Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(268)
- Faculty Publications (99)
- March 2020
- Module Note
Business Model Transformation in the Platform Age
By: Feng Zhu
Although some digital platforms are highly successful, most firms today are still traditional product- or service-based firms. To take advantage of the opportunities created by platform business models, traditional firms can work with existing platforms to become their... View Details
- February 2020
- Teaching Note
Upwork: Reimagining the Future of Work
By: Feng Zhu and Shirley Sun
Teaching Note for HBS No. 616-027. View Details
- January 2020 (Revised February 2020)
- Teaching Note
edaixi (eWash): Digital Transformation of Laundry Services (A) and (B)
By: Feng Zhu
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 617-034 and 617-038. View Details
- December 2019
- Supplement
Korea Telecom: Building a GiGAtopia (B)
By: Shane Greenstein, Feng Zhu and Susie L. Ma
- December 2019
- Supplement
Interview with Stephen L. Herbert, X Fire Paintball & Airsoft: Protagonist in 617-046 X Fire Paintball & Airsoft
By: Willy C. Shih and Feng Zhu
This is an interview with Stephen L. Herbert, founder of X Fire Paintball & Airsoft, in which he discusses competing with his online channel, Amazon. It is for use with HBS Case No. 617-046 X Fire Paintball & Airsoft. View Details
- December 2019
- Article
What Is Different About Digital Strategy?: From Quantitative to Qualitative Change
By: Ron Adner, Phanish Puranam and Feng Zhu
The recent attention paid to the challenge of digital transformation signals an inflection point in the impact of digital technology on the competitive landscape. We suggest that this transition can be understood as a shift from the quantitative advances that have... View Details
- November 2019
- Teaching Note
JD: Envisioning the Future of Retail (A) and (B)
By: Feng Zhu and Shirley Sun
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 618-051 and 619-079. View Details
Keywords: E-commerce
- September 2019 (Revised November 2019)
- Case
Pinduoduo
Founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneur, Colin Huang, Pinduoduo Inc. (PDD) had become China’s fastest-growing e-commerce platform in history. PDD pioneered a new approach to online shopping that allowed shoppers to share products, invite friends to form shopping teams,... View Details
- 2018
- Article
Threat of Platform-Owner Entry and Complementor Responses: Evidence from the Mobile App Market
By: Wen Wen and Feng Zhu
We examine how app developers on the Android mobile platform adjust their innovation efforts (rate and direction) and value-capture strategies in response to Google’s entry threat and actual entry into their markets. We find that, after Google’s entry threat increases,... View Details
- June 21, 2019
- Article
When Tech Companies Compete on Their Own Platforms
By: Feng Zhu
One common complaint from third parties about platform businesses is that they see what succeeds on their platforms and then enter the most profitable areas themselves, often decimating third parties in the process. Studies have identified several motivations for... View Details
- June 2019 (Revised November 2019)
- Supplement
JD: Envisioning the Future of Retail (B)
By: Feng Zhu and Shirley Sun
Supplements the (A) case. View Details
- May 2019 (Revised October 2019)
- Teaching Note
ZBJ: Building a Global Outsourcing Platform for Knowledge Workers (A) and (B)
By: Feng Zhu and Margaret Vo
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 618-044 and 618-046. View Details
- May 2019 (Revised August 2019)
- Teaching Note
X Fire Paintball & Airsoft: Is Amazon a Friend or Foe? (A) and (B)
By: Feng Zhu
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 617-046 and 617-047. View Details
- May–June 2019
- Article
U-Shaped Conformity in Online Social Networks
By: Monic Sun, Michael Zhang and Feng Zhu
We explore how people balance their needs to belong and to be different from their friends by studying their choices of a virtual-house wall color on a leading Chinese social-networking site. The setting enables us to randomize both the popular color and the adoption... View Details
- Article
Friends or Foes? Examining Platform Owners' Entry into Complementors' Spaces
By: Feng Zhu
As platform owners continue to expand their ecosystems, many of them have started to provide consumers with their own complementary applications. These moves position the platform owners as direct competitors to their complementors. This paper surveys empirical studies... View Details
- January–February 2019
- Article
Why Some Platforms Thrive and Others Don't
By: Feng Zhu and Marco Iansiti
In the digital economy, scale is no guarantee of continued success. After all, the same factors that help an online platform expand quickly—such as the low cost of adding new customers—work for challengers too. What, then, allows platforms to fight off rivals and grow... View Details
- October 2018
- Article
Competing with Complementors: An Empirical Look at Amazon.com
By: Feng Zhu and Qihong Liu
Platform owners sometimes enter complementors' product spaces to compete against them directly. Prior studies have offered two possible explanations for such entries: platform owners may target the most successful complementors so as to appropriate value from their... View Details
- September 2018
- Article
Do Experts or Crowd-Based Models Produce More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia
By: Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu
Organizations today can use both crowds and experts to produce knowledge. While prior work compares the accuracy of crowd-produced and expert-produced knowledge, we compare bias in these two models in the context of contested knowledge, which involves subjective,... View Details
- April 2018 (Revised November 2019)
- Case
JD: Envisioning the Future of Retail (A)
By: Feng Zhu and Shirley Sun
JD, China’s second largest e-commerce company by gross merchandise volume (GMV) after Alibaba, had expanded rapidly from 2012 to 2016. When the company celebrated its 13th birthday in 2017, Richard Liu, its founder, deliberated on the company’s growth strategies. The... View Details