Publications

March 2010
Article

I'll Have the Ice Cream Soon and the Vegetables Later: A Study of Online Grocery Purchases and Order Lead Time

By: Katherine L. Milkman, Todd Rogers and Max Bazerman

How do decisions made for tomorrow or two days in the future differ from decisions made for several days in the future? We use data from an online grocer to address this question. In general, we find that as the delay between order completion and delivery increases,... View Details

Keywords: Time Management; Service Delivery; Internet and the Web; Decisions; Customers; Retail Industry

March 2000 (Revised November 2001)
Case

Rosenbluth International and Biztravel.com

Rosenbluth, the third largest U.S. travel agency, uses the Internet to serve new customers with a high-service strategy. Rosenbluth acquires Biztravel.com and integrates the customer support and logistics aspects of service delivery. View Details

Keywords: Horizontal Integration; Internet and the Web; Service Delivery; Acquisition; Travel Industry; United States

November 1999
Case

Interactive Minds (B)

By: Ashish Nanda, Thomas J. DeLong, Christina L. Darwall and Scot H. Landry

Two recent Harvard Business School graduates start a venture capital/consulting firm focused on opportunities related to the Internet. View Details

Keywords: History; Venture Capital; Internet and the Web; Capital Structure; Entrepreneurship; Consulting Industry

March 2020 (Revised July 2020)
Case

LULA: Transforming Transport and Mobility (A)

By: Siko Sikochi and Hayley (Le) Ma

Based in Cape Town, LULA was founded to create and operate a Mobility-as-a-Service platform with the aim to integrate different modes of transport through a one-ticket solution. LULA was “easy” in isiZulu, a language spoken in South Africa. Yet, it wasn’t easy for LULA... View Details

Keywords: Mobility; Transportation; Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Problems and Challenges; Opportunities; South Africa

2019
Working Paper

Real Exchange Rate Behavior: New Evidence from Matched Retail Goods

By: Alberto Cavallo, Brent Neiman and Roberto Rigobon

We use a dataset containing daily prices for thousands of matched retail products in nine countries to study tradable-goods real exchange rates. Prices were collected from the websites of large multi-channel retailers and then carefully matched into narrowly-deﬁned... View Details

Keywords: Purchasing Power Parity; Online Prices; Real Exchange Rate; Macroeconomics; Currency Exchange Rate; Price; Internet and the Web

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June 2015
Case

Beacon Group of Hong Kong: Finding Light in the Shadow Education Industry

By: Christopher Marquis, Qi Li and Guy Leung

After more than 25 years of operation, Beacon Group had grown from having 3 small classrooms on the fourth floor of a commercial building, to a network of 21 centers across Hong Kong with over 60,000 students enrolled per year. The key long-term challenge for the... View Details

Keywords: Online Education; Education; Tutoring; Incentives; Hong Kong; Motivation and Incentives; Internet and the Web; Family Business; Education Industry; Hong Kong

Article

Exclusivity, Contingent Control Rights, and the Design of Internet Portal Alliances

By: Josh Lerner and Dan Elfenbein

We explore the relationship between exclusivity and state-contingent control rights using a sample of over 100 Internet portal alliance contracts. We find that stronger exclusivity arrangements are associated with more frequent usage of contingent control rights. For... View Details

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Contracts; Governance Controls; Internet and the Web; Ownership

March 2000 (Revised May 2000)
Case

Evolution of eCoverage in the Online Insurance Market, The

David Riker, the founder and chairman of eCoverage, an online insurance company, describes the various phases of company development, such as presenting a business plan, gathering a management team, getting the word out, and running the site. View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Internet and the Web; Business Startups; Insurance Industry

October 2001
Article

The On-Line Auction Phenomenon: Growth, Strategies, Promise, and Problems

By: Gillian Ku and Deepak Malhotra

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Auctions; Growth and Development; Strategy; Problems and Challenges

01 Jun 2000
News

HBS Business Plan Contestants Pin Their Hopes on the Internet

cash and in-kind services. They are KNUMI, which is developing technology to enable "media content providers to create a highly interactive experience for end-users"; Sound MicroSystems, which is commercializing View Details

01 Sep 2006
News

Notebook

processing. How we got the idea: My classmate and cofounder, Tracy Lawrence, and I were in our second year at HBS, and we were looking to start a business. Tracy’s parents were moving, and in the context of that move, we thought it would make sense for them to be able... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley; Business Schools & Computer & Management Training; Educational Services; Telecommunications; Information

17 Mar 2015
News

The First Five Years: Adam Enbar (MBA 2010)

people web development for fun, and getting them amazing jobs and careers. I was blown away. That’s when the light bulb went off. Since then, we’ve done fairly well. We’ve trained over 500 graduates and maintain a 99 percent job placement... View Details

Keywords: Technical and Trade Schools; Educational Services

First Quarter 1996
Article

Electronic Commerce: Building Blocks of New Business Opportunity

By: L. M. Applegate, C.W. Holsapple, R. Kalakota, F.J. Radermacher and A.B. Whinston

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Opportunities

November 2006
Case

Tickle

By: William A. Sahlman and Dan Heath

Describes a set of decisions confronting the management team of a rapidly growing online psychological testing and social networking company. They can either sell the company to a large public company, raise another round of capital from a preeminent venture capital... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Internet and the Web; Growth Management; Internet and the Web; Business Strategy; Corporate Finance

2023
Chapter

The Platform Organization

By: Annabelle Gawer, Michael A. Cusumano and David B. Yoffie

The industry platform is a distinct organizational form that has grown into importance over the past 20 years. We focus on the digital platform, which, along with its associated ecosystem, is uniquely positioned to create and capture value in the digital economy. View Details

Keywords: Platform; Organization; Organizations; Internet and the Web; Value Creation; Digital Platforms

01 Oct 2000
News

Linda B. Kanner: All in the Family

"counterphobic move." Punch cards and mainframes were the technological order of the day when she enrolled at HBS, and a successful career in marketing -- including top-level positions at J. Baker Inc. and Bank of New England -- had... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna

July–August 2024
Article

Navigating the Future of Online Advertising with WEB3

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Ben Plomion

or years, digital ad spend was a steadily growing portion of marketing budgets. But online advertising faces challenges that mean a transformative shift in digital marketing. Meanwhile, so-called “Web3” has emerged as a medium that can change ad spend and how personal... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Advertising; Digital Marketing

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Spring 2020
Article

The Basic Economics of Internet Infrastructure

By: Shane Greenstein

The internet's structure and operations remain invisible to most economists. What determines the economic value of internet infrastructure and the incentives to improve it? What are the open research questions for the most salient policy issues? This article reviews... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Infrastructure; Operations; Economics; Value

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October 14, 2019
Article

Designing Better Online Review Systems

By: Geoff Donaker, Hyunjin Kim and Michael Luca

Online reviews are transforming the way consumers choose products and services of all sorts. We turn to TripAdvisor to plan a vacation, Zocdoc to find a doctor, and Yelp to choose a new restaurant. Reviews can create value for buyers and sellers alike, but only if they... View Details

Keywords: Reviews; Internet and the Web; Design; Quality; Reputation