Publications

07 May 2020
Research & Ideas

The One Good Thing Caused by COVID-19: Innovation

and information security. Similar considerations also apply to business travel, as firms become smarter at identifying less information-sensitive and interaction-critical trips that teleconferencing can replace. Business and policy... View Details

Keywords: by Hong Luo and Alberto Galasso

14 May 2013
First Look

First Look: May 14

that decays over time, similar to that of advertising. A major challenge is that privacy laws prevent us from observing information about the applicant pool. I overcome this challenge by using order statistic distribution to infer... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

15 Mar 2016
First Look

March 15, 2016

presidential and parliamentary elections shows that voter registration requirements have significant effects on turnout, disproportionately discouraging marginalized citizens. We assigned 20,500 apartments to one control or six treatment groups that received canvassing... View Details

January 2006 (Revised October 2006)
Case

Hewlett-Packard: The Flight of the Kittyhawk (A)

By: Clayton M. Christensen

Hewlett-Packard decided that, to grow more rapidly, it needed to design a revolutionary disk drive product that would create an entirely new market or application for magnetic recording technology. The company followed most of the "rules" good managers follow in such... View Details

Keywords: Management; Information Infrastructure; Innovation and Management; Product Development; Computer Industry; United States

17 Dec 2013
First Look

First Look: December 17

activity. Today China has again emerged as a great power. Beijing is once more the capital of a multi-ethnic empire that dominates East Asia. Foreign students flock to China to live, study, and work. New infrastructure of airports,... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

11 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

The High Risks of Short-Term Management

developed a long-term-oriented approach through formal (e.g., incentive systems) or informal institutions (e.g., building the corporate culture over time and employee selection). The finding that more long-term-oriented firms have lower... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services

March 2017 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Facebook Fake News in the Post-Truth World

By: John R. Wells and Carole A. Winkler

In January 2017, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, was surrounded by controversy. The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States in November 2016 had triggered a national storm of protests, and many attributed Trump’s victory to... View Details

09 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

When Benchmarks Don’t Work

customer order, or processing the same type of paycheck or benefit claim across multiple companies. But benchmarking is not informative when it is used to compare fundamentally different processes or products. For example, knowing that a... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan; Service

January 2023 (Revised April 2023)
Case

Cobalt Robotics: Scaling Workplace Robotics

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Nicole Tempest Keller and Kyung Keun Park

Founded in 2016, Cobalt Robotics, based in Fremont, California, was a Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) company that built autonomous workplace robots that were designed to replace or supplement human security guards. Outfitted with over 60 sensors, Cobalt robots patrolled... View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Invention; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Channels; Customers; Technology Industry; United States; California

06 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

Are You a Level-Six Leader?

several options)? “Opportunists are the people who always ask, 'What's in it for me?'” Asking the question whom do you serve? is a powerful vector on which to build a useful typology of leadership. Based on this idea, I have constructed a six-level Purpose-Driven Model... View Details

Keywords: by Mitch Maidique

September 2020
Case

Drinkworks: Home Bar by Keurig

By: Sunil Gupta, Jonathan Levav and Julia Kelley

In the summer of 2018, Drinkworks CEO Nathaniel Davis needed to make a number of go-to-market decisions ahead of his company’s upcoming product launch. Formed through a joint venture between Keurig Dr. Pepper and Anheuser-Busch InBev, Drinkworks had developed an... View Details

September 2017
Case

Tencent

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

Tencent had undergone many transformations since it was founded in 1998 as a simple messaging service. In 2017, it was the largest online games provider in China with a wide range of game types, China’s largest social networking service provider with several of the... View Details

24 May 2018
Research & Ideas

Distance Still Matters in Business, Despite the Internet

distance in some ways, it has grown it in others. As the authors observe, “For example, while information technology may be an effective means of coordinating ongoing projects and collaborations, it may be less effective as a means of... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Transportation; Telecommunications; Shipping; Publishing; Technology

16 Jul 2013
First Look

First Look: July 16

networks of personal relationships: 1) Change agents who were central in the organization's informal network had a clear advantage, regardless of their position in the formal hierarchy. 2) People who bridged disconnected groups or... View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

October 2013 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Carbon Engineering

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Sid Misra

Dr. David Keith, President of Carbon Engineering, a company based in Calgary, Alberta, is commercializing a technology to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. The company plans to market the captured CO2 to produce low carbon transportation fuels in... View Details

January 2022 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Geely SEA: New Electric Vehicle Platforms

By: Willy C. Shih and Shu Lin

Kent Bovellan, the Chief Engineer and Head of the Vehicle Architecture Center for Geely Holding, the Hangzhou, China headquartered global automotive group, was debating the platform choice for an upcoming "D" segment midsized battery electric vehicle (BEV). He had led... View Details

Keywords: Product Innovation; Product Architecture; Product Engineering; Platform Design; Platform Strategy; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Product Design; Product Development; Cost Management; Decision Making; Competitive Strategy; Industry Structures; Auto Industry; China; Sweden

31 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 31, 2018

infrastructure presents an excellent opportunity to avoid the pitfalls of complex, restrictive, digital health systems that have evolved elsewhere. We propose here a federated, patient-centric, application programming interface... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

November 2018 (Revised June 2019)
Case

ofo

By: Mitchell Weiss

Dai Wei and his co-founders grew Beijing-based ofo from a school-based startup to a bike-share behemoth in a matter of months, topped an all-out market-share battle fueled with almost $1 billion in venture capital, provided 2 billion bicycle rides, soaked up the... View Details

July 2006 (Revised October 2006)
Case

Lenovo: Building A Global Brand

By: John A. Quelch and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Announced in December 2004, the $1.75 billion acquisition of IBM's PC division by Lenovo, China's largest PC maker, made headlines around the world. A relative upstart in the business, Lenovo acquired the division of IBM that invented the PC in 1981. While Lenovo was... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Multinational Firms and Management; Information Infrastructure; Global Strategy; Acquisition; Brands and Branding; Manufacturing Industry; Computer Industry; China