Publications

January 2025
Supplement

Wendell Weeks at Corning Inc.

By: Ryan Raffaelli

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Disruptive Innovation; Information Technology; Leadership; Health Pandemics; Technology Industry; United States; New York (city, NY)

January 2018 (Revised May 2018)
Case

AT&T Managing Technological Change and the Future of Telephone Operators in the 20th Century

By: Daniel P. Gross and William R. Kerr

By the 1930s, AT&T dominated the American phone industry, serving 10 million telephones and employing over 100,000 switchboard operators. But beginning in the mid-1910s, the company began changing from manually operated switchboards to mechanical switching systems that... View Details

Keywords: AT＆T; Bell Telephone; Phone Lines; Phone Operators; Mechanical Switching; Layoffs; Technological Change; Transition; History; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Disruption; Change Management; Communications Industry; Telecommunications Industry; United States

02 Mar 2015
Research & Ideas

Retail Reaches a Tipping Point—Which Stores Will Survive?

to make sure you are selling items that have good profit margin. That is critically important. So it's taking a cold hard look at your business and asking, are there enough people who are going to continue to buy your goods in a store over time? Q: If the answer is no,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

24 Apr 2014
News

Seeing glass in a new light

Rao Mulpuri (AMP 171, 2006) wants to transform the building industry by disrupting a common product: glass. View Dynamic Glass brings smart windows to buildings, and is gaining rapid adoption in North America—the California-based company... View Details

01 Dec 2019
News

Alumni and Faculty Books for December 2019

University, and T-Mobile, among them. Their stories make it clear that organizations don’t have to be tech startups or have the latest innovations to transform. What they need to do is develop a disruptive... View Details

August 2001 (Revised January 2015)
Case

SonoSite: A View Inside

By: Clayton Christensen and Jeremy Dann

After its spin-off from one of the world's largest ultrasound makers, Sonosite attempts to popularize a new kind of handheld ultrasound units. Sonosite needs to decide if it should focus on new markets that will value the portability and ease of use of its products, or... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Disruptive Innovation; Product Positioning; Demand and Consumers

Web

Transportation - Business & Environment

contributions are even greater; in the U.S., transportation is the top GHG contributor. [37] Transportation infrastructure--roads, bridges, airports, and ports-- is particularly at risk of disruption from climate change. Flooding, storms,... View Details

October 2016 (Revised March 2017)
Case

uberPOOL

By: Marco Iansiti, Michael W. Toffel and Amram Migdal

This case describes Uber's uberPOOL service, which let multiple Uber users who were headed in the same direction share a ride and pay substantially lower fares. View Details

Keywords: Uber; uberPOOL; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Digital Platforms; Transportation; Transportation Networks; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Transportation Industry

01 Mar 2017
News

Case Study: Moment in the Sun

should not only jump into health care, it should seek out other markets to prove and improve itself, and continue to innovate so it can widen the moat. —Yen-Ping Shan (TGMP 10, 2002) Disrupters rest at their... View Details

Keywords: Dan Morrell

11 AM – 12 PM EST, 25 Jan 2018
Webinars: Trending@HBS

Becoming Effective Change Makers: The Power of Networks

Instituting change in an organization or in a sector of society has always been the bane of leaders. However, some leaders do succeed--often spectacularly--at transforming their organizations and even whole sectors of society. What makes some change makers triumph in a... View Details

January 2021 (Revised May 2021)
Case

Ocado Group: Ready for the Future

By: José B. Alvarez, Damien McLoughlin and Natalie Kindred

01 Jun 2003
News

Portraits from the Class of 2003

crisis in the health–care system Originally From: Chicago Hopes: to build a health–care enterprise Hobbies: chess, crossword puzzles, scuba diving Paper Currently Working On: analyzing disruptive innovations... View Details

Keywords: Health, Social Assistance

November 2024
Supplement

AlphaGo (B): Birth of a New Intelligence

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai

This case, the second in a three-part series, explores DeepMind's evolution from developing game-specific AI to more generalized learning systems. Following AlphaGo's 2017 victory over the Go world champion, DeepMind introduced two revolutionary systems that eliminated... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Technological Innovation; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation Leadership; Information Technology Industry; United States; Russia; China

09 Jan 2019
News

Why New England Needs New Ideas

In a recent piece in the Boston Globe Magazine, Professor Clay Christensen, Karen Dillon, a senior researcher at Christensen’s Institute for Disruptive Innovation, and Efosa Ojomo (MBA 2015), a research fellow at the Institute, use New... View Details

Keywords: New England

28 May 2013
Research & Ideas

Can LEGO Snap Together a Future in Asia?

more localized products coupled with licensing agreements linked to specific movie franchises might be an option, but an expensive one. The company also had to consider that "diminishing play time and the threat of a disruptive... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Entertainment & Recreation

October 2006 (Revised October 2007)
Case

Google Advertising

By: Youngme E. Moon and David Chen

In mid-2006, Google is the number one search engine in America with 99% of its revenues deriving from its simple, text-only advertising services. It is on track to bring in roughly $9.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2006, which would place it fourth among American... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Disruptive Innovation; Media; Expansion; Internet and the Web; Advertising Industry; United States

February 2000 (Revised August 2000)
Case

Priceline WebHouse Club

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Jon K Rust

Priceline empowered consumers to "name their own price" for airline tickets and hotel rooms; then it shopped these offers to marketers. Priceline's founder Jay Walker described the resulting transactions as a new ecosystem, that helped consumers realize lower prices... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Strategy; Disruptive Innovation; Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Retail Industry