Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,080)
- Faculty Publications (244)
- 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
- January 2009 (Revised February 2009)
- Case
F-Secure Corporation: Software as a Service (SaaS) in the Security Solutions Market
By: Lynda M. Applegate, Robert D. Austin, Kalle Lyytinen, Esko Penttinen and Timo Saarinen
Describes the development of a business model based on "software as a service" (SaaS) for security solution distributed through Internet Service Providers (ISPs). F-Secure disruptively entered a mature business with dominant players by executing an innovative new... View Details
- July 2008 (Revised September 2009)
- Case
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Eee PC (A)
By: Willy C. Shih, Chintay Shih, Hung-Chang Chiu, Yi-Ching Hsieh and Ho Howard Yu
ASUSTek Computer was the world's largest manufacture of PC motherboards, yet when it tried to launch its new sub-notebook Eee PC, the organization faced challenges in doing things outside of its established processes. Though many of the team members had worked together... View Details
- 2008
- Simulation
Strategic Innovation Simulation: Back Bay Battery
By: Willy C. Shih and Clayton Christensen
This online simulation allows students to play the role of a business unit manager at Back Bay Battery Company who faces the dilemma of balancing a portfolio of investment strategies across products in the rechargeable battery space. Players have to manage R&D... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Wellsprings of Creation: How Perturbation Sustains Exploration in Mature Organizations
By: David James Brunner, Bradley R. Staats, Michael L. Tushman and David M. Upton
Organizations struggle to balance simultaneous imperatives to exploit and explore, yet theorists differ as to whether exploitation undermines or enhances exploration. The debate reflects a gap: the missing mechanism by which organizations break free of old routines and... View Details
- June 2008
- Case
Kidney Matchmakers
By: Brian J. Hall and Nicole Bennett
In this case we look at the design and development of an unconventional market, where neither money nor traditional "goods" are exchanged. Kidney exchange is an idea pioneered by HBS professor and market designer Alvin Roth and a small group of innovative doctors. This... View Details
- February 2008 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
Digital Music: From MP3 to Streaming
By: Willy Shih
The emergence of the MP3 file-based music format not only disrupted the market for portable audio players, it also impacted the business models of major record labels. Modularity, and the commoditization spillover enabled by modularity in the personal computer... View Details
- February 2008 (Revised August 2008)
- Case
Quanta Computer and the One Laptop Per Child Initiative
By: Willy Shih, Chintay Shih and Jyun-Chen Wang
When Quanta Computer, Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of laptop computers, first joined the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, it faced a challenge trying to balance the cost objectives of a laptop computer targeted at children of the developing world with... View Details
- January 2008
- Article
Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things
By: Clayton M. Christensen, Stephen P. Kaufman and Willy C. Shih
Most companies aren't half as innovative as their senior executives want them to be (or as their marketing claims suggest they are). What's stifling innovation? There are plenty of usual suspects, but the authors finger three financial tools as key accomplices.... View Details
- August 2007
- Article
Exploiting Disruption to Jumpstart Innovation
- July 2007 (Revised February 2010)
- Case
Launching Telmore (A)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Celso Fernandez and Moritz Jobke
When the Danish mobile phone service provider Telmore entered the market in October 2000, few people took notice. Its business model was not perceived as particularly aggressive or threatening to the industry. Less than three years later, Telmore's creative adaptation... View Details
- June 2007 (Revised April 2009)
- Case
Opening Pandora's Box
By: Willy C. Shih, Stephen P. Kaufman, Melissa Marie Blakeley and Marissa Wairy Dent
Pandora.com provided a highly customizable online radio service tailored to listeners' musical preferences and had registered explosive growth since its September 2005 launch. But proposed changes in royalty rates threatened to kill off many Internet radio sites,... View Details
- May 2007 (Revised November 2019)
- Case
Dollar General (A)
By: Willy Shih, Stephen P. Kaufman and Rebecca McKillican
Dollar General Corporation (DG) operates one of the leading chains of extreme value retailers in the United States. 2006 revenues reached $9.2 billion, making DG the 6th largest mass retailer in the country. With revenues growing at 9% annually over the five-year... View Details
- May 2007 (Revised April 2009)
- Case
Netflix
By: Willy C. Shih, Stephen P. Kaufman and David Spinola
Reed Hastings founded Netflix with a vision to provide a home movie service that would do a better job satisfying customers than the traditional retail rental model. But as it encouraged challenges it underwent several major strategy shifts, ultimately developing a... View Details
- May 2007
- Article
Location Strategies and Knowledge Spillovers
By: Juan Alcacer and Wilbur Chung
Given the importance of proximity for knowledge spillovers, we examine firms' location choices expecting differences in firms' strategies. Firms will locate to maximize their net spillovers as a function of locations' knowledge activity, their own capabilities, and... View Details
- November 2006 (Revised November 2007)
- Case
EFJ, Inc.
By: Lynda M. Applegate, Ajay Vinze and Mara Vatz
Michael Jalbert plans to transform EFJI, a land mobile radio manufacturer, into a leading radio systems and solutions provider. Taking advantage of new industry standards and the country's increased focus on public safety agencies and homeland security, Jalbert says... View Details
- October 2006 (Revised October 2007)
- Case
Google Advertising
By: Youngme E. Moon and David Chen
In mid-2006, Google is the number one search engine in America with 99% of its revenues deriving from its simple, text-only advertising services. It is on track to bring in roughly $9.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2006, which would place it fourth among American... View Details