Publications

Find at Harvard

20 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Markets or Communities? The Best Ways to Manage Outside Innovation

modules were not recognized until much later. In an ambitious project like building the next-generation airplane, it's critical for suppliers to inform Boeing and each other about problems. This did not happen either. Boeing did not build... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

November 2021
Supplement

Ant Group (B)

By: Krishna G. Palepu, Feng Zhu and Susie L. Ma

Keywords: Information Technology; Value Creation; Network Effects; Strategy; Disruptive Innovation; Technology Industry; Financial Services Industry; China

August 2010 (Revised November 2011)
Case

MindTree: A Community of Communities

By: David A. Garvin and Rachna Tahilyani

MindTree is a mid-sized Indian IT services company known for its knowledge management practices, its collaborative communities, and its strong culture and values. The CEO has set a goal of becoming a $1 billion company by 2014; to reach that goal, employees must create... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Employee Relationship Management; Innovation and Invention; Knowledge Management; Leadership; Organizational Culture; Social and Collaborative Networks; Information Technology Industry; India

2015
Working Paper

Fake It Till You Make It: Reputation, Competition, and Yelp Review Fraud

By: Michael Luca and Georgios Zervas

Consumer reviews are now part of everyday decision-making. Yet, the credibility of these reviews is fundamentally undermined when businesses commit review fraud, creating fake reviews for themselves or their competitors. We investigate the economic incentives to commit... View Details

Keywords: Information; Competition; Internet and the Web; Ethics; Reputation; Social and Collaborative Networks; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

SSRN

Read Now

August 2004 (Revised August 2005)
Background Note

Online Auction Markets

eBay, Yahoo!, and Amazon.com entered the online auction market within four years of one another, along with a host of smaller Web sites. Five years later, eBay clearly outstripped its competitors, despite the fact that Yahoo! and Amazon both had a huge installed base... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Auctions; Network Effects

06 Jan 2011
What Do You Think?

How Should Management Deal With “Anonymous”?

discovery in a legal case. The wise don't do it. But this can be a costly practice, given our faulty memories. And in the age of WikiLeaks and the Internet, when every "secret" seemingly becomes public before long, the new advice is to avoid trying to keep... View Details

Keywords: by James L. Heskett

31 Jul 2014
Research & Ideas

A Scholarly Crowd Explores Crowdsourcing

spectrum, self-correcting to neutral bias only after hundreds if not thousands of revisions over long periods of time. Their paper, still in development, is titled Does Collective Intelligence Create More Biases Than Experts? Evidence From Wikipedia and Britannica.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

March 2011 (Revised August 2014)
Background Note

Social Media in Health Care

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Selin Gunal Tyler and Charles C. Huang

This note reviews the social media firms in health care that help providers and consumers to interact and their nascent business models. View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Health Care and Treatment; Digital Platforms; Social and Collaborative Networks; Health Industry

23 Jul 2007
Research & Ideas

HBS Cases: How Wikipedia Works (or Doesn’t)

of American Independence." But Wikipedia also employs a series of consensus driven vetting processes that strive to ensure the information is accurate, is verifiable, is built on solid sources, and excludes personal opinion. Just as... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Publishing

29 Nov 2004
Research & Ideas

Caves, Clusters, and Weak Ties: The Six Degrees World of Inventors

innovation, but since clusters get stale, you also need the non-redundant information that flows in from outside the local cluster. Hence, the advantage of small worlds is that they combine tight local clustering with distant ties. My... View Details

Keywords: by Sara Grant; Publishing

March 2008 (Revised March 2013)
Teaching Note

MySpace (TN)

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

Teaching Note for 708499. View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Competitive Advantage; Social and Collaborative Networks; Decisions; Growth and Development; Digital Platforms; Web Services Industry; United States

08 Jul 2002
Research & Ideas

How to Fashion Your New E-Business Model

activities can be located inside a firm or across firm boundaries. In the latter case, activities may involve customers, suppliers, partners, or other stakeholders. Accompanying the physical value chain is a related information value... View Details

Keywords: by Lynda M. Applegate

18 Jun 2001
Research & Ideas

Tech Investment the Wise Way

value created for users by the offering based on the technology; define the structure of the value chain, that is, the network of activities within the firm required to create and distribute the products or services offered to customers;... View Details

Keywords: by Henry Chesbrough & Richard S. Rosenbloom

March 2009 (Revised September 2011)
Case

Zopa: The Power of Peer-to-Peer Lending

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, Isabel Fernandez-Mateo and David Chen

Zopa, a U.K.-based peer-to-peer lending company, connected individual lenders and borrowers via an online interface. The company charged a small fee for completed loan transactions but has not turned a profit. Zopa offered two platforms, Markets and Listings. Markets... View Details

Keywords: Financing and Loans; Personal Finance; Market Participation; Digital Platforms; Social and Collaborative Networks; Financial Services Industry; United Kingdom