Software Industry - Publications - Faculty & Research

30 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Computer Security is For Managers, Too

operations tell their materials suppliers exactly what specifications to meet. Similarly, companies should demand reasonable levels of security from software vendors. Look at the wording of this contract between General Electric and View Details

Keywords: by Robert D. Austin & Christopher A.R. Darby

29 Sep 2003
Research & Ideas

Why Managing Innovation is Like Theater

"Get it right the first time." On the other hand, some software development processes are designed nowadays so that they can be reconfigured cheaply and quickly. Developers generate new versions of a View Details

Keywords: by Rob Austin & Lee Devin

17 Oct 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, October 17, 2017

Digital Agility: The Impact of Software Portfolio Architecture on IT System Evolution By: MacCormack, Alan, Robert Lagerström, Martin Mocker, and Carliss Y. Baldwin Abstract—The modern industrial firm... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

1997
Chapter

Patent Scope and Emerging Industries: Biotechnology, Software, and Beyond

By: Josh Lerner and Robert P. Merges

Keywords: Patents; Applications and Software; Genetics; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry

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02 Jan 2007
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Articles of 2006

Here then are our most-read stories in 2006. Microsoft vs. Open Source: Who Will Win? Using formal economic modelling, professors Pankaj Ghemawat and Ramon Casadesus-Masanell consider the competitive dynamics of the software wars between... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

May 2017
Article

The Reference Wars: Encyclopædia Britannica's Decline and Encarta's Emergence

By: Shane Greenstein

The experience of Encyclopædia Britannica provides the canonical example of the decline of an established firm at the outset of the digital age. Competition from Microsoft’s Encarta in 1993 led to sharp declines in the sales of books, which led to the distressed sale... View Details

Keywords: Digital; Britannica; Diseconomies; Encyclopedias; Applications and Software; Books; Competition; Publishing Industry

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03 Feb 2003
Research & Ideas

Web Services

coding over a new solution." Using a common code base to build applications that automate repetitive tasks is key to serving the needs of various business partners. The Customer's View Representing the customer perspective, GM's CTO Tony Scott outlined transitions... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Service

21 Nov 2006
First Look

First Look: November 21, 2006

cost to identify and investigate. The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis Authors:Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf Periodical:Journal of Political Economy (forthcoming) Abstract For industries ranging... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

30 Nov 2018
What Do You Think?

What’s the Best Administrative Approach to Climate Change?

Summing Up: Should a 'Montreal Protocol' for Administering Global Warming Be Pursued? Climate change and how to manage it is a daunting subject. Nevertheless, several readers of this month’s column were willing to venture a model or two for administering a system... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Energy

06 Aug 2001
Research & Ideas

Go Global—or No? Can You Make the Case?

being." Tom frowned but, feeling that Susan had the momentum, decided to hold his fire. After lunch, it was Group B's turn. They suggested using autonomous software distributors in each country. That would help DataClear keep a tight... View Details

Keywords: by Walter Kuemmerle

23 Aug 2004
Research & Ideas

Strategy for Small Fish

number of niche firms for long, sustained periods of time. In the software industry, a large number of niche players have endured for many years, constantly generating a variety of product innovations. Despite the contraction caused by... View Details

Keywords: by Marco Iansiti & Roy Levien

04 Mar 2016
Research & Ideas

Is E-commerce at Risk in Apple's Security Dispute with the FBI?

aspect. But as Tim Cook wrote in his letter, jeopardizing customer security is a slippery slope. Q: So is the cost not just to Apple but to the e-commerce industry prohibitive here? A: It’s a strange situation from Apple’s point of view.... View Details

Keywords: Re: Sunil Gupta; Technology

20 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Markets or Communities? The Best Ways to Manage Outside Innovation

nature of the innovation problem at hand, the motivation of the external developers, and the firm's platform business model. Depending on these factors, the outside innovation might be fed and managed either by creating collaborative communities (think of the... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

18 Mar 2014
First Look

First Look: March 18

the ratings. Our tests examine whether these forms of disclosure reflect firms' real efforts to combat corruption or are cheap talk. We find that the ratings are related to enforcement and monitoring, country and industry corruption risk,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2007 (Revised October 2007)
Case

Information Technology and Clinical Operations at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer, F. Warren McFarlan and Julia Rose Adler-Milstein

Describes the history of clinical computing at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital and the development, since the 1996 merger to form the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, of an information system designed to support the delivery of patient care. The hospitals' CIO, John... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Product Design; Service Delivery; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Health Industry; Boston

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23 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

Product Disasters Can Be Fertile Ground for Innovation

Incremental changes. The first type, which occurred immediately following the accidents, consisted of incremental changes—that is, software fixes targeted at preventing accidental over-radiation. These included dose displays, alerts, and... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health; Medical Devices & Supplies

March 2005
Background Note

Home Video Games: Generation Seven

By: Elie Ofek

Discusses the issues facing firms in the seventh generation of home video game platforms. In particular, Sony and Microsoft plan to launch new game consoles in the 2005 to 2006 time frame. Each firm seems to be following a different strategy. Microsoft wants to launch... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Technological Innovation; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

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October 2018 (Revised May 2019)
Teaching Note

Intuit: Turbo Tax PersonalPro - A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs

By: Joseph Fuller, Shikhar Ghosh and Monica Baraldi

Teaching Note for HBS No. 816-048. The case tells the story of a product manager within Intuit who develops an idea for a new product that spans two of the company's existing business units—professional tax software, sold to accountants, and the consumer focused... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Business or Company Management; Applications and Software; Accounting; Product Development; Financial Services Industry

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07 Jun 2016
First Look

June 7, 2016

data are often voluminous and unstructured, presenting analytical challenges for traditional tools that were designed for well-structured, quantitative data. We adapt methods from natural language processing and machine learning to illustrate how the hotel View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2017 (Revised February 2018)
Case

VMware and the Public Cloud

By: Raffaella Sadun and Christine Snively

In 2015, VMware, a pioneer in server and network virtualization and a member of parent company EMC’s “federation” of companies, had set its sights on becoming a leading public cloud provider. Two years prior, VMware first entered the public cloud market with its vCloud... View Details