Platform Business - Publications - Faculty & Research

January 2019 (Revised March 2021)
Case

SoundCloud: Subscription Streaming?

By: Ashish Nanda, Eric Van den Steen, Andy Wu, Jeffrey Boyar and Bonnie Bennett Slater

Established in 2007, SoundCloud already boasted the second largest number of active music listeners among all streaming services and was recognized as the go-to platform for new artists by early 2014. Yet, its founders were questioning the robustness of the firm’s... View Details

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21 May 2019
Cold Call Podcast

If the Key to Business Success Is Focus, Why Does Amazon Work?

Keywords: Re: Sunil Gupta; Retail

June 2021
Case

Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani at avatarin (A)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2016, Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani, aeronautical engineers at All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., began to wonder why, in a world of accelerating globalization and digital connectivity, those who lived in far-remote villages or impoverished urban areas could not... View Details

Keywords: Agility; Ecosystem; Innovation Ecosystems; Crowdsourcing; Open Innovation; Partnership; Government; Collaboration; Co-creation; Purpose; Impact; Social Impact; Movement; Organizational Behavior; Organizational Ambidexterity; Ambidexterity; Culture; Culture Change; Global Teams; Experimentation; Space; Airline Industry; Start-up; Platform Business; Platform Strategy; Platform; Digital; Robotics; Robots; Mobility; Strategy; COVID-19; Intrapreneurship; Public-private Partnership; XPRIZE; Space Industry; Avatar; Telepresence; Innovation Lab; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Partners and Partnerships; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Alignment; Leadership; Leading Change; Diversity; Organizational Culture; Change Management; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transportation Industry; Aerospace Industry; Japan

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June 2021
Case

Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani at avatarin (A) (Abridged)

By: Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards

In 2016, Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani, aeronautical engineers at All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., began to wonder why, in a world of accelerating globalization and digital connectivity, those who lived in far-remote villages or impoverished urban areas could not... View Details

Keywords: Agility; Ecosystem; Innovation Ecosystems; Innovation; Crowdsourcing; XPRIZE; Open Innovation; Partnership; Government; Collaboration; Co-creation; Purpose; Impact; Social Impact; Movement; Organizational Behavior; Organizational Ambidexterity; Ambidexterity; Culture; Culture Change; Global Teams; Experimentation; Space; Space Industry; Airline Industry; Start-up; Platform Business; Platform Strategy; Platform; Digital; Robotics; Robots; Avatar; Telepresence; Innovation Lab; Mobility; COVID-19; Intrapreneurship; Public-private Partnership; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Partners and Partnerships; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Alignment; Leadership; Leading Change; Diversity; Organizational Culture; Change Management; Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Transportation Industry; Aerospace Industry; Japan

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11 Oct 2024
Research & Ideas

How AI Could Ease the Refugee Crisis and Bring New Talent to Businesses

transformed several industries over the past two years—may offer solutions for overwhelmed resettlement programs run by both nongovernmental organizations and governments, according to a study by Harvard Business School Assistant... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Technology; Information Technology

Web

From the Director | Baker Library | Bloomberg Center | Harvard Business School

TV Bibliography From the Director Site Credits Visit & Contact Us Special Collections Baker Library Search Search Search U.S. Steel Resources From the Director From the Director From the Director American businesses in the mid-twentieth... View Details

02 Jan 2024
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

November 2018 (Revised February 2019)
Teaching Plan

Gimlet Media: A Podcasting Startup

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

When digital distribution becomes an option for an analog industry, the effects on the incumbents can be devastating. Is podcasting the beginning of the end of radio? Can it do what streaming video did to television and websites did to print? Two former public radio... View Details

Keywords: Platforms And Ecosystems; Startup; Creative Industries; Digital Marketing; Podcasting; Business Startups; Media; Entertainment; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Platforms; United States

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The Founding of U.S. Steel and the Power of Public Opinion | Baker Library | Bloomberg Center | Harvard Business School

Morgan and George F. Baker. 1 U.S. Steel Corporation Finance Committee, featuring George F. Baker (third from left) and J.P. Morgan (fifth from left), 1926. Baker Family Papers, Baker Library, Harvard Business School (olvwork642542). Show... View Details

