Publications

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August 2019
Case

Twiggle: E-commerce with Semantic Search

By: Shane Greenstein and Danielle Golan

Four years after being founded, in 2014, by former Google executives Amir Konigsberg (CEO) and Adi Avidor (CTO), Twiggle had developed a search enhancement that plugged into an online merchant’s existing framework. The company utilized advanced structuring and... View Details

Keywords: Search Technology; Customer Acquisition; Internet and the Web; Technological Innovation; Commercialization; Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Technology Industry; Israel

June 2019 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Eric Hawkins Leading Agile Teams @ Digitally-Born AppFolio (A)

By: Tsedal Neeley, Paul Leonardi and Michael Norris

Eric Hawkins, director of engineering at AppFolio—a digital technology firm that offered cloud-based business software to small and medium sized companies—was shocked by an unusual request from his senior leadership team. Could Hawkins and one of his agile teams build... View Details

Keywords: Values; Agile; Vision; Corporate Culture; Leadership; Values and Beliefs; Organizational Culture; Decision Choices and Conditions; Digital Transformation; Technology Industry; United States; California

June 2019
Teaching Note

CEWD: Closing the Skills Gap

By: William R. Kerr and Ted Smalley Bowen

Teaching Note for HBS No. 818-081. The teaching note presents background, case details, and teaching strategies, along with board plans and supporting graphics. View Details

May 2019 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Bill Cummings: The Cummings Way

By: Christina R. Wing, Robert F. White and Michael Norris

In 2019, Bill Cummings, founder of Cummings Properties and Cummings Foundation and billionaire signer of the Giving Pledge, is winding down his roles at his company and foundation. How should the management move the company forward? View Details

Keywords: Real Estate Development; Philanthropy; Family Business; Nonprofit Organizations; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Management Succession; Real Estate Industry; United States; Boston

March 2019
Case

Wattpad

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

How to run a platform to match four million writers of stories to 75 million readers? Use data science. Make money by doing deals with television and filmmakers and book publishers. The case describes the challenges of matching readers to stories and of helping writers... View Details

2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 15 The IBM PC

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The IBM PC was the first digital computer platform that was open by as a matter of strategy, not necessity. The purpose of this chapter is to understand the IBM PC as a technical system and set of organization choices in light of the theory of how technology shapes... View Details

Keywords: IBM; Personal Computer; Digital Platforms; System; Strategy

SSRN

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September 2018
Case

OYO: Creating Effective Spaces

By: Das Narayandas, Sunil Gupta, Rachna Tahilyani and Mahima Rao-Kachroo

Twenty-four-year old Ritesh Agarwal, founder and CEO of India-based online hotel branding network OYO Rooms, has tackled the issue of unreliability in India's highly fragmented budget hotel industry. In 2018, OYO branded 8,500 properties across 200 cities and managed... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Accomodation; App Development; Operations And Processes; Innovation; Strategy; Change Management; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Research; Marketing; Operations; Innovation Strategy; Sales; Accommodations Industry; India; South Asia

July 2018
Article

Global Collaborative Patents

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr

We study the prevalence and traits of global collaborative patents for U.S. public companies, where the inventor team is located both within and outside of the United States. Collaborative patents are frequently observed when a corporation is entering into a new... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Ethnic Networks; Migration; Technology Transfer; Mobility; Information Technology; Globalized Firms and Management; Diasporas; Patents; Ethnicity; Entrepreneurship; Research and Development; Foreign Direct Investment; Innovation and Invention; Globalization; United States

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May 2018
Case

The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation's Answer Fund

By: Richard G. Hamermesh and Matthew G. Preble

March 2018 (Revised July 2018)
Case

Cadre

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Scott Duke Kominers and David Lane

Late in 2017, CEO Ryan Williams and his team debated whether Cadre should become not only a technology-enabled investment manager, but also an online trading exchange providing high levels of liquidity for investors in commercial real estate (CRE) equity. Cadre was a... View Details

Keywords: ＂Cadre,＂; Entrepreneurship; Market Design; Digital Platforms; Strategy; Internet and the Web; Private Equity; Financial Services Industry; Real Estate Industry; United States

March 2018 (Revised January 2021)
Case

China Vanke: Battle for Control (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine, Charles C.Y. Wang, Dawn H. Lau and Anthony K. Woo

In June 2016, the board of China Vanke, one of China’s largest and best-known private residential real estate developers, must vote on a proposed acquisition that is opposed by its largest shareholders, state-owned China Resources Co. and the lesser-known property... View Details

Keywords: China Vanke; China Resources; Hostile Takeover; Board Of Directors; Shareholding Structure; Shareholder Rights; Asset Restructuring; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Valuation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Real Estate Industry; China

February 2018 (Revised December 2019)
Case

The Tax Man: Taxes in Private Equity Real Estate

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz, Timothy J. Becker, Ricardo Andrade and Sayiddah F. McCree

In January 2018, Caelan Langan, an associate at KSW Partners LLC (“KSW”), was asked by Katherine Scott, the partner for whom he worked, to recommend a proposed structure to acquire a prominent office building in San Francisco for their most recent fund. Caelan was... View Details

Keywords: Real Estate; Alternative Investment Structures; Property; Acquisition; Private Equity; Investment; Management; Taxation; Policy

December 2017 (Revised January 2018)
Case

Alltech

By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred

Alltech was a Lexington, Kentucky–based producer of supplements for animal feed, with revenues of over $2 billion (projected to reach $3 billion in 2018), sales in 120 countries, 5,000 employees, and 100 manufacturing plants worldwide. For nearly four decades, Alltech... View Details

Article

Capturing Value from Intellectual Property (IP) in a Global Environment

By: Juan Alcácer, Karin Beukel and Bruno Cassiman

Globalization should provide firms with an opportunity to leverage their know-how and reputation across countries to create value. However, it remains challenging for them to actually capture that value using traditional Intellectual Property (IP) tools. In this paper,... View Details

Keywords: Appropriation Strategy; Counterfeit; Intellectual Property Rights; Litigation; Value Capturing; Intellectual Property; Rights; Value; Lawsuits and Litigation; Global Range; Situation or Environment

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Article

Scenario Generation for Long Run Interest Rate Risk Assessment

By: Robert F. Engle, Guillaume Roussellet and Emil N. Siriwardane

We propose a statistical model of the term structure of U.S. treasury yields tailored for long-term probability-based scenario generation and forecasts. Our model is easy to estimate and is able to simultaneously reproduce the positivity, persistence, and factor... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting; Stress Testing; Interest Rates; Forecasting and Prediction; Risk Management; United States