Platform Differentiation - Publications - Faculty & Research - Harvard Business School

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Research Summary

Science-Based Business and the Business of Science

By: H. Kent Bowen

Science and technology can provide strategic advantage to companies' through differentiated products and processes. The focus of our research is on unusually productive and creative labs that are the sources of breakthroughs that create platforms for sustained... View Details

31 Aug 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Exclusivity and Control

Keywords: by Andrei Hagiu & Robin S. Lee; Entertainment & Recreation

May 2025
Case

Boutiqaat: Influencing Retail in MENA

By: Juan Alcacer and Noor Al Qadhi

Boutiqaat, a Kuwait-based e-commerce platform, scaled an influencer-driven beauty retail model across MENA and now faces critical strategic choices about offline expansion and globalization. Founded in 2015, Boutiqaat combined social commerce, localized logistics, and... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Digital Strategy; Growth and Development; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Retail Industry; Kuwait; Saudi Arabia; Middle East; North Africa

May 2025
Teaching Note

Boutiqaat: Influencing Retail in MENA

By: Juan Alcacer and Noor Al Qadhi

Boutiqaat, a Kuwait-based e-commerce platform, scaled an influencer-driven beauty retail model across MENA and now faces critical strategic choices about offline expansion and globalization. Founded in 2015, Boutiqaat combined social commerce, localized logistics, and... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Digital Strategy; Growth and Development; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Retail Industry; Kuwait; Saudi Arabia; Middle East; North Africa

May 2016 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Fasten: Challenging Uber and Lyft with a New Business Model

By: Feng Zhu and Angela Acocella

Fasten, a new ridesharing start-up in Boston, entered the scene in September 2015 hoping its unique vision of transparency for both driver and passenger and strategy to keep riders' fares low and charge drivers a flat $0.99 fee per ride as opposed to the 20-30%... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Transportation; Business Startups; Business Model; Transportation Industry; Boston

22 Feb 2017
HBS Seminar

Juliet Schor, Boston College

October 2023
Case

Vida Health: Transforming Chronic Disease Treatment

By: William Sahlman and Nicole Tempest Keller

San Francisco based Vida Health, founded by Stephanie Tilenius, former vice president of Commerce and Payments at Google, was a B2B digital health startup focused on the treatment of cardiometabolic conditions, such as diabetes and obesity. Its innovative digital... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Health Care and Treatment; Product Marketing; Risk and Uncertainty; Technological Innovation; Health Industry; Technology Industry; United States; California; San Francisco

December 2019
Case

Steemit: A New Social Media?

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Alexander White and Karen Elterman

This case discusses the alternative social media site Steemit, including the principles it was founded on in 2016 and the challenges it faced in 2019. Steemit was a blockchain-based platform that aimed to differentiate itself from other social media companies by... View Details

January 2008 (Revised May 2011)
Case

Cognizant Technology Solutions

By: Robert G. Eccles, David Lane and Prabakar 'PK' Kothandaraman

In the highly competitive information technology outsourcing industry, Cognizant Technology Solutions has developed a strategy to differentiate itself by emphasizing building very close client relationships through its "Two-in-a-box" (TIB) model. This model is based on... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Knowledge Sharing; Resource Allocation; Competitive Advantage; Information Technology; Information Technology Industry

11 Feb 2025
HBS Seminar

Brett Hollenbeck, University of California, Los Angeles

November–December 2023
Article

Look the Part? The Role of Profile Pictures in Online Labor Markets

By: Isamar Troncoso and Lan Luo

Profile pictures are a key component of many freelancing platforms, a design choice that can impact hiring and matching outcomes. In this paper, we examine how appearance-based perceptions of a freelancer’s fit for the job (i.e., whether a freelancer "looks the part"... View Details

Keywords: Freelancers; Gig Workers; Demographics; Prejudice and Bias; Selection and Staffing; Jobs and Positions; Analytics and Data Science

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September 2016 (Revised March 2020)
Teaching Note

