Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,444)
- Faculty Publications (295)
- January–February 2023
- Article
External Interfaces and Internal Processes: Market Positioning and Divergent Professionalization Paths in Young Ventures
By: Alicia DeSantola, Ranjay Gulati and Pavel Zhelyazkov
We explore how the initial market positioning of entrepreneurial ventures shapes how they professionalize over time, focusing specifically on the development of functional roles. In contrast to existing literature, which has presumed a uniform march toward... View Details
- 13 Dec 2022
- Interview
Why Some Start-Ups Fail to Scale
By: Jeffrey Rayport and Curt Nickisch
Managing rapid growth is a huge challenge for young businesses. Even start-ups with glowing reviews and skyrocketing sales can fail. That’s because new ventures and corporate initiatives alike have to sustain profitability at scale, according to Harvard Business School... View Details
- November 2022
- Case
Wendy Estrella: Scaling Multiple Businesses
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Sarah Mehta
Entrepreneur Wendy Estrella, a self-made, Latina millionaire based in Lawrence, Massachusetts, is attempting to simultaneously scale her law practice as well as her property management and development company. What path should she take for each and can she do it all,... View Details
- September–October 2022
- Article
Should Your Company Sell on Amazon?: Reach Comes at a Price
By: Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Matt Higgins and Sabir Semerkant
Selling on Amazon allows brands to reach millions of consumers—but that exposure comes with costs. They include smaller margins, more competition, the risk of commoditization, and less knowledge about customers.
In this article, the authors present a scorecard to... View Details
Keywords: Retail; Retailing; Online Business; Ecommerce; E-commerce; E-Commerce Strategy; Omnichannel Retail; Omnichannel Retailing; Amazon; Amazon.com; Sales; Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Fashion Industry; Advertising Industry; Battery Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Distribution Industry; Electronics Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States
- September 2022
- Teaching Note
Yinglan Tan: Scaling a Venture Capital Firm in Southeast Asia
By: Josh Lerner
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 823-025. View Details
- September 26, 2022
- Article
Is Your Family Office Built for the Future?
By: Josh Baron and Rob Lachenauer
Family offices can provide a number of benefits, including privacy, customization, and having your own team to handle a wide range of services, such as guiding family philanthropy, managing shared properties, or even managing household help. Successful principals in... View Details
- September 2022
- Article
Experimentation and Start-up Performance: Evidence from A/B Testing
By: Rembrand Koning, Sharique Hasan and Aaron Chatterji
Recent scholarship has argued that experimentation should be the organizing principle for entrepreneurial strategy. Experimentation leads to organizational learning, which drives improvements in firm performance. We investigate this proposition by exploiting the... View Details
- August 2022 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
Wasabi Technologies
By: N. Louis Shipley and Mel Martin
After launching a successful hot cloud storage company, Founder and CEO David Friend is ready to scale the venture rapidly. Wasabi Technologies had focused primarily on direct sales, but an opportunity to pivot to channel sales was on the horizon. The company’s major... View Details
- August 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
NewLab: Scaling an Innovation Engine
By: Tarun Khanna and George Gonzalez
Silicon Valley-veteran Shaun Stewart is the CEO of NewLab, a dynamic technology hub headquartered in the storied Brooklyn Navy Yard. Founded in 2016, NewLab fostered a community of entrepreneurs, corporate and government partners, and investors, all seeking to apply... View Details
- August 2022 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Iluméxico: For Every Family to Have Power
By: Brian Trelstad, Isa Oliveres and Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago
In 2022, Manuel Wiechers, the CEO of Iluméxico, a for-profit social enterprise that provided off-grid solar energy services in rural Mexico, was finalizing his presentation for the company’s upcoming board meeting. In the 12 years since Wiechers had co-founded... View Details
- July 2022
- Case
Yinglan Tan: Scaling a Venture Capital Firm in Southeast Asia
By: Josh Lerner and Richard Zhu
Yinglan Tan considered the future of his young Singapore-based venture capital firm. On the one hand, the intuition that was behind the initial creation of Insignia in 2017 had been proven correct. The venture capital market in Southeast Asia had grown rapidly, driven... View Details
- June 2022
- Teaching Note
Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 721-419. On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years... View Details
- April 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Antler
By: Dennis Campbell and Iuliana Mogosanu
The case describes the founding, development, and scaling of Antler, an early-stage investment platform that invests in entrepreneurs pre-team and, in many cases, even pre-idea. The case explores the economics of venture capital investing at such an early stage and the... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Innovation at Moog Inc.
