Platform Businesses - Publications - Faculty & Research

05 Nov 2024
Book

Building the Road to 'Small Business Utopia' with AI and Fintech

of a portal from which the business owner could operate all their financial activities? What if this intelligent platform knew when the business might need credit and could... View Details

Keywords: by Karen G. Mills; Financial Services

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Past Projects | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

leadership among the business community by founding the Ebola Private Sector Mobilization Group (EPSMG). Our project evaluated the role that AM and EPSMG played during the Ebola crisis in Liberia. Measuring the "Impact" in Impact... View Details

January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
Case

Jumia's Path to Profitability

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in September 2019 as Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, co-founders and co-CEOs of Jumia, the leading Pan-African e-commerce platform, are contemplating the company’s path to profitability in the aftermath of a fragile investor sentiment, as the company... View Details

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17 Apr 2024
Blog Post

New Venture Competition 2024: Business and Environment Ventures

The New Venture Competition is an annual competition sponsored by the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise Initiative open to all students and alumni who are launching new business and social impact ventures. This year,... View Details

13 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

Small Businesses Are Worse Off Than We Thought

survey of nearly 6,000 small-business owners conducted by a team of researchers in partnership with Alignable, an online business networking platform with 4.5 million members. The survey results paint a... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Financial Services

April 2015 (Revised December 2015)
Case

Resuscitating Monitter

By: Benjamin Edelman and Wei Sun

After a Twitter API change and policy change block his fledgling startup, solo entrepreneur Alex Holt evaluates his options. Should he double-down with a major investment in new servers, rewriting his app from scratch, and charging users for a service that he had... View Details

Keywords: Platform Strategy; Envelopment; Dependence; Social Media; Business Strategy; Vertical Integration; Information Technology; Digital Platforms; Advertising Industry; Information Technology Industry; Australia

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Selling on Amazon allows brands to reach millions of consumers—but that exposure comes with costs. They include smaller margins, more competition, the risk of commoditization, and less knowledge about customers.

In this article, the authors present a... View Details

October 19, 2021
Article

The Facebook Trap

By: Andy Wu

Facebook has a clear mission: Connect everyone in the world. Clarity is good, but in Facebook’s case, it has also put the company in a bind because the mission—and the company’s vision for creating value through network effects—has also become the source of its biggest... View Details

Keywords: Business And Society; Mission and Purpose; Network Effects; Value Creation; Corporate Accountability; Strategy

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Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business | HBS Online

Introduction to Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB) Our Most Comprehensive Offering 5 pre-set courses + 2 electives + a capstone project. Choose from the New Leader or Experienced Leader learning paths.... View Details

01 Oct 1997
News

Shaping the Way Business Does Business: HBR at 75

professor of social sciences, now emeritus, wrote "Communications Technology - For Better or for Worse," in which he laid out concepts that paved the way for the Information Superhighway. The year was 1979. And the magazine was the Harvard View Details

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BiGS Fellows | Institute for Business in Global Society

Professor of Marketing, Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech and Co-Founder, Technology, Race and Prejudice (T.R.A.P.) Lab Turner's research explores how race and racism are built into markets, business systems, and technology. The... View Details

09 Nov 2023
Blog Post

The No. 1 Character Trait You Will Need to Succeed in Business

in a thriving business when a job offer comes from a company you’ve always admired that’s on the brink of bankruptcy. The risks are tremendous but so are the potential rewards – to you and society. This situation brings to mind the... View Details

January 2019 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Rural Taobao: Alibaba's Expansion into Rural E-Commerce

By: Tarun Khanna, Ryan Allen, Adam Frost and Wesley Koo

Alibaba's Rural Taobao initiative had been launched in 2014 as a public service initiative to increase e-commerce adoption in China’s remote rural areas. In the first two iterations of the initiative, dubbed “1.0” and “2.0,” Alibaba had partnered with local businesses... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Business Growth; Ecommerce; Corporate Social Responsibility; Business And Government; Emerging Market; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Emerging Markets; Rural Scope; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Government Relations; Decision Making; E-commerce; China

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23 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

Businesses Need a 'Catalyst' to Make CSR Practices Stick

Many companies follow a tried-and-true approach to pursuing corporate social responsibility practices. They set aside a certain amount per year to fund a CSR office, which then tries to help clean up the environment or improve the quality of life of people in the areas... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

25 Jun 2020
News

Global Centers Broaden Understanding of Business and the Pandemic

As the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world, HBS’s 15 global centers and offices have been instrumental in supporting faculty members’ research into the business impact of the pandemic and supporting alumni who have... View Details

18 Jul 2019
Lessons from the Classroom

The Internet of Things Needs a Business Model. Here It Is

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been near the top of the technology-hype lists for years. In 2018, Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies ranked IoT platforms as cresting the “peak of inflated expectations” stage and ready to... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Computer

27 Jun 2019
Blog Post

My Week at Harvard Business School's Summer Venture in Management Program (SVMP)

I am incredibly grateful to have spent this past week at Harvard Business School's Summer Venture in Management Program (SVMP) aimed at introducing rising seniors to Harvard's MBA and, in all, exposing us to the impact of strong... View Details

October 2018 (Revised August 2019)
Case

Everybody Knows: Russia and the Election

By: Rawi Abdelal, Rafael Di Tella and Galit Goldstein

Following a contentious presidential race, Donald Trump’s 2016 election destabilized America’s status quo. Academics, journalists, politicians and the public at large examined why Trump had won. Many Americans, inside and outside the government, asserted that a... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Industry; Strategic Alliances (Business); Business And Government; Business And Public Policy; Business And Society; Media Businesses; Media Content; Media Slant; Media Regulation; Internet Of Everything; Government Policy; Politics; Political Campaigns; Political Strategy; Political Turmoil; Government; Government Regulation; Security; International Business; International Relations; National Security; Political Elections; News; Media; Internet and the Web; Rights; Problems and Challenges; Globalization; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Government Legislation; Risk and Uncertainty; Cognition and Thinking; Conflict and Resolution; Identity; Civil Society or Community; Culture; Public Opinion; Social Issues; War; Social Media; Public Administration Industry; United States; Russia

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July 15, 2022
Article

Does Elon Musk Have a Strategy?

By: Andy Wu and Goran Calic

Does Elon Musk have a strategy? Or is he just out there winging it? Looking at Musk’s many companies, common themes stand out across three areas: what fits into his vision for problems to solve, how he designs an organization as a solution to those problems, and why he... View Details