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Placement - Doctoral

and Mary Ann Glynn 2021 Michael Christensen Management, 2021 Placement: University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business, Lecturer Dissertation: Antecedents, Process, and Consequences: Strategic Choice in Organization Advisors: Ranjay Gulati (Chair), Jan W.... View Details

December 2015
Article

What Is Disruptive Innovation?

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Michael Raynor and Rory McDonald

For the past 20 years, the theory of disruptive innovation has been enormously influential in business circles and a powerful tool for predicting which industry entrants will succeed. Unfortunately, the theory has also been widely misunderstood, and the "disruptive"... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Theory

December 2022
Article

Shaping Nascent Industries: Innovation Strategy and Regulatory Uncertainty in Personal Genomics

By: Cheng Gao and Rory McDonald

In nascent industries—whose new technologies are often poorly understood by regulators—contending with regulatory uncertainty can be crucial to organizational survival and growth. Prior research on nonmarket strategy has largely focused on established firms in mature... View Details

Keywords: Technological Change; Innovation; Qualitative Methods; New Categories; Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Risk and Uncertainty; Strategy

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Online Business Courses & Certifications | HBS Online

4 weeks, 6-8 hrs/week Enroll by January 30 $1,850 Certificate Disruptive Strategy Professors Rory McDonald & Clayton Christensen Strengthen your capacity to create winning... View Details

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Students on the Job Market - Doctoral

manner. Faculty Advisor(s): Andy Wu (Chair), Jan W. Rivkin , Eric J. Van den Steen , Dennis A. Yao , and Rory McDonald Curriculum Vitae | Website | Email Kyle Schirmann Abstract: Oceans of Sound: Creative... View Details

March 2022
Module Note

Navigating Nascent Industries and Product Categories

By: Rory McDonald

This Note introduces a module of cases used at Harvard Business School to teach fundamental concepts about navigating nascent industries and product categories. It elaborates a set of ‘innovation tensions’ that managers must address in these domains. In connecting the... View Details

Keywords: Nascent Industries; Product; Innovation and Management; Strategy

January 2018
Case

Under Armour

By: Rory McDonald, Clayton M. Christensen, Daniel West and Jonathan E. Palmer

After 20 years of growth unprecedented in the sports apparel industry, Under Armour finds itself with a new record to beat: making the leap from $5 to $10 billion in sales—a feat only accomplished to date by competitors Nike and Adidas. At the heart of this challenge... View Details

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Global Impact of the Collapse | Baker Library | Bloomberg Center | Harvard Business School

default swap contracts. As confidence in the banks eroded, borrowing rates rose and home foreclosures continued to spike. Lawrence McDonald, author and a former vice-president at Lehman Brothers, reflects back on the devastating cost brought about View Details

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Online Business Strategy Courses | HBS Online

Certificate Courses (6) Disruptive Strategy Professors Rory McDonald & Clayton Christensen Strengthen your capacity to create winning strategies and bring innovations to market View Details

June 2020
Article

Parallel Play: Startups, Nascent Markets, and the Effective Design of a Business Model

By: Rory McDonald and Kathleen Eisenhardt

Prior research advances several explanations for entrepreneurial success in nascent markets but leaves a key imperative unexplored: the business model. By studying five ventures in the same nascent market, we develop a novel theoretical framework for understanding how... View Details

Keywords: Search; Legitimacy; Organizational Innovation; Organizational Learning; Mechanisms And Processes; Institutional Entrepreneurship; Qualitative Methods; Business Model Design; Business Model; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Emerging Markets; Adaptation; Competition; Strategy

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Faculty - Private Capital Project

Administration in the Finance and Entrepreneurial Management Units. She presently teaches Real Estate Private Equity and Venture Capital and Private Equity. Rory M. McDonald Assistant Professor of Business... View Details

April 2022
Article

The Past Is Prologue? Venture-Capital Syndicates' Collaborative Experience and Start-Up Exits

By: Dan Wang, Emily Cox Pahnke and Rory M. McDonald

Past research has produced contradictory insights into how prior collaboration between organizations—their relational embeddedness—impacts collective collaborative performance. We theorize that the effect of relational embeddedness on collaborative success is... View Details

Keywords: Inter-organizational Networks; Collaboration; Entrepreneurship; Networks; Organizations; Performance; Venture Capital

September 2022
Article

A Spanner in the Works: Category-Spanning Entrants and Audience Valuation of Incumbents

By: Rory M. McDonald and Ryan T. Allen

Previous work has examined how audiences evaluate category-spanning organizations, but little is known about how their entrance affects evaluations of other, proximate organizations. We posit that the emergence of category-spanning entrants signals the advent of an... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Industries; Industry Dynamics; Organization And Management Theory; Technology Strategy; Technology And Innovation Management; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Strategy; Management; Theory; Innovation and Management

February 2015 (Revised May 2015)
Case

Boeing 787: Manufacturing a Dream

By: Rory McDonald and Suresh Kotha

This case traces the design and development of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Emphasis is on executive leadership and firm strategy in coordinating across a global network of partners in the production of a new aircraft. View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Operations Strategy; Project Management; Coordination; Product Development; Operations; Production; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Aerospace Industry; United States

Educators