Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,872)
- Faculty Publications (781)
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
Keywords: Ocado; Grocery; Retail; Online Grocery; Supermarket; Delivery Models; Service Models; United Kingdom; Technology; Operations Management; Digital Platforms; Competition; Internet and the Web; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Supply Chain; Marketing; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United Kingdom
- 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
Keywords: Latin America; South America; Brazil; Sao Paulo; Education Startup; Education Technology; Child Education; Literacy; Blog; Technology; School Districts; Public Schools; Fundraising; Sponsorship; Leadership Skills; Education; Early Childhood Education; Blogs; Internet and the Web; Leadership; Education Industry; Latin America; South America; Brazil; Sao Paulo
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Smart Cities; Government Innovation; Internet Of Things; IoT; Anything As A Service; Platform As A Service; Infrastructure As A Service; PaaS; Xaas; Bigbelly; Jack Kutner; B2G; Civic Innovation; City Innovation; Government Technology; Govtech; Civic Technology; Entrepreneurship; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Information Technology Industry; Public Administration Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Web Services Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Massachusetts; United States; Boston; Chicago; Philadelphia; New York (city, NY)
- 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
- 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
- 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
Keywords: Technology; Digital Services And Strategy; Launch; Mobile; Mobile Payments; Apple; Payments; Smartphone; Apple Pay; Eddy Cue; Jennifer Bailey; iOS; Iphone; Marketing; Product; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Product Launch; Finance; Credit Cards; Technology Industry; Banking Industry; United States; United Kingdom
- August 2015
- Case
Yabbly (A)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Christopher Payton
In November 2013, with less than 10 months of cash on hand, Tom Leung, the founder and CEO of Yabbly, must decide where to focus his resources. His startup, a question-and-answer application for shopping decisions, had benefited from a strong showing at the SXSW... View Details
- 2015
- Chapter
Information Technology and the Distribution of Inventive Activity
By: Chris Forman, Avi Goldfarb and Shane Greenstein
We examine the relationship between the diffusion of advanced Internet technology and the geographic concentration of invention, as measured by patents. First, we show that patenting became more concentrated from the early 1990s to the early 2000s and, similarly, that... View Details
- July 2015
- Case
Vita: Cosmetics in the Nordics
By: Das Narayandas, Krishna Palepu and Kerry Herman
Vita is a Norwegian cosmetics retailer owned by FSN Capital, a Scandinavian private equity company. The company has a strong market position in Norway. The case focuses on two strategic issues: how to develop an e-commerce strategy to supplement the company's... View Details
- June 2015 (Revised April 2018)
- Case
WeChat: A Global Platform?
By: Willy Shih, Howard Yu and Feng Liu
WeChat was developed by Tencent Holdings as a lightweight messaging platform. As it grew quickly to become the most popular messaging app in China, it added a range of products and services that sat on top that were designed to appeal to a broad range of consumers and... View Details