Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,135)
- Faculty Publications (624)
- March 2024 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Angel City Football Club: Scoring a New Model
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Jennifer Fonstad and Nicole Tempest Keller
In January 2024, Kara Nortman, Julie Uhrman, and Natalie Portman, the founders of Angel City Football Club (ACFC) were developing the club’s first three-year strategic plan. Founded in 2020, ACFC had a star-studded investor group, including Portman and celebrities such... View Details
- March 2024 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
Amperity: First-Party Data at a Crossroads
By: Elie Ofek, Hema Yoganarasimhan and Alexis Lefort
In the summer of 2023, Amperity management was facing a critical decision on its future direction. Given the dramatic changes occurring within the digital advertising ecosystem, as concerns over consumer privacy placed limits on the ability to engage in third-party... View Details
- 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
- March 2024
- Case
Nomad: A License to Bank
By: Paul A. Gompers and Pedro Levindo
In late 2023, Lucas Vargas, CEO and co-founder of Nomad, a fintech that offered financial services in the United States for Brazilian residents, had to decide what to do to ensure the company’s continued expansion. Nomad launched its first product, a U.S. digital bank... View Details
Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Startups; Customer Satisfaction; Decision Making; Entrepreneurship; Banks and Banking; Initial Public Offering; Global Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Organizational Culture; Going Public; Ownership Stake; Innovation and Invention; Strategic Planning; Business and Government Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Corporate Strategy; Diversification; Expansion; Vertical Integration; Leadership; Law; Banking Industry; Technology Industry; Service Industry; Brazil; United States; North America; Latin America
- March 7, 2024
- Article
Integrating Digital Tools into Every Stage of Your Sales Strategy
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Georg Krentzel
In their growth and customer-acquisition activities, most companies now face twin challenges: understanding and responding to omni-channel buying behavior and doing that without inadvertently decreasing sales productivity. Thirty years ago, Peter Drucker noted that... View Details
- February 2024
- Teaching Note
UGG Steps into the Metaverse
By: Shunyuan Zhang and Sunil Gupta
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 523-013. View Details
- February 2024
- Teaching Note
AB InBev: Brewing Up Forecasts during COVID-19
By: Mark Egan and C. Fritz Foley
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 224-020. In July 2021, the CEO of AB InBev's European operations and his team strategized to position the company for success post-pandemic. As the world's largest beer company, boasting over 500 brands, revenue of $46 billion, and a... View Details
- February 2024
- Module Note
Collaborate on the Core, Compete on the Edges
By: Frank Nagle
In the rapidly evolving environment of modern business, the digitization of economic activity and the ubiquitous integration of technology across industries are fundamentally altering how companies develop and implement strategy. The rise of digital technologies has... View Details
- February 21, 2024
- Article
The NFT Staircase: How Digital Ownership Benefits Brands and Consumers
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Steve Kaczynski
One of our goals with our new book, The Everything Token: How NFTs and Web3 Will Transform the Way We Buy, Sell, and Create, is to unlock the power of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, for business. National and international brands are already using NFTs in some of... View Details
- February 2024
- Case
Does “Matter” Matter? Amazon and Open Standards in the Smart Home Industry
By: Frank Nagle
In early 2023, the smart home industry stood at a pivotal juncture. The recent launch of “Matter” version 1.0, an ambitious interoperability standard developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), promised to unify a fragmented market plagued by incompatible... View Details
- February 2024
- Case
AGENTS.inc: Pathways to Growth at an AI Startup
By: Frank Nagle, Manuel Hoffmann, Karoline Ströhlein and Susan Pinckney
The case describes the history of AGENTS.inc. Despite being a small startup, with only four employees, that had never had a funding round, the company boasted an impressive client portfolio including multiple Fortune 500 companies. While AGENTS.inc had been an early... View Details
Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Business Startups; Small Business; Transformation; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decisions; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Financial Strategy; AI and Machine Learning; Digital Platforms; Technological Innovation; Copyright; Management; Growth and Development; Market Timing; Ownership; Risk and Uncertainty; Competition; Open Source Distribution; Entrepreneurial Finance; Computer Industry; Europe; Germany
- February 9, 2024
- Article
The Rise of Consumer Crypto
By: Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers
Although non-fungible tokens are often misunderstood and even derided, they remain a general and flexible solution for establishing and tracking ownership in the digital domain. As a superior solution to existing technology in many areas of the consumer economy, their... View Details
- February 2024 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Uniswap: Fighting a Vampire Attack (A)
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Shweta Bagai and Liang Wu
This is the first of a three-case series that explores the challenges faced by Uniswap, a key player in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. Founded by Hayden Adams, the case traces Uniswap's rapid growth from a simple idea inspired by a Reddit post to becoming one... View Details
Keywords: Blockchain; Cryptocurrency; Crypto Economy; Community; Decentralization; Decentralized Exchange; Decentralized Finance; Open Platforms; Open-source Innovation; Market Distruption; Stablecoin; Vampire Attack; Web3; Token; Digital Platforms; Entrepreneurship; Governance; Technological Innovation; Competitive Strategy; Financial Liquidity; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; United States
- February 2024
- Case
Adventures Inc: 21st Century Brand Building
By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott
Founded in 2020, Adventures worked with celebrities in Brazil to create and launch digitally native brands. The idea was to match the celebrity’s skill in creating content and entertaining fans with Adventures’ skill in consumer packaged goods marketing and operations.... View Details
Keywords: Digital Brand; Influencer Marketing; Growth And Scaling; Capital Constraints; Brand Portfolio Strategy; CPG; Start-up; Celebrity Endorsement; Digital Marketing; Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Advertising; Social Media; Business Startups; Joint Ventures; Brands and Branding; Brazil
- February 2024
- Case
FIGS: Scrubbing the Status Quo
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Nicole Tempest Keller
In October 2023, FIGS had revolutionized the medical scrubs industry with its fashionable and functional designs, but the venture was at a critical juncture. The digitally native vertical brand (DNVB) had gone public in a successful IPO in 2021 and reached $500 million... View Details
- Working Paper
Visual Uniqueness in Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces: Machine Learning Model Development, Validation, and Application
By: Flora Feng, Charis Li and Shunyuan Zhang
Peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces have seen exponential growth in recent years featured by unique offerings from individual providers. Despite the perceived value of uniqueness, scalable quantification of visual uniqueness in P2P platforms like Airbnb has been largely... View Details
- January 2024
- Case
Huawei: Resilience amid Autarky and Adversity
By: William C. Kirby and Daniel Fu
In September 2023, Huawei made a dramatic return to the global smartphone space with the launch of its Mate 60 Pro smartphone, equipped with an indigenously designed, 7nm chip. This came despite a myriad of export controls and restrictions imposed against the company... View Details
Keywords: International Strategy; Semiconductors; Smartphone; Government And Politics; Government And Business; Digital Infrastructure; 5G; Political Risk; Business and Government Relations; Global Strategy; Multinational Firms and Management; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; AI and Machine Learning; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Leadership; Retirement; Corporate Strategy; Technology Industry; China; United States; Europe; Asia; Middle East
- January 2024
- Article
Dog Eat Dog: Balancing Network Effects and Differentiation in a Digital Platform Merger
By: Chiara Farronato, Jessica Fong and Andrey Fradkin
Digital platforms are increasingly the subject of regulatory scrutiny. In comparison to multiple competitors, a single platform may increase consumer welfare if network effects are large or may decrease welfare due to higher prices or reduction in platform variety. We... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Veeva Systems: The Next Frontier
By: Satish Tadikonda and William Marks
Born out of a desire to bring technological advances in enterprise software into the healthcare vertical, Peter Gassner and Matt Wallach founded Veeva to bring life sciences companies into the digital age for data management in both the commercial and R&D sectors. Over... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
KOKO Networks: Bridging Energy Transition and Affordability with Carbon Financing
By: George Serafeim, Siko Sikochi and Namrata Arora
The problem was massive: two million hectares of African forests were lost annually to charcoal production for cooking, an area equivalent to 13 times Greater London, resulting in one billion tons of carbon emissions yearly. At the same time, an estimated 700,000... View Details
Keywords: Clean Tech; Digital; Carbon Credits; Carbon Offsetting; Climate Change; Entrepreneurship; Energy Sources; Environmental Sustainability; Health; Market Design; Business Startups; Transition; Environmental Regulation; Policy; Energy Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Africa; Kenya; Rwanda