Publications

April 2010 (Revised December 2010)
Case

Shanzhai! MediaTek and the "White Box" Handset Market

By: Willy C. Shih, Chen-Fu Chien and Jyun-Cheng Wang

The term "white box" is often used to describe products without a brand name. Such products are assembled from standardized parts, and they became a very popular category of desktop PCs. Hsinchu, Taiwan based MediaTek is a fabless semiconductor company that unleashed a... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Emerging Markets; Competitive Advantage; Wireless Technology; Semiconductor Industry; Taiwan

Portrait Project

Sam Li

probably take me three minutes, but for Michael, it was like taking a stressful exam. What is a password security question? What is PayPal? It was too much. Computer technology disrupted his life without providing much benefit. We... View Details

25 Aug 2022
News

Hair Today

precious: In addition to her studies, Winters was guardian of her sister, who was 14 at the time. “I remember thinking, ‘This is absolutely crazy,’” she says. After writing a paper about Drybar and its disruption of blowouts, Winters... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; entrepreneurship; hair; beauty; Houston; Super Bowl

01 Mar 2012
News

Where Innovation Rules

thousands of HBS alumni. Whether through creative destruction, disruptive innovation, or riding a societal quantum leap forward, HBS alumni entrepreneurs have founded or grown companies that are pervasive and familiar, from consumer... View Details

Keywords: Deborah Blagg;Garry Emmons;Julia Hanna;Roger Thompson; Corporate Services; Educational Services; Management

December 2019 (Revised July 2020)
Case

Ray White

By: Boris Groysberg and Tricia Gregg

Ray White is an Australian real estate business that has been owned and operated by the White family for four generations. The business has expanded and prospered. However, as the industry faces new challenges and opportunities, how should the White family respond?... View Details

Keywords: Crisis; COVID-19; Pandemic; Family Business; Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Disruption; Information Technology; Health Pandemics; Crisis Management; Real Estate Industry; Australia

10 Jun 2002
Research & Ideas

Disruption: The Art of Framing

competitor's action as both a threat and an opportunity. Here are organizational and process changes that can help meet the challenge.It's one thing to recognize the importance of careful framing when you're faced with a disruptive... View Details

Keywords: by Clark Gilbert & Joseph L. Bower

March 2020 (Revised May 2022)
Case

The Art of the Merger: The Museum of Modern Art and PS1

By: Dennis Yao and Hillary Greene

This case examines the organizational relationship between the Museum of Modern Art and its affiliate MoMA PS1. The relationship raises a number of business and corporate strategy questions regarding the evolution of organizational relationships and their management.... View Details

Keywords: Arts; Nonprofit Organizations; Corporate Strategy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Disruption; Decision Making; Fine Arts Industry; United States; New York (state, US)

January 2018 (Revised May 2018)
Case

AT&T Managing Technological Change and the Future of Telephone Operators in the 20th Century

By: Daniel P. Gross and William R. Kerr

By the 1930s, AT&T dominated the American phone industry, serving 10 million telephones and employing over 100,000 switchboard operators. But beginning in the mid-1910s, the company began changing from manually operated switchboards to mechanical switching systems that... View Details

Keywords: AT＆T; Bell Telephone; Phone Lines; Phone Operators; Mechanical Switching; Layoffs; Technological Change; Transition; History; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Disruption; Change Management; Communications Industry; Telecommunications Industry; United States

19 Jan 2024
News

Blockchain for Good

After immigrating to the United Kingdom in the late 1960s to escape the Nigeria-Biafra civil war, Stella Dyer (MBA 1994) and her family lived in public housing and had very little money. “But we still had more than our friends and relatives back home,” she recalls. “My... View Details

07 Dec 2016
HBS Case

Why Millennials Flock to Fintech for Personal Investing

Millennials are disruptive bunch. The first generation to grow up with the internet, consumers born after 1980 are used to relying on technology and engineering to do almost everything—including shopping (Amazon), listening to music... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

15 Dec 2015
First Look

December 15, 2015

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50234 December 2015 Harvard Business Review What Is Disruptive Innovation? By: Christensen, Clayton M., Michael Raynor, and Rory McDonald Abstract—For the past 20 years, the theory of View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

Web

Self-Catering | About

beverage at all other campus locations must be supplied by Restaurant Associates (RA). Appropriate foods for self-catering include: bagels, pizza, “take-out” food, chips, non-alcoholic beverages in disposable containers, etc. Classes must not be View Details

01 Dec 2004
News

Aldrich Renovations Reach Halfway Point

Students taking classes in Aldrich Hall this year can literally place one foot in the past and one in the future where the old and newly renovated halves of the building meet on each of the three floors. To avoid disrupting classes,... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

May 2018
Teaching Note

AT&T: Managing Technological Change and the Future of Telephone Operators in the 20th Century

By: Daniel P. Gross and William R. Kerr

Teaching Note for HBS No. 718-486. View Details

Keywords: AT＆T; Bell Telephone; Phone Lines; Phone Operators; Mechanical Switching; Layoffs; Technological Change; Transition; History; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Disruption; Change Management; Communications Industry; Telecommunications Industry; United States