Publications

October 2023
Case

CornerUp: Digitizing the Corner Store

By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui, Stacy Straaberg and Diego Zainos De La Sota Riva

In July 2023, Jason Diaz, co-founder and CEO of CornerUp, assessed the progress of his business-to-business e-procurement software application (app) startup, founded in January 2022. CornerUp began as a fast-moving consumer packaged goods (FMCG) distributor in New York... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Small Business; Transition; Decisions; Social Entrepreneurship; Geographic Location; Disruptive Innovation; Market Participation; Digital Platforms; Trust; Business Strategy; Expansion; Information Infrastructure; Internet and the Web; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Technology Industry; United States

19 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: “The Architecture of Innovation”

The key to managing innovation starts, and probably ends, with incentives. In his new book, The Architecture of Innovation: The Economics of Creative Organizations, Harvard Business School Professor Josh... View Details

Keywords: by Josh Lerner; Financial Services

June 1998 (Revised January 2001)
Case

Browser Wars, 1994-1998, The

By: David B. Yoffie and Mary Kwak

Analyzes the competition between Netscape and Microsoft in the market for Web browsers and related products. Despite its first mover advantage, Netscape sees its market share fall once Microsoft becomes "hard-core" about the Internet. By the spring of 1998, the future... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Internet and the Web; Innovation and Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Competition; Supply and Industry; Information Technology Industry

August 2023 (Revised December 2023)
Case

Automating Morality: Ethics for Intelligent Machines

By: Joseph L. Badaracco Jr. and Tom Quinn

As autonomy became a more significant part of modern life – most notably in autonomous vehicles (AVs), such as Teslas – ethical debates about whether and how to impart ethics to machines heated up. Utilitarians pointed out that autonomous vehicles crashed much less... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Judgments; Fairness; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Disruptive Innovation; Technology Adoption; Risk and Uncertainty; Cognition and Thinking; Technological Innovation; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Africa; Asia; Europe; North and Central America; Oceania; South America

August 1989 (Revised October 1989)
Case

Avon Co.

Avon engineers developed a new type of electric adjustable speed drive. Executives began to make long-range plans for production and marketing. Members of the sales department wondered what pricing recommendations they should make to management on the basis of... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Price; Product Development; Technology Industry

October 2000 (Revised September 2002)
Case

NTT DoCoMo (A): The Future of the Wireless Internet?

By: Stephen P. Bradley and Matthew Sandoval

NTT DoCoMo was established in 1992 and became publicly held in 1998. This case tracks how DoCoMo became the number one mobile phone company in Japan and how its i.mode service revolutionized the cellular phone market. View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Goals and Objectives; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Competitive Strategy; Expansion; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Japan

October 2016 (Revised February 2019)
Case

PTC: A Transformation to IoT

By: Rajiv Lal and Sarah McAra

In the 2010s, PTC, a leading provider of software for discrete manufacturers, faced maturing markets and changing customer needs as smart, connected products took hold—the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT). PTC saw a first mover advantage in entering the IoT space... View Details

Keywords: Internet Of Things; IoT; Smart; Connected Products; Business Organization; Transformation; Customer Relationship Management; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Leading Change; Marketing; Product Development; Service Operations; Strategy; Competition; Technology Industry

June 1999 (Revised May 2001)
Case

CardioThoracic Systems

CardioThoracic Systems, a company that has developed a new system for performing heart surgery on a beating heart, is facing marketing challenges. Discusses the numerous reasons for the system's low penetration (including existing techniques, surgeon resistance, and a... View Details

Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Technological Innovation; Situation or Environment; Marketing Strategy; Sales; Health Care and Treatment; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States

04 Sep 2019
News

Deep Dive

scientific advancement, team-building, and international cooperation. And the goal had never been a world record for one man. “We want to open the door for future exploration... View Details

Keywords: April White; photo by Jeff Wilson; Scientific Research and Development Services

October 2012 (Revised August 2013)
Case

Global Unichip Corporation (A)

By: Willy Shih and Chen-Fu Chien

Global Unichip Corporation (GUC) is a design services company that acts as a front-end to TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor foundry. In so doing, it masked the complexity of the latest process technologies, and reduced the entry barriers for small firms to... View Details

February 2023
Supplement

Astyanax Kanakakis at norbloc: A Founder's Experience with the DIFC Fintech Hive

By: Linda A. Hill and Lydia Begag

norbloc was founded in 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden, by Astyanax Kanakakis and his co-founders, Vitalii Demianets and Sam Saatchi. Kanakakis and Demianets got to work to address a key gap in the industry: Know Your Customer (KYC) data sharing. As the first distributed KYC... View Details

07 Dec 2016
HBS Case

Why Millennials Flock to Fintech for Personal Investing

Millennials are disruptive bunch. The first generation to grow up with the internet, consumers born after 1980 are used to relying on technology and engineering to do almost everything—including shopping... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

January 2013
Supplement

Cabot Corporation: The Fuel Cell Decision (B)

By: Willy Shih and Ying Zhou

Managers at Cabot Corporation are faced with deciding the future of its fuel cell program. The (A) case recounts the view of the business manager and the technical project lead, and the (B) case describes the perspective of a senior manager who is the head of the New... View Details

June 2004 (Revised May 2006)
Case

Millennial Net

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Johanna Regine Naunton Blaxall

Millennial Net created self-organizing, ultra-low-power, wireless sensor networks, a space that was getting a lot of attention in 2004. The company was founded in 2000 and in early 2004 was looking for a second round of funding. The area had attracted a number of new... View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Technological Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry

18 Jun 2001
Research & Ideas

When In-House Research Isn’t Enough

of these changes is a new and more complex innovation system. "An internal technology base remains," he explained, "and the company can draw upon that to launch... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Aisner

September 2023 (Revised November 2023)
Case

Seeds of Innovation: GALY's Quest to Cultivate the Future of Agriculture in the Lab

By: George Serafeim and Michael Norris

In 2023, Luciano Bueno, CEO and founder of plant cell culture agriculture company GALY, was considering the best path forward for his company as he planned to pitch Series B investors. GALY, founded in 2019, aimed to produce cotton and other crops from cells grown in... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Green Technology; Goods and Commodities; Growth and Development Strategy; Science-Based Business; Entrepreneurship; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Business Startups; Decisions; Technological Innovation; Production; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Boston; Sao Paulo