Publications

May 2016 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Building the Digital Manufacturing Enterprise of the Future at Siemens

By: Willy Shih

This case describes the motivation for and the development of Siemens' digital manufacturing enterprise vision, which became the foundation for its implementation of Industrie 4.0. While the effort started with a purely defensive move by Anton Huber, head of the... View Details

April 2016
Teaching Note

Flipkart: Transitioning to a Marketplace Model

By: Sunil Gupta and Das Narayandas

In 2015, Sachin and Binny Bansal, co-founders of India's largest e-tailer, Flipkart, announced that the company would switch to a marketplace model and move its logistics arm into a separate company. At the time of the announcement, Snapdeal already claimed to be... View Details

Keywords: India; Marketplaces; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Market Entry and Exit; E-commerce; Retail Industry; India

Spring 2016
Article

Net Neutrality: A Fast Lane to Understanding the Tradeoffs

By: Shane Greenstein, Martin Peitz and Tommaso Valletti

The last decade has seen a strident public debate about the principle of "net neutrality." The economic literature has focused on two definitions of net neutrality. The most basic definition of net neutrality is to prohibit payments from content providers to internet... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Policy

2016
Working Paper

Big History, Global Corporations, Virtual Capitalism

By: Richard L. Nolan

Homo sapiens has mastered its environment so thoroughly that, for the first time in history, a small minority of the population is capable of creating enough food and fuels to support not only itself, but also a growing majority of the 6 billion people now living on... View Details

Keywords: Economic Systems; Internet and the Web; Innovation and Invention; United States

SSRN

March 2016
Article

To Groupon or Not to Groupon: The Profitability of Deep Discounts

By: Benjamin Edelman, Sonia Jaffe and Scott Duke Kominers

We examine the profitability and implications of online discount vouchers, a relatively new marketing tool that offers consumers large discounts when they prepay for participating firms' goods and services. Within a model of repeat experience good purchase, we examine... View Details

Keywords: Voucher Discounts; Groupon; Experience Goods; Repeat Purchase; Internet and the Web; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Communications

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2016
Teaching Note

Advanced Leadership Pathways: David Weinstein and Write the World

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Tessa Natanay Hamilton and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Teaching Note for Case 314-030. Following a successful career as a lawyer, Chief Administrative Officer of Fidelity Investments, and law school instructor, David Weinstein became a 2011 Advanced Leadership Fellow at Harvard University. During his Advanced Leadership... View Details

Keywords: Writing; Online Platform; Social Entrepreneurship; Education; Internet and the Web; Competency and Skills; Leadership; Change Management

January 2016 (Revised February 2016)
Case

Citizens United and Corporate Speech

By: David Moss and Marc Campasano

The story of Citizens United began in late 2007, as leading members of the Republican and Democratic parties were preparing for the 2008 presidential primaries. Democrats expected a three-way contest in their party between Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, Senator (and... View Details

Keywords: Rights; Internet and the Web; Political Elections; Lawsuits and Litigation; Business and Government Relations

Winter 2016
Article

Analytics for an Online Retailer: Demand Forecasting and Price Optimization

By: Kris J. Ferreira, Bin Hong Alex Lee and David Simchi-Levi

We present our work with an online retailer, Rue La La, as an example of how a retailer can use its wealth of data to optimize pricing decisions on a daily basis. Rue La La is in the online fashion sample sales industry, where they offer extremely limited-time... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Price; Forecasting and Prediction; Revenue; Sales; Retail Industry

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2016
Working Paper

Net Neutrality: A Fast Lane to Understanding the Trade-offs

By: Shane Greenstein, Martin Peitz and Tommaso Valletti

The “net neutrality” principle has triggered a heated debate, and advocates have proposed policy interventions. In this paper, we provide perspective by framing issues in terms of the positive economic factors at work. We stress the incentives of market participants... View Details

Keywords: Rights; Internet and the Web; Debates

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December 2015 (Revised February 2016)
Case

