Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,483)
- Faculty Publications (436)
- January 2016 (Revised January 2017)
- Case
Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved
By: John J-H Kim and Amram Migdal
In fall of 2015, the Toronto, Canada–based education technology nonprofit Rumie had distributed thousands of computer tablets preloaded with collections of thousands of pieces of curated educational content to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in some of the most... View Details
- Winter 2016
- Article
Analytics for an Online Retailer: Demand Forecasting and Price Optimization
By: Kris J. Ferreira, Bin Hong Alex Lee and David Simchi-Levi
We present our work with an online retailer, Rue La La, as an example of how a retailer can use its wealth of data to optimize pricing decisions on a daily basis. Rue La La is in the online fashion sample sales industry, where they offer extremely limited-time... View Details
- December 2015 (Revised February 2016)
- Case
Ocado
By: José Alvarez, David E. Bell and Damien McLoughlin
In 2015, U.K.-based Ocado was the world's largest pure player in the online home-delivery grocery business and was gaining a growing share of the highly competitive U.K. grocery market. Ocado had made heavy investments in technology, including a highly automated... View Details
Keywords: Ocado; Grocery; Retail; Online Grocery; Supermarket; Delivery Models; Service Models; United Kingdom; Technology; Operations Management; Digital Platforms; Competition; Internet and the Web; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Supply Chain; Marketing; Retail Industry; Retail Industry; United Kingdom
- November 2015 (Revised April 2017)
- Case
Streaming Over Broadband: Why Doesn't My Netflix Work?
By: Shane Greenstein and Michael Norris
In late 2013 and early 2014, Netflix service over the major U.S. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) suffered major slowdowns. What were the causes of these problems? What could Netflix do to solve them? View Details
- November 2015 (Revised April 2018)
- Case
Flipkart (A): Transitioning to a Marketplace Model
By: Das Narayandas, Sunil Gupta and Rachna Tahilyani
In 2015, Sachin and Binny Bansal, co-founders of India’s largest e-commerce company, are wondering if it is time to move from a hybrid model to a full marketplace. While Amazon runs a hybrid model, Alibaba operates a marketplace. In addition, Flipkart has been losing... View Details
- October 2015
- Case
Bigbelly
By: Mitch Weiss and Christine Snively
To accelerate Bigbelly's sales growth and its "smart cities" positioning, its CEO planned to shift his company from equipment sales to a subscription service. Jack Kutner hoped to re-position Bigbelly's solar-powered trash compacting stations beyond trash and recycling... View Details
Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Smart Cities; Government Innovation; Internet Of Things; IoT; Anything As A Service; Platform As A Service; Infrastructure As A Service; PaaS; Xaas; Bigbelly; Jack Kutner; B2G; Civic Innovation; City Innovation; Government Technology; Govtech; Civic Technology; Entrepreneurship; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Massachusetts; United States; Boston; Chicago; Philadelphia; New York (city, NY)
- October 2015
- Case
BandPage (A)
By: Karim R. Lakhani, Colin Maclay and Greta Friar
BandPage CEO James "J" Sider is about to receive results from BandPage's targeted advertising campaign on music streaming service Rhapsody and learn whether BandPage's strategy to improve ad click through rates and generate revenue has succeeded. BandPage, which began... View Details
- 2015
- Book
How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a New Network
By: Shane Greenstein
In less than a decade, the Internet went from being a series of loosely connected networks used by universities and the military to the powerful commercial engine it is today. This book describes how many of the key innovations that made this possible came from... View Details
- August 2015 (Revised December 2016)
- Case
Apple Pay
By: Sunil Gupta, Shelle Santana and Margaret L. Rodriguez
On September 9, 2014, in front of a packed audience in Cupertino, CA, Tim Cook, the chief executive officer of Apple, announced the much anticipated launch of Apple Pay. "Our vision is to replace this [wallet] and we are going to start with payments." Cook then invited... View Details
Keywords: Technology; Digital Services And Strategy; Launch; Mobile; Mobile Payments; Apple; Payments; Smartphone; Apple Pay; Eddy Cue; Jennifer Bailey; iOS; Iphone; Marketing; Product; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Product Launch; Finance; Credit Cards; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States; United Kingdom
- June 2015 (Revised April 2018)
- Case
WeChat: A Global Platform?
