Publications

April 2019 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Voatz

By: Mitchell Weiss and Maddy Halyard

Nimit Sawhney scrolled through the tweet stream on his phone, unsure of what to make of it on August 6, 2018 or how to respond. Voatz, the Boston-based startup he co-founded and led, provided a mobile-voting platform. In March of 2018, had successfully piloted the new... View Details

Keywords: Mobile App; Business Startups; Voting; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Safety; Cybersecurity

Educators

January 2017 (Revised August 2019)
Case

X Fire Paintball & Airsoft: Is Amazon a Friend or Foe? (A)

By: Feng Zhu and Angela Acocella

Three years after launching his brick-and-mortar store, X Fire Paintball and Airsoft, Steve Herbert Sr. and his sons began selling products on Amazon.com’s third-party Marketplace, and online sales expanded rapidly. Over time, X Fire noticed that products of which it... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Competition; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Small Business; Retail Industry; Canada

Educators

April 2016
Teaching Note

Flipkart: Transitioning to a Marketplace Model

By: Sunil Gupta and Das Narayandas

In 2015, Sachin and Binny Bansal, co-founders of India's largest e-tailer, Flipkart, announced that the company would switch to a marketplace model and move its logistics arm into a separate company. At the time of the announcement, Snapdeal already claimed to be... View Details

Keywords: India; Marketplaces; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Market Entry and Exit; E-commerce; Retail Industry; India

December 2011
Article

Did R&D Firms Used to Patent? Evidence from the First Innovation Surveys

By: Tom Nicholas

Matching 2,777 R&D firms in surveys conducted by the National Research Council between 1921 and 1938 with U.S. patents reveals that 59 percent of all firms and 88 percent of publicly-traded firms patented. These shares are much higher than those observed for modern R&D... View Details

Keywords: Research and Development; Patents; Surveys; Innovation and Invention; Geographic Location; United States

Find at Harvard

May 2007 (Revised July 2011)
Background Note

Retail Shopping in 2007: The Net Versus the Mall

By: Stephen P. Bradley, Nancy Bartlett and James Weber

Provides an overview of the retail sector within the United States as online shopping captures an increased percentage of consumer spending. The role of enabling technologies and applications, including comparison shopping sites and recommendation systems, are covered.... View Details

Keywords: Spending; Marketing Channels; Demand and Consumers; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Retail Industry; United States

Educators

1985
Manual

Teacher's Manual for Revitalizing Businesses: Shareholder/Work Force Conflicts

By: W. E. Fruhan Jr.

Keywords: Business and Shareholder Relations; Employees; Conflict and Resolution; Books

Find at Harvard

2020
Article

Inconvenient Truths: Interpreting the Origins of the Internet

By: Shane Greenstein

A conventional economic narrative provides intellectual underpinnings for governments to subsidize research and development ("R&D") that coordinates risky research to benefit many in society. This essay compares this narrative with the origins and invention of the... View Details

Keywords: Lead Users; Technology Transfer; Internet and the Web; History; Analysis; Research and Development; Governance; Information Technology; Policy

01 Mar 2012
News

Where Innovation Rules

Kiva Systems Intuit Angie’s List Rakuten athenahealth Pandora Bloomingdale's and Gilt Groupe Social Finance Innovation is the real business of Harvard Business School. It begins with the School’s bias toward action, as embodied in its intellectual cornerstone, the case... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg;Garry Emmons;Julia Hanna;Roger Thompson; Corporate Services; Educational Services; Management

01 Sep 2014
News

The Next Lessons

Khan Academy began in 2004 as a family favor: To help his teenaged cousins understand a few math concepts, hedge fund analyst Salman Khan (MBA 2003) offered after-school math tutoring via phone calls and explainer videos. A decade later, Khan Academy has become an... View Details

Keywords: William Weber

01 Mar 2010
News

A New Oath for Business Leaders

At the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Forum for Young Global Leaders (YGL) resolved to study the idea of developing an oath to guide decision-making when facing tough business choices. HBS professors Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria, who advised... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

01 Apr 2001
News

Beyond the Rim: New Paths to Success in Asia

other HBS scholars are essential to understanding the realities of doing business. They provide what Asia-Pacific Initiative director F. Warren McFarlan calls “local content.” For HBS faculty, access to such information has been made... View Details

Keywords: Alejandro Reyes and Deborah Blagg; David Lane; Educational Services

Web

Social Media Guidelines for Faculty and Staff | About

team posting about a new program offering), generally, as members of the HBS community (e.g., using a LinkedIn profile for personal or career development), and in their personal capacities (e.g., to share information with friends and... View Details

Web

Kraft Accelerator

Thank you Thank you Thank you for registering! We will keep you informed with new information. Before you download the tool Please complete the form: Your First Name * Your Last Name * Your Company Name * Your Email Address * SUBMIT &... View Details

13 Dec 2011
News

What Motivates Tomorrow's Leaders

Keywords: Information; Information; Information; Information; Information; Information

17 Feb 2011
News

Field Report: Rwanda

Afghanistan. Information gathering for the field project began before the team left Boston. The group’s on-the-ground experience, however, provided much-needed cultural context — the heart of any IXP experience. “Most of the renewals for... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Religious, Grantmaking, Civic, Professional, and Similar Organizations; Personal Services

1981
Chapter

The Diffusion of Residential Solar Equipment in California

By: D. A. Leonard

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Renewable Energy; Energy Industry; California

March–April 2025
Article

Getting Value from Digital Technologies

By: Frank Cespedes and Georg Krentzel

Companies need digital technologies in an omni-channel buying world where online and in-person interactions are complements, not either/or substitutes. Multi-channel hybrid sales solutions are required, but what are the key requirements for using the available... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Technology Adoption; Competitive Advantage

Forthcoming
Article

Slowly Varying Regression Under Sparsity

By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Vassilis Digalakis Jr, Michael Lingzhi Li and Omar Skali Lami

We consider the problem of parameter estimation in slowly varying regression models with sparsity constraints. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer optimization problem and demonstrate that it can be reformulated exactly as a binary convex optimization problem... View Details

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Analytics and Data Science

December 18, 2024
Article

Is AI the Right Tool to Solve That Problem?

By: Paolo Cervini, Chiara Farronato, Pushmeet Kohli and Marshall W Van Alstyne

While AI has the potential to solve major problems, organizations embarking on such journeys of often encounter obstacles. They include a dearth of high-quality data; too many possible solutions; the lack of a clear, measurable objective; and difficulty in identifying... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; AI and Machine Learning; Problems and Challenges