Publications

March 2024
Teaching Note

Sonder Holdings Inc.: Using Technology to Solve Hospitality's Frictions

By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 922-039. Digital disruption is challenging the hospitality industry. Traditional hotels face competition from platforms, most visibly Airbnb but also the homeshare divisions of online travel agencies such as Expedia and Booking.com, that... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Disruptive Innovation; Competition; Market Participation; Accommodations Industry

January 2017 (Revised March 2017)
Case

IBM Transforming, 2012–2016: Ginni Rometty Steers Watson

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen

To transform IBM for the next technology wave, Ginni Rometty, who became CEO in 2012, led divestment of declining businesses, made acquisitions in digital innovation and cloud computing, formed partnerships with former competitors such as Apple and tech startups, and... View Details

Keywords: Digital; Technological Change; Artificial Intelligence; Data; IBM; Watson; Internet Of Things; Innovation and Invention; Management; Sales; Information Technology; Technological Innovation; Transformation; AI and Machine Learning

2023
Working Paper

Can Digitalization Improve Public Services? Evidence from Innovation in Energy Management

By: Robyn C. Meeks, Jacquelyn Pless and Zhenxuan Wang

This paper examines how digitalization impacts public service provision through a study of the U.S. power sector. We exploit the staggered timing of electric utilities’ investments in “smart” meters and find that electricity losses per unit sold decrease by 3.6%. This... View Details

Keywords: Electric Utility; Energy Management; Smart Meters; Energy; Climate Change; State Ownership; Private Ownership; Technology Adoption; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; United States

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September 2023 (Revised June 2024)
Case

CyberArk: Fearlessly Forward in a Digital World

By: David B. Yoffie and Daniela Beyersdorfer

CyberArk was a leader in privileged access management and was an emerging leader in security identity. This case explores strategies in cybersecurity and whether big bets are needed to become a global leader. View Details

Keywords: Cybersecurity; Strategy; Technological Innovation; Technology Industry

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: Who Has the Power in the Music Industry?

The music industry likes power. Power chords, power ballads, even Towers of Power. The balance of power in the industry, however, has been completely upset with the advent and rapid proliferation of digital music. Who calls the shots... View Details

Keywords: Re: Felix Oberholzer-Gee; Music

26 Nov 2019
News

Collective Genius: Leading Innovation and Digital Transformation

emerging technologies to innovate and create differentiated customer experiences, people in organizations have to work differently, Hill says. Corporations are finding that digital transformation often... View Details

23 Jan 2020
News

Digital Transformation’s Emerging Effect on Customer Expectations

January 2019 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Glossier: Co-Creating a Cult Brand with a Digital Community

By: Jill Avery

Glossier’s proclaimed strategy was “born from content; fueled by community.” The digital-first, direct-to-consumer beauty brand had experienced rapid growth, with sales up 600% in 2017 and a customer portfolio that grew by threefold. But, its founder, Emily Weiss, was... View Details

30 Oct 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 14 Introducing Open Platforms and Business Ecosystems

Keywords: by Carliss Y. Baldwin

10 Mar 2015
News

Women in Tech: Breaking the Digital Ceiling

with a successful entrepreneurial track record and a Boston address. “I am a tech CEO.” With so few women in leadership roles in the information technology sector and a dramatic gender imbalance throughout the field, Kraus’s title is more... View Details

Keywords: April White

2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 14 Introducing Open Platforms and Ecosystems

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The purpose of this chapter is to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive theoretical investigation of open platform systems. To do this, we must first recognize that, although there is a strong family resemblance among all platform systems, there are different types of... View Details

Keywords: Open Platforms; Business Ecosystems; Information Technology; Organizational Design; Industry Structures; Digital Platforms

SSRN

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02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: The Business of Crowdsourcing

Gaining the community's trust is vital to building a successful business with crowdsourcing, agreed business leaders at the Digital Initiative Summit at Harvard Business School on March 30. When Tongal got its start in 2009, some members... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

13 Feb 2019
News

Want Digital Disruption? Decouple the Customer Experience

January 2006 (Revised March 2010)
Case

Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and the Market for Digital Information Goods

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Andres Hervas and Jordan Mitchell

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

Keywords: Price; Profit; Distribution; Competition; Internet and the Web; Information Infrastructure

28 Nov 2016
News

Digital Change: Lessons from the Newspaper Industry

April 2017 (Revised February 2020)
Supplement

edaixi (eWash): Digital Transformation of Laundry Services (B)

By: Feng Zhu, Weiru Chen, Chuang Chen and Ciwu Lin

Founded in 2013 as a laundry service featuring online ordering for home pickup and delivery, China’s edaixi (eWash) illustrated the online-to-offline (O2O) business model. As yet unclear in 2016 was the optimal way to organize third-party laundry service providers,... View Details

Keywords: Laundry; O2O; Online-to-offline; Service Operations; Business Model; Digital Platforms; Transformation; Service Industry; China