Publications

12 Mar 2013
First Look

First Look: March 12

let people pay their bills online, and airline apps let them check in and monitor the status of their flights. (2) Offer unique value. In South Korea, commuters can use an app to order groceries while waiting for their trains. (3) Provide View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2018
Other Unpublished Work

Trump's Populism: What Business Leaders Need To Understand

By: Rafael Di Tella

In the 2016 United States presidential election, candidates from both major political parties used anti-establishment messaging to appeal to Americans, a theme that had been on the sidelines of US political discourse for decades. Donald Trump, in particular, played... View Details

Keywords: Populism; Globalization; Public Opinion; Social Issues; Government and Politics; Demographics; United States

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October 19, 2021
Article

The Facebook Trap

By: Andy Wu

Facebook has a clear mission: Connect everyone in the world. Clarity is good, but in Facebook’s case, it has also put the company in a bind because the mission—and the company’s vision for creating value through network effects—has also become the source of its biggest... View Details

Keywords: Business And Society; Mission and Purpose; Network Effects; Value Creation; Corporate Accountability; Strategy

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June 2023
Case

ByteDance: TikTok and the Trials of Going Viral in 2023

By: William C. Kirby, Noah B. Truwit and John P. McHugh

In March 2023, Chew, with an army of well-paid U.S. lobbyists and TikTok creators, descended on Washington. In his testimony, he planned to highlight the 150 million daily active American users on TikTok and how the platform had benefitted small business owners and... View Details

Keywords: Social Media; International Relations; Government Legislation; China; United States

13 Jul 2016
HBS Case

How Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy Attracted Their First 1,000 Customers

New businesses often struggle finding their first customers. The challenge is even more difficult with startups in the sharing economy that launch as platforms connecting independent service providers with consumers. Take Uber. Its View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail; Service; Transportation

16 Nov 2016
Research & Ideas

Turning One Thousand Customers into One Million

of experimentation. Taking all these factors into account, a startup can create dozens of ads within just a few days, and learn quickly and cheaply what is most effective to attract suppliers. Uber, for instance, made extensive use of online advertising in various... View Details

Keywords: by Thales S. Teixeira and Michael Blanding; Retail; Transportation; Accommodations

June 2020
Case

Career Karma: Growth in a Time of Global Uncertainty (A)

By: Laura Huang, Elizabeth Jiang and Brandon Yu

Career Karma is a startup focused on helping individuals looking to transition careers into computer engineering roles or similar fields by preparing them for formal technical training programs, or “coding bootcamps,” that would lead to a successful career pivot upon... View Details

2023
Working Paper

Polarizing Corporations: Does Talent Flow to "Good" Firms?

By: Emanuele Colonnelli, Tim McQuade, Gabriel Ramos, Thomas Rauter and Olivia Xiong

We conduct a field experiment in partnership with the largest job platform in Brazil to study how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices of firms affect talent allocation. We find both an average job-seeker’s preference for ESG and a large degree of... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Job Search; Talent and Talent Management; Wages; Attitudes

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04 Feb 2014
Working Paper Summaries

From Crowds to Collaborators: Initiating Effort and Catalyzing Interactions Among Online Creative Workers

Keywords: by Kevin J. Boudreau, Patrick Gaule, Karim R. Lakhani, Christoph Riedl & Anita Williams Woolley

February 2021 (Revised March 2022)
Case

TikTok in 2020: Super App or Supernova?

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dan Maher and Dan O'Brien

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around a simple idea – helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. In less than a decade, it had become one of the world’s most valuable private companies, with investors... View Details

Article

Why Am I Seeing This Ad? The Effect of Ad Transparency on Ad Effectiveness

By: Tami Kim, Kate Barasz and Leslie K. John

Given the increasingly specific ways marketers can target ads, many consumers and regulators are demanding ad transparency: disclosure of how consumers’ personal information was used to generate ads. We investigate how and why ad transparency impacts ad effectiveness.... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Customization and Personalization; Information; Trust; Performance Effectiveness

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05 Nov 2014
HBS Seminar

CV Harquail, Authentic Organizations and Stevens Institute of Technology

March 2018 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Morgan Stanley: Building Long-Term Sustainability

By: Vikram S. Gandhi and Lynn Schenk

This case focuses on the 10-year journey of one of the world's largest global financial institutions developing a sustainability strategy and integrating it across all of its business units. The case provides a deep dive into the challenges and successes of trying to... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Sustainability; Green Bonds; ESG; Environmental Sustainability; Strategy; Business Units; Integration; Financial Institutions

June 2016
Case

Big Spaceship: The Evolving Agency

By: Boris Groysberg and Matthew G. Preble

This case discusses the evolution of Big Spaceship, an advertising and marketing agency, from a product-focused business to a relationship-oriented one as clients seek deeper and more meaningful long-term partnerships. The 15-year-old company had already evolved... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Marketing; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Social Media; Advertising Industry; United States; New York (city, NY)