Publications

05 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

Venture Capital Goes Boom—or Bust?

University of Illinois, Netscape became embroiled in a messy intellectual-property dispute. Despite these challenges, on its first day of trading, Netscape soared to a market capitalization of $2.1 billion. Why did Andreessen and Clark succeed where Brooks failed? Part... View Details

Keywords: by Paul A. Gompers & Josh Lerner

Research Summary

Pay-What-You-Want

In pay-what-you-want settings, typical marketplace dynamics are inverted: buyers, not sellers, determine the price. According to classic economic theory, the rational response of consumers in such situations is to pay nothing, but that is not what happens in actual... View Details

July 2011 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Game Time Decision for AppDirect

By: Andrei Hagiu, Laura Arjona and Emily Zhang

AppDirect is a start-up that offers small businesses software-as-a-service solutions through a business app marketplace and portal. Daniel Saks, co-founder and co-CEO, is faced with the key question of deciding distribution strategy: should AppDirect find channel... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Distribution; Applications and Software; Innovation Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Business Growth and Maturation; Competitive Strategy; Information Technology Industry; United States

01 Sep 2024
News

Back to School

There are some things you just can’t learn in an HBS classroom—what it takes to jump out of an airplane, for instance, or the experience of playing at the World Series of Poker. Yet those kinds of out-of-office pursuits are important, says HBS assistant professor Jon... View Details

Keywords: April White; illustrations by Josh Cochran

07 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Three Steps for Crisis Prevention

Bazerman Failures of prioritization arise when potential threats are recognized by leaders but not deemed sufficiently serious to warrant immediate attention. Monsanto fell into this trap in late 1999 when CEO Robert Shapiro and his... View Details

Keywords: by Michael D. Watkins & Max H. Bazerman

04 Mar 2009
Op-Ed

Credit is Not the Bogey

down; savings are up. Yet a simplistic credit-as-bogey outlook masks a more nuanced picture. From a different vantage, credit was an economic white knight. Easy credit fueled the prosperity of the past decade. American statesman Daniel... View Details

Keywords: by Nicolas P. Retsinas & Eric S. Belsky; Construction; Real Estate; Financial Services

01 May 2018
News

Elon Musk’s Unusual Compensation Plan Isn’t Really About Compensation at All

05 Jul 2004
Research & Ideas

Radical Change, Entrepreneurial Opportunity

firm, how do you adapt to this really new technology? And as an established firm, how can you influence the perspective of others and ultimately the industry's evolution? In attempting to adapt, firms are constrained by their prior... View Details

Keywords: by Michael J. Roberts; Technology

January 2025 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Blue Frontier: Disrupting Air Conditioning

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jacob A. Small

Serial entrepreneur Daniel Betts founded Blue Frontier in South Florida to offer a climate-friendly solution to increase air conditioning efficiency and dehumidify using new technology he developed. Backed by significant venture capital, Blue Frontier had to choose... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Technological Innovation; Market Entry and Exit; Performance Efficiency; Business Strategy; Florida

April 2009 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Supply Chain Partners: Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

Virginia Mason Medical Center (VM) hired Owens & Minor (O&M) as its alpha vendor for medical/surgical supplies in 2004. By 2005, O&M was performing Just-in-Time and Low Unit of Measure services for VM, but they believed the pricing model in the industry was outdated.... View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Price; Distribution; Supply Chain Management; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

Roberto Verganti (rverganti@hbs.edu) is in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. He teaches Design Theory and Practice for the View Details

Keywords: automotive; computer; consumer products; electronics; fashion; food; furniture; high technology; home appliances; industrial goods; pharmaceuticals; semiconductor; software; telecommunications; textiles

10 Jun 2002
Research & Ideas

Reinventing the Industrial Giant

problem, Kodak has turned to digital cameras. In fact, Kodak CEO, Daniel Carp, "is betting the company on a digital strategy." Carp believes that digital cameras will increase sales by 8 percent to... View Details

Keywords: by Nitin Nohria, Davis Dyer & Frederick Dalzell; Manufacturing

January–February 2019
Article

Cracking Frontier Markets

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon

Executive Summary:
With emerging-market giants such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China experiencing slowdowns, investors, entrepreneurs, and multinationals are looking elsewhere. They’ve been eyeing frontier economies such as Nigeria and Pakistan with great... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Market Entry and Exit; Growth and Development Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Innovation and Invention; Development Economics

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26 Jun 2007
First Look

First Look: June 26, 2007

Working PapersTaxes, Institutions and Foreign Diversification Opportunities Authors:Mihir A. Desai and Dhammika Dharmapala Abstract Investors can access foreign diversification opportunities through either foreign portfolio investment (FPI) or foreign direct... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

22 Feb 2022
News

New Urban Order

By 2050, nearly 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities, according to a 2018 UN report, up from 55 percent today. That means making room for and creating the infrastructure for another 2.5 billion people to live, work,... View Details

Keywords: Kathleen Fu, Deborah Blagg, Julia Hanna, and Maureen Harmon; illustrations by; energy; environment; sustainability; entrepreneurship; Transit and Ground Passenger Transportation; Transportation; Water, Sewage and Supply Systems; Utilities; Construction of Buildings; Construction; Waste Management and Remediation Services; Corporate Services

Innovation and Design in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

At the heart of any innovation process lies a fundamental practice: the way people create ideas and solve problems. This “decision making” side of innovation is what scholars and practitioners refer to as “design.” Decisions in innovation processes have so far been... View Details

2016
Working Paper

Mapping the Economic Grand Tour: Travel and International Emulation in Enlightenment Europe

By: Sophus A. Reinert

As the itinerant wizard (technically one of the Maiar, if not the Istari) Gandalf wrote to the then domestically-inclined hobbit Frodo Baggins in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, “Not all those who wander are lost.” Indeed, as the recent brouhaha over the... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Globalization