Publications

Winter 2013
Article

The New Patent Intermediaries: Platforms, Defensive Aggregators and Super-Aggregators

By: Andrei Hagiu and David B. Yoffie

The patent market consists mainly of privately negotiated, bilateral transactions, either sales or cross-licenses, between large companies. There is no eBay, Amazon, New York Stock Exchange, or Kelley's Blue Book equivalent for patents, and when buyers and sellers do... View Details

Keywords: Intellectual Property; Platforms; Intermediaries; Aggregator; Patents; Digital Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Distribution Channels

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June 2007 (Revised April 2009)
Case

Opening Pandora's Box

By: Willy C. Shih, Stephen P. Kaufman, Melissa Marie Blakeley and Marissa Wairy Dent

Pandora.com provided a highly customizable online radio service tailored to listeners' musical preferences and had registered explosive growth since its September 2005 launch. But proposed changes in royalty rates threatened to kill off many Internet radio sites,... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Entrepreneurship; Disruptive Innovation; Intellectual Property; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Operations; Internet; Media and Broadcasting Industry

04 Oct 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com

Keywords: by Michael Luca; Food & Beverage

February 2000 (Revised November 2000)
Case

Women.com

By: Myra M. Hart and Sarah S. Khetani

Entrepreneurs Ellen Pack and Marleen McDaniel have founded a women's online network and watched it grow from an online subscription service in 1992 to one of the best known, widely visited women's networks on the web in 1999. While the company's vision has remained... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Entrepreneurship; Internet and the Web; Partners and Partnerships; Initial Public Offering; Networks; Transition; Web Services Industry

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January 2002 (Revised June 2002)
Background Note

The Rise and Decline of e-Consulting

By: Ashish Nanda and M. Julia Prats

E-consulting began as a specialized consulting service in the late 1990s. In January 2000, more than 100 firms were characterized as e-consultants. By December 2001, more than 50% of these firms had disappeared. This case tracks the rapid rise and sharp decline of... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Market Participation; Consulting Industry

02 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

Disruptors Sell What Customers Want and Let Competitors Sell What They Don’t

Over the past two decades, entire industries have been disrupted by Internet competitors who "unbundled" their content and delivered it to consumers in new ways. Newspapers... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

07 Nov 2023
News

Love and Money

more efficient. And so concierge services like matchmakers or dating coaching or consulting services, they're very expensive. It's a luxury good that you can buy to make it more efficient, so that when you... View Details

September 2021 (Revised June 2023)
Case

Mission edX: Balancing Social Good and Financial Sustainability

By: John J-H Kim, David J. Collis and James Barnett

In March 2021, online education platform edX considers how to achieve financial sustainability without compromising its mission to provide universal access to high-quality education. View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Education; Values and Beliefs; Internet and the Web; Financial Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Education Industry; United States

17 Mar 2021
Research & Ideas

Beyond Pajamas: Sizing Up the Pandemic Shopper

data-id=_/5WV9qIO851dKEzcCnWEy][/div] We found that roughly 33 percent of US shoppers and 20 percent of those in the UK had not purchased from online retailers before the pandemic. In March, that figure... View Details

Keywords: by Ayelet Israeli, Eva Ascarza, and Laura Castrillo; Retail

March 2017 (Revised February 2018)
Case

VMware and the Public Cloud

By: Raffaella Sadun and Christine Snively

In 2015, VMware, a pioneer in server and network virtualization and a member of parent company EMC’s “federation” of companies, had set its sights on becoming a leading public cloud provider. Two years prior, VMware first entered the public cloud market with its vCloud... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; Internet and the Web; Computer Industry; Computer Industry; Computer Industry

August 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Case

C3.ai—Driven to Succeed

By: Robert Simons and George Gonzalez

CEO Tom Siebel navigates his artificial intelligence (ai) startup through a series of pivots, market expansions, and even an elephant attack to become a leading platform ad service provider. The case describes his unusual management approach emphasizing employee... View Details