Publications

Find at Harvard

April 2016
Teaching Note

Flipkart: Transitioning to a Marketplace Model

By: Sunil Gupta and Das Narayandas

In 2015, Sachin and Binny Bansal, co-founders of India's largest e-tailer, Flipkart, announced that the company would switch to a marketplace model and move its logistics arm into a separate company. At the time of the announcement, Snapdeal already claimed to be... View Details

Keywords: India; Marketplaces; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Market Entry and Exit; E-commerce; Retail Industry; India

2007
Working Paper

How to Capture Value from Innovation: Shaping Intellectual Property and Industry Architecture

By: Gary P. Pisano and David J. Teece

In making strategic decisions about how to capture value from innovation, managers often look at two critical domains—the intellectual property environment and the architecture of the industry—as beyond their control. Yet, the intellectual property environment and the... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Intellectual Property; Industry Structures; Value

22 Sep 2003
Research & Ideas

How Businesses Can Respond to AIDS

There's just no way to isolate the issue from the rest of the environment, the immediate family, the external environment, the prevailing cultural norms. We're talking here about a point of entry into an... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Article

Ten Year Sunset Rule for Healthcare Regulation Is a Nonstarter and Discouragement to Post-COVID-19 Investment

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Eugene Schneller

U.S. healthcare delivery has not benefitted from the same productivity growth as many other service industries, such as bricks and mortar retailing, a loss that has gravely diminished cost control and access. Regulatory capture, which creates barriers to venture... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; COVID-19; Regulation; Health Care and Treatment; Health Pandemics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Investment

Read Now

August 2012 (Revised August 2013)
Background Note

Competency-Destroying Technology Transitions: Why the Transition to Digital Is Particularly Challenging

By: Willy Shih

Some technology transitions are exceedingly difficult for incumbent firms to execute. The bankruptcy filing by the Eastman Kodak Company highlighted the difficulty companies faced when their core business transitioned from an analog to a digital world. Kodak's business... View Details

22 Jul 2019
Book

How to Be a Digital Platform Leader

becomes, which lowers the likelihood of a winner-take-all outcome. Lastly, the truly successful firms in a platform world tend to have meaningful supply-side scale economies. Markets with large economies of scale generally have higher... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

August 2013
Technical Note

Raising the Level of Abstraction

By: Willy Shih

This technical note discusses abstraction as a way of generalizing a process or component for wider application. By hiding complexity inside a module, abstraction enables system designers to think at a higher level. This lowers entry barriers to using (and reusing) a... View Details

Keywords: Abstraction; Modularity; Commercialization; Information Technology; Information Infrastructure; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Digital Platforms; United States; Asia; Europe

13 Aug 2020
Research & Ideas

6 Ways to Support COVID-Weary Employees

enhanced personal protective equipment; creating a physical barrier between work stations (for example, Plexiglas screens or individual offices); and changing work schedules to minimize contact between... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

11 Oct 2004
Research & Ideas

Four Ways to Create Lasting Change

improvements. According to Roberto and Levesque, "We began to understand the barriers and catalysts for successful institutionalization of these programmatic change... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

October 2022
Case

Colette Phillips and GetKonnected!: Creating Inclusive Ecosystems

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Amy Chiu and Joyce Kim

Colette Phillips’ marketing firm had just won the City of Boston’s 2nd largest contract in history to a Black-owned company. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Get Konnected!, the networking organization for people of color that she founded 15 years earlier and led to... View Details

October 2023 (Revised April 2024)
Case

FARM Rio: Bringing a Brazilian Fashion Brand to the World

By: Isamar Troncoso and Jill Avery

FARM Rio, a twenty-six year old Brazilian fashion brand, had recently put down roots in the U.S. The brand, known for its bold, colorful, nature-inspired tropical prints, was testing the waters in Europe to assess if and how the brand should further expand globally.... View Details

Keywords: Global Marketing; Go-to-market Strategy; Global Branding; Brand Positioning; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Positioning; Market Entry and Exit; Distribution Channels; Expansion; Fashion Industry; Brazil; United States; Europe

11 Feb 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

10 Rules Entrepreneurs Need to Know Before Adopting AI

in your sales and marketing team, especially if they come from the industry or companies on your target list. Nowadays functional leaders have more power than in the past to decide which software to use, so... View Details

Keywords: by Rocio Wu

15 Sep 2010
Working Paper Summaries

From Bench to Board: Gender Differences in University Scientists’ Participation in Commercial Science

Keywords: by Waverly W. Ding, Fiona Murray & Toby E. Stuart; Biotechnology

January 2003 (Revised September 2007)
Background Note

A Note on Racing to Acquire Customers

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

Examines factors that motivate a firm's race to acquire customers in newly emerging markets and explores conditions under which racing strategies are likely to yield attractive returns. Provides a definition of racing behavior, introduces the notion of an optimal level... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Price Bubble; Network Effects; Emerging Markets; Market Entry and Exit; Behavior; Competition

March 2023
Case

Azenta Life Sciences: The Road to Transformation

By: Gary P. Pisano and Catherine Piner

When the Board brought Steve Schwartz in as President of Brooks Automation in 2010, they gave him a clear mission: strengthen the company’s core semiconductor equipment business and find a new industry to enter. Over the course of the next decade, Schwartz and the... View Details

Keywords: Transformation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Market Entry and Exit; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Segmentation; Technology Industry

August 23, 2018
Article

Using a New EHR System to Increase Patient Engagement, Improve Efficiency, and Decrease Cost

By: Katy French, Barbra Bryce Speer, Alexis B. Guzman, Tayab Andrabi, Iris Recinos, Keith A. Shook, James R. Incalcaterra, John C. Frenzel and Thomas W. Feeley

Patients and providers are frustrated with seemingly endless data entry. We used our patients’ vested interest in their own health care by actively engaging them in the entry of their own medical information into the EHR. Prior to the implementation of the new EHR we... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Analytics and Data Science; Performance Efficiency; Cost Management

Read Now

06 Dec 2006
Op-Ed

India Needs to Encourage Trade with China

procedural roadblocks for the likes of Chinese telecom products maker Huawei Technologies, and why not facilitate Chinese entry into India? It will be a worthy complement to continued dialogue regarding the... View Details

Keywords: by Tarun Khanna

04 Sep 2007
Research & Ideas

Jumpstarting Innovation: Using Disruption to Your Advantage

Mature companies understand that to compete today they need to innovate. But finding sources of innovation while still paying attention to the current business can be a... View Details

Keywords: by Lynda M. Applegate

September 2023
Article

(Not) Paying for Diversity: Repugnant Market Concerns Associated with Transactional Approaches to Diversity Recruitment

By: Summer R. Jackson

In a 20-month ethnographic study, I examine how a technology firm, ShopCo (a pseudonym), considered 13 different recruitment platforms to attract racial minority engineering candidates. I find that when choosing whether to adopt recruitment platforms focused on racial... View Details

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Recruitment; Race; Organizational Change and Adaptation