Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,190)
- Faculty Publications (244)
- 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
- Case
AllSpice: GitHub for Hardware Engineers
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Mel Martin
AllSpice, a software-as-a-service company that built a GitHub-like revision control tool for hardware engineers, was in the midst of preparing for rapid scale when the 2022 market downturn left them with big decisions to make. Cofounder and CEO Valentina Ratner had to... View Details
- September 6, 2022
- Article
Creating a Platform for Costless Personalization in Clothing
By: Shane Greenstein
This study analyzes the role of co-invention in the creation of a platform for print-on-demand-clothing, or PODC. Co-invention is the invention of a new business process to complement new technology, and turn it into a valuable commercial service. PODC copies a design... 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 March 2025)
- Case
Wasabi Technologies (A)
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
Operation Overlord
By: Boris Groysberg, Greg Goullet, Katherine Connolly Baden and Sarah L. Abbott
On June 6, 1944, nearly 5,000 ships, 11,000 planes, and 160,000 infantrymen under an Allied joint-command of American, British, and Canadian leaders were sent across the English Channel, with hopes of re-establishing a foothold in Nazi-occupied France. Known as D-Day,... View Details
- July 15, 2022
- Article
Does Elon Musk Have a Strategy?
By: Andy Wu and Goran Calic
Does Elon Musk have a strategy? Or is he just out there winging it? Looking at Musk’s many companies, common themes stand out across three areas: what fits into his vision for problems to solve, how he designs an organization as a solution to those problems, and why he... View Details
- Article
Online Experimentation: Benefits, Operational and Methodological Challenges, and Scaling Guide
By: Iavor Bojinov and Somit Gupta
In the past decade, online controlled experimentation, or A/B testing, at scale has proved to be a significant driver of business innovation. The practice was first pioneered by the technology sector and, more recently, has been adopted by traditional companies... 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 July 2022)
- Teaching Note
Camera IQ and the Metaverse: Building Augmented Reality Brand Experiences
By: Jill Avery
Camera IQ, a camera marketing software company that empowered brands to create and launch augmented reality experiences (AREs) across social platforms, had just raised an additional $5 million to fund further product development and expand its marketing and sales... View Details
Keywords: Brand Management; Virtual Reality; Augmented Reality; B2B; E-commerce; Technology Platform; Marketing; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Growth Management; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Social Media; Applications and Software; Digital Platforms; Advertising 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; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; North America; United States; Massachusetts; Boston; California; Asia; Philippines
- February 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
TikTok in 2020: Super App or Supernova? (Abridged)
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dan Maher and Dan O'Brien
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around a simple idea—helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. In less than a decade, it had become one of the world’s most valuable private companies, with investors... 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; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States; North America; New York (city, NY); New York (state, US)
- February 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Huazhu: A Chinese Hotel Giant's Journey of Digital Transformation
By: Feng Zhu, Yulin Fang, Bonnie Yining Cao and Duan Yang
Based in Shanghai, China, Huazhu Group, the world’s third-largest hotel operator, was known for its standardized IT system. It helped the company boost efficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief Digital Officer Xinxin Liu also faced some longer-term challenges:... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Aleph Farms: A New Culture of Meat
By: Elie Ofek and Jeff Huizinga
Aleph Farms, an Israeli food-tech start-up, was hoping to play a major role in disrupting the conventional meat sector. Compared to intensive agricultural practices, Aleph’s cultured (or lab-grown) meat solution held the promise of considerably reducing greenhouse gas... View Details
Keywords: Innovation; Disruptive Innovation; Adoption; Go To Market Strategy; Industry Evolution; Food Industry; Environmental And Social Sustainability; Marketing Of Innovations; Brand Building; Capital Expenditures-equipment; Disruption; Green Technology; Environmental Sustainability; Food; Market Entry and Exit; Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior; Competitive Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry
- 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
- January 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Geely SEA: New Electric Vehicle Platforms
By: Willy C. Shih and Shu Lin
Kent Bovellan, the Chief Engineer and Head of the Vehicle Architecture Center for Geely Holding, the Hangzhou, China headquartered global automotive group, was debating the platform choice for an upcoming "D" segment midsized battery electric vehicle (BEV). He had led... View Details
Keywords: Product Innovation; Product Architecture; Product Engineering; Platform Design; Platform Strategy; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Product Design; Product Development; Cost Management; Decision Making; Competitive Strategy; Industry Structures; Auto Industry; China; Sweden