Publications

March 2018
Case

Sandra Brown Goes Digital (A): The Promise and Perils of Social Movements in a Healthcare Company

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen

As a middle manager at a biotechnology company, Sandra Brown harnessed digital tools and social media to engage others and build campaigns for change in the company. This case follows her career at the company and describes the challenges she faced as a change agent,... View Details

Keywords: Digital; Engagement; Stakeholder Engagement; Grassroots Movement; Organization Change And Adaptation; Quality; Health Care; Health Care Industry; Career Path; Leading Change; Management; Innovation and Management; Personal Development and Career; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Biotechnology Industry; Health Industry

11 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

In the Future of Sports Investing, Media Is the Best Bet

But if you ask Bob Higgins, Wyc Grousbeck, and Mark Wan—all seasoned sports team owners-—about the secret to investment success in sports, they'll tell you it has little to do with owning a team. Rather, it's all about the media... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Sports; Financial Services

07 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Digital Transformation: A New Roadmap for Success

address customers‘ evolving needs and desires, rather than simply selling their existing products and solutions. 3. Build a data-informed culture by upskilling talent Fewer than half of survey respondents reported that their organizations had the View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

25 Mar 2015
HBS Case

Tate’s Digital Makeover Transforms the Traditional Museum

Avery, it is essential for organizations diving into digital not to give in to the temptation to farm out blogging and social media to outside companies. "You have to be confident that whoever is... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Education

2007
Working Paper

Digital Interactivity: Unanticipated Consequences for Markets, Marketing, and Consumers

By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

The digital interactive transformation in marketing is not unfolding, as many thought it would, on the model of direct marketing. That model anticipated that digital media using rich profiling data would intrude marketing messaging more deeply and more precisely into... View Details

Keywords: Communication Intention and Meaning; Interactive Communication; Marketing Communications; Consumer Behavior; Social and Collaborative Networks; Internet and the Web

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16 Jul 2024
Research & Ideas

Weighing Digital Tradeoffs in Private Equity

When private equity (PE) firms buy a company, they typically follow a standard playbook to create value—streamlining operations, restructuring debt, changing management, and cutting costs. However, as digital technologies and artificial... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

17 Feb 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

How Entrepreneurs Can Find the Right Problem to Solve

discovery to validate a problem but don’t yet have a product, my follow-up question is: “How do you know people or companies will use your product?” Answers are equally discouraging. More often than not, I hear examples of interest tests, such as hits on social View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

25 Sep 2000
Research & Ideas

Cyber-Marketing: Scouting the Digital Communications Frontier

Seated before a computer with an Internet link, consumers today can flip through an estimated 800 million Web pages of public information by merely clicking a mouse. Add to this that television, now in 98 percent of American homes, is moving, albeit slowly, toward... View Details

Keywords: by Peter K. Jacobs

December 2009
Article

Media Markets and Localism: Does Local News en Español Boost Hispanic Voter Turnout?

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Joel Waldfogel

Since the dawn of broadcasting, and especially in the past decade, Americans have turned their attention from local to more distant sources of news and entertainment. While the integration of media markets will raise the private welfare of many consumers, critics of a... View Details

Keywords: Voting; Ethnicity; Behavior; Local Range; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States

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March 12, 2021
Article

Is Your C-Suite Equipped to Lead a Digital Transformation?

By: J. Yo-Jud Cheng, Cassandra Frangos and Boris Groysberg

The pandemic has rapidly accelerated many companies’ digital efforts, but do they have the right executives in place to lead this sort of transformation? To answer this question, the authors analyzed more than 100 search specifications for C-suite positions in Fortune... View Details

Keywords: Management Teams; Information Technology; Transformation; Competency and Skills; Digital Transformation

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22 Jul 2019
Book

How to Be a Digital Platform Leader

challenges and opportunities posed by digital platforms, The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power is a new book by Harvard Business School Professor David... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

11 Mar 2001
Research & Ideas

Digital Designs on the Inner City

An increasing number of inner city residents own computers and have online access, but government agencies and private companies need to do more to bridge the digital divide that still exists among income groups, according to business and... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

31 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

Where Can Digital Transformation Take You? Insights from 1,700 Leaders

Digitally mature companies have the right technical expertise (such as experienced data scientists or analysts), tools (dashboards and data visualization applications), and platforms (computing... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards

30 Nov 2009
Research & Ideas

Tracks of My Tears: Reconstructing Digital Music

favorite songs.” Harvard Business School professor Anita Elberse, who does much of her business research on the entertainment industry, looked at the clash between bundles and digital distribution, and the effect on View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Music

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: Companies Must Forget—and Borrow

As companies ride the digital wave, many find that switching up old, tired practices and deviating from the norm can be crucial to survival. But sometimes things can be taken too far. During the Digital... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Education; Advertising

28 Sep 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Digital Interactivity: Unanticipated Consequences for Markets, Marketing, and Consumers

Keywords: by John A. Deighton & Leora Kornfeld

23 Nov 2016
Cold Call Podcast

Digital Change: Lessons from the Newspaper Industry

Keywords: Re: Bharat N. Anand; Journalism & News

January 2023
Case

Proday: Calling the Right Play

By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn

Sarah Kunst knew the elements of a successful startup from her tenure at venture capital firms. In April 2018, however, her own app – Proday, a home fitness platform featuring exercises filmed by professional sports stars – was floundering. Kunst theorized that... View Details

Keywords: Social Media; Entrepreneurship; Advertising; Digital Marketing; Product Launch; Social Marketing; Failure; Sports; Applications and Software; Business Startups; Technology Industry; United States

August 2018 (Revised June 2025)
Case

Facebook—Can Ethics Scale in the Digital Age?

By: George A. Riedel and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Since its founding in 2004, Facebook has built a phenomenally successful business at global scale to become the fifth most valuable public company in the world. The revelation of Cambridge Analytica events in March 2018, where 78 million users' information was leaked... View Details

Keywords: Facebook; Ethics; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Trust; Business Model; Corporate Accountability; Social Media