Publications

19 Nov 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

E-Santa: Is Retail Ready for Digital Christmas?

carlballou Most industries are in major digital upheaval, but retail particularly seems in some kind of disruptive spin-cycle. As the retail season eneters its most crucial time of year, we take a deep breath to contemplate research from... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

22 Jan 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

Why You Are Unhappy at Work

importance of being supportive. Hazard Warning: The Unacceptable Cost of Toxic Workers A productive workplace can be easily disrupted by one unruly employee. Here's what companies can do to detox the problem-makers. If the CEO’s High... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

26 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

A Clear Eye for Innovation

seeking to pioneer radical or disruptive innovations while pursuing incremental gains. A business does not have to escape its past, these cases show, to renew itself for the future. [...] A New Lens On Growth One company that has used an... View Details

Keywords: by Charles A. O'Reilly III & Michael L. Tushman

July 2019
Case

Autonomous Vehicles: Smooth or Bumpy Ride Ahead?

By: Elie Ofek and Akhil Waghmare

In early 2019, transportation was set to undergo a major transformation with the advent of autonomous vehicles (AVs), also referred to as driverless cars, which were nearing completion from an R&D and testing phase. Yet many questions remained open regarding exactly... View Details

Keywords: Transportation; Technological Innovation; Disruptive Innovation; Transformation; Technology Adoption; Business Model; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Transportation Industry; Auto Industry

October 2010 (Revised January 2012)
Background Note

Book Publishing in 2010

By: Stephen P. Bradley and Nancy Bartlett

Legacy book publishers wrangled with ebook retailers over royalty rates, release strategy, and distribution rights as customer demand for cheaper ebooks eroded publishers' profitable print formats. E-readers like Kindle, as well as Apple's iPad that invigorated the... View Details

Keywords: Price; Information Publishing; Books; Disruptive Innovation; Demand and Consumers; Distribution; Strategy; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Publishing Industry

September 2014 (Revised June 2016)
Case

edX: Strategies for Higher Education

By: David Collis, Matthew Shaffer and Ashley Hartman

In May 2012, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) founded edX, a new non-profit joint venture that would provide a platform for massive open online courses (MOOCs). edX did not produce original courses or instructional content—it made... View Details

Keywords: MOOCS; edX; Online Platforms; Online Education; Harvard University; MIT; Execution; Monetization; Brand Management; Higher Education; Information Technology; Strategy; Disruptive Innovation; Digital Platforms; Education Industry

October 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

SEK: Reimagining Spanish Higher Education at Universidad Camilo José Cela (UCJC)

By: John J-H Kim, Mary C. Sauer and Emilie Billaud

In 2023, Nieves Segovia, President of the SEK Education Group in Spain, contemplates the future of her family's for-profit education company, which includes K-12 schools and the newly established UCJC university. Renowned for its innovation in education, SEK faces... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Curriculum and Courses; Higher Education; Teaching; Digital Strategy; Disruptive Innovation; Knowledge Dissemination; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Succession; Resource Allocation; Organizational Structure; Education Industry; Europe; Spain

11 Apr 2000
Research & Ideas

Financial Services 24/7

housed its two data centers twenty miles apart—in different power grids—outside Phoenix. "A software failure could easily put the whole enterprise at risk," explains McFarlan. Disruptive Technologies One question facing the established... View Details

Keywords: by Susan Young

13 Jun 2012
HBS Case

HBS Cases: A Startup Takes On the Credit Ratings Giants

For most of the 20th century, three bond ratings agencies—Moody's, Fitch, and Standard & Poor's—dominated the credit ratings industry, recently controlling 97 percent of the market. But the status quo was disrupted by the 2008 global... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish; Banking; Financial Services

11 Sep 2012
First Look

First Look: September 11

meals and lodging planned, and their daily productivity measured and monitored. These findings disrupt prevailing narratives in business history, challenging the primacy that Alfred Chandler awarded the railroad as the testing ground for... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

31 Jul 2014
Research & Ideas

A Scholarly Crowd Explores Crowdsourcing

fail miserably," HBS Associate Professor Karim Lakhani, who helped organize the project, told a roomful of academic experts on innovation this week. In fact, the effort was so successful, Christensen—known for his work on disruptive... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

15 Jan 2013
First Look

First Look: January 15

into account, significant differences emerge between taxes that are equivalent in standard models but generate different information on taxable transactions. Download the paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=43830 When Supply-Chain View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

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

25 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

Planning for Surprises

section, "The shortage caught many Americans by surprise, but it followed decades of warnings from health experts who said the nation's system for vaccine supply and distribution was growing increasingly fragile." There have been numerous View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

August 2024 (Revised August 2024)
Case

No Labels and the 2024 Presidential Insurance Plan

By: Robert F. White and Tom Quinn

After observing record voter dissatisfaction with the choices in the 2024 U.S. presidential election – Democratic nominee President Joe Biden and Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump – the bipartisan nonprofit No Labels decided to reserve ballot access... View Details

Keywords: Disruption; Cost vs Benefits; Forecasting and Prediction; Lawfulness; Failure; System Shocks; United States