Publications

Summer 2018
Book Review

Leslie Berlin, Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age

By: William A. Sahlman

Leslie Berlin's book Troublemakers, is an engaging and insightful people-first exploration of the roots of Silicon Valley, from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Berlin portrays seven individuals who played important roles at critical junctures in the... View Details

Keywords: Silicon Valley; Technological Innovation; Disruptive Innovation; History; California

Find at Harvard

2024
Working Paper

The Value of Silence: The Effect of UMG’s Licensing Dispute with TikTok on Music Demand

By: Mengjie (Magie) Cheng, Elie Ofek and Hema Yoganarasimhan

Social media platforms like TikTok have transformed how music is discovered, consumed, and monetized. This study examines the implications of the dispute between TikTok and Universal Music Group (UMG), which resulted in UMG excluding its music from TikTok from... View Details

Keywords: Demand And Consumers; Monetization; Social Media; Revenue; Conflict and Resolution; Music Industry

SSRN

Read Now

Anita Elberse

Anita Elberse is the Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Professor Elberse develops and teaches an MBA course covering the "Businesses of Entertainment, Media, and Sports," which ranks among the most sought-after... View Details

Keywords: advertising; arts; broadcasting; communications; consumer products; e-commerce industry; electronics; entertainment; fashion; home video games; information; marketing industry; motion pictures; music; publishing industry; sports; telecommunications; video games

August 2023
Case

WayCool: Reimagining the Food Supply Chain

By: Paul Gompers and Kairavi Dey

Founded in 2015, WayCool, is an Indian agri-tech start-up that built a B2B operation acquiring fruits and vegetables from product-specific agriculture companies and small-holding farmers. It sold them to business customers, such as local retail stores, restaurants, and... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Digital Transformation; Operations; Business Strategy; Supply Chain; Performance; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; Asia; South Asia

October 2010 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Bessemer Trust: Guardians of Capital

By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen

Henry Phipps, Jr. made his fortune in the steel industry alongside one of America's most celebrated entrepreneurs—Andrew Carnegie. His wealth was administered in the form of trusts, which he hoped would provide a stream of income for his family and their descendants... View Details

Keywords: Wealth; Asset Management; Family Business; Business History; Income; Entrepreneurship; Capital; United States

Research Summary

Political Economy of Business Development

In an ongoing research stream, Professor Fabbe is studying the political economy of business development in fragile societies. Her newest project in this research stream explores the opportunities for complementarities and joint ventures between Syrian and Turkish... View Details

Research Summary

Ethics & Politics of Emerging Technologies

In this stream of research, my collaborators and I investigate the ethical, political, and social implications of computational technologies.

In this work, I often collaborate with academic colleagues in computer science by helping to... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Algorithms; Computational Social Science

April 2018 (Revised February 2019)
Case

Gimlet Media: A Podcasting Startup

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

When digital distribution becomes an option for an analog industry, the effects on incumbents can be devastating. Is podcasting the beginning of the end of radio? Can it do what streaming video did to television and websites did to print? Two former public radio... View Details

Keywords: Podcasting; Business Ecosystem; Business Startups; Media; Disruption; Strategy

Research Summary

Professor Wei-Skillern's research is focused in the field of Social Enterprise. Her research examines the creation of social value in both commercial and nonprofit organizations. In the former stream of research on corporate social responsibility, she has studied... View Details

November 2018 (Revised February 2019)
Teaching Plan

Gimlet Media: A Podcasting Startup

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

When digital distribution becomes an option for an analog industry, the effects on the incumbents can be devastating. Is podcasting the beginning of the end of radio? Can it do what streaming video did to television and websites did to print? Two former public radio... View Details

Keywords: Platforms And Ecosystems; Startup; Creative Industries; Digital Marketing; Podcasting; Business Startups; Media; Entertainment; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Platforms; United States

February 2017
Case

Yemeksepeti: Growing and Expanding the Business Model through Data

By: William R. Kerr, Gamze Yucaoglu and Eren Kuzucu

In October 2016, Nevzat Aydin, co-founder and CEO of Yemeksepeti, the Turkish online food-ordering company, was looking over the company's quarterly results and projections for the upcoming year with his management team. It had been almost a year and a half since Aydin... View Details

January 2021 (Revised October 2021)
Case

iOpenEye: Theater and #MeToo in Nigeria

By: Caroline Elkins, Tarun Khanna and Joyce J. Kim

In 2014, Ifeoma Fafunwa, an award-winning playwright and director, founded iOpenEye, a commercial production company dedicated to driving social change through performance art. iOpenEye’s flagship theatrical production was called “Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True,”... View Details

Keywords: Theatre; Social Change; Entrepreneurship; Social Enterprise; Arts; Entertainment; Social Issues; Health Pandemics; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business Model; Nigeria

October 2010 (Revised July 2013)
Case

AEP: Carbon Capture and Storage

By: Richard H.K. Vietor

By October 2010, American Electric Power, the largest coal-fired, electric utility in the United States, had been operating a carbon capture and sequestration pilot plant for one year. Using a proprietary, Alstom chilled ammonia technology, AEP was capturing and... View Details

Keywords: Energy Generation; Government Legislation; Technological Innovation; Partners and Partnerships; Projects; Decision Choices and Conditions; Environmental Sustainability; Problems and Challenges; Utilities Industry; United States

Research Summary

Building Effective Relationships Across Cultures

Trust is the foundation of any successful collaborative relationship. In my first stream of research, I draw on the basic distinction between cognition-based versus affect-based trust– that is, trust from the head versus trust from the heart – to better... 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

Keywords: Business Model; Newspapers; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Online Technology; Journalism and News Industry; Publishing Industry

March 2025
Case

Calyx Global: Rating Carbon Credits

By: Michael W. Toffel and Adam Chen

This case describes how rating agencies and other organizations are seeking to improve the quality of carbon credits sold in the voluntary carbon market to organizations seeking to use them to supplement their internal decarbonization efforts to meet their net zero... View Details

Keywords: Service Design; Certification; Auditing; Auditor Reputation; Carbon Credits; Carbon; Rating Agency Disagreement; Ratings; Climate Change; Business Model; Environmental Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Conflict of Interests; Reputation; Business Strategy