains, and on roads and sidewalks.

• Stefan Thomke is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is a leading authority on the management of business experimentation and innovation and has worked with many global companies on product, process, and technology development. He is the author of Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments (HBR Press, 2020).

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• October 2012 (Revised September 2013)
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The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time

• Format: Print
• | Language: English
• | Pages: 13

About The Author

Stefan H. Thomke

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• The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time  By: Stefan H. Thomke

Inside the Case: The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time

Featuring: Stefan Thomke, Mona Sinha

The Inside the Case: The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time video offers behind-the-scenes insights on teaching the case from coauthor Stefan Thomke. He discusses the case's learning objectives, provides introductory and discussion questions that have worked well for him, offers suggestions for teaching the case online, and shares memorable moments of teaching this case with students.

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Food for thought: what makes mumbai's dabbawalas successful.

How do you get extraordinary results from ordinary people? Mumbai's dabbawalas provide the answers, says Harvard's Stefan Thomke.

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Dabbawala Case Study: How Mumbai Thrives On This Model?

Aashita Singh

Updated on: March 22, 2024

Mumbai dabbawala service has made it easy for the people to have and enjoy freshly home cooked meals either at their offices or other working places.

This service has led many people who hail from different parts of the country come to Mumbai to work and live, to have a meal which is home cooked and healthy.

Let’s start with our discussion of the Mumbai Dabbawala Case Study and how Mumbai has been living on this model since decades! 

(A) Mumbai Dabbawala Profile 

Mumbai Dabbawala or the name by which is famously called, “The Dabba Service” started from the late 1800s i.e. 1890, serves freshly cooked meals to people either from their homes or from the dabba service places. 

The Dabbawala service was initially started by Mahadeo Havaji Bachche in 1890 as a small business, and now has become one of the world recognized businesses. 

Apart from being a prominent dabba service in Mumbai, it also offers various services and facilities like, Ted talk in various business schools, seminars, lectures, a day with dabbawala, app service, etc. all the factors which contributes to its key position as the leading player in the dabba service in Mumbai. 

Beyond all this, Mumbai dabbawala has been awarded with various recognition like the Six Sigma.

That narrates the tale of Mumbai Dabbawala of not only showcasing an unparalleled service but have also earned their place in the global standards of operational efficiency by achieving Six Sigma certification, which translates to an error ration of just 1 in 16 million, or simply translated as a single error in 1,60,00,000 lunch boxes.

(B) Dabbawala Business Model 

The business model used by Dabbawala is a blend of simplicity, user-centric approach, efficiency, and dedication. The dabbawalas work on a single aim, i.e. to serve the people and the society with their best services. 

The Mumbai Dabbawala service operates their business mainly on four pillars, i.e. organization, management, process, and culture. 

The above four principles are core elements of the Dabbawala Service, which has been crucial for the business which has been opening for many years now. 

(B.1) How Did the Idea of Dabbawala Originated? 

Around 130 years ago, a Parsi Banker working in Fort Branch only wanted to have his home cooked meal in his office. For that he hired a young man named Mahadeo Havaji Bacche, who would daily get his lunch from his home in the afternoon.

That is how the concept and the first dabbawala emerged. 

With time, with the vision and hard work of Mahadeo Havaji Bacche, the business started growing and thriving in the city and has a large workforce to operate. 

(B.2) How did this business become an exception?

• The dabbawala service delivers over 2,00,000 tiffins on a daily basis from their homes or dabba service to their offices. 
• It delivers all its services and transactions in almost 6 hours, six days a week, before lunch time, without any mistakes.
• All this success has been achieved by Dabbawalas without the intervention of any technological tool at low cost and in an eco-friendly manner.
• Later on, they have made their own app for catering to more people and offering more services. 

• It has been awarded with the title of “ Six Sigma” from the study conducted by the Harvard Business School, which means that the dabbawalas made less than 3.4 errors per million transactions.
• Mumbai Dabbawalas have employed around 5,000 people for delivering its services, and many of them are less educated, or have not appropriate reading knowledge, but they operate efficiently and provide their best services. 
• A force of hardworking people has led them to achieve this success and become a prominent name all over the world. 
• The Mumbai Dabbawalas were also visited by Mr. Richard Branson, a british entrepreneur and adventurer and Prince Charles during his visit to India.

