Publications

2009
Chapter

Opening Platforms: When, How and Why?

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Geoffrey Parker and Marshall Van Alstyne

Platform-mediated networks encompass several distinct types of participants, including end users, complementors, platform providers who facilitate users' access to complements, and sponsors who develop platform technologies. Each of these roles can be opened-that... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Governance Controls; Market Participation; Digital Platforms

20 Nov 2017
Research & Ideas

How Independent Bookstores Have Thrived in Spite of Amazon.com

stores to 2,227. This surprising resurgence piqued the interest of Ryan Raffaelli, an assistant professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School, who studies how mature organizations and industries faced with View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel (with video by Amelia Kunhardt); Retail

December 2002
Article

Knowledge Seeking and Location Choice of Foreign Direct Investment in the United States

By: Juan Alcacer and Wilbur Chung

To what extent do firms go abroad to access technology available in other locations? This paper examines whether and when state technical capabilities attract foreign investment in manufacturing from 1987-1993. We find that on average state R&D intensity does not... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Acquisition; Foreign Direct Investment; Research and Development; Information Technology; Production; Geographic Location; United States

Read Now

2010
Working Paper

Do Call Centers Promote Education? Evidence from India

By: Emily Fair Oster and Mary Bryce Millett

Over the last two decades in India there have been large increases in outsourced jobs and large increases in schooling rates, particularly in English. Existing evidence suggests the trends are broadly related. In this paper we explore how localized these impacts are;... View Details

Keywords: Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Education; Training; Geographic Location; Technology Industry; India

March 1998 (Revised August 1998)
Case

BSkyB

By: Debora L. Spar

In 1983, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought a floundering two-year-old British company called Satellite Television plc. and renamed it Sky. Without external financing, without having been allocated any space on Britain's existing satellites, and over the opposition of... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Change Management; Television Entertainment; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Great Britain

January 2020
Case

Ninja: Which Platform Wins Esports' Biggest Star?

By: Anita Elberse and Michal T. Leszczynski

It is July 2019, and the business of esports and gaming is booming. Tyler Blevins—better known as Ninja—has risen to stardom playing the immensely popular shooter game Fortnite. He has become the most followed streamer in the world and, helped by his management company... View Details

Keywords: Esports; Platforms; Superstar; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Internet and the Web; Personal Development and Career; Decision Making; Digital Platforms; Technology Industry; Technology Industry

07 Feb 2024
News

The Sound of Success

A groundbreaking gene therapy developed by Akouos, Inc., a precision genetic medicine company founded in 2016 by Emmanuel (Manny) Simons (MBA 2012), has enabled an 11-year-old boy from Morocco to hear sounds for the first time. According to a recent New York Times... View Details

July 2000 (Revised November 2001)
Case

Catalyst Medical Solutions

By: Amy C. Edmondson, Richard M.J. Bohmer and Naomi Atkins

Faced with a drop in the NASDAQ, four eHealth entrepreneurs must decide between two distribution strategies for their new company's technology. The team, comprised of three full-time resident physicians and an MBA, has developed software to enable electronic... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Health Care and Treatment; Distribution; Strategy; Venture Capital; Applications and Software; Partners and Partnerships; Borrowing and Debt; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry

15 Jul 2020
News

A COVID Cure, Racism, and Why Leaders Need to Walk the Talk

Keywords: COVID-19

July 2023
Case

Crocs: Using Community-Centric Marketing to Make Ugly Iconic

By: Ayelet Israeli and Anne V. Wilson

In 2022, the Crocs Classic Clog was the best-selling item of clothing on Amazon, the brand was one of the fastest growing brands in the U.S., and global net revenue had increased to approximately $3.6 billion. By most accounts, Crocs had become the “it” shoe. Crocs... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Product Development; Growth and Development; Customer Value and Value Chain; Digital Marketing; Digital Strategy; Segmentation; Advertising; Consumer Products Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States

22 Nov 2023
News

So You Want to Join a Startup

sells, There's enough left over after the preferred shareholders get paid out that the common shareholders get paid out. There's so many risks that startups have to go through in order to reach success, right? There's technology risk,... View Details

Web

Life at Harvard - Doctoral

Community Anil Doshi Technology & Operations Management Filippo Mezzanotti Business Economics Sarah Wolfolds Strategy Anastassia Fedyk Business Economics Alexandra C. Feldberg Organizational Behavior Rohan Kekre Business Economics Do Yoon... View Details

July–August 2018
Article

Learning by Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Contribution to Crowdsourced Public Goods

By: Frank Nagle

As the economy becomes more information based, firms are increasingly using crowdsourced public goods as inputs for innovation and production. Counterintuitively, some firms pay their employees to contribute to the creation of these goods, which can be used freely by... View Details

Keywords: Open Source Distribution; Applications and Software; Competitive Strategy; Learning; Competitive Advantage

September 2019 (Revised December 2019)
Case

Google: To TVC or Not to TVC?

By: William R. Kerr and Carl Kreitzberg

In late 2018, evidence emerged that many of Google’s temporary help agency workers, vendors, and independent contractors (“TVCs”) were unhappy with the company. TVCs, who reportedly made up 49.95% of Google’s 170,000-person global workforce, had raised concerns of... View Details

13 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

The Color of Private Equity: Quantifying the Bias Black Investors Face

Founders: An Entrepreneur’s Dilemma Fencing Off Silicon Valley: Cross-Border Venture Capital and Technology Spillovers Financial Distancing: How Venture Capital Follows the Economy Down and Curtails Innovation Feedback or ideas to share?... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds; Financial Services

September 2001
Background Note

Note on Application of the Antitrust Laws to the New Economy: An Analysis of United States v. Microsoft Corporation

Analyzes the 1991 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the seminal New Economy antitrust case United States vs. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3rd 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001), which arose out of Microsoft's efforts to promote Internet Explorer... View Details

Keywords: Lawsuits and Litigation; Software; Intellectual Property; Monopoly; Laws and Statutes; Information Technology Industry; District of Columbia