Publications

September 2023 (Revised December 2023)
Case

TetraScience: Noise and Signal

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn

In 2019, TetraScience CEO “Spin” Wang needed advice. Five years earlier, he had cofounded a startup that saw early success with a hardware product designed to help laboratory scientists in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical spaces more easily collect data from... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Organization; Restructuring; Forecasting and Prediction; Digital Platforms; Analytics and Data Science; AI and Machine Learning; Organizational Structure; Network Effects; Competitive Strategy; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States; Boston

February 2024
Case

Does “Matter” Matter? Amazon and Open Standards in the Smart Home Industry

By: Frank Nagle

In early 2023, the smart home industry stood at a pivotal juncture. The recent launch of “Matter” version 1.0, an ambitious interoperability standard developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), promised to unify a fragmented market plagued by incompatible... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Resource Allocation; Standards; Business Strategy

25 Mar 2016
News

The Race Is On to Control Artificial Intelligence, and Tech’s Future

November 2014
Article

Beyond Bedlam: How Consumers and Brands Alike Are Playing the Web

By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

The new marketing order, as played out on media platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Instagram, is so unlike the order it is displacing that it might seem like bedlam, an asylum of sorts for ideas intelligible only to their creators. And yet, surely, something... View Details

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2016
Book

Revolutionizing Innovation: Users, Communities, and Open Innovation

By: Dietmar Harhoff and Karim R. Lakhani

The last two decades have witnessed an extraordinary growth of new models of managing and organizing the innovation process, which emphasize users over producers. Large parts of the knowledge economy now routinely rely on users, communities, and open innovation... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Transformation; Collaborative Innovation and Invention

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Working Paper

AI in Disguise—How AI-generated Ads' Visual Cues Shape Consumer Perception and Performance

By: Yannick Exner, Jochen Hartmann, Oded Netzer and Shunyuan Zhang

Generative AI’s recent advancements in creating content have offered vast potential to transform the advertising industry. This research investigates the impact of generative AI-enabled visual ad creation on real-world advertising effectiveness. For this purpose, we... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; AI and Machine Learning; Advertising; Consumer Behavior; Advertising Industry

SSRN

March 2022 (Revised July 2022)
Case

Climate Action in Miami

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The Miami metropolitan area is a global epicenter of climate risk from heat and sea level rise, but leaders have only recently mobilized for action to respond to this systemic challenge. Resilient 305 began a collaboration across officials in the cities of Miami and... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Climate Impact; Change; Leadership; Cross-sector Collaboration; Coalition; Ecosystem; Greenhouse Gas Emissions; Green Business; Adaptation; Environmental Sustainability; Infrastructure; Green Technology; Environmental Management; Miami

23 Sep 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Nowcasting the Local Economy: Using Yelp Data to Measure Economic Activity at Scale

Keywords: by Edward L. Glaeser, Hyunjin Kim, and Michael Luca

Revolutionizing Innovation: Users, Communities, and Open Innovation

The last two decades have witnessed an extraordinary growth of new models of managing and organizing the innovation process that emphasizes users over producers. Large parts of the knowledge economy now routinely rely on users, communities, and open innovation... View Details

October 2013
Case

Oaktree and the Restructuring of CIT Group (A)

By: Victoria Ivashina and David Scharfstein

CIT's prepackaged bankruptcy marked the first time a major financial institution was able to successfully restructure and emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, challenging conventional views that a financial firm could not survive bankruptcy proceedings as a going... View Details

Keywords: Debt Securities; Restructuring; Financial Services Industry

13 Jan 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Recognition Incentives for Internal Crowdsourcing: A Field Experiment at NASA

Keywords: by Jana Gallus, Olivia S. Jung, and Karim R. Lakhani; Aerospace

March 2022 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Emeritus: Achieving Impact, Providing Access (A)

By: Ashish Nanda and Zack Kurtovich

In June 2019, Emeritus cofounders Ashwin Damera (HBS MBA 2005) and Chaitanya Kalipatnapu were thrilled with the rapid growth of Emeritus. Damera and Kalipatnapu believed that Emeritus, established in July 2015 to offer online executive education, was only in the early... View Details

Keywords: Education Technology; Professional Service Firm; Startup; Digital Strategy; Global Business; Global Firm; Platform Business; Business Startups; Growth and Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Executive Education; Strategy; Education Industry; India

Web

Publications - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

platform must organize data around conditions. February 2020 Article 2020 TDABC Starter Kit 2020 TDABC Starter Kit by Professor Robert Kaplan and Dr. Syed Shehab This article is designed for new partners to... View Details

13 Jul 2016
HBS Case

How Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy Attracted Their First 1,000 Customers

who have rides to offer. (Same idea as Airbnb, which connects people needing rooms with home-owners.) So to launch as a platform service, these companies need to find users on both the supply and demand... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail; Service; Transportation

June 2014
Article

Mastering the Intermediaries: Strategies for Dealing with the Likes of Google, Amazon, and Kayak

By: Benjamin Edelman

Many companies depend on powerful platforms which distinctively influence buyers' purchasing. (Consider, Google, Amazon, and myriad others in their respective spheres.) I consider implications of these platforms' market power, then suggest strategies to help companies... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Market Power; Dominance; Advertising Campaigns; Marketing Channels; Agreements and Arrangements; Competitive Strategy; Negotiation; Transportation Industry; Information Technology Industry; Web Services Industry

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30 Nov 2021
In Practice

What's the Role of Business in Confronting Climate Change?

The 26th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, also known as COP26, ended with a hard-fought pact that called on businesses and governments to meet their climate change goals faster. The event followed an August report by the Intergovernmental... View Details

Keywords: by Lynn Schenk and Dina Gerdeman

12 Feb 2018
News

More and More CEOs Are Taking Their Social Responsibility Seriously

March 2022 (Revised April 2023)
Case

Pittsburgh: A Successful City?

By: Karen Mills, Caroline Elkins, Vikram Gandhi, Gabriella Elanbeck and Zeke Gillman

Pittsburgh, PA, was once the crown jewel of American heavy industry. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the city was an undisputed leader in steel production, boasting some of the largest companies and wealthiest individuals in the world. Its abundance of... View Details

Keywords: Economic And Social Disparities; Economic Development; Local Economic Development; Contextual Intelligence; Contextual Knowledge; Context; City Growth; City Innovation; City Leadership; Pittsburgh; Local Government; Local Stakeholders; Business And Community; Business And Community Relations; Community Engagement; Community Relations; Cross-sector Collaboration; Innovation; Innovation Economy; Innovation Clusters; Innovation Ecosystems; Shared Prosperity; Equality Of Opportunity; Equity; Inclusion; Business And Government; Business ＆ Government Relations; Business And Government Relations; Business And Society; Neighborhoods; Race And Ethnicity; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Diversity; Ethnicity; Race; Household; Income; Economic Growth; Economic Sectors; Economics; Local Range; Urban Development; Urban Scope; City; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Government and Politics; Government Administration; Growth and Development; History; Leadership; Goals and Objectives; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Society; Civil Society or Community; Culture; Human Needs; Public Opinion; Public Sector; Social Issues; Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Manufacturing Industry; Steel Industry; Education Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Pittsburgh; Pennsylvania

May 2022
Article

Strengthening Digital Infrastructure: A Policy Agenda for Free and Open Source Software

By: Frank Nagle

While there is little debate that digital forces are playing an increasingly crucial role in the economy, there is limited understanding of the importance of the digital infrastructure that underlies this role. Much of the discussion around digital infrastructure has... View Details

Keywords: Open Source; Applications and Software; Policy; Infrastructure; Open Source Distribution