Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,586)
- Faculty Publications (412)
- 2021
- Working Paper
Hidden Software and Veiled Value Creation: Illustrations from Server Software Usage
By: Raviv Murciano-Goroff, Ran Zhuo and Shane Greenstein
How do you measure the value of a commodity that transacts at a price of zero from an economic standpoint? This study examines the potential for and extent of omission and misattribution in standard approaches to economic accounting with regards to open source... View Details
- March 2021
- Teaching Note
Performance Improvement Consulting and Hi-R-Me: Making Sales Calls
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 819-043. This case study focuses on concepts, tools, and behaviors relevant to making sales calls along a typical progression with a prospect: from an initial phone call thru more in-depth discovery to a go/no-go meeting. The teaching... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Time Dependency, Data Flow, and Competitive Advantage
Data is fundamental to machine learning-based products and services and is considered strategic due to its externalities for businesses, governments, non-profits, and more generally for society. It is renowned that the value of organizations (businesses, government... View Details
- March 2021 (Revised February 2025)
- Teaching Note
Afterpay U.S.: The Omnichannel Dilemma
By: Antonio Moreno and Anibha Singh
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 519-086. In 2018, Nick Molnar, the founder of the Australia-based online payment service Afterpay began its expansion to the U.S. market. The service had gained a loyal following in Australia by enabling customers to pay for online... View Details
Keywords: Omnichannel Retail; Digital Marketing; Business Startups; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Business Organization; For-Profit Firms; Change Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Satisfaction; Financing and Loans; Microfinance; Global Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Product Development; Supply Chain Management; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Networks; Network Effects; Internet and the Web; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Australia
- March 2021 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Seeding and Selling Asana
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie Ma and Amram Migdal
In December 2019, Oliver Jay, Asana’s Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), was reconsidering his go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Asana was cloud-based work management software that enabled users to break up projects into discrete tasks that could be assigned, scheduled, and... View Details
Keywords: SaaS; Customer Journey; Business Model; Business Organization; Change Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Marketing Channels; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Technology Industry; United States
- 2021
- Working Paper
First Law of Motion: Influencer Video Advertising on TikTok
By: Jeremy Yang, Juanjuan Zhang and Yuhan Zhang
This paper engineers an intuitive feature that is predictive of the causal effect of influencer video advertising on product sales. We propose the concept of m-score, a summary statistic that captures the extent to which a product is advertised in the most engaging... View Details
- February 2021
- Article
A Dynamic Theory of Multiple Borrowing
By: Daniel Green and Ernest Liu
Multiple borrowing—a borrower obtains overlapping loans from multiple lenders—is a common phenomenon in many credit markets. We build a highly tractable, dynamic model of multiple borrowing and show that, because overlapping creditors may impose default externalities... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Entrepreneurial Learning and Strategic Foresight
By: Aticus Peterson and Andy Wu
We study how learning by experience across projects affects an entrepreneur's strategic foresight. In a quantitative study of 314 entrepreneurs across 722 crowdfunded projects supplemented with a program of qualitative interviews, we counterintuitively find that... View Details
- January 2021
- Case
Anodot: Autonomous Business Monitoring
By: Antonio Moreno and Danielle Golan
Autonomous business monitoring platform Anodot leveraged machine learning to provide real-time alerts regarding business anomalies. Anodot’s solution was used in various industries in order to primarily monitor business health, such as revenue and payments, product... View Details
- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Supplement
Toyota and Its Labor Union in Argentina (B)
By: Jorge Tamayo, Erik Snowberg and Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago
Toyota Argentina (TASA) and the union representing automotive industry workers in the country had been working together since 2011 to address the challenges faced by Toyota’s manufacturing plant in Zárate (Argentina). The strategy for moving forward was built on an... View Details
- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
THE YES: Reimagining the Future of E-Commerce with Artificial Intelligence (AI)
By: Jill Avery, Ayelet Israeli and Emma von Maur
THE YES, a multi-brand shopping app launched in May 2020 offered a new type of buying experience for women’s fashion, driven by a sophisticated algorithm that used data science and machine learning to create and deliver a personalized store for every shopper, based on... View Details
