Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(284)
- Faculty Publications (52)
- November 2018
- Case
Swissgrid: Enterprise Risk Management in a Digital Age
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Anette Mikes
Kurt Meyer, chief risk officer of Swissgrid, the Swiss national electricity transmission system operator, reflects on the risk management system he installed after the deregulation and liberalization of the European energy market. With 41 connections to other European... View Details
- October 2018 (Revised August 2023)
- Case
Safecast: Bootstrapping Human Capital to Big Data
By: Ethan Bernstein and Stephanie Marton
On March 11, 2011, at 2:46pm, a 9.1-on-the-Richter-scale, six-minute long earthquake unleashed a tsunami that ravaged the Tohoku region of Japan, damaging the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power facility and releasing sufficient radioactive material into the air and ocean... View Details
Keywords: Citizen Science; Creative Commons; Open Data; Open Architecture; Volunteer-based Organization; Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Facility; 311; Nuclear; Radiation; Crowdsourcing; Bgeigie; Geiger Counters; Kickstarter; Sustainability; Sustainable Business And Innovation; Design; Energy Generation; Social Entrepreneurship; Human Capital; Innovation and Invention; Crisis Management; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Information Technology; Business Model; Energy Industry; Technology Industry; Japan; North and Central America; Europe
- February 2018 (Revised September 2018)
- Case
Huawei: How Can We Lead the Way?
By: Elie Ofek, Tian Tao, Eden Yin and Nancy Hua Dai
On September 12, 2017, just as Apple’s Tim Cook was unveiling the iPhone X, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group (CBG), and Glory Cheung, his Chief Marketing Officer, were discussing some key strategic issues regarding Huawei’s smartphone business.... View Details
- September 2017 (Revised March 2023)
- Background Note
Production Processes
By: Willy Shih and Michael W. Toffel
This note describes four broad categories of process architectures and then examines the nature of task assignment that typically would be found in a factory organized along the lines of each process type. It then delves more deeply into work flow policies, materials... View Details
- April 14, 2017
- Article
Companies Like United Need to Cultivate Good Judgment, and Free Their Employees to Use It
By: John A. Deighton
United Airlines has pledged to improve its training programs and empower its employees to put customers first in the wake of a video showing a passenger being dragged from a plane. Of all the U.S. air carriers, United should have known the power of social media and... View Details
- April 2017
- Article
Introduction to Special Issue: The Consumer in a Connected World
By: John A. Deighton, Jacob Goldenberg and Andrew T. Stephen
- November–December 2016
- Article
The Impact of Patent Wars on Firm Strategy: Evidence from the Global Smartphone Industry
By: Yongwook Paik and Feng Zhu
Strategy scholars have documented in various empirical settings that firms seek and leverage stronger institutions to mitigate hazards and gain competitive advantage. In this paper, we argue that such “institution-seeking” behavior may not be confined to the pursuit of... View Details
- October 2016
- Case
Supercell
By: William R. Kerr, Benjamin F. Jones and Alexis Brownell
Supercell is a young Finnish smartphone game company with an unusual team structure and company philosophy. It is already one of Finland’s most valuable companies, and despite being only six years old, it has put up some impressive numbers: as of 2016, it has released... View Details
- September 2016
- Teaching Note
Apple Pay
By: Shelle Santana and Sunil Gupta
- 2016
- Working Paper
The Impact of Patent Wars on Firm Strategy: Evidence from the Global Smartphone Market
By: Feng Zhu
Strategy scholars have documented in various empirical settings that firms seek and leverage stronger institutions to mitigate hazards and gain competitive advantage. In this paper, we argue that such “institution-seeking” behavior may not be confined to the pursuit of... View Details
- August 2015 (Revised December 2016)
- Case
Apple Pay
By: Sunil Gupta, Shelle Santana and Margaret L. Rodriguez
On September 9, 2014, in front of a packed audience in Cupertino, CA, Tim Cook, the chief executive officer of Apple, announced the much anticipated launch of Apple Pay. "Our vision is to replace this [wallet] and we are going to start with payments." Cook then invited... View Details
Keywords: Technology; Digital Services And Strategy; Launch; Mobile; Mobile Payments; Apple; Payments; Smartphone; Apple Pay; Eddy Cue; Jennifer Bailey; iOS; Iphone; Marketing; Product; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Product Launch; Finance; Credit Cards; Technology Industry; Banking Industry; United States; United Kingdom