Fasten: Challenging Uber and Lyft with a New Business Model

Fasten, a new ridesharing start-up in Boston, entered the scene in September 2015 hoping its unique vision of transparency for both driver and passenger and strategy to keep riders' fares low and charge drivers a flat $0.99 fee per ride, as opposed to the 20%–30%... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Transportation; Business Startups; Business Model; Transportation Industry; Boston

March 2025 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Perplexity: Redefining Search

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Michelle Hu, Sriraghav Srinivasan and Radhika Kak

By early 2025, Perplexity had rapidly evolved from a modest startup into a popular "answer engine" valued at $9 billion. The company had boldly positioned itself as the disruptor to Google aiming to redefine search for the AI age. Through novel AI... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Venture Capital; Innovation Leadership; Technological Innovation; Internet and the Web; Business Startups; Competitive Strategy; Business Model; Technology Industry; United States

June 2024 (Revised August 2024)
Case

Revlon India's Turnaround: Navigating Online-Offline Decisions Using a Balanced Scorecard

By: Tatiana Sandino and Samuel Grad

Revlon India was founded as a joint venture in 1995, pairing the industrial conglomerate UMG with the global beauty brand Revlon, Inc. to bring international color cosmetics to India. After growing rapidly and pioneering the Beauty Advisor (BA) model in India, the... View Details

June 2022
Article

The Welfare Effects of Peer Entry in the Accommodation Market: The Case of Airbnb and the Accommodation Industry

By: Chiara Farronato and Andrey Fradkin

We study the effects of enabling peer supply through Airbnb in the accommodation industry. We present a model of competition between flexible and dedicated sellers—peer hosts and hotels—who provide differentiated products. We estimate this model using data from major... View Details

Keywords: Peer To Peer; Airbnb; Digital Platforms; Market Entry and Exit; Competition; Accommodations Industry

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2018
Working Paper

The Welfare Effects of Peer Entry in the Accommodation Market: The Case of Airbnb

By: Chiara Farronato and Andrey Fradkin

We study the effects of enabling peer supply through Airbnb in the accommodation industry. We present a model of competition between flexible and dedicated sellers - peer hosts and hotels - who provide differentiated products. We estimate this model using data from... View Details

Keywords: Peer To Peer; Digital Platforms; Market Entry and Exit; Competition; Accommodations Industry

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02 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 3, 2008

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14222 Cases & Course MaterialsCognizant Technology Solutions Harvard Business School Case 408-099 In the highly competitive information technology outsourcing industry, Cognizant Technology Solutions has developed a strategy to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2012 (Revised September 2012)
Case

INRIX

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Ryan Johnson

Since its founding in 2004, INRIX, a leading global provider of traffic information and driver services, had received four rounds of financing from leading venture capital (VC) firms and by 2012 had been cash flow positive for the past six quarters. Its founder, Bryan... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Exit or Shutdown; Business Startups; Organizational Structure; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Competitive Strategy; Information Technology Industry; Service Industry; Washington (state, US)

2022
Working Paper

Small Campaign Donors

By: Laurent Bouton, Julia Cagé, Edgard Dewitte and Vincent Pons

In this paper, we study the characteristics and behavior of small donors, and compare them to those of large donors. We first build a novel dataset including all the 340 million individual contributions reported to the U.S. Federal Election Commission between 2005 and... View Details

Keywords: Campaign Finance; Campaign Contributions; Small Donations; ActBlue; WinRed; TV Advertising; Political Elections; Finance; Demographics; Advertising; Analysis; Analytics and Data Science

November 2019 (Revised December 2020)
Case

Grupo Éxito: Facing Colombia's Competitive Grocery Retail Industry

By: José B. Alvarez, Carla Larangeira, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Miguel Diaz Moreno

Grupo Éxito, a leading South American retailer, faced declining market shares in Colombia in 2019 with the arrival of low-cost competitors and emerging digital trends. Originally founded in Medellín, Éxito had over the course of its seventy-year history evolved from a... View Details

Keywords: Grocery; Market Share; Information Technology; Trends; Competitive Strategy; Retail Industry; Colombia; Latin America

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