Publications

December 2014 (Revised May 2015)
Case

Growth Hacking at Bazaart (A)

By: Jeffrey Bussgang and Matthew G. Preble

The four founding members of Bazaart—a young Israeli company whose sole product was its eponymous mobile application (app) which allowed users to create collages from photographs and other images—face an important strategic decision in June 2014. Since its founding... View Details

Keywords: Growth Hacking; Customer Acquisition; Startup Marketing; Startup; Startup Nation; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Customers; Marketing; Social Marketing; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Israel

02 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

Why We Still Need Twitter: How Social Media Holds Companies Accountable

social media as a tool to expose corporate misconduct, Heese and Pacelli used data from the 3G (third generation) mobile broadband network rollout to identify increased activity on Twitter, plus they studied... View Details

Keywords: by Kasandra Brabaw; Technology

October 2018 (Revised July 2023)
Case

Innovation at Uber: The Launch of Express POOL

By: Chiara Farronato, Alan MacCormack and Sarah Mehta

Set in March 2018, the case follows ride-sharing company Uber as it develops and launches a new product called Express POOL. This product offers a reduced price to riders willing to carpool, walk a short distance to/from their pick-up and drop-off points, and wait a... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Applications and Software; Digital Platforms; Decision Making; Technology Industry; California; San Francisco

2025
Working Paper

Dynamic Personalization with Multiple Customer Signals: Multi-Response State Representation in Reinforcement Learning

By: Liangzong Ma, Ta-Wei Huang, Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli

Reinforcement learning (RL) offers potential for optimizing sequences of customer interactions by modeling the relationships between customer states, company actions, and long-term value. However, its practical implementation often faces significant challenges.... View Details

Keywords: Dynamic Policy; Deep Reinforcement Learning; Representation Learning; Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment; Latent Variable Models; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Foreign Direct Investment; Analytics and Data Science

SSRN

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26 Sep 2023
Book

Digital Strategy: A Handbook for Managing a Moving Target

clearly epitomized by the advent and affirmation of the electronic processing and sharing of data at a magnitude and speed that in no way we have seen before. The digital age... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Information Technology; Information Technology

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; Technology Industry; Turkey

12 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

New Research Explores Multi-Sided Markets

operating system companies need both end-users and application developers. Increasingly, thanks in large part to technology and the Internet, multi-sided markets are becoming... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

14 Dec 2010
First Look

First Look: Dec. 14

president of media strategy and digital media for the NFL, was faced with the challenge of determining the league's strategic approach to the wireless market—and presenting his views to NFL team owners. What... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

May 2004 (Revised March 2005)
Case

Instant Messaging

By: David B. Yoffie and Deborah Freier

Explores the usage and technology of instant messaging (IM). IM enables two or more users to communicate almost instantaneously over the Internet with short, private text messages. Most IM service providers chose to remain proprietary and, therefore, a user of most IM... View Details

Keywords: Network Effects; Standards; Communication Technology; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Internet and the Web; Web Services Industry

Find at Harvard

28 Apr 2015
First Look

First Look: April 28

Zeal as they consider their product development strategy. In February 2013, serial entrepreneurs John Danner and Sanjay Noronha cofounded Zeal, an education technology start-up providing a web-based, View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

11 Nov 2014
First Look

First Look: November 11

http://hbr.org/2014/11/how-not-to-cut-health-care-costs/ar/1 November 2014 Harvard Business Review How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition By: Porter, Michael E., and James E. Heppelmann Abstract—Information View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

15 Nov 2011
First Look

First Look: November 15

duopoly rather than to remain a monopolist. Bias in Search Results?: Diagnosis and Response Author:Benjamin Edelman Publication:The Indian Journal of Law and Technology 7... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2017
Working Paper

Salience through Information Technology: The Effect of Balance Availability on the Smoothing of SNAP Benefits

By: Andrew Hillis

Recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) run out of most benefits before halfway through a benefit deposit cycle. I study the introduction of a mobile software application, Fresh EBT, that enables beneficiaries to check their available balance... View Details

Keywords: Mobile Technology; Welfare or Wellbeing; Technology Adoption; Behavior

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March 2016 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Reinventing Best Buy

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

On March 1, 2017, Best Buy Company, Inc., North America’s largest retailer of consumer electronics and appliances, announced a third year of comparable-store sales increases and a 20.8% increase in domestic comparable online sales. These results were in marked contrast... View Details

03 Dec 2007
Research & Ideas

Authenticity over Exaggeration: The New Rule in Advertising

Consumers," HBS professor John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld, research director of Canada's Mobile MUSE Consortium, pinpoint 5 qualities of success in this new world of digital media marketing. In this new... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Publishing; Advertising

06 Mar 2012
First Look

First Look: March 6

productive. The authors have studied when 161 countries adopted 104 technologies over the past 200 years, and they conclude that profound economic advantages-as measured by per capita income-accrue to early... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2015
Case

BOLT: Seed Venture Capital Firm

By: William A. Sahlman and Robert F. White

BOLT is a different kind of seed venture capital firm built to serve the needs of early-stage startups at the intersection of hardware and software.

In the past decade, the cost of entrepreneurial experimentation has dropped dramatically, particularly in web... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Accelerator; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Venture Capital; Applications and Software; Information Infrastructure; Strategy