Publications

10 Dec 2015
News

Shane Greenstein: "How the Internet Became Commercial"

04 May 2011
Research & Ideas

Is Web Surfing Distracting Your Workers?

A number of studies have suggested that US workers waste between one and two hours a day web surfing, costing their companies billions in lost productivity. In response, some employers have banned private... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

2020
Article

Inconvenient Truths: Interpreting the Origins of the Internet

By: Shane Greenstein

A conventional economic narrative provides intellectual underpinnings for governments to subsidize research and development ("R&D") that coordinates risky research to benefit many in society. This essay compares this narrative with the origins and invention of the... View Details

Keywords: Lead Users; Technology Transfer; Internet and the Web; History; Analysis; Research and Development; Governance; Information Technology; Policy

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July 1997
Case

Ford Motor Company: Maximizing the Business Value of Web Technologies

One of the largest companies in the world decides to aggressively deploy Web technology and must manage and support the new technology. A discussion of infrastructure renewal, application development, extranets, and content management is included. View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Value Creation; Information Technology; Infrastructure; Internet and the Web; Manufacturing Industry; Auto Industry

This 105 page report analyzes the structure and dynamics of the commercial internet by classifying individually the internet-dependent revenues and employment of the 412 largest firms that participate in the ecosystem, and rolling up smaller firms and individuals. The... View Details

19 Oct 2009
Research & Ideas

Why Are Web Sites So Confusing?

Do you sometimes get the feeling that Internet portals, search pages, social networks, e-commerce, and other Web sites are not necessarily... View Details

Keywords: by Andrei Hagiu & Bruno Jullien

2001
Book

Communications Policy in Transition: The Internet and Beyond

By: Benjamin M. Compaine and Shane Greenstein

November 20, 2000
Article

Untangling the Value of Web Companies

By: Sunil Gupta and Donald R. Lehmann

Keywords: Value; Internet and the Web; Business Ventures

1998
Chapter

Developing Products for the Internet

By: A. D. MacCormack and M. Iansiti

Keywords: Product Development; Internet and the Web; Information Technology; Technology Industry

File

Internet Appendix

March 2005 (Revised June 2006)
Case

Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Web Services Strategy

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Fernando Suarez

Microsoft and IBM have excluded Sun Microsystems from the board of the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I), an industry consortium that will shape the evolution of Web services standards. Sun managers must decide whether to join WS-I as a contributing... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Standards; Corporate Governance; Power and Influence; Web Services Industry; Web Services Industry

Educators

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

01 Oct 2000
News

Internet Tsunami

Hiroshi Mikitani (MBA '93) is the founder, president, and CEO of Rakuten, Japan's leading online shopping destination. He believes that because the View Details

Keywords: Nonstore Retailers; Retail Trade

October 2009
Article

Shaping Online Consumer Choice by Partitioning the Web

By: Jolie M. Martin and Michael I. Norton

This research explores how partitioning attributes in online search interfaces changes the valuations of those attributes-and impacts subsequent choice-such that attributes that are displayed as separate categories tend to receive greater decision weight than... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Information Management; Demand and Consumers; Research; Internet and the Web; Valuation

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November 2014
Article

Beyond Bedlam: How Consumers and Brands Alike Are Playing the Web

By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

The new marketing order, as played out on media platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Instagram, is so unlike the order it is displacing that it might seem like bedlam, an asylum of sorts for ideas intelligible only to their creators. And yet, surely, something... View Details

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2015
Book

How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a New Network

By: Shane Greenstein

In less than a decade, the Internet went from being a series of loosely connected networks used by universities and the military to the powerful commercial engine it is today. This book describes how many of the key innovations that made this possible came from... View Details

October 2003 (Revised January 2016)
Exercise

The BCPC Internet Strategy Team: An Exercise

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Laura Feldman

This short fictional case forms the basis of a team decision-making exercise. The case, inspired by a real decision facing a major telecommunications company, describes a cross-functional management team convened by the CEO for the purpose of developing a... View Details

Keywords: Groups and Teams; Decision Making; Risk and Uncertainty; Information Management; Perspective; Product Launch; Internet and the Web; Knowledge Sharing; Telecommunications Industry