Disruptive Technology - Publications - Faculty & Research

30 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

The Upside of Highlighting a Product's Downsides

their products and downplay risks, fearing that any negative sentiment might hurt demand. But research led by Ryan W. Buell, a professor in the HBS Technology and Operations Management Unit, and doctoral student MoonSoo Choi found that... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

Web

Launching Tech Ventures | HBS Online

manage your company. Launching Tech Ventures focuses specifically on technology companies and the early strategic decisions that founders, joiners and VCs must make to find a viable business model that has product-market fit. The course... View Details

21 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

The Pandemic Conversations That Leaders Need to Have Now

creates a more genuine style of leadership communication. Interactivity turns that communication into a two-way dialogue, allowing management to respond to workers’ needs better, and act on their insights. Technology can facilitate a... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg, Robin Abrahams, and Katherine Connolly Baden

14 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Restarting Under Uncertainty: Managerial Experiences from Around the World

other countries outside China such as Germany and Sweden before local contagion even started, allowing precious time to acquire personal protective equipment before it became scarce. Second, since the company was able to foresee large View Details

Keywords: by Raffaella Sadun, Andrea Bertoni, Alexia Delfino, Giovanni Fassio, and Mariapaola Testa

20 Jan 2023
News

Free Spirits

attention-begging designs give away its second disruptive innovation, which is to fully embrace its NA-ness, according to Annie Wilson (PhDBA 2020). A behavioral scientist and lecturer of marketing at the Wharton School who wrote a case... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Food Services and Drinking Places; Hospitality

01 Mar 2018
News

Every Trick in the Book

Borders is gone. So are B. Dalton, Waldenbooks, and Crown Books. Barnes & Noble, headed by CEO Demos Parneros (AMP 178, 2010), now has about 630 physical bookstores—down from more than 700 in 2011. But the number of independent bookstores, a breed declared endangered... View Details

Keywords: April White

02 Feb 2015
Research & Ideas

Disruptors Sell What Customers Want and Let Competitors Sell What They Don’t

Over the past two decades, entire industries have been disrupted by Internet competitors who "unbundled" their content and delivered it to consumers in new ways. Newspapers lost out to Google and Craigslist, record companies to iTunes and... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

26 Aug 2024
Research & Ideas

Can AI Match Human Ingenuity in Creative Problem-Solving?

When ChatGPT and other large language models began entering the mainstream two years ago, it quickly became apparent the technology could excel at certain business functions, yet it was less clear how well artificial intelligence could handle more creative tasks. Sure,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Information Technology; Information; Technology

03 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

Everyone Knows Innovation is Essential to Business Success—Except Board Directors

Open the Wall Street Journal on any given day, and you are likely to find at least one story about how technology is disrupting yet another industry, and the pressures companies face to innovate. And yet,... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

January 2013
Supplement

Microsoft Server & Tools (B)

By: Marco Iansiti and Alain Serels

Supplement for case 613031. Update on progress of Microsoft's Server & Tools Business through July 2011. Satya Nadella and his team explore whether or not to support Linux on Windows Azure. View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Disruptive Innovation; Information Technology; Information Technology Industry

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October 2019 (Revised January 2020)
Background Note

Evolution of the Drone Industry

By: Rory McDonald, Andy Wu, Emilie Billaud and Ryan Bayer

This note focuses on the development of the drone industry in recent years and provides insights on the drone technology, regulations, applications, market size, top players, and ecosystem. This note was written in conjunction with the case study “Parrot: Navigating... View Details

Keywords: Drones; Information Technology; Disruption; Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Engineering; Product Development; Technology Industry; Asia; Europe; North America; United States

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01 Apr 2000
News

At Cyberposium, Amazon's Bezos Debunks Internet Myths

movie theaters did with the advent of television. Myth #2: There are no barriers to entry on the Internet. What about the huge sums, asked Bezos, that Amazon and other e-commerce companies invest in their businesses? Barriers to entry are actually getting higher in the... View Details

15 Aug 2024
Op-Ed

Post-CrowdStrike, Six Questions to Test Your Company's Operational Resilience

the full stack of technology infrastructure to find out if your business could support continuous operations during an actual disruption. Are there clear roles and responsibilities for business continuity? People: Clearly define and... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson and Anita Lynch

20 Aug 2024
Book

Why Competing With Tech Giants Requires Finding Your Own Edge

turn, strengthens their bargaining position against each of these technology behemoths. To hub or not to hub: Finding the right path to grow your ecosystem When building an ecosystem, companies have choices: they can be a hub or a... View Details

Keywords: by Feng Zhu; Technology; Technology

18 Nov 2013
Op-Ed

Twitter IPO: Overvalued or the Start of Something Big?

focusing on disruptive technologies, offers his analysis of the Twitter IPO phenomenon. In our second-year MBA elective Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise (a course developed by my colleague Clay Christensen), one of the... View Details

Keywords: by Chet Huber; Technology

01 Feb 2002
News

Health Industry Alumni Convene for Conference

analyses. Afternoon sessions included a presentation by HBS professor Clayton Christensen on disruptive technologies in health care; a panel, moderated by HBS professor Gary Pisano, on individually tailored... View Details

Keywords: Ambulatory Health Care Services; Health, Social Assistance

01 Mar 2017
News

HBX: Reimagining HBS for the Digital Age

When considering how to enter the digital learning arena, HBS did what any startup would do. It began in 2012 by identifying a challenge: How to merge the unique elements of the HBS learning experience with the latest technology to create... View Details

07 Dec 2016
HBS Case

Why Millennials Flock to Fintech for Personal Investing

Millennials are disruptive bunch. The first generation to grow up with the internet, consumers born after 1980 are used to relying on technology and engineering to do almost everything—including shopping... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

25 Sep 2000
Research & Ideas

More Than the Sum of Its Parts: The Impact of Modularity on the Computer Industry

whole system. In effect, each module was free to evolve along its own trajectory. By accommodating unforeseen, after-the-fact improvements, the modular approach unleashed value for the system as a whole. At the request of Working Knowledge, Dean Clark, an expert in... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Technology; Technology; Technology