Publications

September 2016 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Collage.com: Scaling a Distributed Organization

By: Christopher Stanton and Shikhar Ghosh

Kevin Borders and Joe Golden, co-founders and co-CEOs of Collage.com, must decide how to grow their custom photo-products startup in the face of fierce competition. From 2011 through 2016, the business evolved from a hobby to a startup with $22 million in revenue and... View Details

Keywords: Remote Work; Internet and the Web; Organizational Structure; Competitive Strategy; Employees; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Service Industry

06 Aug 2021
Blog Post

Socioeconomic Inclusion at HBS: Alexis Jackson (MBA 2021)

industry that would bring financial and job security. An aptitude for math and science led to an engineering scholarship to Penn State, a major in electrical engineering, and a position at a multinational oil and gas corporation after... View Details

January 2013 (Revised June 2018)
Case

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google 2018

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

Four businesses had, by 2012, grown to dominate the infrastructure that all firms rely on to reach online customers. Will the balance of power among the four persist, will one take command at the expense of the other three, or are all four more vulnerable than they... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Competitive Advantage; Infrastructure; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Growth and Development; Service Industry; Service Industry; United States

25 Jul 2016
Research & Ideas

Who is to Blame for 'The Great Training Robbery'?

the context matters. Corporate training is most effective when leadership has prepared the organization for change. Source: MonkeyBusinessImages Take the example of Swedish industrial conglomerate Cardo. The CEO commissioned a training... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Education

June 2022 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Dollar Tree: Breaking the Buck

By: Jill Avery and Marco Bertini

For thirty-five years, Dollar Tree, a discount retail chain selling general merchandise, had held its fixed price point steady, pricing all of its household items, food, stationery, books, seasonal items, gifts, toys, and clothing that made up its diverse and... View Details

Keywords: Retailing; Pricing; Pricing Strategy; Discount Retailing; Discount Store; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Price; Inflation and Deflation; Consumer Behavior; Retail Industry; United States

August 2011
Article

Independent Invention During the Rise of the Corporate Economy in Britain and Japan

By: Tom Nicholas

Independent inventors accounted for approximately half of all patents in Britain and Japan by 1930, despite the rise of the corporate economy and the spread of industrial R&D. A mixture of patent renewal and historical citations data reveals that the quality of... View Details

Keywords: Independent Innovation and Invention; Development Economics; Research and Development; Patents; System; Motivation and Incentives; Tokyo; London; United States

Find at Harvard

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10 Dec 2013
News

The Payoffs And Pitfalls Of Self-Doubt

03 Jul 2015
Blog Post

What is HBS Bridges?

professional front, we heard from industry veterans about what it means to re-enter the workforce with a powerful degree but still realistically, only limited professional experience. No doubt we will all... View Details

12 May 2020
Blog Post

Leaving a Career in Tech for Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship

ecosystem both from an entrepreneurial and investing perspective. I’d heard it was a difficult industry to break into, and I’d hoped to find a supportive network at HBS who could help me prepare for it. “The best way to get a job in VC,... View Details

Teaching

Overview

21st Century Energy — Dr Crawford teaches this EC course, which exposes students to business models and management diilemmas, all along the energy value chain — from oil sands and pipelines, to coal and natural gas, hydro and nuclear, wind and solar, to biofuels. The... View Details

08 May 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Capitalizing On Innovation: The Case of Japan

Keywords: by Robert Dujarric & Andrei Hagiu

Buffett's Bid for Media General's Newspapers

On May 12, 2012, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway announced an offer to buy Media General’s (MEG) newspaper division for $142 million in cash and, under a separate agreement, provide debt financing to the struggling firm. Reactions from investors and industry... View Details

2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 14 Introducing Open Platforms and Ecosystems

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The purpose of this chapter is to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive theoretical investigation of open platform systems. To do this, we must first recognize that, although there is a strong family resemblance among all platform systems, there are different types of... View Details

Keywords: Open Platforms; Business Ecosystems; Information Technology; Organizational Design; Industry Structures; Digital Platforms

SSRN

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September 2021
Case

TAV Airports: Acquiring Almaty International

By: Juan Alcácer and Esel Çekin

The case opens in April 2020 with Sani Şener, CEO of TAV Airports, a vertically integrated regional airport operator headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey, and his team discussing the pending acquisition of the Almaty International Airport in Kazakhstan. The company had... View Details

Keywords: Airports; COVID-19 Pandemic; Strategy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Bids and Bidding; Air Transportation Industry; Central Asia; Turkey

When Google bought Nest, a maker of digital thermostats, for $3.2 billion just a few months ago, it was a clear indication that digital transformation and connection are spreading across even the most traditional industrial segments and creating a staggering array... View Details

29 May 2013
Blog Post

Reflections and learnings

So, without further ado, the 7* lessons that made this all worthwhile for me: Winning is not easy: It’s easy to look at an industry leader like Sephora and imagine a seamlessly polished machine cranking out... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products / Retail

2021
Working Paper

Technology Differentiation and Firm Performance

By: Sam Arts, Bruno Cassiman and Jianan Hou

Prior work has extensively studied how investing in R&D and building a technology portfolio relate to superior firm performance. However, the value of a firm’s technology portfolio should also be driven by the degree to which it is more unique and technologically... View Details

Keywords: Technology Portfolio; Differentiation; Competitiveness; Organizations; Technology; Performance; United States