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- Faculty Publications (58)
Analogy
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- July 2015 (Revised April 2016)
- Case
Lomography: Analog in a Digital World
By: John T. Gourville, Karol Misztal and Emer Moloney
In spite of the world's move to digital photography, in 2013 Lomography continues to design and offer analog (film) cameras to a loyal following of artistic photographers. Now it must decide whether to stick to its traditional offerings, to expand into artistic lenses... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Configurations of Extremal Type II Codes
By: Noam D. Elkies and Scott Duke Kominers
We prove configuration results for extremal Type II codes, analogous to the configuration results of Ozeki and of the second author for extremal Type II lattices. Specifically, we show that for n∈{8,24,32,48,56,72,96} every extremal Type II code of length n is... View Details
Keywords: Mathematical Methods
- 2015
- Working Paper
Strategy-Proofness, Investment Efficiency, and Marginal Returns: An Equivalence
By: John William Hatfield, Fuhito Kojima and Scott Duke Kominers
We show that a mechanism induces an agent to make efficient ex ante investment choices if and only if it rewards that agent with his marginal surplus; additionally, for an ex post efficient mechanism, these properties are equivalent to strategy-proofness for the agent.... View Details
- December 2014
- Technical Note
The Thermostat Industry: Transformation from Analog to Digital
By: Karim R. Lakhani, Kerry Herman and Christine Snively
This note examines the evolution of the thermostat industry as it transitioned from analog to digital technologies. It presents an overview of key industry participants and the shift in value creation and value capture models for firms. View Details
- December 2013
- Supplement
Rough Justice: Stuart Eizenstat and Holocaust-Era Asset Restitution (B)
By: James K. Sebenius and Laurence A. Green
This case carefully traces the process by which Stuart Eizenstat handled the negotiation challenges outlined in "Rough Justice: Stuart Eizenstat and Holocaust-Era Asset Restitution (A)". It describes the outcome of the Swiss negotiations and briefly sketches... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Adjusting National Accounting for Health: Is the Business Cycle Countercyclical?
By: Mark Egan, Casey B. Mulligan and Tomas J. Philipson
Many national accounts of economic output and prosperity, such as gross domestic product (GDP) or net domestic product (NDP), offer an incomplete picture by ignoring, for example, the value of leisure, home production, and the value of health. Previous discussed... View Details
- December 2012 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
AmTran Technology Ltd.
By: Willy Shih, Jyun-Cheng Wang and Karen E. Robinson
As an original design manufacturer (ODM) of television sets and leading supplier to Vizio, a market leader in the U.S. for LCD flat panel TVs, AmTran Technology Ltd. uses what founder Alpha Wu describes as a "WE" model in which western companies perform sales,... View Details
Keywords: Modularity; Technology Transitions; Analog; Digital; Television; TV; Flat-panel; ATSC; NTSC; Video; Global Strategy; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Development; Product Design; Supply Chain; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Technology Adoption; Digital Platforms; Electronics Industry; Taiwan; United States; Japan
- August 2012 (Revised August 2013)
- Background Note
Competency-Destroying Technology Transitions: Why the Transition to Digital Is Particularly Challenging
By: Willy Shih
Some technology transitions are exceedingly difficult for incumbent firms to execute. The bankruptcy filing by the Eastman Kodak Company highlighted the difficulty companies faced when their core business transitioned from an analog to a digital world. Kodak's business... View Details
Keywords: Technology Transitions; Competency-destroying; Digital; Analog; Digital Transition; Modular; Modularity; Technological Change; Radical Innovation; Incremental Innovation; Architectural Innovation; Modular Innovation; Sustaining Innovation; Competency-enhancing; Noise Propagation; Perfect Copying; Digital Music; Digital Media; Consumer Electronics; Kodak; Sony; Panasonic; Disruptive Innovation; Technology Adoption; Transition; Change Management; Consumer Products Industry; United States
- July 2012
- Article
Discrete Choice Cannot Generate Demand That Is Additively Separable in Own Price
By: Sonia Jaffe and Scott Duke Kominers
