Publications

February 23, 2022
Article

Can WEB3 Bring Back Competition to Digital Platforms?

By: Christian Catalini and Scott Duke Kominers

Like the early Internet, blockchain and Web3 applications promise a new wave of decentralization and competition—yet at the same time, it is unclear which of the dynamics that drove concentration in online platforms and services will remain in force under the Web3... View Details

Keywords: Web3; Blockchain; Interoperability; Internet and the Web; Technological Innovation; Competition; Digital Platforms

Article

A Novel Framework for Reputation-Based Systems

By: Jad Esber and Scott Duke Kominers

November 18, 2021
Article

With Decentralized Identity, Your Reputation Travels with You Across Cyberspace

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Jad Esber

October 26, 2021
Article

It's Time to Knock Down the Walled Gardens of the Payments System

By: Christian Catalini and Scott Duke Kominers

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December 2021
Article

Auctioneers Sometimes Prefer Entry Fees to Extra Bidders

By: Jiafeng Chen and Scott Duke Kominers

We investigate a market thickness–market power tradeoff in an auction setting with endogenous entry. We find that charging admission fees can sometimes dominate the benefit of recruiting additional bidders, even though the fees themselves implicitly reduce competition... View Details

Keywords: Entry; Reserve Prices; Entry Fees; Auctions; Design

Article

The Case for a COVID Vaccine Lottery

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alex Tabarrok

Even the smartest distribution plans are complicated by a stubborn fact: We won't have enough for everyone right away. View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Vaccine; Distribution; Health Pandemics

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July 3, 2020
Article

Delivery Apps Need to Start Treating Suppliers As Partners

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Ian Macomber

Home delivery has shifted from a luxury service aimed at young urban professionals to a core part of many businesses, which is used by almost everyone. That upheaval has strained capacity of many delivery services and changed how they relate to the suppliers that they... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Supply Chain; Performance Capacity; Performance Efficiency; Entrepreneurship

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February 2020
Case

Klöckner & Co: Steeling for a Digital World

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Hoping to get ahead of potential digital disruption at Klöckner & Co.—one of the world’s largest steel and metal distributors—CEO Gisbert Rühl set up both kloeckner.i (KCI), an internal transformation arm, and XOM Materials (XOM), an independent industry platform. KCI... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Market Design; Digital Platforms; Markets; Industry Structures; Supply and Industry; Technology Adoption; Transformation; Digital Transformation; Steel Industry; Information Technology Industry; Europe; Germany

Educators

December 2018
Teaching Note

Feeding America (A) and (B)

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Alan Lam

Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 818-130 and 818-131. View Details

2010
Article

On Congruence Conditions for Primality

By: Sherry Gong and Scott Duke Kominers

July 2012
Article

Discrete Choice Cannot Generate Demand That Is Additively Separable in Own Price

By: Sonia Jaffe and Scott Duke Kominers

We show that in a unit demand discrete choice framework with at least three goods, demand cannot be additively separable in own price. This result sharpens the analogous result of Jaffe and Weyl (2010) in the case of linear demand and has implications for testing of... View Details

Keywords: Discrete Choice; Unit Demand; Separable Demand; Linear Demand; Demand and Consumers; Market Design; Mathematical Methods; Economics

October 2011
Supplement

Online Marketing at Big Skinny — slide supplement

By: Benjamin Edelman and Scott Duke Kominers

Slide Supplement for 911-034 View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products Industry

Article

Configurations of Rank-40r Extremal Even Unimodular Lattices (r=1,2,3)

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Zachary Abel

We show that if L is an extremal even unimodular lattice of rank 40r with r=1,2,3 then L is generated by its vectors of norms 4r and 4r+2. Our result is an extension of Ozeki's result for the case r=1. View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods

17 Jun 2014
First Look

First Look: June 17

Harvard Business School Case 914-011 Progress Energy and Duke Energy (A) Just as Duke Energy and Progress Energy announce their merger-forming the largest utility company in the United States, to be led by... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

15 Nov 2020
News

Global Outposts Expand HBS’s Intellectual Footprint

“Zoom Video Communications and COVID-19,” by Scott Duke Kominers, the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration, and George Gonzalez, senior researcher. The case examines Zoom’s strengths and weaknesses, role in... View Details

December 22, 2023
Article

How NFTs Will Make a Comeback in 2024

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Steve Kaczynski

NFTs are poised to be a major driver of Web3 adoption in 2024 – but the successful projects will look very different from what’s come before. View Details

Keywords: NFTs; Web3; Crypto Economy; Value Creation; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy