Publications

20 Nov 2017
Research & Ideas

How Independent Bookstores Have Thrived in Spite of Amazon.com

bookstore activity and industry conferences; and an analysis of 915 newspaper and trade publication articles that mentioned independent bookselling in some fashion. He even attended a training course on how to open an independent... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel (with video by Amelia Kunhardt); Retail

30 Nov 2007
What Do You Think?

What Is Management’s Role in Innovation?

to B. V. Krishnamurthy, confining such activities to an "R&D function" even though he questioned "whether organizations are ready for open collaboration." Ulrich Nettesheim suggested that, if innovation is to be... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

May 2010 (Revised September 2013)
Case

Friend Bank: The Time for Hope

By: Clayton S. Rose and Aldo Sesia

In 2010, Friend Bank was entering the fifth year of Hope Harris Johnson's ambitious 20-year growth plan to transform her family's one branch community bank into an institution with a substantial presence in southeastern Alabama. Harris Johnson was pleased, so far, with... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Financial Crisis; Banks and Banking; Growth and Development Strategy; Risk Management; Family Ownership; Competitive Advantage; Banking Industry; Alabama

May 2017 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies: Building Breakthrough Innovations in Crowd-Powered Ecosystems

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Terri L. Griffith and Ann Majchrzak

Dirk Ahlborn, co-founder and CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc. (HTT) looks back at the evolving organizational design and community that allows HTT to be crowd-powered. Since the founding in 2013, HTT has dealt with building an organization with less... View Details

Keywords: Collaboration; Crowdsourcing; Entrepreneurial Finance; Innovation; Organizational Design; Startups; Business Startups; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Product Development

December 2022
Article

The Rise of People Analytics and the Future of Organizational Research

By: Jeff Polzer

Organizations are transforming as they adopt new technologies and use new sources of data, changing the experiences of employees and pushing organizational researchers to respond. As employees perform their daily activities, they generate vast digital data. These data,... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Analytics and Data Science; Technology Adoption; Employees

2021
Working Paper

Hidden Software and Veiled Value Creation: Illustrations from Server Software Usage

By: Raviv Murciano-Goroff, Ran Zhuo and Shane Greenstein

How do you measure the value of a commodity that transacts at a price of zero from an economic standpoint? This study examines the potential for and extent of omission and misattribution in standard approaches to economic accounting with regards to open source... View Details

Keywords: Server Software; Open Source Distribution; Applications and Software; Analytics and Data Science; Economics; Value Creation; Measurement and Metrics

13 Nov 2019
Research & Ideas

Don't Turn Your Marketing Function Over to AI Just Yet

machine learning tools, says Amano, and employ people who can communicate effectively about data-based approaches. Ultimately, managers who have the foresight to collaborate with data analysts to design data collection efforts and stagger... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

28 Jan 2008
Research & Ideas

Billions of Entrepreneurs in China and India

of stories about social entrepreneurs, political entrepreneurs, and others whom we study in business schools—investors, capitalists, and so on. Q: What's different about entrepreneurship in both countries? A: The extent and type of government involvement and the nature... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

July–August 2018
Article

Learning by Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Contribution to Crowdsourced Public Goods

By: Frank Nagle

As the economy becomes more information based, firms are increasingly using crowdsourced public goods as inputs for innovation and production. Counterintuitively, some firms pay their employees to contribute to the creation of these goods, which can be used freely by... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Applications and Software; Competitive Strategy; Learning; Competitive Advantage

November 2021 (Revised January 2022)
Case

Scott Tucker (A): Race to the Top

By: Aiyesha Dey and Amram Migdal

The case tells the story of the rise and fall of Scott Tucker, an entrepreneur, businessman, passionate race car driver, competitor, and owner of a professional racing team. From 1997 to 2012, Tucker built a nationwide network of payday lending businesses, becoming a... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Crime and Corruption; Ethics; Fairness; Financing and Loans; Personal Finance; Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Governance Compliance; Governance Controls; Financial Services Industry; United States

November 2021
Article

Gaussian Process Subset Scanning for Anomalous Pattern Detection in Non-iid Data

By: William Herlands, Edward McFowland III, Andrew Gordon Wilson and Daniel B. Neill

Identifying anomalous patterns in real-world data is essential for understanding where, when, and how systems deviate from their expected dynamics. Yet methods that separately consider the anomalousness of each individual data point have low detection power for subtle,... View Details

Keywords: Pattern Detection; Subset Scanning; Gaussian Processes; Mathematical Methods

23 Aug 2022
Cold Call Podcast

Management Lessons from the Sinking of the SS El Faro

Keywords: Re: Joseph B. Fuller; Shipping

March 2008 (Revised June 2011)
Case

MySpace

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, David T. Chen and Carin-Isabel Knoop

The case, set in late 2007, examines what MySpace—the largest online social network—should do to respond to its agile competitor, Facebook. Since its inception MySpace had experienced phenomenal growth, acquiring 20 million members in its first 20 months of operation,... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Partners and Partnerships; Social and Collaborative Networks; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Information Technology Industry

General Partner, Flybridge Capital Partners

Former entrepreneur turned VC, HBS Senior Lecturer, author of three, dad of three, husband of one, civic leader, and fan of all Boston sports.

Jeffrey J. Bussgang is a Senior... View Details

May 2012
Article

Correlation in the Multiplayer Electronic Mail Game

By: Peter A. Coles and Ran Shorrer

In variants of the Electronic Mail Game (Rubinstein, 1989) where two or more players communicate via multiple channels, the multiple channels can facilitate collective action via redundancy, the sending of the same message along multiple paths or else repeatedly along... View Details

Keywords: Electronic Mail Game; Stag Hunt; Coordination; Signaling; Networks; Behavior; Communication; Trust; Game Theory

March 2010 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Dassault Systemes

By: Stefan H. Thomke and Daniela Beyersdorfer

Dassault Systèmes, a leader in product lifecycle management software, has enjoyed a very profitable business model in 3D engineering design. In the past, it has successfully managed market disruptions and opportunities through acquisition and organic innovations. Its... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Innovation and Invention; Product Development; Product Marketing; Technology Industry

July 2012 (Revised August 2012)
Case

Friend Bank: The Time for Hope (Abridged)

By: Clayton Rose and Aldo Sesia

In 2010, Friend Bank was entering the fifth year of Hope Harris Johnson's ambitious 20-year growth plan to transform her family's one-branch community bank into an institution with a substantial presence in southeastern Alabama. Harris Johnson was pleased, so far, with... View Details

Keywords: Banking; Family Business; Strategy And Execution; Banks and Banking; Family Ownership; Financial Institutions; Strategy; Banking Industry; United States; Alabama

2022
White Paper

The American Opportunity Index: A Corporate Scorecard of Worker Advancement

By: Matt Sigelman, Joseph Fuller, Nik Dawson and Gad Levanon

The American Opportunity Index: A Corporate Scorecard of Worker Advancement is a new effort to give companies and other stakeholders a set of robust tools that measure how well major employers are doing in fostering economic mobility for workers and how they could do... View Details

Keywords: Upward Mobility; Career Advancement; Personal Development and Career; Compensation and Benefits; Employees; Wages; Human Capital; Recruitment

2024
Book

The Everything Token: How NFTs and Web3 Will Transform the Way We Buy, Sell, and Create

By: Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers

We demystify the coming digital revolution, showing how NFTs will transform our online and offline interactions.

NFTs aren’t just pictures on the internet, or a fad that has come and gone. Rather, they’re a new technology for creating digital assets and... View Details