Publications

Program

Senior Executive Leadership Program—Middle East

who can deliver value in a global context, drive new levels of innovation, and build accountable, high-performance organizations. Key Benefits The Senior Executive Leadership Program—Middle East prepares you to make the bold market moves... View Details

March 2020
Supplement

Poppy (B)

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Scott Duke Kominers, Jeff Huizinga and Allison Ciechanover

Avni Patel Thompson, founder and CEO of Poppy, an online marketplace for on-demand childcare, revisits the venture's final months, and discusses the steps she took in the wake of the shutdown. This case explores experiments the company conducted to refine its original... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Marketplace Matching; Business Model; Business Exit or Shutdown; Personal Development and Career; United States

February 2000 (Revised November 2002)
Case

QuickenInsurance: The Race to Click and Close (A)

By: Lynda M. Applegate

ES Technologies started in 1976 as a storefront in Tempe, Arizona selling personal computer kits to hobbyists. Twenty years later, revenues exceeded $3.5 billion, and the business had evolved from a computer store to a master reseller and full-line integrator of... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Industry Structures; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Information Technology; Information Technology Industry; Arizona

Find at Harvard

Lynda M. Applegate is a Baker Foundation Professor at HBS and is Chair of the Advisory Committee for Harvard University’s Masters Degree of Liberal Arts in Finance and Management at the Harvard University Extension School. She has also played a... View Details

March 2018 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Chewy.com (A)

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Matthew G. Preble

In late 2013, Ryan Cohen, cofounder and CEO of online pet products retailer Chewy.com, faces a “bet the company decision”—whether to stay with a third-party logistics provider (3PL) for all of its e-commerce fulfillment or to take the function in house. Cohen worries... View Details

Keywords: Pet Food; Pet Products; Retail; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Operations; Decision Choices and Conditions; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Service Industry; Florida; United States

January 1995 (Revised September 1997)
Case

TV Guide (B)

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport

TV Guide, the nation's most profitable and largest magazine, attempts entry into the world of electronic publishing. The crux of TV Guide's strategy is to transform the magazine's content into a centralized database that can be accessed by new businesses, like... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Service Delivery; Information Technology; Marketing; Information Publishing; Service Industry; Publishing Industry

January 2018
Case

Peak Games: Hiring Priorities in Times of Rapid Growth (A)

By: William R. Kerr and Gamze Yucaoglu

Sidar Şahin, founder and CEO of Peak Games, a Turkey-based global mobile gaming company, must decide on the final list of candidates for the critical global marketing director position the company has been trying to fill for over a year. Since its founding in 2010,... View Details

Keywords: Recruiting; Staffing; Emergent Countries; Entrepreneurial Management; Private Sector; Business Strategy; Decision; Growth Management; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Selection and Staffing; Talent and Talent Management; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Value Creation; Organizational Culture; Decision Choices and Conditions; Technology Industry; Turkey

09 Apr 2013
HBS Seminar

Andrew Stephen, University of Pittsburgh

Research Summary

Overview

I study how people collaborate with each other as they define, change, and solve problems while working on creativity and innovation projects in organizations.

Conference Proceedings:
Cromwell, J. & Gardner, H. 2017. High-stakes innovation: When... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Startups; Decision Choice And Uncertainty; Teams; Team Process

Research Summary

Overview

By: John A. Deighton

Professor Deighton conducts research at the intersection of information technology and marketing. He is interested in the complementary uses of human and artificial intelligence and creativity in areas such as advertising, content creation, and online retailing. He... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Media; Information Technology; Advertising Industry; Communications Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Information Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Publishing Industry; North and Central America; Asia; Europe

09 Sep 2015
HBS Seminar

Judith A. Chevalier, Yale University

Program

Real Estate Management Program

succeed in a complex market by taking a holistic approach to real estate projects and addressing challenges from a cross-disciplinary perspective. As you examine sustainability goals, design considerations, financing strategies, industry... View Details

Keywords: Real Estate; Real Estate

14 Dec 2010
First Look

First Look: Dec. 14

increased during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Diversification gave firms both financing and investment advantages. First, conglomerates became significantly more leveraged relative to comparable focused firms. Second, conglomerates' access to internal capital View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2003 (Revised February 2009)
Case

Yahoo!: Becoming a Competitor in the Career Listings Space (B)

By: Kathleen L. McGinn and Nicole Nasser

After weighing the pros and cons of making an unsolicited bid for HotJobs.com (an online recruiting company already under contract to be acquired by TMP Worldwide), the executive team of Yahoo! decides to make an immediate move rather than wait for the Federal Trade... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Management Teams; Bids and Bidding; Negotiation Process; Strategy

November 2019 (Revised September 2022)
Case

TripAdvisor: An Itinerary for Growth

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Spencer Rascoff and Susie L. Ma

In 2019, TripAdvisor was one of the best-known and most-trafficked online travel sites. For nearly 20 years, its founder and CEO Steve Kaufer had steered TripAdvisor through many phases of growth and profitability, but recently the company’s growth had started to slow.... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Making; Business or Company Management; Growth Management; Innovation and Invention; Brands and Branding; Operations; Customer Value and Value Chain; Information Technology; Travel Industry; Massachusetts

February 2021
Article

How Transparency into Internal and External Responsibility Initiatives Influences Consumer Choice

By: Ryan W. Buell and Basak Kalkanci

Amid growing calls for transparency and social and environmental responsibility, companies are employing different strategies to improve consumer perceptions of their brands. Some pursue internal initiatives that reduce their negative social or environmental impacts... View Details

Keywords: Sustainable Operations; Corporate Social Responsibility; Operational Transparency; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Operations; Environmental Sustainability; Consumer Behavior; Perception

SSRN

Find at Harvard

2009
Working Paper

Do Friends Influence Purchases in a Social Network?

By: Raghuram Iyengar, Sangman Han and Sunil Gupta

Social networks, such as Facebook and Myspace have witnessed a rapid growth in their membership. Some of these businesses have tried an advertising-based model with very limited success. However, these businesses have not fully explored the power of their members to... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Network Effects; Sales; Power and Influence; Social and Collaborative Networks; Web Sites; South Korea

Read Now

Winter 2013
Article

The New Patent Intermediaries: Platforms, Defensive Aggregators and Super-Aggregators

By: Andrei Hagiu and David B. Yoffie

The patent market consists mainly of privately negotiated, bilateral transactions, either sales or cross-licenses, between large companies. There is no eBay, Amazon, New York Stock Exchange, or Kelley's Blue Book equivalent for patents, and when buyers and sellers do... View Details

Keywords: Intellectual Property; Platforms; Intermediaries; Aggregator; Patents; Digital Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Distribution Channels