(B.3) Major Events of Mumbai Dabbawalas  

(c) marketing mix strategy .

One of the key factors of Dabbawala case study is the marketing mix which it has been following for years. The dabbawala operates on 6 P’s of marketing mix, which is Product, Place, Price, Promotion, and People. 

(C.1) Product 

The primary service of the Dabbawala is to provide the freshly home cooked meal lunch boxes from the customer’s home and deliver them at their offices. Along with that they also collect their tiffin boxes after lunch and deliver them back to their home. 

With that they also offer advertising facilities with them, workshops, seminars, and more of it. 

(C.2) Place

Mumbai Dabbawala, an Indian business organization, primarily operates its services in Mumbai. The dabbawalas also take their service orders through SMSs. It has a wide distribution network and a workforce of nearly 5,000 workers.

(C.3) Price 

Mumbai Dabbawala has a turnover of around Rs.36 crores annually, and its services cost within a range of Rs.300 to 1,000.  The affordable pricing for its services, the annual subscription model for payments, the uniform pricing strategy, no hidden costs, all contribute to an easy marketing mix. 

(C.4) Promotion  

The organization that has been operating from decades now has been well famous and a prominent name in the city Mumbai. They have mostly adopted the mouth publicity for their business.

They rely on their exceptional service model and quality assurance of operations. Many production houses, companies, promote their messages and movies through dabbawala. 

(C.5) People 

The success and growth of Mumbai Dabbawala largely depends on the people it serves. They are the backbone and the key elements of the entire operation of Dabbawalas. The business has high skilled workers, teamwork, coordination, training, and has good customer relations. 

(D) Unique Coding System 

Instead of putting names for different stations, tiffin deliveries, office place, etc. they have a unique full proof coding system of delivering dabbas. Some of them are- 

Let’s have a look at the other factors constituting the Mumbai Dabbawala case study!

(E) Other Factors Analysis 

Above were some other factors which contributed to its growth and overall success over the years. It’s a mix of its teamwork, coordination, delivery systems, returning facility, coding system. 

Over the years, the Mumbai Dabbawala has kept their services simple and unique. With time they have developed their own app and site which has helped to connect to more customers and make a more simplified process. 

Summing Up: The Dabbawala Case Study

The Mumbai Dabbawala Service , one of the most famous things of Mumbai. The dabbawala service that has been operating and providing its best services to the people since 1890, is one of most anticipated case studies to look at. 

Note: We do have case studies of other famous names like

• Taj Mahal Case Study ,
• Zara Case Study ,
• Starbucks Case Study ,

Be it providing the on time tiffin delivery service, doing seminars, unique coding system of tiffin’s, exceptional service over the years, delivering ted talks, etc. all constitute as the major key elements of the dabbawala case study. 

Mumbai Dabbawala service believes in the simple working techniques which offers high quality in low prices. 

Related Posts:

Contact Info: Axponent Media Pvt Ltd, 706-707 , 7th Floor Tower A , Iris Tech Park, Sector 48, Sohna Road, Gurugram, India, Pin - 122018

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1. Build your organisation around people Much of the dabbawala organisation’s success is due to their human resource system, in the way they hire, develop, manage and reward people, says Stefan Thomke, William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. “It’s an organisation built around people, not around technology.”

2. Commitment and attitude trump qualifications Although the dabbawalas are semi-literate, they are “suitably educated” for their jobs because they believe in serving the customer above all else. “We couldn’t hire MBAs,” says Manish Tripathi, founder and chairman of the Dabbawala Foundation.

3. Give employees a sense of purpose and value The dedication of the dabbawalas can be partly attributed to the value they place on the work they do. “Our dabbawalas view their work as worship. They are grateful to have work, and to serve others by delivering food is to serve God,” says Manish. As a result, he says, everyone in Mumbai respects the dabbawalas for the work they do.

4. Stay true to your core purpose While the dabbawala organisation has received suggestions to branch out into other business lines, such as cooking the food instead of merely supplying it, it has stayed true to its century-old purpose. “We focus on delivering dabbas to our customers as best as we can,” says Manish.

5. Recruit carefully New dabbawalas go through a strict six-month probationary period and are hired from only the villages around Pune, so they suit the working culture. “We are all one family, from the Vakari sect. We eat lunch together and we pray together,” says Manish.

6. Don’t be too lean, build in buffers “Each dabbawala is capable of collecting up to 20 dabbas a day – but this is the maximum. Usually, in a group, each dabbawala will collect less so that if a dabbawala is sick the others can compensate. New dabbawalas are hired only to replace a member or when there are too many new customers in an area,” says Manish.

7. Encourage self-discipline The dabbawalas are self-motivated to be disciplined, not because they have a superior telling them what to do, says Manish. “They work right because it’s the right thing to do. Self-discipline is the way to make an organisation great.”

8. Create a sense of ownership The dabbawala organisation has no employees because every member is a shareholder, says Manish. “So if one member does less work and earns less money, he’s also hurting himself.”

9. Maintain a flat organisation Harvard Business School’s case study notes that the dabbawala organisation has evolved into a flat organisational structure to enable quick decision-making. 10. Abandon bad customers “One customer should not cause thousands to suffer. If a Mumbai housewife is late with the dabba for more than one week, we no longer serve that customer,” says Manish.

This article appeared in Management@work, the monthly management pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 839, Jan 3-9, 2011

Copyright © 1999-2023 The Edge Communications Sdn. Bhd. 199301012242 (266980-X). All rights reserved

Case Study of Popular Mumbai Dabbawala System- 2023

Gateway of India, Haji Ali, Hotel Taj, Colaba Market, Fashion Street , and many more. Most of you must have guessed the city we are discussing.

Yes, you guessed it right.

It’s Mumbai.

But other than these, there is something else that makes Mumbai famous. It’s “Dabbawala.”

We have heard people saying that Mumbai is a city that does not stop. But similarly, an army of men in the same town does not get tired or stop. Who are they?

They are Mumbai Dabbawalas, also known as Dabbawalas.

If you visit Mumbai, you are bound to notice the Mumbai Dabbawalas. You may not realize this, but the Mumbai Dabbawala is an essential part of the life of Mumbai.

Dabbawalas deliver around 2,00,000 meals daily and have been doing this for 130 years. Within 4 hours, they provide home-cooked meals to offices daily and do all this without using any technology.

Let us look at the Mumbai Dabbawala case study that will help you understand Dabbawala better.

The Invention of Mumbai Dabbawala

Founded in 1890, Mumbai Dabbawalas are the men dressed in traditional white outfits with Gandhi caps delivering home-cooked food to Mumbaikar from home to office daily.

They are a strong army of nearly 5,000 people who ensure that 2,00,000 people get their lunch on time at their offices.

Their work is so efficient that many famous personalities like Richard Bradstone and Prince Charles have visited them.

Moreover, these men in white have given lectures at different business schools. Therefore, they are six sigma compatible.

The service was born out of sheer need.

With so many people belonging to different communities reaching the city of dreams and no fast-food culture being that popular back then, there was a shortage of an adequate food delivery system.

While there was a rising demand, there was a supply of illiterate workers who had traveled to the city after their agriculture business failed to ensure sustenance at home.

With no education to work as clerks in the homes of Britishers but with enough energy to embark on any hard work, the idea of delivering home-cooked food was born.

Thus was the launch of the “Dabba Delivery System” in Mumbai.

How did the Mumbai Dabbawala Emerge?

Nearly 125 years ago, a Parsi banker working in Fort Branch wanted to have home-cooked food in his office. So he appointed a young man who belonged from Gurgaon to get his lunch from his home every afternoon.

It is how the job of 1st Dabbawala emerged.

The Mumbai dabbawalla price was nearly two annas at that time.

Soon, the business started picking up and gaining popularity because of the visionary work of Mahadeo Havaji Bacche, who considered this a golden opportunity and decided to grow it as a business.

