Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,052)
- Faculty Publications (375)
- December 2012
- Case
Delwarca Software Remote Support Unit
By: Roy D. Shapiro and Paul E. Morrison
Delwarca Software provides business software to large corporate clients around the world. The firm serves customers who prefer to assemble corporate solutions using a combination of software programs from various suppliers rather than implementing a single enterprise... View Details
- November 2012
- Article
The Variance of Non-Parametric Treatment Effect Estimators in the Presence of Clustering
By: Samuel G. Hanson and Adi Sunderam
Non-parametric estimators of treatment effects are often applied in settings where clustering may be important. We provide a general methodology for consistently estimating the variance of a large class of non-parametric estimators, including the simple matching... View Details
- October 2012
- Case
Microsoft Office 2007 (Abridged)
By: Marco Iansiti and Bianca Buccitelli
A discussion of the history and processes behind the development of Microsoft's Office 12 software. View Details
- September 2012 (Revised March 2014)
- Case
Reinventing Brainlab (A)
By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Vincent Dessain and Karol Misztal
The management of Germany's Brainlab AG, a leading provider of software-driven oncology and surgery solutions, needs to evaluate strategic options for proceeding without an exclusive hardware partner in its most profitable business segment. View Details
- July 2012 (Revised April 2014)
- Case
Research In Motion: The Mobile OS Platform War
By: Alan MacCormack, Brian Dunn and Chris F. Kemerer
The case describes competition in the market for smart phones in the US, and the position of one player, Research In Motion (RIM) who manufacture the popular Blackberry line of products. Early in 2011, RIM is in trouble. Its stock price has plummeted, amidst poor... View Details
Keywords: Innovation; Product Development; Technology Strategy; Platform Strategy; Software; Hardware; Technological Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Information Infrastructure; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Digital Platforms; Applications and Software; Telecommunications Industry; Technology Industry; Canada; United States
- 2012
- Chapter
IP Modularity in Software Ecosystems: How SugarCRM's IP and Business Model Shape Its Product Architecture
By: Josef Waltl, Joachim Henkel and Carliss Y. Baldwin
- June 2012
- Case
Microsoft IT India
By: Willy C. Shih, Margaret Pierson, Alexander Down, William Gustave Jair-Shemuel Jurist, Diego Medicina and Helen Wang
Raj Biyani faced tough challenges managing Microsoft IT India: leading a remote development organization in which key decisions were made in Redmond, and managing an organization that was perceived as less strategic than its sister Microsoft India Development Center... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Development; Cross-functional Management; Foreign Subsidiaries; Strategy Alignment; Organizational Behavior; Indian Software Development; Global Distributed R＆D; Software Industry; Organizational Structure; Research and Development; Operations; Leadership; Globalized Firms and Management; Business Subsidiaries; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Industry; India
- March 2012
- Article
China's Growing IT Services and Software Industry: Challenges and Implications
By: F. Warren McFarlan, Ning Jia and Justin Wong
The Chinese management software and IT services industry has grown dramatically over the past two decades and today is about the size of the Indian industry a decade ago. The objective of this article is to help CIOs in firms outside of China better understand the... View Details
- 2012
- Chapter
The Confederacy of Heterogeneous Software Organizations and Heterogeneous Developers: Field Experimental Evidence on Sorting and Worker Effort
By: Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani
Software development occurs in a patchwork or "confederacy" of different types of institutions (universities, small start-ups, multinational enterprises, government agencies, etc.) utilizing varied work approaches. Here we speculate on one possible explanation for this... View Details
- 2012
- Teaching Note
Beyondsoft Co., Ltd. (B) (TN)
By: F. Warren McFarlan, Donghong Li and Hong Zhang
The case "Beyondsoft Co., Ltd. (A)" completed in early 2010 described the strategic path of Beyondsoft over its history of more than 10 years since its foundation in 1995, containing its major business lines and the relations with the major customers at that time, the... View Details
- September 2011 (Revised July 2012)
- Case
Building Watson: Not So Elementary, My Dear!
By: Willy Shih
This case is set inside IBM Research's efforts to build a computer that can successfully take on human challengers playing the game show Jeopardy! It opens with the machine named Watson offering the incorrect answer "Toronto" to a seemingly simple question during the... View Details
- July 2011 (Revised January 2013)
- Case
Digital Microscopy Is Making Me Crazy!
By: Willy Shih
For Carl Zeiss Microimaging, modular hardware and software enabled customers to tailor Zeiss's broad range of microscopy systems hardware and software to meet a wide range of needs from basic scientific research in the biological and medical sciences to clinical... View Details
- July 2011
- Article
Mixed Source
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Gaston Llanes
We study competitive interaction between a profit-maximizing firm that sells software and complementary services and a free open source competitor. We examine the firm's choice of business model between the proprietary model (where all software modules are... View Details
- May 2011
- Article
Incentives and Problem Uncertainty in Innovation Contests: An Empirical Analysis
By: Kevin J. Boudreau, Nicola Lacetera and Karim R. Lakhani
Contests are a historically important and increasingly popular mechanism for encouraging innovation. A central concern in designing innovation contests is how many competitors to admit. Using a unique data set of 9,661 software contests, we provide evidence of two... View Details
- March 2011
- Teaching Note
TopCoder (A): Developing Software through Crowdsourcing (TN)
By: Karim R. Lakhani and Eric Lonstein
Teaching Note for 610032. View Details
- February 2011 (Revised August 2012)
- Teaching Note
Emotiv Systems Inc.: It's the Thoughts that Count (TN)
By: Elie Ofek and Natalie Kindred
Teaching Note for 510050. View Details
- February 2011 (Revised December 2014)
- Case
RentJuice
By: Thomas Eisenmann and Liz Kind
RentJuice, founded in mid-2008, provided a subscription software service—sold via phone and live online webinars—that allowed real estate professionals like brokers and agents to manage and market rental listings, communicate with clients, and complete transaction... View Details
- 2011
- Teaching Note
Beyondsoft Co., Ltd. (A) (TN)
By: F. Warren McFarlan, Donghong Li and Hong Zhang
In the past two decades, along with China's rapidly growing economy and its integration into the world economic system, the Chinese software outsourcing industry has also risen from zero to being fairly significant in the world IT market. It is currently growing much... View Details
- 2011
- Teaching Note
Kingdee
By: F. Warren McFarlan, Jin Zhang and Ziqian Zhao
- 2011
- Teaching Note
UFIDA (A) (TN)
By: F. Warren McFarlan, Bin Yang and E. Chen
The five-case UFIDA series is about China's largest supplier of management/ERP software, its 20-year evolution, and current strategic challenges. The (A) case is the cornerstone of the series. It introduces the company's history, strategic turning points, current... View Details