Publications

July 2001
Exercise

Working with Your "Shadow Partner": Building a High Tech Investment Portfolio

By: Dwight B. Crane and Richard L. Nolan

Team-based exercise designed to illustrate the use of the Internet directly by executives. Requires going on the Internet to search for information required to construct a high-tech investment portfolio. View Details

Keywords: Investment Portfolio; Groups and Teams; Internet and the Web; Information Management

01 Apr 1998
News

Plunging Into the Net

almost four decades ago, this change is clearly more evolutionary than revolutionary. During the last five years, the Internet - and more... View Details

2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 17 The Wintel Standards-based Platform

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The purpose of this chapter is to use the theory of bottlenecks laid out in previous chapters to better understand the dynamics of an open standards-based platform. I describe how the Wintel platform evolved from 1990 through 2000 under joint sponsorship of Intel and... View Details

Keywords: Open Platforms; Bottlenecks; Wintel Platform; Disintermediation; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Business History; Digital Platforms; Computer Industry

SSRN

Read Now

November 1999 (Revised June 2000)
Case

FairMarket: Managing Business Development

By: William A. Sahlman, Michael J. Roberts and Cathy Taylor

Describes the evolution of FairMarket, a provider of turnkey auction services to community and merchant Web sites. Describes several deals that the CEO must negotiate, requiring a view of the company's valuation. View Details

Keywords: Partners and Partnerships; Internet and the Web; Valuation; Negotiation Deal; Auctions; Growth and Development Strategy; Web Services Industry

Find at Harvard

February 2012 (Revised August 2013)
Case

What's the Deal with LivingSocial?

By: Michael I. Norton, Luc Wathieu, Betsy Page Sigman and Marco Bertini

Tim O'Shaughnessy, the 29-year-old CEO of LivingSocial, is growing a revolutionary worldwide business of "daily deals"—in which retailers offer a heavily-discounted product or service available for purchase for brief (often 24-hour) windows. The case explores the... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Innovation and Invention; Advertising; Brands and Branding; Management; Web Services Industry

01 Sep 2015
News

Alumni and Faculty Books for September 2015

fees, brand globalization, the rise of holding companies, client obsessions with shareholder value, the digital and Internet revolutions—and... View Details

September 2013
Case

Vogue: Defining the Culture of Fashion

By: Anita Elberse, Joseph Ferrer, Elizabeth Gough and Victoria Katsarou

In March 2013, Susan Plagemann, vice president and publisher of Vogue—widely regarded as the world's most influential fashion magazine, and publishing conglomerate Condé Nast's marquee title—is seeking answers to two questions. First, how she can best approach the... View Details

Keywords: Creative Industries; Fashion; Publishing; Digital Technology; Entertainment; Product Portfolio Management; Magazines; Journals and Magazines; Internet and the Web; Change Management; Resource Allocation; Creativity; Media; Advertising; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry

10 Nov 2008
Research Event

Social Media Leads the Future of Technology

number of which offer Internet access. What these statistics suggest is that "the most precious currency today is information," said panelist Jim Breyer, an early investor in Facebook and a... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

01 Jun 2020
News

Keeping the Beat

to hopping on Zoom. Everyone is used to hopping on Instagram Live or Facebook Live, or these virtual experiences. It’s the new norm and people are comfortable with it. They have better View Details

Keywords: Motion Picture and Sound Recording Industries; Motion Picture and Sound Recording Industries

October 2023
Case

CornerUp: Digitizing the Corner Store

By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui, Stacy Straaberg and Diego Zainos De La Sota Riva

In July 2023, Jason Diaz, co-founder and CEO of CornerUp, assessed the progress of his business-to-business e-procurement software application (app) startup, founded in January 2022. CornerUp began as a fast-moving consumer packaged goods (FMCG) distributor in New York... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Small Business; Transition; Decisions; Social Entrepreneurship; Geographic Location; Disruptive Innovation; Market Participation; Digital Platforms; Trust; Business Strategy; Expansion; Information Infrastructure; Internet and the Web; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Technology Industry; United States

27 Mar 2019
News

Sharing the Road

the case of car sharing is the same car gets utilized almost about 75 to 80 percent of the time. “We've invested in two very important aspects of our business. We invest today... View Details

01 Jun 2017
News

Streamlining the Supermarket

A new alumni-backed venture hopes robots will change how we buy our milk, bread, and eggs. In early 2016, José Vicente Aguerrevere (MBA 2002) attended a talk at HBS by Mick Mountz (MBA 1996), founder of Kiva Systems. Kiva’s small, mobile... View Details

Keywords: Francis Storrs

01 Apr 1997
News

Facing the Music

and IBM tested such a concept in the early 1990s but terminated the project after failing to receive commitments from major record labels and... View Details

Keywords: Marguerite Rigoglioso

July 2001 (Revised October 2004)
Case

PSA: The World's Port of Call

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Nancy Bartlett, Dolly Chang-Leow and Neo Boon Siong

Details the evolution of an e-business strategy and capabilities over a 16-year period. What began in 1984 as an effort to automate the port of Singapore to achieve productivity savings, by 2000 had evolved into a global e-business called Portnet.com. Closes as senior... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Strategy; Technological Innovation; Internet and the Web; Business or Company Management; Shipping Industry; Information Technology Industry

10 Feb 2020
In Practice

6 Ways That Emerging Technology Is Disrupting Business Strategy

involving artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, and the Internet of Things are changing the way business leaders think about strategy.... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

May 1997 (Revised July 1997)
Case

Vermeer Technologies (B): Realizing the Dream

By: Ashish Nanda

The Vermeer team works day and night to develop its software offering, unforeseen difficulties and internal tensions notwithstanding. In less than a year, the product is ready. The Vermeer team waits anxiously for the market to pronounce its verdict. View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Applications and Software; Business Startups; Product Development; Information Technology Industry

12 Aug 2008
Op-Ed

Google-Yahoo Ad Deal is Bad for Online Advertising

A proposed advertising deal between Internet competitors Google and Yahoo would reduce competitiveness in the Internet advertising market, likely... View Details

Keywords: by Benjamin G. Edelman; Advertising; Publishing

2016
Working Paper

The Empirical Economics of Online Attention

By: Andre Boik, Shane Greenstein and Jeffrey Prince

In several markets, firms compete not for consumer expenditure but instead for consumer attention. We model and characterize how households allocate their scarce attention in arguably the largest market for attention: the Internet. Our characterization of household... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Competition; Behavior; Resource Allocation; Household; Cognition and Thinking