Publications
Publications
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(3,010)
- Faculty Publications (328)
- February 2011 (Revised November 2012)
- Case
PatientsLikeMe: An Online Community of Patients
By: Sunil Gupta and Jason Riis
PatientsLikeMe (PLM) is an online community where patients share their personal experiences with a disease, find other patients like them, and learn from each other. The company was founded by Jamie and Ben Heywood when their 29-year-old brother was diagnosed with ALS... View Details
- February 2011 (Revised September 2016)
- Case
Investcorp and the Moneybookers Bid
By: Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Nori Gerardo Lietz
In January 2007, Hazem Ben-Gacem, managing director and co-head of Investcorp Technology Partners (ITP), needs to decide what to bid at an auction for Moneybookers Limited, one of the top three e-payment solution providers in Europe. However, approximately 70% of... 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
- January 2011
- Case
Aardvark
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Alison Berkley Wagonfeld and Lauren Barley
Aardvark is an online social search service that allows users to pose questions and receive answers from other users in their extended social network. The case explores the process that Aardvark's founders used to design and develop their product based on intensive... View Details
- January 2011 (Revised October 2014)
- Case
Dropbox: 'It Just Works'
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Michael Pao and Lauren Barley
Dropbox is a venture-backed Silicon Valley startup, founded in 2006, that provides online storage and backup services to millions of customers using a "freemium" (free + premium offers) business model. The case recounts Dropbox's history from conception through... View Details
- January 2011
- Teaching Note
Online Pet Supply Retailing (TN)
By: Tom Nicholas
Teaching Note for 809-117. View Details
- March 2010 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
Major League Baseball Advanced Media: America's Pastime Goes Digital
By: Anita Elberse and Brett Laffel
In January 2010, Bob Bowman, chief executive officer of Major League Baseball Advanced Media -- MLB's digital arm -- is facing a number of decisions related to its 'app' for Apple's new iPad. What are the best name, price, and set of features for MLBAM's iPad app? The... View Details
- February 2010
- Supplement
Lending Club case exhibits (CW)
By: Peter Tufano
A new entrant in the nascent online peer lending space, Lending Club must decide whether or not to register with the SEC. Lending Club provided a platform through which individual borrowers could receive loans funded by individuals who chose to invest in them. The... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised March 2012)
- Case
Harvard Business School Executive Education: Balancing Online and Offline Marketing
By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
How does a small business set its online media budget? The HBS Executive Education Division can be viewed as a small-to-medium sized business unit with annual revenues of $107 million. As we watch it change its culture, practices, and organization from offline to... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised December 2010)
- Case
Lending Club
By: Peter Tufano
A new entrant in the nascent online peer lending space, Lending Club must decide whether or not to register with the SEC. Lending Club provided a platform through which individual borrowers could receive loans funded by individuals who chose to invest in them. The... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised September 2011)
- Case
Local Motors: Designed by the Crowd, Built by the Customer
By: Michael I. Norton and Jeremy Dann
In the wake of the meltdown among U.S. auto manufacturers in 2009, Jay Rogers, CEO of Local Motors, has a new approach for the automotive industry: decide which models are produced through online design competitions, and then allow customers to "build their own cars"... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised October 2010)
- Case
YouTube: Time to Charge Users?
By: Anita Elberse and Sunil Gupta
In January 2010, YouTube, the world's largest online video aggregator, was still seeking to become profitable. Was the time right for Google, YouTube's parent company, to charge users seeking to upload content, as some analysts had suggested—and if so, who should be... View Details
- January 2010 (Revised May 2012)
- Case
TopCoder (A): Developing Software through Crowdsourcing
By: Karim R. Lakhani, David A. Garvin and Eric Lonstein
TopCoder's crowdsourcing-based business model, in which software is developed through online tournaments, is presented. The case highlights how TopCoder has created a unique two-sided innovation platform consisting of a global community of over 225,000 developers who... View Details
- 2010
- Article
Competing against Online Sharing
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Andres Hervas-Drane
This paper aims to explore online sharing of copyrighted content over peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing networks and its impact on the music industry and to assess the viable business models for the industry in the future. View Details
- December 2009 (Revised June 2011)
- Case
Curt Schilling's Next Pitch
By: Noam T. Wasserman, Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Rachel Gordon
As his major-league pitching career was starting to wind down in 2006, baseball all-star Curt Schilling decided to become an entrepreneur. Looking to focus his tenacity and his passion for online role-playing games on a new challenge, he founded an online gaming... View Details
- October 2009 (Revised June 2011)
- Case
Zappos.com 2009: Clothing, Customer Service, and Company Culture
By: Frances X. Frei, Robin J. Ely and Laura Winig
On July 17, 2009, Zappos.com, a privately held online retailer of shoes, clothing, and other soft line retail categories, learned that Amazon.com, a $19 billion multinational online retailer, had won its board of directors' approval to offer to merge the two companies.... View Details
- October 2009 (Revised June 2010)
- Case
Hulu: An Evil Plot to Destroy the World?
By: Anita Elberse and Sunil Gupta
In July 2009, Jason Kilar, the chief executive officer of Hulu, is debating whether the online video aggregator should move away from a purely advertising-supported model, and whether it should participate in an industry-wide initiative to develop and test... View Details
- October 2009
- Simulation
Strategy Simulation: Competitive Dynamics and Wintel
In this online simulation students study the dynamics of cooperation and competition between two markedly different businesses that both rely on the flow of PC sales. Playing the role of Microsoft or Intel, students determine product release schedules and pricing, as... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Do Friends Influence Purchases in a Social Network?
By: Raghuram Iyengar, Sangman Han and Sunil Gupta
Social networks, such as Facebook and Myspace have witnessed a rapid growth in their membership. Some of these businesses have tried an advertising-based model with very limited success. However, these businesses have not fully explored the power of their members to... View Details
- January 2009 (Revised March 2009)
- Case
A Chinese Start-up's Midlife Crisis: 99Sushe.com
By: William C. Kirby, F. Warren McFarlan and Tracy Manty
Now into their third year at the helm of an Internet start-up in China, Ken Pao and Bill Li were managing a totally different company (with a new name) from the one they first founded in 2006. Having changed their business model from a social networking site to an... View Details