Publications

SSRN

January 2021
Supplement

Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher

On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years using a novel technology and data science. ... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Disruption; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Cash Flow; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Brands and Branding; Business Model; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry; United States; California

26 Feb 2001
Research & Ideas

David, Goliath, and Disruption

As elegantly described by HBS professor Clayton M. Christensen in his 1997 bestseller, The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, so-called disruptive technologies are upstart... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

December 2022 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Akooda: Charging Toward Operational Intelligence

By: Christopher Stanton and Mel Martin

The Akooda case describes the challenges confronting founder and CEO Yuval Gonczarowski (MBA ‘17) in 2022 as he attempts to boost sales. Launched in November 2020, Akooda was an AI company that mined 20 different sources of digital data, from tools like Slack, Google... View Details

Keywords: Data Mining; Productivity; Monitoring; Data Analysis; AI and Machine Learning; Knowledge Management; Operations; Problems and Challenges; Employee Relationship Management; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Boston; Israel

March 2022 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Pakistan Rising: Bazaar's Growth Story (A)

By: Paul A. Gompers and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in September 2021 as Hamza Jawaid and Saad Jangda, co-founders of Bazaar technologies (Bazaar), the Pakistani high growth B2B e-commerce marketplace, are contemplating whether the year-and-a half old startup should also venture into offering financing to... View Details

Keywords: B2B; Business Model; Emerging Markets; For-Profit Firms; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Value Creation; Globalization; Competition; Expansion; Profit; Resource Allocation; Diversification; Corporate Strategy; Pakistan

01 Feb 2018
News

After Era That Made It a Verb, Xerox, in a Sale, Is Past Tense

25 Mar 2022
Video

Omobola Johnson

Omobola Johnson, the former Minister of Communication Technology in Nigeria, discusses her transition into a venture capital career and highlights how venture capital enables young Nigerian entrepreneurs to address local challenges. View Details

06 Dec 2017
Blog Post

The 23rd Annual Harvard Business School Tech Conference

(VC) funds. The unifying theme of this year’s conference was ‘The Future We’re Building’. At the baseline, we wanted to discuss emerging technologies and trends such as blockchain, augmented reality/virtual... View Details

Keywords: Technology

August 2019
Case

Synthetic Biology Investment Opportunity

By: Peter Barrett, Karim R. Lakhani, Julia Kelley and Kerry Herman

Using an overview of the emerging technology of Synthetic Biology, this case provides the basis for discussion on what questions one would ask in evaluating a potential investment in the field. View Details

Keywords: Synthetic Biology; Investment

February 1994 (Revised July 2005)
Case

Competitive Information Policy at Pratt & Whitney

By: Lynn S. Paine

Officials at United Technologies Corp. (UTC) must decide on an ethics policy to govern competitive intelligence gathering. The flow of competitor information into the Pratt & Whitney division has declined sharply since adoption of UTC's code of ethics. A rewritten... View Details

Keywords: Policy; Corporate Governance; Ethics; Competition; Information Management; Business or Company Management; Law

22 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

How to Make AI 'Forget' All the Private Data It Shouldn't Have

There’s a virtual elephant in AI’s room: It’s nearly impossible to make the technology forget. And there are an increasing number of scenarios where consumers and programmers may not only want to remove data... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Technology; Technology

2022
Working Paper

Are Experts Blinded by Feasibility?: Experimental Evidence from a NASA Robotics Challenge

By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Zoe Szajnfarber, Jason Crusan, Michael Menietti and Karim R. Lakhani

Resource allocation decisions play a dominant role in shaping a firm’s technological trajectory and competitive advantage. Recent work indicates that innovative firms and scientific institutions tend to exhibit an anti-novelty bias when evaluating new projects and... View Details

Keywords: Evaluations; Novelty; Feasibility; Field Experiment; Resource Allocation; Technological Innovation; Competitive Advantage; Decision Making

SSRN

Read Now

08 Feb 2010
News

Professor Josh Lerner Wins Major Entrepreneurship Prize

09 Apr 2025
Video

Audrey Tang: Taiwan's first digital minister discusses innovation & democracy

02 Jan 2019
What Do You Think?

SUMMING UP: Do We Need an Artificial Intelligence Czar?

AI. It not only requires technological expertise but an even more complex challenge of creating standards and universal formats for organizing and coordinating data and its collection from various sources in... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Technology

May 2016 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Fasten: Challenging Uber and Lyft with a New Business Model

By: Feng Zhu and Angela Acocella

Fasten, a new ridesharing start-up in Boston, entered the scene in September 2015 hoping its unique vision of transparency for both driver and passenger and strategy to keep riders' fares low and charge drivers a flat $0.99 fee per ride as opposed to the 20-30%... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Transportation; Business Startups; Business Model; Transportation Industry; Boston

August 2021
Case

Apax Digital

By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo

The Apax Digital team faced important decisions as they contemplated raising a second fund. Apax Digital Fund I was a $1.1 billion vehicle focused on mid-market growth equity and growth buyouts in the technology sector. The fund had performed well, and the Managing... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Acquisition; Investment Portfolio; Decision Choices and Conditions; Venture Capital; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States