Publications

September 2019 (Revised December 2019)
Supplement

Anthony Soohoo: Retrospection on Dot & Bo

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Allison M. Ciechanover and George Gonzalez

The case describes the final year of the once-promising furniture e-tailer, Dot & Bo, that included a challenging fundraising market, troubles with logistics and operations, and a team tragedy. The founder looks back at the experience and shares his learnings about... View Details

Keywords: Startups; Furnishing; Leadership; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Internet and the Web; Failure; Learning; E-commerce; United States

16 May 2000
Research & Ideas

Getting the Message: How the Internet is Changing Advertising

them come to you," Deighton adds. DoubleClick's area of expertise involves its ability to package media on the Web to meet the goals of marketers and its employment of technology to facilitate using the Web as an advertising vehicle.... View Details

Keywords: by Susan Young

Teaching Interest

Doing Business in Africa

By: John D. Macomber

This course introduces frameworks and models for smart and focused investing and operations across sectors, nations, industries, and time frames in Africa. Students will learn tools and skills to help navigate the business landscape of Africa in terms of selection... View Details

Keywords: Africa

2023
Article

Building the Business Case for an Inclusive Approach to Digital Health Measurement with a Web App (Market Opportunity Calculator): Instrument Development Study

By: Mitchell Tang, Yashoda Sharma, Jennifer C. Goldsack and Ariel Dora Stern

Background: The use of digital health measurement tools has grown substantially in recent years. However, there are concerns that the promised benefits from these products will not be shared equitably. Underserved populations, such as those with lower education and... View Details

Keywords: Demographics; Product Development; Health Care and Treatment; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

December 2022
Article

When and How Should Firms Differentiate? Quality and Advertising Decisions in a Duopoly

By: Dominique Olié Lauga, Elie Ofek and Zsolt Katona

A prominent hallmark of competitive interaction is the desire to differentiate from rivals. In this article, the authors examine under what conditions firms will differentiate through product quality versus advertising intensity. Firms select quality in a first stage,... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Advertising; Product Positioning

13 May 2014
First Look

First Look: May 13

"freemium" business model, which is used by some Internet businesses and smartphone application developers to give users free basic features of a digital product and access to premium functionality for a subscription fee. The discussion topics include the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2020
Article

Mutual Funds: Skill and Performance

By: Jonathan B. Berk, Jules van Binsbergen and Max Miller

The authors summarize the recent literature on mutual fund manager skill and performance. They discuss the latest contributions in the field and reinterpret them through the lens of the rational expectations framework (efficient market hypothesis). They further discuss... View Details

Keywords: Investment Return; Investment Portfolio; Financial Management; Performance Evaluation; Measurement and Metrics

Register to Read

10 Feb 2003
Research & Ideas

Commodity Busters: Be a Price Maker, Not a Price Taker

with beating Microsoft. His battle was futile. He left the company as Novell began a long downward slide. The fighter pilot mentality of several U.S. airlines led to a price war in which billions of dollars were lost. Even in small protected niche View Details

Keywords: by Benson P. Shapiro

Article

Analyzing Scrip Systems

By: Kris Johnson, David Simchi-Levi and Peng Sun

Scrip systems provide a nonmonetary trade economy for exchange of resources. We model a scrip system as a stochastic game and study system design issues on selection rules to match potential trade partners over time. We show the optimality of one particular rule in... View Details

Keywords: ＂Repeated Games＂; Stochastic Trust Game; Dynamic Program; P2P Lending; Scrip Systems; Artificial Currency; Non-monetary Trade Economies; Marketplace Matching; Currency; Operations; Game Theory

September 2021 (Revised June 2023)
Case

Serving Bud Moore (A)

By: David G. Fubini and Patrick Sanguineti

In only his third year at a Leading Strategy Consulting Firm (LSC), Gregory Davis has been assigned to a select group tasked with advising General Motors (GM), one of the largest companies in the world by revenue, on how to reorganize their entire North American... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Decisions; Relationships; Cooperation; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Outcome or Result; Restructuring

Educators

2019
Working Paper

Does Public Ownership and Accountability Increase Diversity? Evidence from IPOs

By: Rembrand Koning and John-Paul Ferguson

Does public ownership improve employment diversity? Organizational researchers theorize that increased transparency to regulators and the public should lead firms to conform to legal and social norms—but that social closure and decoupling should preserve the status... View Details

Keywords: IPO; Initial Public Offering; Employees; Diversity; Gender; Race; Entrepreneurship; United States

February 2023
Supplement

The Swatch Group (B): Omega X Swatch

By: Rohit Deshpandé and Daniela Beyersdorfer

In March 2022, the Swatch Group launched the MoonSwatch, born out of a secret in-house collaboration among its street Swatch and its luxury Omega brand, in tribute to one of Omega’s most legendary watches. The launch created a frenzy among watch fans worldwide, with... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Europe; Switzerland

October 2008 (Revised January 2011)
Case

Lawrence Trinh: Venturing to Vietnam

By: Joshua D. Margolis and Rachel Gordon

Should Lawrence Trinh pursue his aspiration of working in Vietnam—and if so, what set of principles and practices should he adopt if he encounters corruption? These are questions that reverberate for many students who wish to work in emerging markets and other contexts... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Ethics; Investment; Leadership Development; Emerging Markets; Personal Development and Career; Welfare; Financial Services Industry

May 2021
Case

Endeavor Kenya: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Shikhar Ghosh and Christian Godwin

In 2016, Fiona Mungai became Endeavor Kenya’s first managing director. In this role, she helped the organization build its inaugural board and select its first Endeavor entrepreneur, a fintech company called Cellulant. Throughout this process, Mungai observed the power... View Details

Educators

31 Aug 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Innovation through Global Collaboration: A New Source of Competitive Advantage

Keywords: by Alan MacCormack, Theodore Forbath, Peter Brooks & Patrick Kalaher

17 Nov 2003
Research & Ideas

The Business of Babies

We prefer to think of babies as cuddly bundles of joy, but they are also products at the center of a multibillion-dollar market in adoptions and scientific conception, a market that few people acknowledge... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Health

Research Summary

Railroads and the Making of Modern China

My current book project is entitled Railroads and the Making of the Modern China and explores China’s economic and socio-political transformation from the last decades of the empire to the present using railroad infrastructure as a focus. Based on a large... View Details

January 2017
Article

Should You Sleep on It? The Effects of Overnight Sleep on Subjective Preference-based Choice

By: Uma R. Karmarkar, Baba Shiv and Rebecca M.C. Spencer

Conventional wisdom and studies of unconscious processing suggest that sleeping on a choice may improve decision-making. Though sleep has been shown to benefit several cognitive tasks, including problem solving, its impact on everyday choices remains unclear. Here we... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Choice; Sleep; Choice Sets; Confidence; Consumer Psychology; Consumer Preferences; Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior

August 2019
Article

When and How to Diversify—A Multicategory Utility Model for Personalized Content Recommendation

By: Yicheng Song, Nachiketa Sahoo and Elie Ofek

Sometimes we desire change, a break from the same or an opportunity to fulfill different aspects of our needs. Noting that consumers seek variety, several approaches have been developed to diversify items recommended by personalized recommender systems. However,... View Details

Keywords: Recommender Systems; Personalization; Recommendation Diversity; Variety Seeking; Collaborative Filtering; Consumer Utility Models; Digital Media; Clickstream Analysis; Learning-to-rank; Consumer Behavior; Media; Customization and Personalization; Strategy; Mathematical Methods