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- Faculty Publications (1,467)
- December 2021
- Case
Burning Glass Technologies: From Data to Product
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Amy Klopfenstein
In May 2021, Matt Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass Technologies, a company that provided labor market analytics for a variety of markets, navigates his company’s transition from data company to product company. Burning Glass originated as a service that used artificial... View Details
Keywords: Information Technology; Applications and Software; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Strategy; Expansion; Business Strategy; Labor; Employment; Human Capital; Jobs and Positions; Job Design and Levels; Job Search; Human Resources; Selection and Staffing; Recruitment; Employees; Retention; Competency and Skills; Experience and Expertise; Talent and Talent Management; Analytics and Data Science; Business Model; Technology Industry; North and Central America; United States
- December 2021 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Collaboration Wars: Slack vs. Microsoft Teams
By: David B. Yoffie, Kriti Gupta, Mehek Punatar, Poonam Sacheti and Poorvi Vijay
In 2021, Slack was acquired by Salesforce. While widely viewed as the best corporate collaboration and messaging software, Slack was being challenged by Microsoft, which was giving away its competitive product, Microsoft Teams, for free with a subscription to... View Details
- Column
The Changing Geography of Work: Priorities for Policy Makers
The COVID-19 pandemic thrust the issue of how and where we work into the spotlight. The adoption of remote and hybrid work increased exponentially as lockdowns necessitated social distancing. But now, as we enter a new phase of the pandemic, the Geography of Work—where... View Details
Keywords: Remote Work; Hybrid Work Model; Work-from-anywhere; Employees; Geographic Location; Policy
- 30 Nov 2021
- Interview
TikTok: Super App or Supernova?
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Brian Kenny
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around the simple idea of helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. By May 2020, TikTok operated in 155 countries and had roughly 1 billion monthly active users, placing... View Details
- November 2021 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Babban Gona: Great Farm
By: Kristin Fabbe, Tarun Khanna, Caroline M. Elkins, Zeke Gillman, Eleni Kyrkopoulou and Thomaz Teodorovicz
In 2020, Babban Gona was one of the world’s largest farming operations with over 140,000 acres of maize farms, an area over ten times as large as Manhattan, and over 80,000 member-farmers in Nigeria. According to the company, the average Nigerian farmer’s net income... View Details
- 2021
- Chapter
Digital Infrastructure
By: Shane Greenstein
What determines the supply of innovative digital infrastructure and how does variance in supply shape the performance of digital services? The essay reviews research into the economic impact of deployment, innovation, and adoption of digital infrastructure. It... View Details
Keywords: Information Technology; Infrastructure; Economics; Policy; Research; Analysis; United States
- Article
How Direct-to-Consumer Brands Can Continue to Grow
By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Daniel Corsten, Matt Higgins and Leonard A. Schlesinger
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands such as Allbirds, Casper, Peloton, and Warby Parker have creatively found a weakness in the marketing citadel of incumbent brands. By using data gleaned from daily interactions with customers, these brands have been able to adapt how... View Details
- October 2021
- Case
(180) Days of Quibi
By: David J. Collis and Terrence Shu
Mobile streaming app Quibi was ready to take the entertainment world by storm at its April 2020 launch. Backed by $1.75 billion, influential investors from Hollywood to Wall Street eagerly anticipated early success for this brainchild of Meg Whitman, former CEO of... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised September 2022)
- Case
GoPro: Becoming a Subscription Hero
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini and Nicole Tempest Keller
In 2021, Nick Woodman, founder and CEO of GoPro, was reviewing the company’s subscription offering, considering whether to extend it beyond benefits that were directly related to the company’s iconic camera. Founded in 2002, GoPro had gained renown for its innovative... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
The Business of K-12 Education in China
By: Geoffrey Jones and Yuhai Wu
This working paper examines the evolution of K-12 education in China, especially between 1985 and the present day, drawing extensive interviews with participants in the educational sector. China has been hugely successful in reaching almost 100 percent literacy,... View Details
- October 18, 2021
- Article
How to Reframe What Work Means to You
By: Hubert Joly
Our society often conceives of work as something we must endure so we can afford to do something else. The former CEO of Best Buy explains why this view has led to a crisis of engagement among leaders and employees alike, and offers a different model that he introduced... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Engine No. 1: An Impact Investing Firm Engages with ExxonMobil
By: Mark Kramer, Shawn Cole, Vikram S. Gandhi and T. Robert Zochowski
ExxonMobil, the world's fifth largest source of carbon emissions, remained committed to aggressively expanding its oil & gas business despite global warming. During the COVID pandemic this strategy resulted in massive losses as the price and demand for oil declined. ... View Details
- October 2021
- Case
Diversifying P&G's Supplier Base (A)
By: Kris Ferreira, Kym Lew Nelson, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Sarah Mehta
In February 2003, P&G hosted two meetings—one with its largest woman- and minority-owned suppliers and one with its largest non-minority-owned suppliers. Attendees in each meeting heard the same message: P&G was keen to grow its commitment to inclusive supply chains,... View Details
- October 2021
- Supplement
Diversifying P&G's Supplier Base (B)
By: Kris Ferreira, Kym Lew Nelson, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Sarah Mehta
This (B) case accompanies the (A) case of the same title. View Details
- October 2021
- Article
Can Self-Regulation Save Digital Platforms?
By: Michael A. Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer and David B. Yoffie
This article explores some of the critical challenges facing self-regulation and the regulatory environment for digital platforms. We examine several historical examples of firms and industries that attempted self-regulation before the Internet. All dealt with similar... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised September 2022)
- Case
SmartOne: Building an AI Data Business
By: Karim R. Lakhani, Pippa Armerding, Gamze Yucaoglu and Fares Khrais
The case opens in August 2021, as Habib and Shahysta Hassim, husband and wife co-founders of the data labeling company SmartOne, contemplate the strategy of the high growth company. Between 2016 and 2021, SmartOne had kept doubling its size every two years and now,... View Details
- September 2021 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Katie Couric Media: Landing the First Client
By: N. Louis Shipley and William R. Kerr
In May 2018, celebrated journalist Katie Couric and her husband, John Molner, had recently launched a full-service media firm called Katie Couric Media (KCM). Couric treasured the opportunity to address important social issues like gender equality, environmental... View Details
- September 2021 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
Harambe: Mobilizing Capital in Africa
By: Anywhere (Siko) Sikochi, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Francesco Tronci
Harambe was a non-profit organization whose mission was to build an ecosystem to identify promising young African entrepreneurs and provide them access to training, markets, capital, and support networks. From 2007 to 2021, Harambe had grown to a network of 367... View Details
- September 2021 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
On the Bubble: Startup Bootstrapping
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Tom Quinn and Annelena Lobb
Bubble was a software company in the low-code/no-code market, making tools that allowed users without traditional programming backgrounds or technical skills to build software. The case covers cofounder Joshua Haas’s engineering background, as he experienced a high... View Details
Keywords: Business Startups; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Business Plan; Disruption; Transformation; Trends; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Relationship Management; Cost vs Benefits; Decisions; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Equity; Executive Compensation; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Job Interviews; Growth and Development Strategy; Ownership Stake; Opportunities; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; New York (city, NY); California; France
- September 2021 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
Mission edX: Balancing Social Good and Financial Sustainability
By: John J-H Kim, David J. Collis and James Barnett
In March 2021, online education platform edX considers how to achieve financial sustainability without compromising its mission to provide universal access to high-quality education. View Details