Publications

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January 2022
Article

Artificial Intelligence, Data-Driven Learning, and the Decentralized Structure of Platform Ecosystems

By: David R. Clough and Andy Wu

Gregory, Henfridsson, Kaganer, and Kyriakou (2020) highlight the important role of data and AI as strategic resources that platforms may use to enhance user value. However, their article overlooks a significant conceptual distinction: the installed base of... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Data Strategy; Ecosystem; Value Capture; Digital Platforms; Analytics and Data Science; Strategy; Learning; Value Creation; AI and Machine Learning; Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Video Game Industry; Advertising Industry

April 2020
Teaching Note

Cambridge Franchise Partners

By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld

Teaching Note for HBS No. 217-082. Cambridge Franchise Partners (CFP) was established by Matt Perelman and Alex Sloane (both HBS ’15) to pursue a roll-up strategy in the quick service restaurant (QSR) sector. Burger King (BK) approved CFP’s request to become a... View Details

Keywords: Roll-up; Franchise; Franchise Management; Small Firms Management; Franchise Ownership; Small Business; Management; Acquisition

2022
Working Paper

Training, Communications Patterns, and Spillovers Inside Organizations

By: Miguel Espinosa and Christopher T. Stanton

We study direct productivity changes and spillovers after a randomized training program for the frontline workers in a Colombian government agency. While trained workers improved their individual production, we also find substantial spillovers that affected managers'... View Details

Keywords: Spillovers; Labor Productivity; Firm Objectives, Organization, And Behavior; Training; Performance Productivity

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Research Summary

Multinational Firms, Labor Market Discrimination, and the Capture of Competitive Advantage by Exploiting the Social Divide

The organizational theory of the multinational firms holds that foreignness is a liability, and specifically that lack of embeddedness in host-country social networks is a source of competitive disadvantage; meanwhile the literature on labor market discrimination... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firm; Multinationals; Labor Market Discrimination

December 2020
Case

VIA Science (A)

By: Juan Alcácer, Rembrand Koning, Annelena Lobb and Kerry Herman

Via (a) captures the early days of the data analytics startup as founders Gounden and Ravanis considered which markets offer the right opportunities for their firm and what kinds of experiments will help them narrow their choice. Supplement Via (b) reveals the... View Details

Keywords: Data Analytics; Machine Learning; Artificial Intelligence; Strategy; Business Startups; Markets; AI and Machine Learning; Telecommunications Industry; Utilities Industry; United States; Japan

December 2020
Supplement

VIA Science (B)

By: Juan Alcácer, Rembrand Koning, Annelena Lobb and Kerry Herman

Via (a) captures the early days of the data analytics startup as founders Gounden and Ravanis considered which markets offer the right opportunities for their firm and what kinds of experiments will help them narrow their choice. Supplement Via (b) reveals the... View Details

Keywords: Data Analytics; Machine Learning; Artificial Intelligence; Strategy; Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Telecommunications Industry; Utilities Industry; United States; Japan

August 2023
Case

Stay or Go? Sarah Reynolds at Kensington Partners

By: David G. Fubini, Amr Seifeldin and Patrick Sanguineti

Sarah Reynolds, a Partner at the global Kensington Partners strategy consulting firm, has headed the firm's Telecommunications Group for a few years. Thanks to her stellar track record with clients, she has brought the group, and herself, a range of accolades and... View Details

Keywords: Consulting; Consulting Firms; Client Service; Career Management; Success; Time Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Personal Development and Career

February 2021
Case

Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (A)

By: Henry McGee, Nien-hê Hsieh, Sarah McAra and Christian Godwin

In 2015, Apple CEO Tim Cook debuted the iPhone 6S with enhanced security measures that enflamed a debate on privacy and public safety around the world. The iPhone 6S, amid a heightened concern for privacy following the 2013 revelation of clandestine U.S. surveillance... View Details

July–August 2013
Article

Looking Up and Looking Out: Career Mobility Effects of Demographic Similarity among Professionals

By: Kathleen L. McGinn and Katherine L. Milkman

We investigate the role of workgroup sex and race composition on the career mobility of professionals in "up-or-out" organizations. We develop a nuanced perspective on the potential career mobility effects of workgroup demography by integrating the social... View Details

Keywords: Professional Service Firms; Race And Ethnicity; Ethnicity; Race; Personal Development and Career; Gender; Legal Services Industry

