Publications

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October 2010 (Revised August 2012)
Case

Harvest: Organic Waste Recycling with Energy Recovery (A)

By: Deishin Lee, Baris Ata and Mustafa H. Tongarlak

This case describes the waste management industry and a clean technology solution for landfill diversion and renewable energy production. The (A) case focuses on the operational characteristics of waste management and waste to energy, as well as the characteristics of... View Details

Keywords: Renewable Energy; Logistics; Wastes and Waste Processing; Corporate Finance; Green Technology Industry; Green Technology Industry; Green Technology Industry

November 2023
Case

Apple Inc. in 2023

By: David B. Yoffie and Sarah von Bargen

Under CEO Tim Cook, Apple became the first trillion dollar market cap company, the first two trillion dollar company, and the first three trillion dollar company. Since the COVID pandemic, Apple gained over 20% of the world smartphone market and 50% of the U.S. market,... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Product Positioning; Emerging Markets; Competitive Strategy; Technological Innovation; Revenue; Technology Industry

January 2021
Article

Machine Learning for Pattern Discovery in Management Research

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Ryan Allen and Michael G. Endres

Supervised machine learning (ML) methods are a powerful toolkit for discovering robust patterns in quantitative data. The patterns identified by ML could be used for exploratory inductive or abductive research, or for post-hoc analysis of regression results to detect... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Supervised Machine Learning; Induction; Abduction; Exploratory Data Analysis; Pattern Discovery; Decision Trees; Random Forests; Neural Networks; ROC Curve; Confusion Matrix; Partial Dependence Plots; AI and Machine Learning

Find at Harvard

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Article

Beacon and Warning: Sherman Kent, Scientific Hubris, and the CIA's Office of National Estimates

By: J. Peter Scoblic

Would-be forecasters have increasingly extolled the predictive potential of Big Data and artificial intelligence. This essay reviews the career of Sherman Kent, the Yale historian who directed the CIA’s Office of National Estimates from 1952 to 1967, with an eye toward... View Details

Keywords: National Security; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Forecasting and Prediction; History

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Web

Biography - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

Review articles, How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition (November 2014), and How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Companies (October 2015) address the role of information technology in strategy. Dr. Porter’s... View Details

04 May 2021
Book

Best Buy: How Human Connection Saved a Failing Retailer

purpose as “enriching people’s lives through technology by addressing key human needs.” Best Buy’s competitive advantage had always been the unique customer service provided by its sales associates, but that only mattered if they truly... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail

August 2022
Case

Atlanta Ransomware Attack (A)

By: Amit Goldenberg and Julian Zlatev

This case describes the March 2018 Ransomware attack on the information technology (IT) systems of the city of Atlanta and the response by Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and her administration. The case includes a brief background on Bottoms and her young administration at... View Details

Web

Partners - Case Method Project

the Arts West Palm Beach, FL FL 2 of 37 Virgilio Beato Sebring High School Sebring, FL Subjects: Grade 11/12 American Government FL 3 of 37 Samantha Beovich Freedom High School Orlando, FL FL 4 of 37 Heather Boos Frank H Peterson Academies of View Details

22 Nov 2010
Research & Ideas

Seven Strategy Questions: A Simple Approach for Better Execution

strategy is, it won't work forever. There will be booms and busts, customer preferences will change, competitors will introduce new products, and disruptive new technologies will emerge in unexpected places. This brings us to the final... View Details

Keywords: by Robert Simons

April 1995 (Revised July 1995)
Case

Power Play (B): Sega in 16-bit Video Games

Home video-game systems were pioneered by the U.S. company Atari in the mid-1970s. After going through boom and bust in the early 1980s, the industry was resurrected in the mid-1980s by the Japanese company Nintendo. With its 8-bit video-game system, Nintendo... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Competition; Video Game Industry; Japan; United States

28 Sep 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Digital Interactivity: Unanticipated Consequences for Markets, Marketing, and Consumers

Keywords: by John A. Deighton & Leora Kornfeld

March 2010 (Revised February 2011)
Case

Cognizant 2.0: Embedding Community and Knowledge Into Work Processes

By: Robert G. Eccles and Thomas H. Davenport

Knowledge management has been a high priority for Cognizant Technology Solutions since its inception since its global delivery model requires the global sharing of knowledge. Its first major tool was called the Knowledge Management Appliance but as Web 2.0 tools came... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Management; Knowledge Sharing; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Product Development; Service Delivery; Business Processes; Organizational Structure; Cooperation; Information Technology Industry

2017
Working Paper

The Use and Misuse of Patent Data: Issues for Corporate Finance and Beyond

By: Josh Lerner

Patents and citations are powerful tools for understanding innovative activity inside the firm and are increasingly used in corporate finance research. But due to the complexities of patent data collection and the changing spatial and industry composition of innovative... View Details

Keywords: Patents; Analytics and Data Science; Corporate Finance; Research; Problems and Challenges

April 2009 (Revised August 2009)
Case

Backchannelmedia: Making Television 'Clickable'

By: Sunil Gupta, Kavita Shukla and Zachary Scott Clayton

Backchannelmedia (BCM), a three-year-old start-up, intended to completely disrupt the world of advertising by transforming the way Americans watched television. BCM had developed a technology to make television "clickable," enabling viewers to interact with the content... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Investment; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Marketing Strategy; Partners and Partnerships; Competition

January 2020 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Freelancer, Ltd.

By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes

Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500... View Details

Keywords: Freelancers; Platforms; Digital Labor; Labor; Human Resources; Management; Internet and the Web; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Industry; Australia; United States; Philippines

March 2016 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Reinventing Best Buy

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

On March 1, 2017, Best Buy Company, Inc., North America’s largest retailer of consumer electronics and appliances, announced a third year of comparable-store sales increases and a 20.8% increase in domestic comparable online sales. These results were in marked contrast... View Details

Research Summary

(formerly Leonard-Barton) Creating and Exploiting Knowledge-Based Assets

By: Dorothy A. Leonard

For the past decade, Dorothy Leonard's research has focused on how companies develop and exploit strategically advantageous knowledge assets. In her 1995 book Wellsprings of Knowledge (HBS Press), she identified and described in depth, activities that create and... View Details

May 2021 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Coats: Supply Chain Challenges

By: Willy C. Shih and Adina Wong

Coats, the largest thread maker in the world, transformed its business to digital colour measurement so that it could respond better to customer demand in the garment industry for rapid product cycles and more fragmented colour choices. Its embrace of digital colour... View Details

Keywords: Inventory Management; Supply Chains; Digital; Operations; Supply Chain Management; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Asia