Publications

SSRN

September 1999 (Revised November 2000)
Case

Swatch Group, The: On Internet Time

By: Luc R. Wathieu, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Cate Reavis

Under the leadership of Nicholas Hayek, the Swatch Group, makers of the Swatch watch, is widely credited with revitalizing the Swiss watch industry by offering a consistent set of brands addressing all segments of the global watch market. New opportunities beyond the... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Consumer Products Industry

16 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 16, 2008

platform and its evolution. We describe three ways of representing platform architectures: network graphs, design structure matrices, and layer maps. We conclude by addressing a number of fundamental strategic questions suggested View Details

29 Jul 2008
First Look

First Look: July 29, 2008

http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-006.pdf The Agglomeration of U.S. Ethnic Inventors Author:William R. Kerr Abstract The ethnic composition of U.S. inventors is undergoing a significant transformation-with deep impacts for the overall... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2007
Chapter

Disrupting Gender, Revising Leadership

By: D. E. Meyerson, R. Ely and Laura Wernick

In this chapter, we present a case study of men on two off-shore oil platforms—a workplace that has traditionally rewarded men for their masculine displays of bravado and their interactions centered on proving masculinity—in which such displays and interactions were... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Safety; Leadership; Interpersonal Communication; Practice; Gender; Business Processes; Energy Industry

May 2013 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Benetton Group S.p.A., 2000

By: John R. Wells and Galen Danskin

In 2000, Benetton was one of the leading mass fashion competitors in the world with approximately $1.9 billion in sales across 5,500 stores in 120 countries. But the company's fortunes seemed to be on the wane. Operating profits had fallen 9% from the prior year to... View Details

Keywords: Fashion; Strategic Change; Strategic Management; Globalized Firms and Management; Marketing Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Performance Consistency; Management Teams; Strategy; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Retail Industry; Italy

November 2002 (Revised June 2003)
Case

China's Rural Leap Forward

By: Bruce R. Scott and Jamie Matthews

Collectively owned township and village enterprises (TVEs) played a pivotal role in China's rapid growth during the 1980s and 1990s. Although they originated in the policies and institutions of the Maoist era, TVEs thrived only after Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms... View Details

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Public Sector; Public Ownership; Development Economics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Macroeconomics; Emerging Markets; China

December 2018 (Revised June 2021)
Supplement

Bulb 2017: Launch

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

On August 21, 2015, Amit Gudka and Hayden Wood, co-founders of Bulb Ltd. (Bulb) launched a new business to supply energy to the United Kingdom’s 27 million residential homes with a promise of 100% renewable electricity at affordable prices. By the end of March 2017,... View Details

2012
Working Paper

Is India's Manufacturing Sector Moving Away from Cities?

By: Ejaz Ghani, Arti Grover Goswami and William R. Kerr

This paper investigates the urbanization of the Indian manufacturing sector by combining enterprise data from formal and informal sectors. We find that plants in the formal sector are moving away from urban and into rural locations, while the informal sector is moving... View Details

Keywords: Urban Development; Policy; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Geographic Location; Education; Infrastructure; Manufacturing Industry; India

15 Jul 2008
First Look

First Look: July 15, 2008

the technology bubble to examine the hypothesis that inexperienced investors play a role in the formation of asset price bubbles. Using age as a proxy for managers' investment experience, we find that around the peak of the technology bubble, mutual funds run View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

2022
Report

The First Four Healthy Building Strategies Every Building Should Pursue to Reduce Risk from COVID-19

By: Joseph G. Allen, Emily Jones, Marissa V. Rainbolt, Linsey C. Marr, David Michaels, Leslie R. Cadet, Shelly L. Miller, Meira Levinson, Lidia Morawska, Richard L. Corsi, Nira R. Pollock, Yuguo Li, Alasdair P.S. Munro, Kelly Grier, Qingyan Chen, John D. Macomber and Xiaodong Cao

Understanding of the most probable transmission routes and identifying the risk environments for disease spread should always be among the first critical steps in the response to future disease threats. This is one of the most vital public health lessons of the... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Buildings and Facilities; Risk and Uncertainty; Health Industry; Education Industry; Real Estate Industry

2014
Chapter

Schumpeter's Plea: Historical Reasoning in Entrepreneurial Theory and Research

By: G. Jones and R. Daniel Wadhwani

This chapter draws on theories of entrepreneurship and history to explore the ways in which historical processes play an integral role in entrepreneurship. It builds off the plea by Joseph Schumpeter for an active exchange between historical approaches and theories of... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurs; Business History; Entrepreneurship; History; Organizations

July 2020 (Revised September 2020)
Case

MobSquad

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, William R. Kerr and Susie L. Ma

Irfhan Rawji (MBA 2004) launched MobSquad in October 2018 to help American tech start-ups retain hard-to-find talent, many of whom struggled with U.S. work visa issues, such as software engineers with experience in artificial intelligence, machine learning, or data... View Details

Keywords: Work Visas; H1-B; Business Ventures; Business Startups; Labor; Human Capital; Human Resources; Crisis Management; Employment Industry; Canada; United States

Research Summary

Managing Networked Businesses

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

Platform-based businesses that leverage network effects face a distinctive set of management challenges. A platform encompasses components and rules that facilitate interactions between the platform's users. A platform-based product or service exhibits a network... View Details

10 Dec 2013
First Look

First Look: December 10

a comprehensive approach to understanding the drivers of firm location choices by modeling not only the impact of location and firm heterogeneity, but also the strategic interaction among firms. August 2013 Harvard Business Review How... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

No Unique Effect of Intergroup Competition on Cooperation: Non-competitive Thresholds Are as Effective as Competitions between Groups for Increasing Human Cooperative Behavior

By: Matthew R. Jordan, Jillian J. Jordan and David G. Rand

Explaining cooperation remains a central topic for evolutionary theorists. Many have argued that group selection provides such an explanation: theoretical models show that intergroup competition could have given rise to cooperation that is costly for the individual.... View Details

Keywords: Intergroup Competition; Threshold Public Goods Game; Multi-level Selection; Cooperation; Groups and Teams; Competition

February 2000 (Revised August 2000)
Case

Boston.com

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Jon K Rust

How aggressively should an incumbent move when developing an online business that threatens its core product? With Internet competitors taking direct aim at the traditional print newspaper business model, the Boston Globe fought back with its own web initiative,... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Change Management; Internet and the Web; Customer Relationship Management; Competitive Strategy; Publishing Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States

September–October 2017
Article

Managing Our Hub Economy: Strategy, Ethics, and Network Competition in the Age of Digital Superpowers

By: Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani

A small number of digital superpowers—Alibaba, Amazon, Microsoft, and others—have become “hub firms” because they control access to billions of mobile customers coveted by all kinds of product and service providers. These hubs drive increasing returns to scale and... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Strategic Planning; Auto Industry; Technology Industry

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December 2012
Article

The Microwork Solution: A New Approach to Outsourcing Can Support Economic Development—and Add to Your Bottom Line

By: Francesca Gino and Bradely R. Staats

What's the best way to lift people out of poverty? The social entrepreneurs in the new "impact sourcing" industry believe the answer is providing work, not aid. Their organizations hire people at the bottom of the pyramid to perform digital tasks such as transcribing... View Details

Keywords: Outsourcing; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Nonprofit Organizations; Partners and Partnerships; Development Economics; Social Entrepreneurship; Welfare; Cooperation; San Francisco