What makes Dabbawala exceptional?

The dabbawalas have a fantastic service record. Each day they deliver more than 1,30,000 lunchboxes all over Mumbai, the fourth most populous city in the world.

It means nearly 2,60,000 transactions being done in almost 6 hours every day, six days a week, and 52 weeks a year, without a single mistake.

Surprisingly, the dabbawalas have achieved that level of performance at a low cost, eco-friendly manner, without using any digital or IT platform or even mobile phones.

A study conducted by the Harvard Business School rated it “Six Sigma,” which means that the dabbawalas made less than 3.4 errors per million transactions.

With almost 2,00,000 deliveries six days a week, less than 212 missing or delayed Dabbas in a year.

You must be thinking, how can a poorly educated, decentralized team perform amazingly without errors in such a challenging environment?

The answer is a lesson for those companies who want to grow their business in the market.

The way the Mumbai tiffin wala works is an inspiration for all the organizations that want to grow. Companies that cannot afford to appoint stars depend on ordinary people for support.

The success of dabbawalas proves that with the right system and hardworking workers, we can achieve extraordinary results in no time.

Mumbai Dabbawalas employs around 5,000 people, many of whom have had little education or reading knowledge, but how do they keep the orders intact. First, let’s see how Mumbai Dabbawalas operate.

How do Mumbai Dabbawalas work?

The Dabbawalas run their food delivery service on four fundamental pillars. These are the organization, management process, and culture.

All these four pillars are correctly aligned and mutually supporting. It is uncommon to see such coordination in the corporate world.

The Mumbai Suburban Railway, one of the most complex, vast, and mainly used urban commuter lines worldwide, plays a vital role in the Dabbawalas’ operations.

Its basic layout requires delivery people with cycles and handcarts to travel between the railway stations and customers’ offices and homes.

Every day, a Dabba reaches its destination after passing through several hands. In the morning, a dabbawalla picks it up from the customer’s home and goes to the nearest railway station. Then, it is sorted and put on a wooden carte as per its destination.

Once it reaches the nearest station, it is sorted and assigned to another dabbawalla, who delivers it to the office before lunchtime. Once lunchtime is over, the process runs the other way around, and the Dabba reaches the customer’s home.

They use a trick to avoid confusion about which Dabba (the Indian Lunchbox) belongs to. They follow a “coding system.” The lids of the dabbas are labeled with numbers, letters, and symbols indicating where they came and where they should be delivered.

The Mumbai Dabbawalas are famous for their punctuality. Their mission statement since the day they started operation has been “Always deliver on time.”

A supervisory mechanism

The railway system sets the rhythm and pace of delivery. The regular schedule determines the time to complete a task and the time allotted.

Dabbawalas have just 40 seconds to load the crates of Dabbas on a train at essential stations and just 20 seconds at interval stops.

The Dabbawalas manage themselves concerning logistics, hiring, retention, and customer acquisition.

First, however, governing committees fix guidelines for costs, considering factors like the distance between a customer’s house and office and the distance between the office and the nearest railway station.

It helps them operate the service efficiently and keep charges low and the quality high.

Every Dabbawala is an entrepreneur responsible for negotiating prices with his clients. As Dabbawalas own their relationships with clients and tend to work in a similar location for several years, those relationships are usually trustworthy and long-term.

For the Dabbawalas, having the proper procedure signifies much more than just implementing effective workflows. It also involves everything in the organization, including how information is collected, using built-in buffers, and strictly following the standards.

SWOT Analysis

• Teamwork, honesty, and discipline
• Ownership, time management
• Low cost, customer satisfaction
• A service commitment, process consistency
• It depends on Mumbai’s local train service
• Restricted access to education limits

Opportunities

• Have a tie-up with caterers to serve varieties of food
• Expanding to other cities
• Flexible timing
• During high alerts in the city, Dabbawalas face a lot of issues

Awards & Recognition

• Shri. Varkari Prabhodhan Mahasmati Dindi Sohala
• Invitation from CII for conference arranged in Bangalore
• Documentaries made by UTV, BBC, ZEE TV, and MTV
• World record in time management

How COVID-19 affected the Dabbawalas

The COVID-19 Pandemic has dealt a cruel blow to the men in white. Thousands of dabbawalas retreated to their original homes in rural locations as the virus raged across Mumbai, a city of over 20 million people, crippling the century-old food supply chain.

Some of them were surviving on state rations and charities. They neither had electricity nor mobile connectivity in their homes.

Till now, the government did not give permission for the dabbawalas to travel in local trains, which makes it difficult for them to reach their final destinations.

Growth of Dabbawalas

However, the world of Dabbawalas is challenging, showing the spirit and grit of Mumbai, a city with millions of people from different parts of the world.

Many dabbawalas have had to overcome challenges like floods and railway strikes. Also, they have had to advance their skills in recent times, like learning to speak English and embracing technology.

In October 2020, an official website for the dabbawalas, digitaldabbawala.com, was launched. It is an official website that includes details of all the delivery organizations.

In November 2020, they launched a Dabbawala app to make food delivery accessible and uncomplicated. The app helps you find food and order food from where you are.

You type an address, and the app tells you the restaurants that can deliver to your area. Also, you can search restaurants by cuisine, menu, and name.

Once you find what you want, you can place your order online without extra charges. The app also offers access to coupons, special deals, and a customer care team with 24/7 assistance.

Soon, the deliverymen started growing their services from delivering lunchboxes to delivery of digital services like electronic registration of marriages and property.

Customers can now place their lunch orders through the website. In addition, they can choose between a monthly or annual subscription for payment.

The dabbawalas partner with 14 local restaurants to deliver food to clients. Recently, they have been encouraging customers to order directly from the hotels and receive nearly 25% discount and free home delivery.

In August 2021, the dabbawalas launched their digital operation known as Central Kitchen, which lets customers place orders for a wide variety of food for delivery.

The idea behind these new creativities is to think outside the box and to expand the Mumbai Dabbawalas business, starting from lunch delivery to a wide range of other services that will help to protect their source of income and trade after the Pandemic is over.

The men in white continue to deliver lunch and protect the future of the world’s oldest and most respected Mumbai dabbawalla system.

The men in white will still be delivering lunch, though, safeguarding the future of one of the world’s oldest and most respected food delivery systems.

The dabbawalas show that an organization doesn’t need extraordinary talent to achieve outstanding performance with the right system.

In today’s modern age, when we are addicted to the latest technologies, the example of Mumbai Dabbawalas shows that sometimes the best plan is the “simplest.”

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The dabbawala system: on-time delivery, every time case study analysis & solution, harvard business case studies solutions - assignment help.

The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time is a Harvard Business (HBR) Case Study on Technology & Operations , Fern Fort University provides HBR case study assignment help for just $11. Our case solution is based on Case Study Method expertise & our global insights.

Technology & Operations Case Study | Authors :: Stefan Thomke, Mona Sinha

Case study description.

To maximize their effectiveness, color cases should be printed in color.Describes the Mumbai-based Dabbawala organization, which achieves very high service performance (6 Sigma equivalent or better) with a low-cost and very simple operating system. The case explores all aspects of their system (mission, information management, material flows, human resource system, processes, etc.) and the challenges that the Dabbawala organization faces in a rapidly changing environment. An outside consultant proposes the introduction of new technologies and management systems, while the leading logistics companies (e.g., FedEx) come to Mumbai to learn about the Dabbawala system.

Disruptive innovation, Intellectual property, Marketing, Social enterprise, Strategy, Supply chain, Technology

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• HBR case studies provide anecdotal instances from managers and employees in the organization to give a feel of real situation on the ground. Use these instances and opinions to mark out the organization's culture, its people priorities & inhibitions.
• Make a time line of the events and issues in the case study. Time line can provide the clue for the next step in organization's journey. Time line also provides an insight into the progressive challenges the company is facing in the case study.