Ocado

By: José Alvarez, David E. Bell and Damien McLoughlin

In 2015, U.K.-based Ocado was the world's largest pure player in the online home-delivery grocery business and was gaining a growing share of the highly competitive U.K. grocery market. Ocado had made heavy investments in technology, including a highly automated... View Details

November 2015
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Daniella Suarez and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Beatriz Cardoso, founder of Laboratório de Educação (Education Laboratory) had a dream to propel Brazilian education. However challenges in fundraising made it difficult to scale up her project, based on helping adults help children improve their literacy skills. To... View Details

November 2015
Case

Upwork: Reimagining the Future of Work

By: Feng Zhu, Rory McDonald, Marco Iansiti and Aaron Smith

Upwork, the world's largest freelance talent platform, was the result of a merger between the two leading online freelancing companies in 2014, Elance and oDesk. After the merger, the company operated as Elance-oDesk and continued to manage two online... View Details

Keywords: Platforms; Employment; Digital Platforms; Market Transactions; Business Processes; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Job Search

November 2015 (Revised April 2017)
Case

Streaming Over Broadband: Why Doesn't My Netflix Work?

By: Shane Greenstein and Michael Norris

In late 2013 and early 2014, Netflix service over the major U.S. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) suffered major slowdowns. What were the causes of these problems? What could Netflix do to solve them? View Details

Keywords: Digital Innovation; Internet; Broadband Service; Internet and the Web; Information Technology; Infrastructure; Utilities Industry; United States

November 2015 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Flipkart (A): Transitioning to a Marketplace Model

By: Das Narayandas, Sunil Gupta and Rachna Tahilyani

In 2015, Sachin and Binny Bansal, co-founders of India’s largest e-commerce company, are wondering if it is time to move from a hybrid model to a full marketplace. While Amazon runs a hybrid model, Alibaba operates a marketplace. In addition, Flipkart has been losing... View Details

Keywords: Marketplaces; Online Retail; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Emerging Markets; E-commerce; Retail Industry; India

October 2015
Case

Bigbelly

By: Mitch Weiss and Christine Snively

To accelerate Bigbelly's sales growth and its "smart cities" positioning, its CEO planned to shift his company from equipment sales to a subscription service. Jack Kutner hoped to re-position Bigbelly's solar-powered trash compacting stations beyond trash and recycling... View Details

October 2015 (Revised October 2016)
Case

Building Watson: Not So Elementary, My Dear! (Abridged)

By: Willy C. Shih

This case is set inside IBM Research's efforts to build a computer that can successfully take on human challengers playing the game show Jeopardy! It opens with the machine named Watson offering the incorrect answer "Toronto" to a seemingly simple question during the... View Details

Keywords: Analytics; Big Data; Business Analytics; Product Development Strategy; Machine Learning; Machine Intelligence; Artificial Intelligence; Product Development; AI and Machine Learning; Information Technology; Analytics and Data Science; Information Technology Industry; United States

October 2015
Case

Facebook: The First Ten Years

By: Shane Greenstein, Marco Iansiti and Christine Snively

Facebook celebrated its ten year anniversary in February 2014. Over the past decade it has grown into the largest social network in the world with one billion users. After filing an IPO in 2012 at a $104 billion valuation (the third largest IPO in U.S. history), the... View Details

Keywords: Social Networks; Technology; Facebook; Entrepreneurship; Profit; Open Source Distribution; Social and Collaborative Networks; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Social Media; Information Technology Industry

2015
Book

How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a New Network

By: Shane Greenstein

In less than a decade, the Internet went from being a series of loosely connected networks used by universities and the military to the powerful commercial engine it is today. This book describes how many of the key innovations that made this possible came from... View Details

August 2015 (Revised December 2016)
Case

Apple Pay

By: Sunil Gupta, Shelle Santana and Margaret L. Rodriguez

On September 9, 2014, in front of a packed audience in Cupertino, CA, Tim Cook, the chief executive officer of Apple, announced the much anticipated launch of Apple Pay. "Our vision is to replace this [wallet] and we are going to start with payments." Cook then invited... View Details