Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,083)
- Faculty Publications (236)
- November 2010
- Case
Spudnik, Inc.
By: William A. Sahlman and Elizabeth A. Kind
This case describes the plan to finance a revolutionary new television set manufacturing business in late 2009. Yatin Mundkur, a venture capitalist at Artiman Ventures, has recruited a team of veteran eecutives from the optical disk drive business, to design large... View Details
- 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
- September 2010 (Revised January 2012)
- Case
Mobile Banking for the Unbanked
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Katharine Lee
The case describes in detail the workings of two mobile banking operators in Africa—WIZZIT in South Africa and M-PESA in Kenya. It explores the dimensions of strategy that make for success in the market for the unbanked. It raises questions regarding the portability of... View Details
- June 2010
- Article
Change for Change's Sake
By: Freek Vermeulen, Phanish Puranam and Ranjay Gulati
No one disputes that firms have to make organizational changes when the business environment demands them. But the idea that a firm might want change for its own sake often provokes skepticism. Why inflict all that pain if you don't have to? That is a dangerous... View Details
- May 2010 (Revised June 2012)
- Case
From Imitation to Innovation: Zongshen Industrial Group
By: Willy Shih and Nancy Hua Dai
As Zuo Zongshen drove the transformation of the Zongshen Industrial Group from an early imitator in the motorcycle business to a company that increasingly focused on innovation as a way to get out of the hyper-competitive commodity business, he continually faced new... View Details
- April 2010 (Revised March 2011)
- Case
Tata Nano The People's Car
By: Krishna G. Palepu, Bharat N. Anand and Rachna Tahilyani
The case explores how Tata Motors, India's largest automobile company, developed the Nano, the world's cheapest car. The case focuses on the translation of Ratan Tata's (chairman of Tata Motors) vision of a safe affordable car for the masses by Ravi Kant, managing... View Details
- April 2010 (Revised December 2010)
- Case
Shanzhai! MediaTek and the "White Box" Handset Market
By: Willy C. Shih, Chen-Fu Chien and Jyun-Cheng Wang
The term "white box" is often used to describe products without a brand name. Such products are assembled from standardized parts, and they became a very popular category of desktop PCs. Hsinchu, Taiwan based MediaTek is a fabless semiconductor company that unleashed a... View Details
- March 2010 (Revised June 2010)
- Case
Dassault Systemes
By: Stefan H. Thomke and Daniela Beyersdorfer
Dassault Systèmes, a leader in product lifecycle management software, has enjoyed a very profitable business model in 3D engineering design. In the past, it has successfully managed market disruptions and opportunities through acquisition and organic innovations. Its... View Details
- March 2010
- Teaching Note
Disruptive IPOs? WR Hambrecht & Co. (TN)
By: Willy C. Shih
Teaching Note for 610065. View Details
- January 2010 (Revised October 2010)
- Background Note
News in the Digital World: Who Pays?
By: Stephen P. Bradley and Nancy Bartlett
Models to monetizing news in the digital landscape, which is real-time, searchable, sharable, multi-sourced, anytime, and any screen, were emerging in 2010. Could content creators get people to pay for what they watched, read, listened to, and shared online? Were news... View Details
- January 2010 (Revised March 2010)
- Case
Transforming ASUSTeK: Breaking from the Past
By: Willy C. Shih, Ho Howard Yu and Hung-Chang Chiu
What happens when an original design manufacturer (ODM) firm tries to transform itself into a branded goods seller? The case traces the evolution of ASUSTeK from a motherboard supplier, to an ODM of desktop and notebook PCs, through its split into three companies that... View Details
- January 2010
- Teaching Note
Transforming ASUSTeK: Breaking from the Past (TN)
By: Willy C. Shih
Teaching Note for [610041]. View Details
- January 2010 (Revised February 2011)
- Case
The Random House Response to the Kindle
By: Bharat N. Anand and Peter Olson
In early 2010, e-readers, like Amazon's Kindle and Apple's impending iPad, threatened to disrupt the book publishing industry. The case provides an overview of the industry, describes the broader trends regarding e-readers, and asks: how should major publishers like... View Details
- November 2009
- Case
The Explosion of Genetic Testing: Opportunities and Challenges
By: Richard G. Hamermesh, Mara G. Aspinall and Rachel Gordon
This case study invites the reader to consider genetic testing in several different lights. First, can the business of genetic testing be considered a disruptive innovation to the current drug therapy model as defined by Harvard Business School Professor Clay... View Details
- October 2009
- Article
Democratizing Entry: Banking Deregulations, Financing Constraints, and Entrepreneurship
By: William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda
We examine entrepreneurship and creative destruction following US banking deregulations using Census Bureau data. US banking reforms brought about exceptional growth in both entrepreneurship and business closures. Most of the closures, however, were the new ventures... View Details
- September 2009
- Case
ZINK Imaging: 'Zero Ink™'
By: William A. Sahlman and Sarah Flaherty
"ZINK Imaging" describes the issues confronting CEO Wendy Caswell as she uses a partnership model to commercialize ZINK's disruptive printing technology platform, ZINK Paper. The case focuses on the frameworks ZINK has used to decide which markets to target and which... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Breakthrough Inventions and Migrating Clusters of Innovation
By: William R. Kerr
We investigate the speed at which clusters of invention for a technology migrate spatially following breakthrough inventions. We identify breakthrough inventions as the top one percent of US inventions for a technology during 1975-1984 in terms of subsequent citations.... View Details
- April 2009 (Revised August 2009)
- Case
Backchannelmedia: Making Television 'Clickable'
By: Sunil Gupta, Kavita Shukla and Zachary Scott Clayton
Backchannelmedia (BCM), a three-year-old start-up, intended to completely disrupt the world of advertising by transforming the way Americans watched television. BCM had developed a technology to make television "clickable," enabling viewers to interact with the content... View Details
- March 2009 (Revised January 2010)
- Background Note
The Newspaper Industry in Crisis
By: David J. Collis, Peter W. Olson and Mary Furey
This note is a primer on the newspaper industry, which has been in decline in the U.S. and Western Europe. The 19th century business model whereby news and editorial content was packaged and delivered to homes daily and paid for by national advertisers has been... View Details
- February 2009 (Revised December 2009)
- Case
eReading: Amazon's Kindle
By: Bharat N. Anand, Peter W. Olson Esq. and Mary Tripsas
In November 2007, Amazon introduced the Kindle, the first electronic reader with wireless functionality. The case describes the launch of the Kindle and provides information on representative players in the industry (or broader ecosystem) who are likely to be affected... View Details