Publications

October 2006
Case

Clearwire Corporation

By: Richard S. Ruback

Explores Clearwire's decision to fund its substantial capital investments through an initial public offering (IPO) or through private equity. Clearwire is developing and deploying a broadband wireless network using WiMAX technology. It had filed a registered statement... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Technological Innovation; Initial Public Offering; Investment Portfolio; Telecommunications Industry

26 Aug 2014
First Look

First Look: August 26

the importance of overlapping state, civil society, and market governance regimes to meaningful transnational regulation. Download working paper: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2178540 Cases & Course Materials Harvard Business School Case 212-047 Underwater Engineer at... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 1999 (Revised August 2005)
Case

Pandesic: The Challenges of a New Business Venture (A)

By: Joseph L. Bower and Clark Gilbert

Pandesic is a joint venture of SAP and Intel designed to develop turnkey information architectures for marketspace companies. The case explores the problems of developing the joint venture from the perspective of its general management. Describes the development of its... View Details

Keywords: Joint Ventures; Design; Information; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Resource Allocation; Marketing Communications; Performance

July 2008 (Revised April 2009)
Case

Advanced Micro Devices: Competing in the Shadow of a Giant (A)

By: Willy C. Shih and Andrew A. King

As the only significant competitor to Intel Corporation in PC microprocessors, Advanced Micro Devices faced daunting investment choices. Not only did it have to fund microprocessor design teams, it also had to fund silicon process R&D, and it faced huge capital... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Operations; Partners and Partnerships; Competitive Strategy; Technology Industry

Find at Harvard

December 1994
Case

Intel's Pentium: When the Chips Are Down (A)

By: Stephen A. Greyser and Norman Klein

Intel, the largest-selling manufacturer of microprocessor computer chips, finds itself in a brand-threatening situation when a flaw is revealed in its top-of-the-line Pentium chip. The story is front-page news for weeks. The company invested tens of millions of dollars... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Engineering; Crisis Management; Brands and Branding; Production; Failure; Semiconductor Industry

January 2013
Case

Arthur Rock

By: Felda Hardymon, Tom Nicholas and Liz Kind

Arthur Rock was known as one of the country's first venture capitalists and was instrumental in launching major Silicon Valley firms, such as Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel Corporation, Apple Computer, Inc., Scientific Data Systems and Teledyne Incorporated. He was the... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Success; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; California

11 Sep 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Competing Complements

Keywords: by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Barry Nalebuff & David B. Yoffie

October 2012 (Revised February 2014)
Teaching Note

Intel: Strategic Decisions in Locating a New Assembly and Test Plant (A) and (B)

By: Juan Alcácer

The case is used in Harvard Business School's (HBS) elective course "Competing Globally" as the first case in the third module (see "Competing Globally: Course Note for Instructors," HBS No. 713-422). As the first case in the module, it introduces the framework to... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Positioning; Location Choices; Location Strategies; Strategic Planning; Strategy; Global Strategy; Geographic Location; Computer Industry

February 2001 (Revised February 2002)
Background Note

Leader's (Dis)Advantage, The

Provides a rigorous description of the economic dynamics that may produce inherent advantages for large and/or first-mover firms within an industry, as well as those factors that may result in disadvantages for such leading firms. The leader advantages discussed... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Semiconductor Industry

2015
Book

Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs

By: David B. Yoffie and Michael A. Cusumano

The authors of the bestselling Competing on Internet Time (a Business Week top 10 book) analyze the strategies, principles, and skills of three of the most successful and influential figures in business—Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs—offering... View Details

Keywords: Management; Strategy; Leadership; Information Technology; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology Industry

05 Jul 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Wintel: Cooperation or Conflict

Keywords: by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & David B. Yoffie; Computer

January 2008 (Revised September 2008)
Supplement

Marketing the "$100 Laptop" (C)

By: John A. Quelch and David Chen

In October 2007, the OLPC reported production delays and missed its shipment date. In early November, the $100 PC finally went into production, with initial shipments planned for Uruguay and Mongolia, and mid-month launched the "Give One, Get One" program. It enabled... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; For-Profit Firms; Partners and Partnerships; Information Infrastructure; Problems and Challenges; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Computer Industry; Canada; Mongolia; Uruguay; United States

Research Summary

Strategy and Technology

By: David B. Yoffie

Professor Yoffie’s research examines different aspects of strategy and technology. His most recent research has focused on three areas. The first research topic looks at the dynamics of cooperation and competition among “complements.” In a number of articles and... 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

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2010
Working Paper

Competing Complements

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Barry Nalebuff and David B. Yoffie

In Cournot's model of complements, the producers of A and B are both monopolists. This paper extends Cournot's model to allow for competition between complements on one side of the market. Consider two complements, A and B, where the A + B bundle is valuable only when... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Revenue; Monopoly; Game Theory; Competition

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June 2011 (Revised July 2012)
Case

Reversing the AMD Fusion Launch

By: Elie Ofek and Ryan Johnson

AMD management needs to make a critical decision on the launch sequence of its next-generation technology called Fusion. The Fusion processor concept merges the central and graphics processing units (CPU and GPU) onto one chip-- yielding advantages in performance... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Performance Effectiveness; Strategic Planning; Competition; Value Creation; Computer Industry; Technology Industry

February 2022
Case

NFX Capital and Moov Technologies

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Nicole Tempest Keller

In July 2019, James Currier, a general partner at San Francisco-based NFX Ventures, was considering a seed stage investment of $1.5 million in Moov Technologies, a B2B marketplace for used industrial equipment. NFX was a venture capital firm focused on seed-stage... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Network Effects; Marketplace Matching; Digital Platforms; Market Design; Applications and Software; Semiconductor Industry; Financial Services Industry; San Francisco