We show that in a unit demand discrete choice framework with at least three goods, demand cannot be additively separable in own price. This result sharpens the analogous result of Jaffe and Weyl (2010) in the case of linear demand and has implications for testing of... View Details
- Article
Testing Substitutability
By: John William Hatfield, Nicole Immorlica and Scott Duke Kominers
We provide an algorithm for testing the substitutability of a length-N preference relation over a set of contracts X in time O(|X|3⋅N3). Access to the preference relation is essential for this result: We show that a substitutability-testing algorithm with access only... View Details
- Article
Stability and Competitive Equilibrium in Matching Markets with Transfers
By: John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers
This note surveys recent work in generalized matching theory, focusing on trading networks with transferable utility. In trading networks with a finite set of contractual opportunities, the substitutability of agents’ preferences is essential for the guaranteed... View Details
Keywords: Matching; Networks; Joint Ventures; Stability; Competitive Equilibrium; Core; Efficiency; Economics; Theory
- 2010
- Article
On the Classification of Type II Codes of Length 24
By: Noam D. Elkies and Scott Duke Kominers
We give a new, purely coding-theoretic proof of Koch's criterion on the tetrad systems of Type II codes of length 24 using the theory of harmonic weight enumerators. This approach is inspired by Venkov's approach to the classification of the root systems of Type II... View Details
Keywords: Mathematical Methods
- November 2009 (Revised June 2012)
- Case
Crisis and Reform in Japan's Banking System (A)
By: Thierry Porte, Rawi E. Abdelal, Laura Alfaro and Jonathan Schlefer
In 1997, amidst Japan's ongoing financial problems, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto sought to restructure the financial sector to make it more transparent and globally competitive. He hoped that this effort, dubbed the "Big Bang" after the British financial... View Details
- November 2009 (Revised June 2012)
- Supplement
Crisis and Reform in Japan's Banking System (B)
By: Thierry Porte, Rawi E. Abdelal, Laura Alfaro and Jonathan Schlefer
In 1997, amidst Japan's ongoing financial problems, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto sought to restructure the financial sector to make it more transparent and globally competitive. He hoped that this effort, dubbed the "Big Bang" after the British financial... View Details
- October 2009 (Revised July 2012)
- Case
Emotiv Systems Inc.: It's the Thoughts that Count
By: Elie Ofek, Jason Riis and Paul Hamilton
Emotiv is getting ready to launch its innovative brain-computer interfacing (BCI) technology. The company has developed a special headset, called EPOC, and highly sophisticated software that can translate a person's emotions, cognitive thoughts, and facial expressions... View Details
- September 2008
- Article
Response to Farjoun's 'Strategy Making, Novelty, and Analogical Reasoning' Commentary on Gavetti, Levinthal, and Rivkin (2005)
By: G. Gavetti, Daniel A. Levinthal and Jan W. Rivkin
- January 2008
- Article
Seek Strategy the Right Way at the Right Time
By: G. Gavetti and Jan W. Rivkin
Deliberate, emergent, and analogical approaches to finding the best strategy all have their advan-tages, depending on where an industry is in its life cycle. Be open to the best option at each juncture and wise enough to make the right call. View Details
- Article
Stretching the Effectiveness of Analogical Training in Negotiations: Teaching Diverse Principles for Creating Value
By: Simone Moran, Yoella Bereby-Meyer and Max Bazerman
- October 2007 (Revised January 2008)
- Case
The Transformation of Thomson
By: David J. Collis and Troy Smith
Thomson, a French multinational, went through a decade of dramatic change in the early years of the 21st century. From a state-owned enterprise earning 97% of its revenue from television sets and other analog consumer electronics, Thomson had become a publicly traded... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Coupled Search Processes: Why Is it so Difficult to Find that Organizational Design Matters?
By: Nicolaj Siggelkow and Jan Rivkin
Organizational design affects performance via coupled search processes. At low frequency, managers search for appropriate organizational designs. At higher frequency, managers use designs to search for high-performing operational choices. The two searches are coupled:... View Details