February 2021 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Brainlab: Imaging a MedTech Future

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Gregory P. Licholai and Federica Gabrieli

Can Brainlab, a privately held firm, compete with giants like Medtronic and Amazon in delivering the Digital Operating Room of the future? The CEO is pondering solutions for secure exchange of medical information, pricing a new robotic imaging device, and reorganizing... View Details

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

their potential customers and provide lower lending costs as a result. But what if there was more? What if this dashboard was part of a portal from which the business owner could operate all their financial activities? What if this... View Details

October 2020
Supplement

OpenIDEO (B)

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Anne-Laure Fayard, Manos Gkeredakis and Jin Hyun Paik

In the midst of 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic was unfolding, OpenIDEO—an online open innovation platform focused on design-driven solutions to social issues—rapidly launched a new challenge to improve access to health information, empower communities to stay safe... View Details

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Article

Crowdsourcing City Government: Using Tournaments to Improve Inspection Accuracy

By: Edward Glaeser, Andrew Hillis, Scott Duke Kominers and Michael Luca

The proliferation of big data makes it possible to better target city services like hygiene inspections, but city governments rarely have the in-house talent needed for developing prediction algorithms. Cities could hire consultants, but a cheaper alternative is to... View Details

Keywords: User-generated Content; Operations; Tournaments; Policy-making; Machine Learning; Online Platforms; Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods; City; Infrastructure; Business Processes; Government and Politics

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2017
Chapter

Platforms, Open/User Innovation, and Ecosystems: A Strategic Leadership Perspective

By: Elizabeth J. Altman and Michael Tushman

Platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies embrace and enable interactions with external entities. Firms pursuing these approaches conduct business and interact with environments differently than those pursuing traditional closed strategies. This chapter... View Details

Keywords: Platforms; Open/user Innovation; Ecosystems; Crowdsourcing; Strategic Leadership; Top Management Teams; CEO Role; Business Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Managerial Roles; Digital Platforms

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January 2015 (Revised May 2018)
Case

$19B 4 txt app WhatsApp...omg!

By: David Collis, Ashley Hartman and Aakash Mehta

In February 2014, Facebook announced the acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion. WhatsApp, founded in 2009, was a relatively young company that employed only 50 people and earned merely $10 million in revenue in 2013. It was one of many mobile messaging services that... View Details

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2012
Chapter

IP Modularity in Software Ecosystems: How SugarCRM's IP and Business Model Shape Its Product Architecture

By: Josef Waltl, Joachim Henkel and Carliss Y. Baldwin

Keywords: Business Model; Digital Platforms; Open Source Distribution; Complexity; Applications and Software; Intellectual Property

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February 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Case

HubSpot and Motion AI: Chatbot-Enabled CRM

By: Jill Avery and Thomas Steenburgh

HubSpot, an inbound marketing, sales, and customer relationship management (CRM) software provider, announced that it had acquired Motion AI, a software platform that enabled companies to easily build and deploy chatbots, fueled by artificial intelligence, to interact... View Details

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July 2023 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Vytal: Packaging-as-a-Service

By: George Serafeim, Michael W. Toffel, Lena Duchene and Daniela Beyersdorfer

The Germany-based startup Vytal operated the largest digital-native reusable packaging-as-a-service network globally, having raised nearly €15 million, established a large network of restaurant partners, and prevented the use of millions of single-use take-out food... View Details

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01 Sep 2020
News

Road Work

restaurants in the Los Angeles area. But after 25 years, the business went bust, and she relocated the family to her native Mexico when the Salas brothers were 12 years old. It’s a fitting origin story for Camino Financial, an online... View Details

Keywords: banking; LatinX; small businesses; COVID-19; Finance

July 2021
Article

The Effect of Price on Firm Reputation

By: Michael Luca and Oren Reshef

While a business's reputation can affect its pricing, prices can also affect its reputation. To explore the effect of prices on reputation, we investigate daily data on menu prices and online ratings from a large rating and ordering platform. We find that a price... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Reputation Systems; IT Policy And Management; Economics Of Digital Platforms; Business Ventures; Reputation; Price; Consumer Behavior; Analysis