Publications

SSRN

January 2018 (Revised January 2019)
Case

ZappRx

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Olivia Hull

In October 2015, ZappRx founder Zoe Barry is deciding between two business models for her health technology start-up. Her product, a software application that aims to expedite the prescription fulfillment process for patients with rare diseases, has attracted interest... View Details

Keywords: Speciality Drugs; Hub Services; Pivot; Speciality Prescriptions; Health Care and Treatment; Customization and Personalization; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Decision Choices and Conditions; Pharmaceutical Industry; Massachusetts

January 2016 (Revised January 2017)
Case

Rumie: Bringing Digital Education to the Underserved

By: John J-H Kim and Amram Migdal

In fall of 2015, the Toronto, Canada–based education technology nonprofit Rumie had distributed thousands of computer tablets preloaded with collections of thousands of pieces of curated educational content to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in some of the most... View Details

Keywords: Edtech; Education Technology; Social Enterprise; Nonprofit; Education Startup; Technological Innovation; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Entrepreneurship; Education; Business Startups; Education Industry; Canada; Africa

March 2015
Case

BOLT: Seed Venture Capital Firm

By: William A. Sahlman and Robert F. White

BOLT is a different kind of seed venture capital firm built to serve the needs of early-stage startups at the intersection of hardware and software.

In the past decade, the cost of entrepreneurial experimentation has dropped dramatically, particularly in web... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Accelerator; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Venture Capital; Applications and Software; Information Infrastructure; Strategy

07 Aug 2007
First Look

First Look: August 7, 2007

1998, the concept has been adapted and diffused to new settings that extend beyond software. While the open source community has maintained control over which software licenses... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 2022
Article

From Proprietary to Collective Governance: How Do Platform Participation Strategies Evolve?

By: Siobhan O'Mahony and Rebecca Karp

When platform leaders change the rules guiding who can access and control a platform, the strategies of those who create value from the platform can be upended. Little research examines how platform participants adapt their strategies when a platform leader changes the... View Details

Keywords: Platform Governance; Access; Crowdsourcing; Applications and Software; Employees; Leadership Style; Cybersecurity; Risk Management

Find at Harvard

August 2023 (Revised October 2023)
Case

Beyond the Barricades: Chile 2023

By: Debora Spar, Willis Emmons, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Ruth Costas

Chile, often considered among Latin America's greatest economic success stories, suffered a shocking wave of protests in October 2019, as its citizens demanded reforms across healthcare and education systems, and protested inequality and rising costs of living. As... View Details

Keywords: Government Administration; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth; Social Issues; Wealth and Poverty; Public Opinion; Equality and Inequality; Public Administration Industry; Chile; Latin America; South America

June 2020
Article

Evaluation of Prescription Drug Monitoring Program Integration with Hospital Electronic Health Records by US County-Level Opioid Prescribing Rates

By: A Jay Holmgren and Nate Apathy

Prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) have become a widely embraced policy solution to the opioid epidemic in the US. PDMPs offer prescribers a comprehensive view of patients’ controlled substance prescription history and can be used to monitor and reduce... View Details

Keywords: Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs; PDMPs; Electronic Health Records; Hospitals; Health Care and Treatment; Information Technology; Integration; Performance Evaluation

Read Now

13 Mar 2012
First Look

First Look: March 13

census. We document a shift to smaller shops following a 1996 regulatory change that increased the costs of opening large stores. Our analysis suggests that total factor productivity (TFP) of multi-store retail chains fell after the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

13 Feb 2007
First Look

First Look: February 13, 2007

Working PapersAdding Bricks to Clicks: The Effects of Store Openings on Sales through Direct Channels Authors:Jill Avery, Mary Caravella, John Deighton, and Thomas Steenburgh Abstract We assess the effect of View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March 2022 (Revised July 2022)
Case

Nexleaf Analytics: Saving the World Using the Internet of Things

By: Frank Nagle

In 2019, a decade after co-founding Nexleaf Analytics, CEO Nithya Ramanathan faced an important decision that would impact the ability of the small, but growing, not-for-profit organization to thrive for another decade. Their sensor technologies and big data analytics... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Nonprofit Organizations; Competitive Strategy; Patents; Expansion; Information Technology; Health Industry; Information Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Technology Industry

June 2025
Article

Integral Outside: The Financial Curb Market, the Electric Telegraph, and the Politics of Pricing in Second Empire France

By: Charlotte Robertson

Financial markets in nineteenth-century France were far more complex than an analysis of the official Bourse or its state-authorized brokers would suggest. Most financial transactions occurred on an illegal yet tacitly tolerated curb market called the coulisse, which... View Details

Keywords: Financial Markets; History; Communication Technology; Knowledge Dissemination; France

04 Aug 2006
What Do You Think?

What Happens When the Economics of Scarcity Meets the Economics of Abundance?

of scarcity has not been repealed by the digital Long Tail prices are set by demand, not the constraints of supply." Edward Hare opened an aspect of the debate that several commented on when he said, "The rules of economics have... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

June 2004 (Revised June 2006)
Case

Scientific-Atlanta, Inc.

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

Scientific-Atlantia (S-A), a leading manufacturer of cable TV equipment, is confronting strategic challenges in mid-2004. For decades, cable operators have faced high switching costs that have locked them into exclusive supply relationships with either S-A or its... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Competition; Industry Structures; Television Entertainment; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Manufacturing Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

03 Apr 2009
What Do You Think?

How Much Obsolescence Can Business and Society Absorb?

viewpoint will become more isolated and narrow." Brenda Walker, who chided me for not supplying the Internet link to the David Brooks column that I referenced, suggested that "trusted sources of information filtering will have... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Publishing; Journalism & News

06 Aug 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Buy Local? The Geography of Successful and Unsuccessful Venture Capital Expansion

Keywords: by Henry Chen, Paul A. Gompers, Anna Kovner & Josh Lerner

2009
Chapter

Collaboration Across Knowledge Boundaries within Diverse Teams: Reciprocal Expertise Affirmation as an Enabling Condition

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Kate Roloff and Lucy H. MacPhail

We review research on expertise diversity, psychological safety, team collaboration, and role identity to propose a model in which reciprocal affirmations of expertise identity among team members—a feature of the team environment that we conceptualize as a dimension of... View Details

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Experience and Expertise; Learning; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Groups and Teams; Familiarity; Identity; Cooperation

October 2015 (Revised October 2016)
Case

Building Watson: Not So Elementary, My Dear! (Abridged)

By: Willy C. 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

Keywords: Analytics; Big Data; Business Analytics; Product Development Strategy; Machine Learning; Machine Intelligence; Artificial Intelligence; Product Development; AI and Machine Learning; Information Technology; Analytics and Data Science; Information Technology Industry; United States