Publications

March 2020
Case

Hotstar

By: Krishna G. Palepu and Kairavi Dey

Hotstar was an online video streaming platform owned by Star India Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation. Since its launch in 2015, the platform had grown to offer over 100,000 hours of TV content, movies in nine Indian languages... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Television Entertainment; Disruption; Business Strategy; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; India; Mumbai

March 2001
Article

Strategy and the Internet

By: M. E. Porter

Many of the pioneers of Internet business, both dot-coms and established companies, have competed in ways that violate nearly every precept of good strategy. Rather than focus on profits, they have chased customers indiscriminately through discounting, channel... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Online Technology

Find at Harvard

March 2015 (Revised December 2016)
Case

American Well: The DTC Decision

By: Elie Ofek and Natalie Kindred

In late 2013, telehealth company American Well, which developed a digital platform that allowed patients to conduct online medical consultations with physicians, is considering pursuing a direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategy. Founded in 2006, American Well had, to date,... View Details

10 Jan 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: January 10, 2017

alter the underlying setup, and a “final no.” Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52029 Disruptive Innovation: Intellectual History and Future Paths By: Christensen, Clayton M., Rory McDonald, Elizabeth J.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

22 Oct 2013
First Look

First Look: October 22

Publications August 2013 PLoS ONE Prosocial Bonuses Increase Employee Satisfaction and Team Performance By: Anik, Lalin, Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Michael I. Norton, and Jordi Quoidbach Abstract—In three field studies, we explore the impact of providing... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2011
Article

The New M&A Playbook

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Richard Alton, Curtis Rising and Andrew Waldeck

Companies spend more than $2 trillion on acquisitions every year, yet the M&A failure rate is between 70% and 90%. Executives can dramatically increase their odds of success, the authors argue, if they understand how to select targets, how much to pay for them, and... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Model; Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Integration

Find at Harvard

27 Nov 2006
Research & Ideas

Manly Men, Oil Platforms, and Breaking Stereotypes

supporting a generative rather than defensive process of masculine identity construction, these platforms may have avoided costs other dangerous workplaces pay for men's masculinity strivings. Our findings point to the mutability of... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

28 Sep 2010
First Look

First Look: September 28, 2010

http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/11-027.pdf Platform Envelopment Authors:Thomas R. Eisenmann, Geoffrey Parker, and Marshall Van Alstyne Publication:Strategic Management Journal (forthcoming) Abstract Due to network effects and switching... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2020
Case

Klöckner & Co: Steeling for a Digital World

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Hoping to get ahead of potential digital disruption at Klöckner & Co.—one of the world’s largest steel and metal distributors—CEO Gisbert Rühl set up both kloeckner.i (KCI), an internal transformation arm, and XOM Materials (XOM), an independent industry platform. KCI... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Market Design; Digital Platforms; Markets; Industry Structures; Supply and Industry; Technology Adoption; Transformation; Digital Transformation; Steel Industry; Information Technology Industry; Europe; Germany

08 Oct 2013
First Look

First Look: October 8

level data set of 29 countries between 1985 and 2000, we find that the growth effects of FDI increase when we account for the quality of FDI. August 2013 Harvard Business Review Consulting on the Cusp of Disruption By: Christensen,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

August 2014
Case

Netflix: Designing the Netflix Prize (A)

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Wesley M. Cohen, Kynon Ingram, Tushar Kothalkar, Maxim Kuzemchenko, Santosh Malik, Cynthia Meyn, Greta Friar and Stephanie Healy Pokrywa

In 2006, Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, was looking for a way to solve Netflix's customer churn problem. Netflix used Cinematch, its proprietary movie recommendation software, to promote individually determined best-fit movies to customers. Hastings determined that a... View Details

Keywords: Crowdsourcing; Prizes; Digitization; Algorithms; Recommendation Software; Disruption; Transformation; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Sharing; Applications and Software; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Technology Industry; United States

03 Feb 2015
First Look

First Look: February 3

Business School Case 515-001 Disrupting the Meat Industry: Tissue Culture Beef Dr. Mark Post and his team at Maastricht University were perfecting their tissue culture beef product-made entirely from muscle grown in his lab-to give it the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

December 2023
Case

TikTok: The Algorithm Will See You Now

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai

In a world where attention is a scarce commodity, this case explores the meteoric rise of TikTok—an app that transformed from a niche platform for teens into the most visited domain by 2021—surpassing even Google. Its algorithm was a sophisticated mechanism for... View Details

Keywords: Social Media; Applications and Software; Disruptive Innovation; Business and Government Relations; International Relations; Cybersecurity; Culture; Technology Industry; China; United States; India

December 2020
Case

XP: Dual Track Financing Alternatives

By: Marco Di Maggio, Pedro Levindo and Carla Larangeira

XP, an investment platform, was on the verge of defining whether to do an IPO or selling off a majority stake to Itaú Unibanco, Brazil´s largest financial conglomerate. Under the leadership of Guilherme Benchimol, XP´s co-founder and CEO, XP had risen to become the... View Details

Keywords: Financing Decisions; Expansion; Decision Choices and Conditions; Latin America; Brazil

September 2014
Supplement

Netflix: Designing the Netflix Prize (B)

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Wesley M. Cohen, Kynon Ingram, Tushar Kothalkar, Maxim Kuzemchenko, Santosh Malik, Cynthia Meyn, Stephanie Healy Pokrywa and Greta Friar

This supplemental case follows up on the Netflix Prize Contest described in Netflix: Designing the Netflix Prize (A). In the A case, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings must decide how to organize a crowdsourcing contest to improve the algorithms for Netflix's movie... View Details

Keywords: Crowdsourcing; Prizes; Digitization; Algorithms; Recommendation Software; Disruption; Transformation; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Sharing; Applications and Software

July 2022
Teaching Note

Arçelik (A), (B): From a Dealer Network to an Omnichannel Experience

By: Ayelet Israeli, Fares Khrais and Menna Hassan

Arçelik Turkey, the country’s market leader in household appliances, was at an omnichannel crossroads in January 2020. Arçelik was a B2B player utilizing a dealership network with an umbrella of brands and had one of the largest brick-and-mortar store networks in... View Details

December 2014 (Revised August 2024)
Case

HomeAway: Organizing the Vacation Rental Industry

By: Rory McDonald, Feng Zhu and Cheng Gao

In less than 10 years, cofounders Brian Sharples and Carl Shepherd had transformed HomeAway from just another Internet startup into the world's leading vacation-rental marketplace—a global online platform that links customers seeking vacation-home rentals to the... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Innovation; Technology; Acquisitions; Operations Management; Digital Platforms; Acquisition; Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Disruptive Innovation; Disruption; Accommodations Industry

26 May 2015
First Look

First Look: May 26

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2290658 May 2015 Oxford University Press Entrepreneurial Creativity: The Role of Learning Processes and Work Environment Supports. By: Kanter, Rosabeth M. Abstract— No abstract available. Publisher's link: Book Link ... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2021 (Revised March 2022)
Case

TikTok in 2020: Super App or Supernova?

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dan Maher and Dan O'Brien

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around a simple idea – helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. In less than a decade, it had become one of the world’s most valuable private companies, with investors... View Details