Publications

May 2017 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Predicting Consumer Tastes with Big Data at Gap

By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery

CEO Art Peck was eliminating his creative directors for The Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic brands and promoting a collective creative ecosystem fueled by the input of big data. Rather than relying on artistic vision, Peck wanted the company to use the mining of big... View Details

Web

Building Iconic Brands and Brighter Futures: Interview with Glossier CEO, Kyle Leahy - Recruiting

out Cole Haan from Nike and standing it up as an independent company, growing it, transforming it, and turning it around. I got to wear a lot of different hats,” Leahy recalls. From there, Leahy took on the General Manager of E-Commerce... View Details

John A. Deighton

John Deighton is The Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard Business School. He is an authority on consumer behavior and marketing, with a focus on digital and direct marketing. He teaches in the area of Big Data in Marketing,... View Details

Keywords: e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry

January 2017 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Paytm: Building a Payments Network

By: Sunil Gupta, Das Narayandas and Rachna Tahilyani

By January 2017, Paytm, a mobile payments company that started in 2010, became India’s largest mobile payments platform with over 142 million users and $5 billion valuation. Could Paytm become a $100 billion company its founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma envisioned it be? View Details

Keywords: Mobile Payments; Ecommerce; Mobile App; India; Entrepreneurship; Expansion; Service Operations; Mobile and Wireless Technology; E-commerce; Service Industry; India

August 2018 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Hubble Contact Lenses: Data Driven Direct-to-Consumer Marketing

By: Jill Avery and Ayelet Israeli

As its Series A extension round approaches, the founders of Hubble, a subscription-based, social-media fueled, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand of contact lenses, are reflecting on the marketing strategies that have taken them to a valuation of $200 million and debating... View Details

04 Apr 2011
HBS Case

Reinventing the National Geographic Society

for NGS, radical step. The position will be responsible for coordinating web-based offerings and outreach across the Society's numerous departments, integrating several direct-mail efforts into a cohesive e-commerce strategy, and... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Publishing

06 Feb 2020
Research & Ideas

What We Learned from Reading Jeff Bezos’ Patents

focused on devices and three on e-commerce. Given his lead role in these inventions, we surmise that Bezos has developed expertise in e-commerce and devices, two of Amazon’s core business areas. This perhaps isn’t surprising, given Bezos’... View Details

Keywords: by Tricia Gregg and Boris Groysberg; Retail

Alvin E. Roth

Al Roth is the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, and in the Harvard Business School. His research, teaching, and consulting interests are in game theory, experimental economics, and... View Details

Keywords: e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry

F. Warren McFarlan

Professor McFarlan earned his AB from Harvard University in 1959, and his MBA and DBA from the Harvard Business School in 1961 and 1965 respectively. He has had a significant role in introducing materials on Management Information Systems to all major programs at... View Details

Keywords: e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry; e-commerce industry

Web

Regional Winners - Alumni

support public education. Michael Bor, MBA 2003, CEO Region: Central U.S./Atlanta Hue Hue helps brands and retailers embed TikTok-style shoppable videos on their e-commerce websites to give customers confidence to add to cart. Janvi Shah,... View Details

10 Jan 2023
Op-Ed

Time to Move On? Career Advice for Entrepreneurs Preparing for the Next Stage

table for you? Maybe you spent the last decade in e-commerce and you’d like to try an adjacent area like marketing technology or retail? What type of people do you prefer to not work with? For example, extroverts or introverts,... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

Web

Advisory Board - Entrepreneurship

involved or started a number of entrepreneurial ventures. While working three days a week at AOL, he bootstrapped Compare.com , which enabled customers to compare prices on everything from PCs to mortgages. Later, He worked for Open Market, an View Details

10 Nov 2015
Blog Post

Using an MBA for a Career Change

and do a ten day consulting project for a company in an emerging market. My team worked for Dafiti.com, the second largest e-commerce retailer in Brazil. I was impressed by how rapidly e-commerce companies... View Details

October 2017 (Revised October 2022)
Case

Jumia Nigeria: from Retail to Marketplace (A)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Namrata Arora

Founded in 2012, Jumia Nigeria, a startup effort by Germany-based Rocket Internet, aimed to become an African Amazon. The company entered the nascent market and immediately enjoyed an uptick in consumer spending fueled by the strength of Nigeria’s oil-based economy. By... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Marketplace; Inventory; Ecommerce; Funding; Business Ecosystem; Business Ecosystems; Competition; Business Model; Globalization; Emerging Markets; Expansion; Logistics; Competitive Strategy; E-commerce; Retail Industry; India; Nigeria; Africa