Demand Validation - Publications - Faculty & Research

February 2021 (Revised March 2022)
Case

TikTok in 2020: Super App or Supernova?

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dan Maher and Dan O'Brien

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around a simple idea – helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. In less than a decade, it had become one of the world’s most valuable private companies, with investors... View Details

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16 May 2023
HBS Case

How KKR Got More by Giving Ownership to the Factory Floor: ‘My Kids Are Going to College!’

and antipathy, having bounced from one private equity owner to another four times, ran deep. The strategy demanded that Stavros deeply engage with the operations to discover pain points, like inefficient delivery routes and wasted scrap... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

14 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Curiosity, Not Coding: 6 Skills Leaders Need in the Digital Age

their actions. They must learn to see their decisions and actions as working hypotheses that they can only validate by collecting feedback on their impact as expeditiously as possible. Leaders will be blindsided if they rely only on their... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards; Technology

Web

Podcast - Business & Environment

public and private stakeholders, and the evolving landscape of wildfire detection technology. Carsten provides advice for aspiring climate tech entrepreneurs, emphasizing the need to align impact with profitability. Using AI to Optimize Energy View Details

01 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

Good Leadership Is an Act of Kindness

that these are the most difficult times in memory for many, if not most people. Parents struggle to balance the demands of remote work and homeschooling. Employees who live alone strain to stay focused while isolated from loved ones and... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Susan Seligson

March–April 2023
Article

Market Segmentation Trees

By: Ali Aouad, Adam Elmachtoub, Kris J. Ferreira and Ryan McNellis

Problem definition: We seek to provide an interpretable framework for segmenting users in a population for personalized decision making. Methodology/results: We propose a general methodology, market segmentation trees (MSTs), for learning market... View Details

Keywords: Decision Trees; Computational Advertising; Market Segmentation; Analytics and Data Science; E-commerce; Consumer Behavior; Marketplace Matching; Marketing Channels; Digital Marketing

02 Nov 2023
News

Seeding Startups

readily admits now, was the extensive research necessary to validate his idea. He quickly discovered that the demand simply wasn’t there. “We were too early,” he says. The story of TeamOn Systems, the... View Details

Keywords: April White

01 Sep 2023
News

Solving for Z

she says. “But it’s important for everyone to listen, learn, and grow together.” CHEERS: While it may feed older coworkers’ negative stereotypes of them, Apollo’s Breitfelder says that the latest research on strengths-based coaching actually View Details

Keywords: Alexander Gelfand; Illustrations by Doug Chayka; Administration of Human Resource Programs; Government

01 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Encouraging Dissent in Decision-Making

explained, is that such issues are deemed too threatening to organizational harmony or to individuals' career advancement. As a result, the validity of a principal U.S. rationale for the Vietnam War, the "domino theory," was... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons

03 Apr 2012
First Look

First Look: April 3

812-098 Provides practical guidelines for conducting customer visits to explore and validate demand for an entrepreneurial offering. Reviews conditions under which visits will yield superior insights,... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

22 Apr 2022
Research & Ideas

Companies Can Expand Their Talent Pool by Giving Ex-Convicts a Second Chance

hire workers with a criminal history, especially if crime and safety insurance is available, or if the worker can provide past work performance reviews. The findings were included in a working paper, Increasing the Demand for Workers with... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

Web

Online Entrepreneurship & Innovation Courses | HBS Online

months, 5-6 hrs/week Apply by November 3 $6,500 Credential On Demand Launching Tech Ventures Professor Jeffrey Bussgang Gain proven frameworks to build a viable, valuable tech venture that can profitably scale and attract venture capital.... View Details

22 Dec 2008
Research & Ideas

10 Reasons to Design a Better Corporate Culture

Those who aren't living up to BHC's values soon get the point. Employees at all levels in an organization notice and validate the elements of culture. As owners, they judge every management decision to hire, reward, promote, and fire... View Details

Keywords: by James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser & Joe Wheeler

Web

Entrepreneurship Course Online | HBS Online

Now Key Concepts Identify a business opportunity Evaluate an idea and assess the market Explore the risks and rewards of entrepreneurship Leverage experiments to validate concepts and refine your business strategy Discover the key... View Details

14 Sep 2023
Blog Post

MBAs Accelerate Their Social Enterprise Ventures

energizing relationships with farmers and changemakers that deepened my commitment to create impact in this space. Benjamin: Throughout my summer venture, extensive dialogues with NGOs and migrants across Europe confirmed my hypothesis: a pressing View Details

20 Oct 2010
Op-Ed

Export Competitiveness: Reversing the Logic

export is what has often been understood as "export competitiveness". In this thinking, exports become the target and ultimate goal of economic policy. While the crisis has increased the demand for growth strategies, it has also... View Details

Keywords: by Christian Ketels

22 Feb 2022
News

New Urban Order

Highway As cities reshape themselves and populations increase, demand for goods will rise. And if the pandemic taught us anything about supply and demand, it’s that the trucking system—once largely unnoticed—can become a real bottleneck.... View Details

Keywords: Kathleen Fu, Deborah Blagg, Julia Hanna, and Maureen Harmon; illustrations by; energy; environment; sustainability; entrepreneurship; Transit and Ground Passenger Transportation; Transportation; Water, Sewage and Supply Systems; Utilities; Construction of Buildings; Construction; Waste Management and Remediation Services; Corporate Services

Web

Launching Tech Ventures | HBS Online

This course is part of the Entrepreneurship & Innovation track. Introduction to Launching Tech Ventures START NOW HBS Online now offers this course on-demand, allowing you to begin your learning anytime. No application needed—start your journey today! On View Details

12 Nov 2021
News

Alumni Business Leaders on Confronting the Climate Change Challenge

reliably meet the demand generated by these evolving clean energy technologies. These are but a few of the many opportunities corporate leadership will need to bring into its deliberations on strategy and resource allocation. Also, in... View Details

Web

Frequently Asked Questions | HBS Online

manage start-ups, and finance ventures. This course also introduces participants to the idea that entrepreneurs run structured experiments to validate ideas and refine business strategy. Participants work through real-world challenges... View Details

Publications