Step 4 - SWOT Analysis of The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time

Once you finished the case analysis, time line of the events and other critical details. Focus on the following -

• Zero down on the central problem and two to five related problems in the case study.
• Do the SWOT analysis of the The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time . SWOT analysis is a strategic tool to map out the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats that a firm is facing.
• SWOT analysis and SWOT Matrix will help you to clearly mark out - Strengths Weakness Opportunities & Threats that the organization or manager is facing in the The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time
• SWOT analysis will also provide a priority list of problem to be solved.
• You can also do a weighted SWOT analysis of The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time HBR case study.

Step 5 - Porter 5 Forces / Strategic Analysis of Industry Analysis The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time

In our live classes we often come across business managers who pinpoint one problem in the case and build a case study analysis and solution around that singular point. Business environments are often complex and require holistic solutions. You should try to understand not only the organization but also the industry which the business operates in. Porter Five Forces is a strategic analysis tool that will help you in understanding the relative powers of the key players in the business case study and what sort of pragmatic and actionable case study solution is viable in the light of given facts.

Step 6 - PESTEL, PEST / STEP Analysis of The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time

Another way of understanding the external environment of the firm in The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time is to do a PESTEL - Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental & Legal analysis of the environment the firm operates in. You should make a list of factors that have significant impact on the organization and factors that drive growth in the industry. You can even identify the source of firm's competitive advantage based on PESTEL analysis and Organization's Core Competencies.

Step 7 - Organizing & Prioritizing the Analysis into The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time Case Study Solution

Once you have developed multipronged approach and work out various suggestions based on the strategic tools. The next step is organizing the solution based on the requirement of the case. You can use the following strategy to organize the findings and suggestions.

• Build a corporate level strategy - organizing your findings and recommendations in a way to answer the larger strategic objective of the firm. It include using the analysis to answer the company's vision, mission and key objectives , and how your suggestions will take the company to next level in achieving those goals.
• Business Unit Level Solution - The case study may put you in a position of a marketing manager of a small brand. So instead of providing recommendations for overall company you need to specify the marketing objectives of that particular brand. You have to recommend business unit level recommendations. The scope of the recommendations will be limited to the particular unit but you have to take care of the fact that your recommendations are don't directly contradict the company's overall strategy. For example you can recommend a low cost strategy but the company core competency is design differentiation.
• Case study solutions can also provide recommendation for the business manager or leader described in the business case study.

Step 8 -Implementation Framework

The goal of the business case study is not only to identify problems and recommend solutions but also to provide a framework to implement those case study solutions. Implementation framework differentiates good case study solutions from great case study solutions. If you able to provide a detailed implementation framework then you have successfully achieved the following objectives -

• Detailed understanding of the case,
• Clarity of HBR case study fundamentals,
• Analyzed case details based on those fundamentals and
• Developed an ability to prioritize recommendations based on probability of their successful implementation.

Implementation framework helps in weeding out non actionable recommendations, resulting in awesome The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time case study solution.

Step 9 - Take a Break

Once you finished the case study implementation framework. Take a small break, grab a cup of coffee or whatever you like, go for a walk or just shoot some hoops.

Step 10 - Critically Examine The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time case study solution

After refreshing your mind, read your case study solution critically. When we are writing case study solution we often have details on our screen as well as in our head. This leads to either missing details or poor sentence structures. Once refreshed go through the case solution again - improve sentence structures and grammar, double check the numbers provided in your analysis and question your recommendations. Be very slow with this process as rushing through it leads to missing key details. Once done it is time to hit the attach button.

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Leaders weigh in on where we are and what’s next

The explosion of generative AI technology over the past year and a half is raising big questions about how these tools will impact higher education. Across Harvard, members of the community have been exploring how GenAI will change the ways we teach, learn, research, and work.

As part of this effort, the Office of the Provost has convened three working groups . They will discuss questions, share innovations, and evolve guidance and community resources. They are:

• The Teaching and Learning Group , chaired by Bharat Anand , vice provost for advances in learning and the Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. This group seeks to share resources, identify emerging best practices, guide policies, and support the development of tools to address common challenges among faculty and students.
• The Research and Scholarship Group , chaired by John Shaw , vice provost for research, Harry C. Dudley Professor of Structural and Economic Geology in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, and professor of environmental science and engineering in the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science. It focuses on how to enable, and support the integrity of, scholarly activities with generative AI tools.
• T he Administration and Operations Group , chaired by Klara Jelinkova , vice president and University chief information officer. It is charged with addressing information security, data privacy, procurement, and administration and organizational efficiencies.

