Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(675)
- Faculty Publications (74)
- April 2021
- Case
Codecademy: Where to Next?
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Max Mailman and Sarah Ascherman
In March 2020, Zach Sims, co-founder and CEO of online education platform Codecademy, prepared for a meeting with his Chief of Staff Kunal Ahuja to discuss the company’s goals. Codecademy billed itself as the largest online resource for computer science literacy and... View Details
Keywords: Monetization Strategy; Business Model; Change Management; Venture Capital; Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Management Teams; Marketing Channels; Product Marketing; Network Effects; Product Development; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; United States
- January 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
eToro: Building the World's Largest Social Trading Network
By: Elie Ofek and Danielle Golan
Social trading platform eToro was preparing for the launch of its expanded offering in the U.S. The company faced critical decisions regarding product-market fit, go-to-market strategy, positioning and monetization. Moreover, it faced the challenge of how best to make... View Details
- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Jumia's Path to Profitability
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in September 2019 as Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, co-founders and co-CEOs of Jumia, the leading Pan-African e-commerce platform, are contemplating the company’s path to profitability in the aftermath of a fragile investor sentiment, as the company... View Details
Keywords: Retail; Business Models; Business Model; Business Startups; Emerging Markets; For-Profit Firms; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Globalization; Entrepreneurship; Competition; Expansion; Logistics; Profit; Resource Allocation; Diversification; Corporate Strategy; Retail Industry; Technology Industry; Africa
- October 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Supplement
Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations During COVID-19 (C)
By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in August 2020 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are navigating Migros through COVID-19 and the unprecedented... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Globalization; Competition; Expansion; Logistics; Profit; Resource Allocation; Diversification; Corporate Strategy; Crisis Management; Health Pandemics; Strategic Planning; Food and Beverage Industry; Turkey
- October 2020
- Supplement
OpenIDEO (B)
By: Karim R. Lakhani, Anne-Laure Fayard, Manos Gkeredakis and Jin Hyun Paik
In the midst of 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic was unfolding, OpenIDEO—an online open innovation platform focused on design-driven solutions to social issues—rapidly launched a new challenge to improve access to health information, empower communities to stay safe... View Details
Keywords: Innovation Competitions; IDEO; Contests; Contest Design; Platforms And Ecosystems; Open Innovation; Open And User Innovation Strategy; Diversity; Design; Social Entrepreneurship; Global Range; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Social and Collaborative Networks; Health Pandemics; Health; Information; Business and Community Relations; Digital Platforms
- August 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations (A)
By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in November 2019 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are contemplating what the best fulfillment format and... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Supplement
Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations (B)
By: Antonio Moreno and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in February 2020 as Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and chief large-format and online retail officer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), Turkey’s oldest and one of its largest supermarket chains, are looking over the results of the fulfillment pilot the... View Details
- March 2020
- Case
Thingtesting: Launching a Brand Discovery and Testing Digital Community
By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery
Thingtesting, a brand discovery and testing digital community devoted to uncovering and exploring direct-to-consumer brands, had just received seed funding and was contemplating a second year of growth. The new year brought many challenges, as founder Jenny Gyllander... View Details
Keywords: Influencer Marketing; Monetization; Female Ceo; Female Entrepreneur; Female Protagonist; Influencers; Influencer; Direct-to-consumer; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Marketing Communications; Consumer Products Industry; Financial Services Industry; Advertising Industry; London; United Kingdom; United States; Europe; North America
- 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
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 16 Capturing Value by Controlling Bottlenecks in Open Platform Systems
The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the means by which firms capture value in open platform systems. I begin by arguing that the surplus value created by complementarities within a technical system will be split among the owners of the unique and essential... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 17 The Wintel Standards-based Platform
The purpose of this chapter is to use the theory of bottlenecks laid out in previous chapters to better understand the dynamics of an open standards-based platform. I describe how the Wintel platform evolved from 1990 through 2000 under joint sponsorship of Intel and... View Details
- September 2019 (Revised September 2020)
- Case
SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command (Abridged)
By: Herman Leonard, Mitch Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik and Kerry Herman
James "Hondo" Geurts, the Acquisition Executive for U.S. Special Operations Command was in the middle of his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017 to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. Overseeing acquisitions in one of the... View Details
- March 2019
- Case
HOPI: Turkey's Shopping Companion
By: Sunil Gupta, Donald Ngwe and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in 2017 as Onur Erbay, CEO of HOPI, a multi-vendor loyalty platform, is contemplating a critical decision. The case chronicles the origins of Boyner Group, the parent company of HOPI and a major retailer in Turkey, and development of retail and customer... View Details
Keywords: Loyalty Programs; Multi-vendor Platform; Retail; Big Data; Customer Relationship Management; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Business Model; Analytics and Data Science; Competitive Strategy; Decision Making; Applications and Software; Digital Platforms; Technology Industry; Retail Industry; Turkey
- March 2019
- Teaching Note
Numenta: Inventing and (or) Commercializing AI
By: David B. Yoffie
This teaching notes accompanies the Numenta case, HBS No. 716-469. The focus is how to scale a new artificial intelligence technology, how to build a platform and overcome chicken-or-the-egg problems, and how to utilize open source software and licensing. View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 15 The IBM PC
The IBM PC was the first digital computer platform that was open by as a matter of strategy, not necessity. The purpose of this chapter is to understand the IBM PC as a technical system and set of organization choices in light of the theory of how technology shapes... View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 5 Complementarity
The purpose of this chapter is to relate the theory of task networks and technology set forth in previous chapters to theories of firm boundaries from economics and management. Complementary goods have more value when used together than separately. Complementarity may... View Details
Keywords: Complementarity
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 14 Introducing Open Platforms and Ecosystems
The purpose of this chapter is to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive theoretical investigation of open platform systems. To do this, we must first recognize that, although there is a strong family resemblance among all platform systems, there are different types of... View Details
- September 2018 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Apple Pay and Mobile Payments in Australia (A)
By: Feng Zhu, Susan Athey and David Lane
In summer 2016, four of Australia’s top five banks petitioned regulators for permission to bargain collectively with Apple over the terms under which they would support its digital wallet, Apple Pay. They argued that doing so would force concessions from Apple that... View Details
- July 2018 (Revised December 2018)
- Case
SOFWERX: Innovation at U.S. Special Operations Command
By: Herman Leonard, Mitchell Weiss, Jin Hyun Paik and Kerry Herman
James “Hondo” Geurts, the Acquisition Executive for U.S. Special Operations Command, was in the middle of his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017 to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. The questions had a common theme: how... View Details
Keywords: James Geurts; Innovation; Public Entrepreneurship; Open Innovation; Crowdsourcing; Contests; Prototyping; SOFWERX; Special Operations; SOCOM; Govtech; Procurement; FAR; EZ-Fly; Navy; Department Of Defense; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Acquisition; Public Administration Industry; United States
- January 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Case
ZappRx
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Olivia Hull
In October 2015, ZappRx founder Zoe Barry is deciding between two business models for her health technology start-up. Her product, a software application that aims to expedite the prescription fulfillment process for patients with rare diseases, has attracted interest... View Details