Publications

November 2016
Case

ShotSpotter

By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah McAra

SST, Inc. offered a subscription-based gunfire detection service, ShotSpotter Flex, to cities across the United States in addition to a few abroad. Over its 20-year history, SST had mostly honed a reliable business-to-government sales model, and the company had been... View Details

Keywords: ShotSpotter; SST; Internet Of Things; IoT; Smart Cities; Public Entrepreneurship; Enterprise Sales; Scaling And Growth; Government; Public Sector; Innovation; Ralph Clark; Entrepreneurship; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Public Administration Industry; California; United States

13 Jun 2012
HBS Case

HBS Cases: A Startup Takes On the Credit Ratings Giants

studied the credit ratings industry in the wake of the financial crisis. In a paper published in the Journal of Financial Economics, he examined the role of competition between raters. One important distinction, in his view, is between... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish; Banking; Financial Services

October 2007
Article

The Power of Stars: Do Star Actors Drive the Success of Movies?

By: Anita Elberse

Is the involvement of star actors critical to the success of motion pictures? Film studios, which they regularly pay multimillion-dollar fees to star actors, seem driven by that belief. I shed light on the returns on this investment using an event study that considers... View Details

Keywords: Talent and Talent Management; Film Entertainment; Investment Return; Revenue; Compensation and Benefits; Resource Allocation; Success; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

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March 2008 (Revised November 2008)
Case

Sony Digital Entertainment, Japan

By: Anita Elberse

It is late 2007. So-called cell phone ("keitai") novels have turned into an extremely popular form of entertainment-on-the- go in Japan, in particular among young, female readers. In fact, consisting mostly of love stories written by amateurs in short sentences and... View Details

Keywords: Books; Marketing Strategy; Open Source Distribution; Competition; Mobile Technology; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Japan

January 2015 (Revised November 2016)
Case

La Martina: Leveraging Polo's Luxury Lifestyle

By: Anat Keinan, Maria Fernanda Miguel and Sandrine Crener

Founded in 1984 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, La Martina has grown from a high-end polo equipment company into a global fashion brand with operations in 56 countries. Polo, which is not only a sport but also a way of life, is at the core of the brand DNA. Polo is a... View Details

July 2024
Case

Negotiating in a Hurricane: John Branca and the Michael Jackson Estate

By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green

When the "King of Pop," Michael Jackson, unexpectedly died in 2009, he left behind an estate that was over $500 million in debt, with largely illiquid assets, and legions of creditors poised to begin to seize assets in as soon as 60 days. The task of managing Jackson’s... View Details

Keywords: Bargaining; Dispute Resolution; Negotiation; Entertainment; Financial Management; Financial Condition; Assets; Music Industry

24 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 24, 2018

2017, Jason Blum, the founder and chief executive officer of film and television production company Blumhouse Productions, has another blockbuster on his hands with the movie Get Out, produced for just $4.5 million. Remarkable returns for... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

16 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Delivering the Digital Goods: iTunes vs. Peer-to-Peer

and the development of incremental tradeoffs towards radical moves to create new business models, new forms of satisfying needs that drastically reduce costs and/or raise value perceived by customers. One important enabler of new business models is the Internet. This... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Music

2007
Working Paper

Highbrow Films Gather Dust: Time-inconsistent Preferences and Online DVD Rentals

By: Katherine L. Milkman, Todd Rogers and Max H. Bazerman

We report on a field study demonstrating systematic differences between the preferences people anticipate they will have over a series of options in the future and their subsequent revealed preferences over those options. Using a novel panel data set, we analyze the... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Decision Choices and Conditions; Attitudes; Conflict and Resolution; Emotions; Film Entertainment; Cognition and Thinking; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

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June 2009
Article

Highbrow Films Gather Dust: Time-inconsistent Preferences and Online DVD Rentals

By: Katherine L. Milkman, Todd Rogers and Max H. Bazerman

We report on a field study demonstrating systematic differences between the preferences people anticipate they will have over a series of options in the future and their subsequent revealed preferences over those options. Using a novel panel data set, we analyze the... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Forecasting and Prediction; Film Entertainment; Demand and Consumers; Renting or Rental; Power and Influence; Prejudice and Bias; Online Technology; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

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2009
Case

What People Want (and How to Predict It)

By: Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris

Historically, neither the creators nor the distributors of cultural products such as books or movies have used analytics -- data, statistics, predictive modeling -- to determine the likely success of their offerings. Instead, companies relied on the brilliance of... View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Creativity; Customer Satisfaction; Forecasting and Prediction; Markets; Business Model; Publishing Industry; Publishing Industry