Keywords: Data; Data Analytics; Artificial Intelligence; AI; AI Algorithms; AI Creativity; Fashion; Retail; Retail Analytics; E-Commerce Strategy; Platform; Platforms; Big Data; Preference Elicitation; Preference Prediction; Predictive Analytics; App Development; ＂Marketing Analytics＂; Advertising; Mobile App; Mobile Marketing; Apparel; Online Advertising; Referral Rewards; Referrals; Female Ceo; Female Entrepreneur; Female Protagonist; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Creativity; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers; Forecasting and Prediction; Marketing Channels; Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; AI and Machine Learning; E-commerce; Digital Platforms; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States
- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Jumia's Path to Profitability
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in September 2019 as Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, co-founders and co-CEOs of Jumia, the leading Pan-African e-commerce platform, are contemplating the company’s path to profitability in the aftermath of a fragile investor sentiment, as the company... View Details
Keywords: Retail; Business Models; Business Model; Business Startups; Emerging Markets; For-Profit Firms; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Value Creation; Globalization; Entrepreneurship; Competition; Expansion; Logistics; Profit; Resource Allocation; Diversification; Corporate Strategy; Retail Industry; Technology Industry; Africa
- December 2020 (Revised March 2025)
- Case
Responsive Working at PepsiCo UK (A): Designing a Turnaround
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Nancy Boghossian Staples
Facing a significant decline in revenues in 2016, David Gwilliam, Head of Transformation at PepsiCo UK introduced a new way of working (“Responsive Working”), which encompasses a set of work practices and some new team structures. The work practices comprise a set of 9... View Details
- Article
Soul and Machine (Learning)
By: Davide Proserpio, John R. Hauser, Xiao Liu, Tomomichi Amano, Burnap Alex, Tong Guo, Dokyun (DK) Lee, Randall Lewis, Kanishka Misra, Eric Schwarz, Artem Timoshenko, Lilei Xu and Hema Yoganarasimhan
Machine learning is bringing us self-driving cars, medical diagnoses, and language translation, but how can machine learning help marketers improve marketing decisions? Machine learning models predict extremely well, are scalable to “big data,” and are a natural fit to... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Personalized Game Design for Improved User Retention and Monetization in Freemium Games
By: Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer and Julian Runge
One of the most crucial aspects and significant levers that gaming companies possess in designing
digital games is setting the level of difficulty, which essentially regulates the user’s ability to
progress within the game. This aspect is particularly significant in... View Details
- September 2020
- Case
Uber at a Crossroads (2017)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes the history of Uber, its business model—including the ways it differed from that of the traditional taxi industry—and its competition with Lyft. The case is set in 2017, a year in which Uber was plagued by even more scandals than usual, though its... View Details
Keywords: Business Startups; Business Model; Customer Satisfaction; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Price; Profit; Revenue; Investment; Government Legislation; Business History; Compensation and Benefits; Resignation and Termination; Employment; Wages; Lawfulness; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Management Style; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Product Design; Organizational Culture; Problems and Challenges; Attitudes; Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Expansion; Transportation Networks; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Valuation; Transportation Industry; Technology Industry; United States
- September–October 2020
- Article
Global Supply Chains in a Post-Pandemic World: Companies Need to Make Their Networks More Resilient. Here's How.
By: Willy C. Shih
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerabilities in the production strategies and supply chains of firms everywhere. Coupled with a rise in economic nationalism, manufacturers everywhere are going to be under pressure to rethink their sourcing and logistics... View Details
- September–October 2020
- Article
Social-Impact Efforts That Create Real Value
By: George Serafeim
Until the mid-2010s few investors paid attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data—information about companies’ carbon footprints, labor policies, board makeup, and so forth. Today the data is widely used by investors. How can organizations create... View Details
Keywords: Sustainability; Sustainability Management; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Disclosure; ESG Disclosure Metrics; ESG Ratings; ESG Reporting; Social Impact; Impact Measurement; Social Innovation; Purpose; Corporate Purpose; Corporate Social Responsibility; Strategy; Social Enterprise; Society; Accounting; Investment; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Corporate Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; North America; Europe; Japan; Australia
- August 2020
- Article
Strategies for Managing the Privacy Landscape
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Andres Hervas-Drane
Firms use consumer personal information to improve their products and services. Personal information is open to misuse, however, and when exploited for undesired or unexpected purposes reduces consumer’s trust in the firm and their willingness to provide personal... View Details
- August 2020
- Article
Workplace Knowledge Flows
By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton
We conducted a field experiment in a sales firm to test whether improving knowledge flows between coworkers affects productivity. Our design allows us to compare different management practices and to isolate whether frictions to knowledge transmission primarily reside... View Details