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August 2013 (Revised August 2014)
Case

Catalina In the Digital Age

By: Robert J. Dolan and Uma R. Karmarkar

Catalina in the Digital Age considers how a company with a dominant market position should evolve its established product lines given the rise of novel digital technologies. Since its founding in 1983, Catalina had enjoyed a distinct position in the world of consumer... View Details

Keywords: Big Data; Digital Technologies; Marketing; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Analytics and Data Science

September 2023
Article

Customer Churn and Intangible Capital

By: Scott R. Baker, Brian Baugh and Marco Sammon

Intangible capital is a crucial and growing piece of firms’ capital structure, but many of its distinct components are difficult to measure. We develop and make available several new firm-level metrics regarding a key component of intangible capital – firms’ customer... View Details

Keywords: Customer Base; Transaction Data; Customer Churn; Intangible Capital; Capital Structure; Measurement and Metrics; Customers

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May 2023 (Revised May 2023)
Case

Stay or Go? Sarah Reynolds Kensington Partners

By: David G. Fubini, Amr Seifeldin and Patrick Sanguineti

Sarah Reynolds, a relatively new Partner at the global Kensington Partners strategy consulting firm, has headed the firm's Telecommunications Group for a few years. Thanks to her stellar track record with clients, she has brought the group a range of accolades and... View Details

Keywords: Consulting; Consulting Firms; Client Service; Career Management

2020
Working Paper

Why Do Firms Automate Production, and How Do They Adjust? Evidence from the Bell Telephone System over the 20th Century

By: Daniel P. Gross and James J. Feigenbaum

Over the course of the 20th century, AT&T's operating companies replaced telephone operators with mechanical switching and dial telephones. Yet it took AT&T 30 years from the invention of the technology to begin using it, and another 60 years to finish installing it... View Details

Keywords: Employment; Labor; Technology Adoption; Technology Networks; History; Telecommunications Industry; United States

June 2014
Case

Riverview Law: Applying Business Sense to the Legal Market

By: Heidi K. Gardner and Silvia Hodges Silverstein

Riverview Law, run like a business rather than a traditional law firm, wants to expand its unconventional concept from the UK to the US. The firm's approach includes performing all legal work for annual fixed-price contracts, using data and analytics to advise clients... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Professional Services; Disruptive Innovation; Law Firms; Client Service; Culture; Recruiting; Management; Professional Services Firms; Business Model; Legal Services Industry; United Kingdom; United States

January 2023
Supplement

Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (B)

By: Henry McGee, Nien-hê Hsieh and Christian Godwin

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, Apple and Google partnered to develop a contact tracing application that would collect information about users infected with the disease and notify those who they had been in contact with. While Apple/Google’s... View Details

January 2025
Case

Redwood & Strong: The Value of a Consulting Engagement

By: David G. Fubini and Patrick Sanguineti

The board of Redwood & Strong LLP (R&S), the American branch of a large global law firm, is meeting to review the findings of a recent strategic initiative designed to identify potential merger candidates. The request for the engagement originated from Daniel Crawford,... View Details

Keywords: Client Service; Professional Service Firm; Professional Services; Consulting

2014
Working Paper

Bridging Science and Technology Through Academic-Industry Partnerships

By: Sen Chai and Willy C. Shih

Scientific research and its translation into commercialized technology is a driver of wealth creation and economic growth. Partnerships to foster the translational processes from public research organizations, such as universities and hospitals, to private firms are a... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Firm Performance; Public-private Partnership Funding; Translational Research; Small And Medium Enterprises; Partners and Partnerships; Public Sector; Private Sector; Performance; Science-Based Business; Innovation and Invention

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2014
Working Paper

Search-Based Peer Firms: Aggregating Investor Perceptions Through Internet Co-Searches

By: Charles M.C. Lee, Paul Ma and Charles C.Y. Wang

Applying a "co-search" algorithm to Internet traffic at the SEC's EDGAR web-site, we develop a novel method for identifying economically-related peer firms and for measuring their relative importance. Our results show that firms appearing in chronologically adjacent... View Details

Keywords: Peer Firm; EDGAR Search Traffic; Revealed Preference; Co-search; Industry Classification; Analytics and Data Science; Internet and the Web; Mathematical Methods; Corporate Finance