Klara Jelinkova, Bharat Anand, and John Shaw.

Photos by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer; Evgenia Eliseeva; and courtesy of John Shaw

The Gazette spoke with Anand, Shaw, and Jelinkova to understand more about the work of these groups and what’s next in generative AI at Harvard.

When generative AI tools first emerged, we saw universities respond in a variety of ways — from encouraging experimentation to prohibiting their use. What was Harvard’s overall approach?

Shaw: From the outset, Harvard has embraced the prospective benefits that GenAI offers to teaching, research, and administration across the University, while being mindful of the potential pitfalls. As a University, our mission is to help enable discovery and innovation, so we had a mandate to actively engage. We set some initial, broad policies that helped guide us, and have worked directly with groups across the institution to provide tools and resources to inspire exploration.

Jelinkova: The rapid emergence of these tools meant the University needed to react quickly, to provide both tools for innovation and experimentation and guidelines to ensure their responsible use. We rapidly built an AI Sandbox to enable faculty, students, and staff to experiment with multiple large language models in a secure environment. We also worked with external vendors to acquire enterprise licenses for a variety of tools to meet many different use cases. Through working groups, we were able to learn, aggregate and collate use cases for AI in teaching, learning, administration, and research. This coordinated, collective, and strategic approach has put Harvard ahead of many peers in higher education.

Anand: Teaching and learning are fundamentally decentralized activities. So our approach was to ask: First, how can we ensure that local experimentation by faculty and staff is enabled as much as possible; and second, how can we ensure that it’s consistent with University policies on IP, copyright, and security? We also wanted to ensure that novel emerging practices were shared across Schools, rather than remaining siloed.

What do these tools mean for faculty, in terms of the challenges they pose or the opportunities they offer? Is there anything you’re particularly excited about?

Anand: Let’s start with some salient challenges. How do we first sift through the hype that’s accompanied GenAI? How can we make it easy for faculty to use GenAI tools in their classrooms without overburdening them with yet another technology? How can one address real concerns about GenAI’s impact?

While we’re still early in this journey, many compelling opportunities — and more importantly, some systematic ways of thinking about them — are emerging. Various Harvard faculty have leaned into experimenting with LLMs in their classrooms. Our team has now interviewed over 30 colleagues across Harvard and curated short videos that capture their learnings. I encourage everyone to view these materials on the new GenAI site; they are remarkable in their depth and breadth of insight.

Here’s a sample: While LLMs are commonly used for Q&A, our faculty have creatively used them for a broader variety of tasks, such as simulating tutors that guide learning by asking questions, simulating instructional designers to provide active learning tips, and simulating student voices to predict how a class discussion might flow, thus aiding in lesson preparation. Others demonstrate how more sophisticated prompts or “prompt engineering” are often necessary to yield more sophisticated LLM responses, and how LLMs can extend well beyond text-based responses to visuals, simulations, coding, and games. And several faculty show how LLMs can help overcome subtle yet important learning frictions like skill gaps in coding, language literacy, or math.

Do these tools offer students an opportunity to support or expand upon their learning?

Anand: Yes. GenAI represents a unique area of innovation where students and faculty are working together. Many colleagues are incorporating student feedback into the GenAI portions of their curriculum or making their own GenAI tools available to students. Since GenAI is new, the pedagogical path is not yet well defined; students have an opportunity to make their voices heard, as co-creators, on what they think the future of their learning should look like.

Beyond this, we’re starting to see other learning benefits. Importantly, GenAI can reach beyond a lecture hall. Thoughtful prompt engineering can turn even publicly available GenAI tools into tutorbots that generate interactive practice problems, act as expert conversational aids for material review, or increase TA teams’ capacity. That means both that the classroom is expanding and that more of it is in students’ hands. There’s also evidence that these bots field more questions than teaching teams can normally address and can be more comfortable and accessible for some students.

