Publications

Career Coach

Brent Brown

Brent (HBS '02) has experience in private equity/venture capital, investment banking, and real estate, consumer products and digital media industries and currently serves on the boards of numerous private companies. Work Experience: US... View Details

October 2007
Case

iPhone vs. Cell Phone

By: David B. Yoffie and Michael Slind

The launch of Apple's iPhone marked a pivotal new chapter in the story of mobile music (the uniting of digital music players with mobile phones). The iPhone combined an iPod music player, a cell phone, and a mobile Internet device, along with a camera and other... View Details

Keywords: Communication Technology; Music Entertainment; Product Launch; Partners and Partnerships; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Communications Industry; Music Industry

February 2022 (Revised March 2022)
Case

National Electric Vehicles Sweden (NEVS): Materializing a Vision

By: Shane Greenstein and Elena Corsi

In 2021, the car manufacturer National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS) faced the challenge of securing funding from its investor to launch an innovative mobility solution based on fleets of shared autonomous driving (AD) cars. The system was complex as it required the... View Details

Keywords: Autonomous Vehicles; Product Design; Sustainable Cities; Transportation Networks; Auto Industry; Sweden; Europe

September 1976 (Revised July 1995)
Case

Texas Instruments: Time Products Division

By: Steven C. Wheelwright

Outlines the components of Texas Instruments' low-cost digital watch. Focus is on getting the assembly line running smoothly and efficiently in order to meet production cost and delivery requirements. View Details

Keywords: Cost; Production; Service Delivery; Performance Efficiency; Electronics Industry; Technology Industry

June 2016 (Revised January 2018)
Case

Airbnb, Etsy, Uber: Growing from One Thousand to One Million Customers

By: Thales S. Teixeira and Morgan Brown

By 2016, two-sided online platforms (or marketplaces) were pervasive among the highest growing internet startups around. These marketplaces sought to match suppliers of assets for rent, physical products or services with customers demanding them. Among the most notable... View Details

Keywords: Airbnb; Etsy; Uber; Growth Hacking; Two Sided Markets; Digital Platforms; Marketing; Digital Marketing; Growth Management; Service Industry

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

Program

Competing in the Age of AI—Virtual

on service delivery Digital officers, technology officers, and individuals building and launching data science and analytics Attend with a team from your organization to foster fruitful collaboration and... View Details

11 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

In the Future of Sports Investing, Media Is the Best Bet

For sports fans, this time of year is like a chocolate addict's free pass to Willy Wonka's factory. Horse racing's Triple Crown. The National Basketball Association and National Hockey League championship playoffs. And next up, the most watched sporting competition of... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Financial Services; Financial Services

15 Oct 2014
Research & Ideas

Apple Pay’s Technology Adoption Problem

Apple has its work ahead in convincing thoughtful and potentially skeptical customers," says Edelman. On With The Show Reports say Apple will roll out the digital payment service later this week, with... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Technology; Retail

May 2016 (Revised January 2018)
Case

Airbnb, Etsy, Uber: Acquiring the First Thousand Customers

By: Thales S. Teixeira and Morgan Brown

By 2016, two-sided online platforms (or marketplaces) were pervasive among the highest growing internet startups around. These marketplaces sought to match suppliers of assets for rent, physical products or services with customers demanding them. Among the most notable... View Details

Keywords: Airbnb; Etsy; Uber; Growth Hacking; Two-sided Market; Internet and the Web; Marketing Strategy; Digital Platforms; Digital Marketing; Business Startups; Transportation Industry; Accommodations Industry

September 2000
Case

Quokka Sports

By: Stephen P. Bradley, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Stephanie Mason Ogborne and Julie C. Toscano

Quokka Sports is an example of one of the new broadband services focused in total immersion sports. Quokka faces two issues: 1) the broadband infrastructure is emerging slowly so the type of services offered needs to be decided on. 2) Quokka faces an explosion of... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Decisions; Information Publishing; Infrastructure; Competition; Web Services Industry; Web Services Industry

Find at Harvard

July 2014 (Revised August 2014)
Case

AmazonFresh: Rekindling the Online Grocery Market

By: Rory McDonald, Clayton Christensen, Robin Yang and Ty Hollingsworth

More than a decade after the high-profile failures of several early online grocers, grocery remains the largest single U.S. retail category and one of the few that has not yet migrated online. Amazon began testing its grocery-delivery service, AmazonFresh, in Seattle,... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; New Markets; Grocery; Operations Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Strategy; Emerging Markets; Learning; Service Operations; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

21 Aug 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, August 21, 2018

2018 Boston: Harvard Business Review Press Driving Digital Strategy: A Guide to Reimagining Your Business By: Gupta, Sunil Abstract—Disruption and transformation get a lot of hype and for good reason. View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

February 2021
Case

Enterprise Agility at Komerční Banka

By: Euvin Naidoo, Suraj Srinivasan and Sarah Gulick

In 2017, Jan Juchelka, the new CEO of Komerční Banka, identified the need for the bank to start an enterprise wide agile transformation. He started by working to create a sense of urgency to kick-start a process to enable the level of service delivery to customers he... View Details

Keywords: Agile; Agility; Transformation; Organizational Structure; Business Headquarters; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Management Systems; Banking Industry; Czech Republic

Forthcoming
Book

The Everything Token: How NFTs and Web3 Will Transform the Way We Buy, Sell, and Create

By: Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers

We demystify the coming digital revolution, showing how NFTs will transform our online and offline interactions.

NFTs aren’t just pictures on the internet, or a fad that has come and gone. Rather, they’re a new technology for creating digital assets and... View Details

27 Sep 2016
First Look

September 27, 2016

uncertain, ambiguous, and complex (VUCA), Web 2.5-enabled economy. We show that a trio of forces of digital disruption—specifically the disintermediation of the services of instructors and facilitators, the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

David B. Yoffie

Professor David B. Yoffie is the Max and Doris Starr Professor of International Business Administration at Harvard Business School. A member of the HBS faculty since 1981, Professor Yoffie received his Bachelor's degree summa cum laude and Phi Beta... View Details

Keywords: financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services; financial services

September 2020
Case

True North: Pioneering Analytics, Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Kairavi Dey and Hannah Mayer

True North was a private equity fund that specialized in the growth and buyout of mid-market, India-centric companies. The leadership team initially believed that technology was not core to traditional businesses and steered clear of new age technology-oriented... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Information Technology; Management; Operations; Organizations; Leadership; Innovation and Invention; Business Model; AI and Machine Learning; Computer Industry; Technology Industry