Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,226)
- Faculty Publications (483)
- June 2010 (Revised August 2011)
- Case
Tennant Company: Innovating Within and Beyond the Core
By: Lynda M. Applegate, Toby E. Stuart and James Weber
Tennant, a leading producer of floor cleaning equipment, must determine the business model to use for its new chemical-free cleaning technology. In 2005, Tennant Company had developed an innovative, environmentally friendly cleaning technology that could potentially... View Details
- June 2010
- Article
Change for Change's Sake
By: Freek Vermeulen, Phanish Puranam and Ranjay Gulati
No one disputes that firms have to make organizational changes when the business environment demands them. But the idea that a firm might want change for its own sake often provokes skepticism. Why inflict all that pain if you don't have to? That is a dangerous... View Details
- Article
Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and the Market for Digital Information Goods
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Andres Hervas-Drane
We study competitive interaction between two alternative models of digital content distribution over the Internet: peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing and centralized client-server distribution. We present microfoundations for a stylized model of p2p file sharing where all... View Details
- June 2010
- Article
The Circulation of Ideas across Academic Communities: When Locals Re-import Exported Ideas
By: Julie Battilana, Michel Anteby and Metin Sengul
The circulation of ideas across academic communities is central to academic pursuits and has attracted much past scholarly attention. As North American-based scholars with European ties, we decided to examine the impact of Organization Studies in North American... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Trade Policy and Firm Boundaries
By: Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Harald Fadinger and Andrew F. Newman
We study how trade policy affects firms' ownership structures. We embed an incomplete contracts model of vertical integration choices into a standard perfectly-competitive international trade framework. Integration decisions are driven by a trade-off between the... View Details
- May 2010
- Article
Bye Bye Bundles: The Unbundling of Music in Digital Channels
By: Anita Elberse
Fueled by digital distribution, unbundling is prevalent in many information industries. What is the effect of this unbundling on sales? And what bundle characteristics drive this effect? I empirically examine these questions in the context of the music industry, using... View Details
- April 2010
- Course Overview Note
Competing through Business Models
This note was prepared to aid instructors in the EC course “Competing through Business Models” (CTBM). Describes the course objectives; the conceptual framework used in the course; some central principles that emerge from this framework; and the modular structure of... View Details
- April 2010
- Article
Complex Business Models: Managing Strategic Paradoxes Simultaneously
By: Wendy K. Smith, Andrew Binns and Michael Tushman
As our world becomes more global, fast paced and hypercompetitive, competitive advantage may increasingly depend on success in managing paradoxical strategies - strategies associated with contradictory, yet integrated tensions. We identify several types of complex... View Details
- March 2010 (Revised July 2010)
- Case
The Economist
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Bharat N. Anand and Lizzie Gomez
In 2009 the Economist continued to experience impressive growth and operating margins while many of its peers reeled from both a cyclical downturn and structural threats to print publishing. The case describes the history, organization, and business model of the... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised December 2010)
- Case
Google Inc. (Abridged)
By: Benjamin Edelman and Thomas R. Eisenmann
Describes Google's history, business model, governance structure, corporate culture, and processes for managing innovation. Reviews Google's recent strategic initiatives and the threats it poses to Yahoo, Microsoft, and others. Asks what Google should do next. One... View Details
- February 2010
- Case
Go Mobile: The Phirbol Franchise
By: Rajiv Lal and Natalie Kindred
To grow Phirbol, a telecom retail franchise chain in Delhi, India's underdeveloped markets, its founders were exploring ways to offer more value to the franchisees. In mid-2009, the Phirbol franchise was comprised of some 150 franchisees that had converted their small... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised March 2016)
- Background Note
Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Break-even Analysis
By: Thomas J. Steenburgh and Jill Avery
Marketing managers are often called upon to make recommendations for or against programs that cost money to implement. Before expenditures are made, managers want to be sure that they will be getting a return on their investment. One way of assessing this is by... View Details
- February 2010
- Background Note
Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Market Size and Market Share Analysis
By: Thomas J. Steenburgh and Jill Avery
Marketers frequently need to estimate the size of their markets—both for existing products so that sales forecasts can be developed and for new products so that market opportunities can be assessed. This toolkit enables students to size a market and generate a sales... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised January 2014)
- Supplement
CommonAngels (B)
By: Lynda M. Applegate and Kaitlyn Simpson
This case discusses changes in CommonAngels' investment model and organization between 2005 and 2009. View Details
- January 2010 (Revised October 2011)
- Case
The Congressional Oversight Panel's Valuation of the TARP Warrants (A)
The Congressional Oversight Panel wants to value the warrants issued to the government in connection with the TARP investments of 2008, in order to increase the transparency of options repurchases. The case describes the methodology used to value the warrants. Students... View Details
- Article
A Choice Prediction Competition for Market Entry Games: An Introduction
By: Ido Erev, Eyal Ert and Alvin E. Roth
A choice prediction competition is organized that focuses on decisions from experience in market entry games (http://sites.google.com/site/gpredcomp/ and http://www.mdpi.com/si/games/predict-behavior/). The competition is based on two experiments: An estimation... View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
The Architecture of Complex Systems: Do Core-periphery Structures Dominate?
By: Alan MacCormack, Carliss Y. Baldwin and John Rusnak
Any complex technological system can be decomposed into a number of subsystems and associated components, some of which are core to system function while others are only peripheral. The dynamics of how such "core-periphery" structures evolve and become embedded in a... View Details
- December 2009 (Revised February 2010)
- Case
The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF) in 2009
By: Luis M. Viceira and Brendon Christopher Parry
In late June 2009, management at The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF) was considering expanding the footprint of the TIFF Diversified Fund (TDF), the first truly comprehensive endowment management vehicle offered under the TIFF banner. The recent large capital... View Details
- December 2009 (Revised October 2015)
- Case
Diamond Foods
By: David E. Bell and Mary Louise Shelman
CEO Michael Mendes has transformed a grower-owned cooperative into a publicly traded top marketer of snack foods. Diamond's organization, culture, product development process, advertising and promotion strategy, and specifically its marketing department have been built... View Details
- December 12, 2009
- Other Article
The Transformation of India: Incumbent Control, Reforms, and Newcomers
By: Laura Alfaro and Anusha Chari
What microeconomic forces drove the structural transformation of India's economy in recent decades? This column studies firm-level data and portrays a dynamic economy driven by the growth of private and foreign firms. But the Indian economy did not go through an... View Details