Publications

16 Jul 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Principles that Matter: Sustaining Software Innovation from the Client to the Web

Keywords: by Marco Iansiti; Web Services; Web Services

December 2009 (Revised May 2012)
Case

Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center: Breast Cancer Care in Taiwan

By: Michael E. Porter, Jennifer F Baron and C. Jason Wang

Taiwan's Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center has developed an integrated, team-based care delivery model for breast cancer care that is being expanded to other cancer types in 2009. A decade earlier, President and CEO Dr. Andrew Huang and the Center had worked... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Medical Specialties; Service Delivery; Outcome or Result; Performance Effectiveness; Quality; Integration; Health Industry; Insurance Industry; Taiwan

October 1995 (Revised June 1996)
Case

Li & Fung (Trading) Ltd.

Li & Fung, one of the largest export trading companies in Asia, works primarily as an agent to connect U.S. and European manufacturers and retailers of nondurable, mass-market consumer goods with suppliers located all over East Asia who manufacture products according... View Details

Keywords: Networks; Marketplace Matching; Supply Chain Management; Trade; Manufacturing Industry; Retail Industry; Asia; United States; Europe

August 2007
Module Note

Managing Networked Businesses: Platform Evolution Module

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

Offers an overview of conceptual content and pedagogical guidance for instructors using a six-session module, "Platform Evolution," from "Managing Networked Businesses" (MNB), a case-based MBA elective course on platform-mediated networks. The module explores the... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Networks; Business or Company Management; Rights; Business Strategy; Problems and Challenges; Multi-Sided Platforms; Market Transactions; Innovation and Invention; Marketing; Competition; Market Entry and Exit

Profile

Angela R. Hicks Bowman

contractor. He grew frustrated by the dearth of a dependable rating service such as Unified Neighbors, an effective such resource in Indianapolis where he used to live. He decided to start a similar business in Columbus and recruited... View Details

Benjamin C. Esty

Benjamin Esty is the Roy and Elizabeth Simmons Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Over the years, he has taught a variety of courses ranging from advanced corporate finance and project finance to competitive strategy and leadership. He... View Details

Keywords: financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services

June 2021
Case

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments): April 2021

By: Josh Lerner, Reza Satchu and Alys Ferragamo

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is one of the largest pools of investment capital in the world and follows a rigorous “Total Portfolio Framework” in its approach to investment management. In April of 2021, John Graham was just two months into his role... View Details

Keywords: Pension Funds; Investment Strategy; Capital Markets; Financial Strategy; Investment; Asset Management; Financial Institutions; Private Equity; Growth and Development Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Assets; Financial Markets; Financial Services Industry; Canada

22 May 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

A Luxury Industry Veteran Teaches the Importance of Aesthetics to Budding Business Leaders

compelling answer in an unintentional haiku. “Their work is flawless,” she says. “Their quality control is tighter than NASA’s.” The Aesthetic Idol competition The final assignment in “The Business of... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Beauty & Cosmetics; Apparel & Accessories; Auto; Tourism

October 2012 (Revised August 2013)
Case

Global Unichip Corporation (A)

By: Willy Shih and Chen-Fu Chien

Global Unichip Corporation (GUC) is a design services company that acts as a front-end to TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor foundry. In so doing, it masked the complexity of the latest process technologies, and reduced the entry barriers for small firms to... View Details

Dennis W. Campbell is currently the Dwight P. Robinson Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. His research and teaching activities focus broadly on how management control systems can be designed to balance short-term strategy execution... View Details

Keywords: financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services

October 2005 (Revised October 2008)
Case

Virginia Mason Medical Center

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer and Erika Ferlins

In 2000, Dr. Gary Kaplan became CEO of the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. The hospital was facing significant challenges: It was losing money for the first time in its history, staff morale had plummeted, and area hospitals presented ardent... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Production; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Problems and Challenges; Quality; Competition; Seattle

2015
Working Paper

Crowdsourced Digital Goods and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Open Source Software

By: Frank Nagle

As firms increasingly rely on crowdsourced digital goods, understanding their impact on productivity becomes critical. This study measures the firm-level productivity impact of one such good, non-pecuniary (free) open source software (OSS). The results show a... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Performance Productivity; Software

SSRN

Read Now

September 2003 (Revised June 2007)
Case

Virgin Mobile USA: Pricing for the Very First Time

Dan Schulman, the CEO of Virgin Mobile USA, must develop a pricing strategy for a new wireless phone service targeted toward consumers in their teens and twenties, many of whom are believed to have poor credit quality and uneven usage patterns. Contrary to conventional... View Details

Keywords: Price; Market Entry and Exit; Wireless Technology; Telecommunications Industry; United States

March 2021
Case

VideaHealth: Building the AI Factory

By: Karim R. Lakhani and Amy Klopfenstein

Florian Hillen, co-founder and CEO of VideaHealth, a startup that used artificial intelligence (AI) to detect dental conditions on x-rays, spent the early years of his company laying the groundwork for an AI factory. A process for quickly building and iterating on new... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Digital Platforms; Entrepreneurship; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Cambridge

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

January 2020
Case

Freelancer, Ltd.

By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes

Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500... View Details

Keywords: Freelancers; Platforms; Digital Labor; Labor; Human Resources; Management; Internet and the Web; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Industry; Australia; United States; Philippines

25 Sep 2006
Research & Ideas

How Software Platforms Revolutionize Business

transformed nearly every major industry for the past quarter century." Think of software platforms as ring leaders of ecosystems in which a few or many companies can participate to reach users. These core products, like Windows, for example, offer software View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Web Services; Web Services

March 2020
Case

ZEISS Group: Organize by Customer Culture?

By: Willy C. Shih

How should ZEISS, the German manufacturer of precision optical and optoelectronic systems manage two historic businesses that operated fairly autonomously? The Industrial Quality Solutions (IQS) business sold measurement equipment to manufacturing companies in sectors... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Structure; Organizational Culture; Manufacturing Industry; Europe; Germany