By: Brian J. Hall, Ashley V. Whillans, Davis Heniford, Dominika Randle and Caroline Witten
This case focuses on the challenges of incentivizing innovation within Moog, an engineering company based in New York state that designs and builds guidance systems for space, air, and land-based travel. The case enables students to grapple with the challenges of using... View Details
Keywords: Innovation; Innovation Lab; Innovation Management; Motivation; Incentives; Culture; Compensation; Compensation And Benefits; Scalability; Business Growth and Maturation; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Independent Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Organizational Culture; Performance Consistency; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Efficiency; Performance Productivity; Performance Evaluation; Creativity; Motivation and Incentives; Aerospace Industry; Transportation Industry; United States
- March 2022 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Perch
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Stacy Straaberg and Julia Kelley
In May 2021, Perch CEO Chris Bell needed to decide whether his e-commerce aggregator company, which bought and scaled Amazon Marketplace brands, should acquire up to three acquisition targets. The prospective acquisitions, Web Deals Direct, HomeCo, and Future Brands,... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Strategy; Business Strategy; Integration; E-commerce; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Technology Industry; North America; United States; Massachusetts; Boston; California; Asia; Philippines
- February 2022 (Revised June 2022)
- Case
Resident 2020
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Thomas O. Jones
Launched in 2016, Resident was a leading player in the direct-to-consumer bed-in-a-box mattress market, where it was one of at least 175 venture-backed companies competing in the space. By late 2020, it had realized over $500 million in revenue, profitability in the... View Details
- February 2022
- Teaching Note
AptDeco: Circular Economy Furniture Marketplace
By: Ayelet Israeli
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 521-069. AptDeco, a used furniture marketplace, was growing rapidly in the tri-state area. The co-founders were confident that the business model, financial position, and unit economics positioned AptDeco for scaling in the massive $120... View Details
Keywords: E-Commerce Strategy; Mobile; Word-of-Mouth; Word Of Mouth; Word-of-mouth Marketing; Internet Marketing; Growth Strategy; Platform; Platforms; Two Sided Markets; Two-sided Market; Two-sided Marketplace; Two-Sided Markets; Two-sided Network; Black Entrepreneurs; Black Leadership; African Americans; African-American Protagonist; Circular; Peer-to-peer Markets; Furniture Industry; Growth Hacking; Monetization Strategy; Growth Management; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Marketing Channels; Digital Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Acquisition; Retention; Growth and Development Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; Expansion; Brands and Branding; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; United States; North America; New York (city, NY); New York (state, US)
- February 2022 (Revised September 2022)
- Case
InstaDeep: AI Innovation Born in Africa (A)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Esel Çekin
Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim were the co-founders of InstaDeep, a deep tech startup focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. Instadeep was one of the few companies globally that were partnering with DeepMind, an AI subsidiary of Google [Alphabet Inc.].... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised July 2022)
- Supplement
InstaDeep: AI Innovation Born in Africa (B)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Esel Çekin
Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim were the co-founders of InstaDeep, a deep tech startup focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. Instadeep was one of the few companies globally that were partnering with DeepMind, an AI subsidiary of Google [Alphabet Inc.].... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
The Routledge Handbook of Digital Consumption, Chapter 41: The Internet’s Effects on Consumption: Useful, Harmful, Playful
By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
This chapter considers how digital culture has changed over the past decade, as the internet has grown its scope and user base. Billions around the world connect daily to an ever-expanding set of applications. A framework for thinking about digital effects is offered:... View Details