By: Willy Shih, Howard Yu and Feng Liu
WeChat was developed by Tencent Holdings as a lightweight messaging platform. As it grew quickly to become the most popular messaging app in China, it added a range of products and services that sat on top that were designed to appeal to a broad range of consumers and... View Details
- June 2015 (Revised November 2016)
- Supplement
HealthCare.gov: The Crash and the Fix (B)
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Paras D. Bhayani
A review of the process utilized by the Obama administration to create the Health Care.gov exchange and the problems that resulted from the implementation effort. This case provides the follow on strategy and processes utilized to get the site up and running after the... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Change; Implementing Strategy; Implementation; Government Innovation; Health Care Industry; Health Care Reform; Service Delivery; Internet and the Web; Health; Government and Politics; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States
- June 2015
- Teaching Note
Quincy Apparel
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Lisa C. Mazzanti
- May 2015
- Case
Venture Republic, 2011
By: W. Carl Kester and Mayuka Yamazaki
In December 2011, the founders of Venture Republic, a Japanese developer and operator of on-line search engines for shopping and travel, faced a decison about whether or not to take the company private in a management buyout transaction just three years after an... View Details
- April 2015 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Comcast Corporation (A)
In March 2015, the U.S. television industry received a major wake-up call. HBO, a premium cable channel with over 30 million subscribers, had announced it would begin offering a standalone streaming service. This new service would allow customers to bypass the cable... View Details
- April 2015 (Revised June 2016)
- Case
The Transformation of NCR
By: David Collis, Raffaella Sadun and Matthew Shaffer
During his tenure as CEO since 2005, Bill Nuti had moved NCR Corporation (originally National Cash Register) from its historical competence in hardware to become a provider of hardware and software for managing transactions across a range of industries and payments... View Details
- 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
Keywords: Health Care; Telehealth; Telemedicine; American Well; Schoenberg; Boston; Israel; Technology; Online Care; Direct-to-consumer; DTC; Health Insurance; Affordable Care Act; Health Care Reform; Accountable Care Organizations; Technology Change; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Digital Marketing; Strategy; Competition; Information Technology; Marketing; Technological Innovation; Technology Adoption; Entrepreneurship; Marketing Strategy; Health Industry; Health Industry; Boston; Massachusetts; United States; Israel
- March 2015 (Revised September 2016)
- Technical Note
Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent: The Three Kingdoms of the Chinese Internet
By: Feng Zhu and Aaron Smith
This note provides an overview of the Chinese Internet by describing its leading three companies: Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent (BAT). While BAT had previously focused their respective businesses on distinct sectors of the online economy—Baidu for search, Alibaba for... View Details
- February 2015 (Revised April 2016)
- Supplement
Quincy Apparel (B)
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Lisa C. Mazzanti
The (B) case provides post-mortem analysis from Quincy's cofounders on why their startup failed and what they could have done differently. Explanations for failure focus on Quincy's ambitious value proposition and resulting operational challenges; cofounder conflict;... View Details
- January 2015
- Article
Competing with Privacy
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Andres Hervas-Drane
We analyze the implications of consumer privacy for competition in the marketplace. We consider a market where firms set prices and disclosure levels for consumer information, and consumers observe both before deciding which firm to patronize and how much information... View Details
- December 2014 (Revised November 2023)
- Case
Codecademy: Monetizing a Movement?
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Lisa C. Mazzanti
Codecademy, an open-platform, online community for learning computer programming, launched in 2011. By 2014, the company had raised a total of $12.5 million in funding and was, on many fronts, an overwhelming success. However, there were still no revenues. The founders... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Startup Management; Technology; Computer Programming; Coding; Online Education; Monetization; Online Communities; Marketplaces; Internet and the Web; Education; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Industry; Technology Industry