Of course, we need to identify and counter harmful patterns. There is a risk, in this early and enthusiastic period, of sparking over-reliance on GenAI. Students must critically evaluate how and where they use it, given its possibility of inaccurate or inappropriate responses, and should heed the areas where their style of cognition outperforms AI. One other thing to watch out for is user divide: Some students will graduate with vastly better prompt engineering skills than others, an inequality that will only magnify in the workforce.

What are the main questions your group has been tackling?

Anand: Our group divided its work into three subgroups focused on policy, tools, and resources. We’ve helped guide initial policies to ensure safe and responsible use; begun curating resources for faculty in a One Harvard repository ; and are exploring which tools the University should invest in or develop to ensure that educators and researchers can continue to advance their work.

In the fall, we focused on supporting and guiding HUIT’s development of the AI Sandbox. The Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching’s annual conference , which focused exclusively on GenAI, had its highest participation in 10 years. Recently, we’ve been working with the research group to inform the development of tools that promise broad, generalizable use for faculty (e.g., tutorbots).

What has your group focused on in discussions so far about generative AI tools’ use in research?

Shaw: Our group has some incredible strength in researchers who are at the cutting edge of GenAI development and applications, but also includes voices that help us understand the real barriers to faculty and students starting to use these tools in their own research and scholarship. Working with the other teams, we have focused on supporting development and use of the GenAI sandbox, examining IP and security issues, and learning from different groups across campus how they are using these tools to innovate.

Are there key areas of focus for your group in the coming months?

Shaw: We are focused on establishing programs — such as the new GenAI Milton Fund track — to help support innovation in the application of these tools across the wide range of scholarship on our campus. We are also working with the College to develop new programs to help support students who wish to engage with faculty on GenAI-enabled projects. We aim to find ways to convene students and scholars to share their experiences and build a stronger community of practitioners across campus.

What types of administration and operations questions are your group is exploring, and what type of opportunities do you see in this space?

Jelinkova: By using the group to share learnings from across Schools and units, we can better provide technologies to meet the community’s needs while ensuring the most responsible and sustainable use of the University’s financial resources. The connections within this group also inform the guidelines that we provide; by learning how generative AI is being used in different contexts, we can develop best practices and stay alert to emerging risks. There are new tools becoming available almost every day, and many exciting experiments and pilots happening across Harvard, so it’s important to regularly review and update the guidance we provide to our community.

Can you talk a bit about what has come out of these discussions, or other exciting things to come?

Jelinkova: Because this technology is rapidly evolving, we are continually tracking the release of new tools and working with our vendors as well as open-source efforts to ensure we are best supporting the University’s needs. We’re developing more guidance and hosting information sessions on helping people to understand the AI landscape and how to choose the right tool for their task. Beyond tools, we’re also working to build connections across Harvard to support collaboration, including a recently launched AI community of practice . We are capturing valuable findings from emerging technology pilot programs in HUIT , the EVP area , and across Schools. And we are now thinking about how those findings can inform guiding principles and best practices to better support staff.

While the GenAI groups are investigating these questions, Harvard faculty and scholars are also on the forefront of research in this space. Can you talk a bit about some of the interesting research happening across the University in AI more broadly ?

Shaw: Harvard has made deep investments in the development and application of AI across our campus, in our Schools, initiatives, and institutes — such as the Kempner Institute and Harvard Data Science Initiative. In addition, there is a critical role for us to play in examining and guiding the ethics of AI applications — and our strengths in the Safra and Berkman Klein centers, as examples, can be leading voices in this area.

What would be your advice for members of our community who are interested in learning more about generative AI tools?

Anand: I’d encourage our community to view the resources available on the new Generative AI @ Harvard website , to better understand how GenAI tools might benefit you.

There’s also no substitute for experimentation with these tools to learn what works, what does not, and how to tailor them for maximal benefit for your particular needs. And of course, please know and respect University policies around copyright and security.

We’re in the early stages of this journey at Harvard, but it’s exciting.

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