Publications

June 2001 (Revised December 2006)
Case

Role of Capital Market Intermediaries in the Dot-Com Crash of 2000, The

By: Krishna G. Palepu and Gillian D Elcock

Set in the context of the rise and fall of the Internet stocks in the United States. View Details

Keywords: Stocks; Price Bubble; Capital Markets; Investment Banking; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States

March 2000 (Revised November 2001)
Case

Rosenbluth International and Biztravel.com

Rosenbluth, the third largest U.S. travel agency, uses the Internet to serve new customers with a high-service strategy. Rosenbluth acquires Biztravel.com and integrates the customer support and logistics aspects of service delivery. View Details

Keywords: Horizontal Integration; Internet and the Web; Service Delivery; Acquisition; Travel Industry; United States

August 1998 (Revised June 2000)
Case

FairMarket, Inc.: Where Buyers and Sellers Connect

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Jack Wieland and Chad M. M Raube

On February 20, 1997, FairMarket, an Internet-based business-to-business auction site, was launched. CEO, founder Scott Randall, drew on his experience building Internet businesses at NECX Direct, Yahoo, and Internet Shopping Network to build his business. This case,... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Debates; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development; Growth Management; Management Style; Product Launch; Multi-Sided Platforms; Problems and Challenges; Information Technology; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry

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02 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

Disruptors Sell What Customers Want and Let Competitors Sell What They Don’t

Over the past two decades, entire industries have been disrupted by Internet competitors who "unbundled" their content and delivered it to consumers in new ways. Newspapers lost out to Google and Craigslist,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

05 Apr 2010
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: iPads, Kindles, and the Close of a Chapter in Book Publishing

cooperation with Amazon? Are there other strategic partners to consider? As the largest publisher in the world, should Random House take a stand on e-book pricing and royalty rates? Finally, if the entire structure of the book publishing View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Information; Publishing; Entertainment & Recreation

17 Jun 2014
First Look

First Look: June 17

http://hbr.org/product/the-information-superhighway-meets-the-highway-technology-and-mobility-trends-and-opportunities/an/314093-PDF-ENG Harvard Business School Case 614-032 GE and the Industrial Internet... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2000 (Revised April 2001)
Case

eFrenzy, Inc. (A)

By: Marco Iansiti and Nicole Tempest

Details how to design, launch, and scale a rapidly growing Internet venture. Focuses on the challenges and opportunities involved in leveraging a network of partners. View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Business Growth and Maturation; Internet and the Web; Product Development; Business or Company Management; Problems and Challenges; Information Technology Industry; United States

11 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

Doing Well by Doing Good? One Industry’s Struggle to Balance Values and Profits

a few main strategies. “In any organization, you want to make the moral and material coexist,” Ramarajan says. It can be a challenge, no more so than in the media, and the paper offers lessons for building a morally grounded career in any View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

02 Nov 2020
What Do You Think?

Is Antitrust Just a Quaint Notion in the Digital Age?

to be as much as $12 billion, or 21 percent of Apple’s profits. The larger point is that Google pays Apple large heaps of money to help it preserve its 92 percent share of the global internet search market. The government vs. Google case... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Retail; Technology; Telecommunications; Communications; Consumer Products; Service

17 Sep 2001
Research & Ideas

Why E-commerce Didn’t Die With the Fall of Webvan

intimacy, and community offered by direct-to-consumer marketing will have an impact on every industry and intermediary," Deighton predicted. Supermarkets may have "dodged a bullet" for now, but direct-to-consumer marketing... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Consumer Products; Retail

August 2000 (Revised February 2003)
Case

Borders Group, Inc.

By: Zeynep Ton and Ananth Raman

Describes Borders Group, a well-known retail chain, in late 1999 and its traditional strengths and rapid growth in the 1990s. By 1990, however, the company had fallen behind Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble in leveraging the Internet for book retailing, although it... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Distribution Channels; Service Operations; Business Growth and Maturation; Economic Growth; Industry Growth; Growth and Development; Internet; Business Model; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Supply and Industry; Retail Industry; Retail Industry

July 2000 (Revised August 2000)
Case

AllHerb.com: Evolution of an E-tailer

By: Teresa M. Amabile and Christina L. Darwall

Serial entrepreneur Ken Hakuta, in the second year of his latest venture, reconsiders his original strategy of maintaining an independent, self-funded, self-led company. His Internet herbal remedy company, AllHerb.com, has already enjoyed considerable success with its... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Business or Company Management; Goals and Objectives; Strategic Planning; Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

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February 2011 (Revised February 2012)
Case

Online Marketing at Big Skinny

By: Benjamin Edelman and Scott Duke Kominers

Describes a wallet maker's application of seven Internet marketing technologies: display ads, algorithmic search, sponsored search, social media, interactive content, online distributors, and A/B testing. Provides concise introductions to the key features of each... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Digital Marketing; Resource Allocation; Marketing Strategy; Performance Evaluation; Internet and the Web; Retail Industry

Professor David B. Yoffie is a Baker Foundation Professor and the Max and Doris Starr Professor of International Business Administration, Emeritus at Harvard Business School. A member of the HBS faculty since 1981, Professor Yoffie received his... View Details

Keywords: e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry

June 2002 (Revised September 2005)
Case

Online Music Distribution in a Post-Napster World

By: Youngme E. Moon

Provides a description of the rise and decline of Napster, the free Internet music-swapping service. Also describes second-generation peer-to-peer services (e.g., Gnutella) as well as paid subscription services (e.g., MusicNet, pressplay). View Details

Keywords: Distribution; Internet and the Web; Price; Marketing Channels; Service Operations; Music Industry

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

November 2000 (Revised January 2003)
Case

Yahoo!'s Stock-Based Compensation

By: Paul M. Healy and Jacob Cohen

Amy Maislos, an investor in Internet and technology companies, was excited to read that Yahoo! had reported a positive net income for 1998 operations. During the late 1990s, stock prices of Internet companies had risen rapidly even though most companies were reporting... View Details

Keywords: Stock Options; Internet and the Web; Financial Statements; Corporate Disclosure; Business Earnings; Earnings Management; Information Technology Industry