- June 2015 (Revised February 2017)
- Case
Uber and Stakeholders: Managing a New Way of Riding
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Daniel Fox
By 2015, technological innovations—the smartphone and the advanced data connectivity that enabled it—created new opportunities for people to move around cities quickly and conveniently without owning a car, via car-sharing services like Zipcar or new ride-sharing... View Details
Keywords: Uber; Ride-sharing; Sharing Economy; Transportation Network Company; Leadership And Change Management; Stakeholder Management; Managing Change; Leadership; Regulation; Smartphones; Web-enabled Application; Disruptive Technology; Startup Management; Entrepreneurship; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Transportation; Mobile Technology; Transportation Industry; Technology Industry
- May 2015 (Revised October 2015)
- Case
Apple Inc. in 2015
By: David B. Yoffie and Eric Baldwin
At the end of 2014, Apple Inc. recorded the most profitable quarter of any firm in history, and its market capitalization soon topped $700 billion. 'Apple Inc in 2015' explores the history of Apple, its successes under Jobs, its continued growth under Tim Cook, and the... View Details
Keywords: Competition; Innovation; Market Positioning; Marketing Implementation; Planning; Products; Strategy; Strategic Positioning; Technology; Information Technology; Strategic Planning; Product Positioning; Leadership; Communication; Competitive Advantage; Product; Innovation and Invention; Computer Industry; Electronics Industry
- February 2015 (Revised August 2016)
- Case
Nokia's Bridge Program: Redesigning Layoffs (A)
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Susan J. Winterberg
"Not another Bochum." Nokia Board Chairman Jorma Ollila was clear in the goals he set for the 2011 restructuring that Nokia's new CEO, Stephen Elop, had decided was necessary to address the dramatically changed competitive environment the company faced in smartphones... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Match Your Own Price? Self-Matching as a Retailer's Multichannel Pricing Strategy
By: Pavel Kireyev, Vineet Kumar and Elie Ofek
Multichannel retailing has created several new strategic choices for firms. With respect to pricing, an important decision is whether to offer a "self-matching policy." Self-matching allows a multichannel retailer to offer the lowest of its online and in-store prices... View Details
- November 2014 (Revised January 2017)
- Case
Micromax: Scaling the Largest Indian Mobile Handset Company
By: Ranjay Gulati, Rachna Tahilyani and Alicia DeSantola
It is January 2014 and Rahul Sharma, cofounder of Micromax Informatics (Micromax), the largest Indian mobile handset company, is preparing for an emergency conference call with his private equity investors. In the last six years, Micromax had grown its annual product... View Details
- March 2014
- Case
MediaTek: From Feature Phones to Smartphones
By: Willy Shih
MediaTek was the third largest fabless semiconductor company in the world, and was the second largest supplier of the silicon microchips that powered mobile phones. Yet as the company's chairman reflected on his R&D strategy, he wondered why it hadn't moved faster on... View Details
- January 2014 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
The Rise and Fall of Nokia
By: Juan Alcacer, Tarun Khanna and Christine Snively
In 2013, Nokia sold its Device and Services business to Microsoft for €5.4 billion. For decades Nokia had led the telecommunications (telecom) industry in handsets and networking. By the late 2000s, however, Nokia's position as market leader in mobile devices was... View Details
- September 2013
- Case
PadFone vs. FonePad
By: Willy Shih and Sen Chai
To Jonney Shih, Chairman of ASUSTek Computer, the introduction of Apple's iPad made clear the need to transition his company to a new cloud-computing era. But the company's roots in the manufacture of Windows-powered desktop and notebook PCs bounded the creativity of... View Details
Keywords: Mobile Phones; Smartphone; Tablet Computer; Android; Recombination; Design Thinking; Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Strategy; Adaptation; Business Strategy; Commercialization; Competitive Strategy; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Information Technology Industry; Computer Industry; Communications Industry; Technology Industry; Asia; Taiwan; Europe; United States
- June 2013 (Revised November 2013)
- Case
Bluefin Labs: The Acquisition by Twitter
By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
What is the value of Bluefin Labs's social listening data to Twitter? Acquired by Twitter in 2013, Bluefin had built a system that gathered millions of online comments in an effort to develop new metrics for TV programs and brand advertising. With data from Twitter... View Details