Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(284)
- Faculty Publications (60)
- January 2020
- Case
Lunchclub: Algorithmic Networking
By: Scott Duke Kominers and George Gonzalez
Algorithmic networking startup Lunchclub coordinates in-person meetings between professionals who would have been unlikely to meet. The company faces marketplace design, growth, and monetization challenges: The executive team has to refine Lunchclub's marketplace... View Details
- January 2020
- Case
SK Group: Social Progress Credits
By: George Serafeim, Ethan Rouen and David Freiberg
SK Group was one of the largest companies South Korea. A family-run conglomerate consisting of around 120 subsidiaries and employing more than 100,000, SK was tightly knit into the fabric of Korean society. SK viewed their future success as contingent upon the strength... View Details
Keywords: Impact; Impact Investing; Impact Measurement; Social Value; Social Development; Conglomerates; Measurement Of Purpose; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Capital Markets; Innovation; Environmental Impact; Collaboration; Social Enterprise; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Issues; Measurement and Metrics; Value Creation; Cooperation; Environmental Sustainability; Employment; Accounting; Energy Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Chemical Industry; South Korea
- September 2019 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
Engineering an Inclusive Bioeconomy
By: Tarun Khanna, Raffaella Sadun and Susie L. Ma
In 2019, entrepreneur Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio was developing a project he hoped could generate and share wealth from the natural resources of the Amazon without destroying those resources. His idea, called Earth Bank of Codes (EBC), would create a library of the... View Details
Keywords: Decision Making; Development Economics; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Intellectual Property; Emerging Markets; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Science; Genetics; Natural Environment; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Social Enterprise; Strategy; Strategic Planning; Information Technology; Ownership; Social Psychology; Trust; Society; Biotechnology Industry; South America; Amazon Basin
- April 2019 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
Raksul
By: Scott Duke Kominers, Masahiro Kotosaka, Nobuo Sato and Akiko Kanno
Raksul, 2018 Forbes Japan "Startup of the Year," ran an e-commerce platform drawing upon thousands of individual suppliers. Launched as a business-to-business printing services marketplace, Raksul had recently expanded to operate both a logistics/delivery marketplace... View Details
- 2019
- Article
Big Data
By: John A. Deighton
Big data is defined and distinguished from a mere moment in the “ancient quest to measure.” Specific discontinuities in the practice of information science are identified that, the paper argues, have large consequences for the social order. The infrastructure that runs... View Details
- July 2018
- Article
Marketplaces, Markets, and Market Design
By: Alvin E. Roth
Marketplaces are often small parts of large markets, and both markets and marketplaces come in many varieties. Market design seeks to understand what marketplaces must accomplish to enable different kinds of markets. Marketplaces can have varying degrees of success,... View Details
- June 2018
- Case
Feeding America (A)
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alan Lam
This case describes how Feeding America, the third-largest nonprofit organization in the U.S., designed a marketplace for allocating donated food across its network of food banks. It considers the promises and pitfalls of using market-based allocation in the context of... View Details
- Article
Good Markets (Really Do) Make Good Neighbors
This article gives a (very) brief exposition of what market design is, along with four examples of market design in action. Loosely themed after Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” the examples demonstrate ways in which market design can break barriers—physical,... View Details
- March 2018 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
Matching Markets for Googlers
By: Bo Cowgill and Rembrand Koning
This case describes how Google designed and launched an internal matching market to assign individual workers with projects and managers. The case evaluates how marketplace design considerations—and several alternative staffing models—could affect the company’s goals... View Details
- Article
Strategy-Proofness of Worker-Optimal Matching with Continuously Transferable Utility
By: Ravi Jagadeesan, Scott Duke Kominers and Ross Rheingans-Yoo
We give a direct proof of one-sided strategy-proofness for worker-firm matching under continuously transferable utility. A new “Lone Wolf” theorem (Jagadeesan et al., 2017) for settings with transferable utility allows us to adapt the method of proving one-sided... View Details
- January 2018 (Revised February 2018)
- Technical Note
Making Markets
Explains how to identify and capitalize on marketplace design opportunities. Defines markets and marketplaces and describes the basic functions of each. Discusses attributes (e.g., heterogeneity of participants' preferences and asymmetry in available information) that... View Details
- November 2017
- Case
Poppy: A Modern Village for Childcare
By: Thomas Eisenmann and Jeff Huizinga
In 2017, management at Poppy, which matched families that required occasional childcare with thoroughly vetted caregivers, was formulating plans for the Seattle-based seed-stage startup’s next phase of expansion. One option was to grow using the same business model... View Details
- Article
An Invitation to Market Design
By: Scott Duke Kominers, Alexander Teytelboym and Vincent P. Crawford
Market design seeks to translate economic theory and analysis into practical solutions to real-world problems. By redesigning both the rules that guide market transactions and the infrastructure that enables those transactions to take place, market designers can... View Details
Keywords: Matching; Trading; Scrip; Liquidity; Efficiency; Equity; Allocation Rules; Marketplaces; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Auctions
- October 2017
- Case
Shift Technologies, Inc.
By: Thomas Eisenmann and Nicole Tempest Keller
In 2017, management at Shift, an online marketplace that uses a “high touch,” concierge approach to buy and sell used cars, was formulating plans for the San Francisco–based startup’s next phase of expansion. One option was to preserve Shift’s current business model... View Details
- October 2017
- Case
Updating Dating
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Scott Duke Kominers and Alan Lam
To identify design ideas for their own startup, two MBAs compare the different profiling, matching, and monetization approaches employed by five incumbent dating services: Coffee Meets Bagel, OKCupid, Jiayuan, Dating Ring, and HurryDate. View Details
Keywords: Marketplace Design; Dating Services; Entrepreneurship; Market Design; United States; China
- 2017
- Working Paper
Digital Agility: The Impact of Software Portfolio Architecture on IT System Evolution
By: Alan MacCormack, Robert Lagerström, Martin Mocker and Carliss Y. Baldwin
The modern industrial firm increasingly relies on software to support its competitive position. However, the uncertain and dynamic nature of today’s global marketplace dictates that this software be continually evolved and adapted to meet new business challenges. This... View Details
- 2017
- Book
Global Marketing Management: A Casebook
By: John A. Quelch
During the last quarter century, international business was shaken by a revolution in global competition unlike any previously experienced. As companies move through the twenty-first century, they need to be aware of the range of powerful, dynamic, and often... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Minimizing Justified Envy in School Choice: The Design of New Orleans' OneApp
By: Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Yeon-Koo Che, Parag A. Pathak, Alvin E. Roth and Oliver Tercieux
In 2012, New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD) became the first U.S. district to unify charter and traditional public school admissions in a single-offer assignment mechanism known as OneApp. The RSD also became the first district to use a mechanism based on Top... View Details
- January 2017
- Article
Contract Design and Stability in Many-to-Many Matching
By: John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers
We develop a model of many-to-many matching with contracts that subsumes as special cases many-to-many matching markets and buyer/seller markets with heterogeneous and indivisible goods. In our setting, substitutable preferences are sufficient to guarantee the... View Details
- 2016
- Article
Peer-to-Peer Markets
By: Liran Einav, Chiara Farronato and Jonathan Levin
Peer-to-peer markets such as eBay, Uber, and Airbnb allow small suppliers to compete with traditional providers of goods or services. We view the primary function of these markets as making it easy for buyers to find sellers and engage in convenient, trustworthy... View Details