Publications

01 Sep 2003
News

Kumar Mahadeva

“What’s different about our business model is that we’ve leveraged the global talent pool, kept our costs low, and stayed on top of new technologies that can benefit our clients.” Mahadeva enjoys being an entrepreneur and is excited about the innovative possibilities... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services; Professional Services

08 Mar 2004
Research & Ideas

Creating Value in Your Business Ecosystem

rapidly with the number of ecosystem members that use them. This allows keystone players to share the surplus with their communities. During the Internet boom, many businesses failed because, although the theoretical value of a keystone... View Details

Keywords: by Marco Iansiti & Roy Levien

07 Jul 2003
What Do You Think?

Can We Have Too Much Productivity Improvement?

global economy and the Internet were cited by some as being responsible for the current dilemma. John van Heteren paraphrased several respondents when he opined that "I believe that the existing definition in your article was not... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

20 Nov 2019
Research & Ideas

It's No Joke: AI Beats Humans at Making You Laugh

on friends, family, and even strangers on the Internet when they’re deciding which products to purchase or even which people to date. And they put a lot of trust in their fellow humans; 83 percent of people say they trust recommendations... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

August 2013 (Revised September 2015)
Case

Coursera

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Hyunjin Kim

By providing free and open-access online courses at a large scale, Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms seek to innovate the business models of the traditional higher education industry. In a little over a year, Coursera had grown at a rapid rate to emerge as a... View Details

Keywords: Business Models; Strategy; Competition; Business Model; Internet and the Web; Higher Education; Competitive Advantage; Education Industry

07 Aug 2013
What Do You Think?

Is There Still a Role for Judgment in Decision-Making?

the proper role of judgment in decision-making? What do you think? Original Article In the last several years, a veritable tsunami of advice on how to make decisions has hit the Internet and what few shelves remain in our local... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

18 Feb 2019
Book

What’s Really Disrupting Business? It’s Not Technology

idea—allowing people to live-cast on the internet their day-to-day activities—that was centered on technology. After many twists and turns, they arrived at their eventual business model of allowing gamers to decouple playing games from... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Beauty & Cosmetics; Insurance; Service; Retail

02 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Not All M&As Are Alike—and That Matters

acquired 62 companies, as it races to dominate the Internet server and communication equipment fields. From the target company's point of view, an acquisition is often desirable, since it takes a massive amount of money to build a... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph L. Bower

December 2018
Case

DraftKings and the Future of Fantasy Sports

By: Robert F. Higgins and Julia Kelley

Founded in 2012, DraftKings helped change the fantasy sports landscape by popularizing daily fantasy sports (DFS), or short-term fantasy sports tournaments that offered big cash prizes to winners. The company’s valuation exceeded $1 billion by 2015, but DraftKings soon... View Details

Profile

Enrico Ferrari

grocery delivery venture in Germany and Australia, which was backed by Rocket Internet, the largest European internet incubator and investor. Although that founder's journey ultimately came to an end, Rocket recruited Enrico as the... View Details

Keywords: Tech

October 2019 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Fixing Facebook: Fake News, Privacy, and Platform Governance

By: David Yoffie and Daniel Fisher

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook based on the idea that connecting people was a fundamentally good thing—and a way to turn a handsome profit. But from the beginning, Facebook received criticism both for how it handled user privacy and how it curated user-generated... View Details

Keywords: Platform; Governance; Privacy; Internet and the Web; Corporate Governance; Ethics; Business and Government Relations; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Web Services Industry

11 Apr 2024
News

Mission Control

analytical work. I did a piece of research that uncovered or discovered the equivalence to Moore's law from the computer industry in the space industry. And I had full understanding of how Moore's law, 2x performance every two years, had driven the computer industry... View Details

2016
Chapter

User-Generated Content and Social Media

By: Michael Luca

This paper documents what economists have learned about user-generated content (UGC) and social media. A growing body of evidence suggests that UGC on platforms ranging from Yelp to Facebook has a large causal impact on economic and social outcomes ranging from... View Details

Keywords: User-generated Content; Crowdsourcing; Design Economics; Internet and the Web; Marketing; Economics; Media; Social Media

Find at Harvard

Read Now

October 2009 (Revised June 2010)
Case

Hulu: An Evil Plot to Destroy the World?

By: Anita Elberse and Sunil Gupta

In July 2009, Jason Kilar, the chief executive officer of Hulu, is debating whether the online video aggregator should move away from a purely advertising-supported model, and whether it should participate in an industry-wide initiative to develop and test... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Business Model; Television Entertainment; Distribution Channels; Service Operations; Internet and the Web; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry