Publications

December 24, 2019
Article

Why It's So Hard to Change People's Commuting Behavior

By: Ariella S. Kristal and A. V. Whillans

Car commuters report higher levels of stress and lower job satisfaction compared to train commuters—in large part because car commuting can involve driving in traffic and navigating tense road situations. Some employers are trying to get involved and reduce car... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Motivating People; Time And Wellbeing; Time Stress; Commuting; Behavior; Change; Motivation and Incentives

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November, 2016
Article

Fixing Discrimination in Online Marketplaces

By: Ray Fisman and Michael Luca

Online marketplaces such as eBay, Uber, and Airbnb have the potential to reduce racial, gender, and other forms of bias that affect the off-line world. And in the early days of Internet commerce, the relative anonymity of transactions did make it harder for... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Race; Gender

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Research Summary

Overview

Over the last decade, technology companies like Amazon, Google, and Netflix have pioneered data-driven research and development processes centered on massive experimentation. However, as companies increase the breadth and scale of their experiments to millions of... View Details

June 2023 (Revised October 2024)
Teaching Note

Clash of Two Giants Simulation Exercise Teaching Note

By: Feng Zhu

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 623-092. Many markets are organized around platforms that connect consumers with complimentary applications and services. These platforms are two-sided because both sides—consumers and those providing applications or services—need access... View Details

Keywords: Platform Strategy; Customer Acquisition; Technology Platform; Competitive Strategy; Network Effects; Digital Platforms; Management Skills

26 Apr 2011
Working Paper Summaries

The Contingent Effect of Absorptive Capacity: An Open Innovation Analysis

Keywords: by Andrew A. King & Karim R. Lakhani

02 May 2005
What Do You Think?

Where is Consumer Generated Marketing Taking Us?

increasingly rely on users for new product development, design, and distribution. His particular interest is in how products can be designed and distributed to elicit user-driven development through such... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

November 2006 (Revised March 2007)
Case

Liz Claiborne and the New Working Woman

By: Anthony Mayo and Mark Benson

At age 47, with two decades of experience as a lead designer for a Fortune 500 fashion company, Liz Claiborne put her life savings on the line to form Liz Claiborne, Inc., a partnership that included her husband. A decade later, in 1986, Claiborne was CEO of her own... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Entrepreneurship; Business History; Leadership; Gender; Brands and Branding; Personal Development and Career; Apparel and Accessories Industry

16 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Delivering the Digital Goods: iTunes vs. Peer-to-Peer

are better designed to cope with scalability issues. Incentive schemes that reward users as a function of their contributions help improve sharing, but they introduce other distortions, and the legal risks... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Music

23 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 23, 2008

or more intermediaries, that encompasses infrastructure and rules required by users to transact with each other. A fundamental design decision for firms that aspire to develop platform-mediated networks is... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

April 2021 (Revised July 2021)
Case

StockX: The Stock Market of Things (Abridged)

By: Chiara Farronato, John J. Horton, Annelena Lobb and Julia Kelley

Founded in 2015 by Dan Gilbert, Josh Luber, and Greg Schwartz, StockX was an online platform where users could buy and sell unworn luxury and limited-edition sneakers. Sneaker resale prices often fluctuated over time based on supply and demand, creating a robust... View Details

October 2007 (Revised June 2008)
Case

Leader(ship) Development

By: Scott A. Snook

Designed for use in the first year of an MBA program, can be included within a core course on leadership or used more broadly to orient students to their upcoming experience while in school. Offers a series of robust conceptual models to help students frame their... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development; Framework; Business Education; Education Industry

2023
Book

The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger than Your Business Card

By: Christina Wallace

Pouring yourself into a single full-time job is the riskiest move you can make. Your parents’ advice to focus on one career path? It doesn’t work anymore, for reasons ranging from recessions to student loan debt, the gig economy, climate disasters, and a global... View Details

Keywords: Work-Life Balance; Personal Development and Career

September 2023
Module Note

Live Case Exercise for Financial Reporting

By: Tatiana Sandino and Marshal Herrmann

Harvard Business School employs the case method as a cornerstone of its pedagogy, providing students with opportunities to engage in discussions related to difficult or contentious decisions confronted by real-world organizations. In this “live case,” we depart from... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Research; Corporate Disclosure

31 Jul 2019
Research & Ideas

Distressed Employees? Try Resilience Training

times more likely to experience work-related problems than employees with chronic physical illnesses like diabetes or heart disease. So why do many companies fail to help their workers battle mental health disorders? “There’s a silence... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Health

March–April 2019
Article

Operational Transparency: Make Your Processes Visible to Customers and Your Customers Visible to Employees

By: Ryan W. Buell

Conventional wisdom holds that the more contact an operation has with its customers, the less efficiently it will run. But when customers are partitioned away from the operation, they are less likely to fully understand and appreciate the work going on behind the... View Details

Keywords: Operational Transparency; Customers; Services; Operations; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Customer Satisfaction; Behavior; Service Industry

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23 May 2016
Research & Ideas

A Little Understanding Motivates Copyright Abusers to Pay Up

if the ultimate enforcement mechanism seems so far-fetched? “By understanding why people make mistakes, it may help you creatively design an approach to resolve these disputes” Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Hong Luo looks at... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Media & Broadcasting; Publishing

January 2017 (Revised August 2017)
Case

Weathernews

By: Karim R. Lakhani and Akiko Kanno

Tomohiro Ishibashi (Bashi), chief executive officer for B to S, and Julia Foote LeStage, chief innovation officer of Weathernews Inc., were addressing a panel at the HBS Digital Summit on creative uses of big data. They told the summit attendees about how the Sakura... View Details

Keywords: Crowdsourcing; Operations; Globalization; Weather; Forecasting and Prediction; Global Strategy