Publications

08 Mar 2004
Research & Ideas

Creating Value in Your Business Ecosystem

Assistant, which helps new sellers prepare professional-looking online listings, and its Turbo Lister service, which tracks and manages thousands of bulk listings on home computers. The company has also established and maintained... View Details

Keywords: by Marco Iansiti & Roy Levien

Ayelet Israeli

Ayelet Israeli is the Marvin Bower Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School Marketing Unit. She is the co-founder of the Customer Intelligence Lab at the Digital Data Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard Business School. She teaches... View Details

Keywords: retailing; e-commerce industry; internet; automotive

April 2012 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Dovernet

By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred

This case illustrates the implications of using stringent performance measurement systems to create performance pressure, motivate employee achievement, and sharpen a firm's competitiveness. It opens by describing the downsides of the ruthlessly competitive culture at... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Information Technology; Competitive Advantage; Decision Choices and Conditions; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Compensation and Benefits; Web Services Industry; Information Technology Industry; Vancouver

October 1998
Case

Excite, Inc.--1998

By: Stephen P. Bradley and Kelley Porter

Reviews recent trends and the evolution of the emerging portal industry, highlighting the competitive position of the industry's major participants. The business model of Excite, Inc., and its major competitors are presented. In addition, the case looks at the new... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Business Model; Emerging Markets; Transformation; Market Entry and Exit; Industry Structures; Web Services Industry

Find at Harvard

23 Jul 2013
First Look

First Look: July 23

Restaurant Hygiene Inspections and Online Reviews By: Kang, Jun Seok, Polina Kuznetsova, Yejin Choi, and Michael Luca Abstract—Restaurant hygiene inspections are often cited as a success story of public... View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

2017
Working Paper

Nowcasting the Local Economy: Using Yelp Data to Measure Economic Activity

By: Edward L. Glaeser, Hyunjin Kim and Michael Luca

Can new data sources from online platforms help to measure local economic activity? Government datasets from agencies such as the U.S. Census Bureau provide the standard measures of economic activity at the local level. However, these statistics typically appear only... View Details

Keywords: Economy; Analytics and Data Science; Local Range; Social and Collaborative Networks

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14 Dec 2015
Research & Ideas

Airbnb Hosts Discriminate Against African-American Guests

many online marketplaces of the so-called sharing economy. “To facilitate trust, many online platforms like Airbnb encourage sellers to provide personal profiles and even to post pictures of themselves” says... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Accommodations; Web Services

November 2016 (Revised May 2017)
Case

The Black List

By: Henry McGee and Sarah McAra

Franklin Leonard founded The Black List in 2005 as an innovative approach to identifying potential hit movie scripts via crowdsourcing. As the annual Black List proved to hold the scripts of some of Hollywood’s most successful films, from “Slumdog Millionaire” to... View Details

Keywords: Screenwriting; Independent Production; Hollywood; Film Development; Film Distribution; Film Financing; Manging Uncertainty; Barriers To Entry; Globalization; Digitalization; Film Entertainment; Entrepreneurship; Marketing; Media; Strategy; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; United States

March 2011 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Demand Media

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

Google search had helped Demand Media grow to be a $1.9 billion online publisher. Then, social media and smartphone apps began to change the way people navigated the Internet. How should Demand Media respond? The business ran on a radically new model in which a stable... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Information Publishing; Consumer Behavior; Customization and Personalization; Internet and the Web; Publishing Industry

09 Oct 2012
First Look

First Look: October 9

markets, and the theory of market design. Publisher's Link: http://www.amazon.com/Auctions-Market-Mechanisms-Their-Applications/dp/3642309127 Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century Authors:Thomas H. Davenport and D.J. Patil Publication:Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

April 2020
Article

Collective Emotions

By: Amit Goldenberg, David Garcia, Eran Halperin and James J. Gross

When analyzing situations in which multiple people are experiencing emotions together—whether the emotions are positive or negative and whether the situations are online or offline—we are intuitively drawn to the emotions of each individual in the situation. However,... View Details

Keywords: Emotions; Social Psychology

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Robert Simons is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School. For over 35 years, Simons has taught accounting, management control, and strategy execution courses in both the Harvard MBA and Executive Education Programs. For 2023/24, he is... View Details

02 Oct 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 2, 2018

forthcoming Annual Review of Economics History, Micro Data and Endogenous Growth By: Akcigit, Ufuk, and Tom Nicholas Abstract—Economic growth is concerned with long-run changes, and as a result historical data should be especially... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

24 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

Uncovering Racial Discrimination in the ‘Sharing Economy’

The "sharing economy" is a burgeoning business model in which people offer their personal belongings and personal services to others, usually through online marketplaces that facilitate the transactions. It seems absolutely egalitarian at... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Construction; Real Estate; Advertising

August 1999 (Revised September 1999)
Case

Double Dealmaking in the Browser Wars (A)

By: James K. Sebenius

Recounts two complex negotiations in which Netscape and Microsoft compete to win a browser contract with AOL--then later with KPMG. After reviewing the web and browser sectors, this case recounts AOL's dramatic negotiations with Netscape and with Microsoft over which... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Process; Negotiation Tactics; Negotiation Deal; Web; Web Services Industry

Article

Positioning Brands Against Large Competitors to Increase Sales

By: Neeru Paharia, Jill Avery and Anat Keinan

We explore the effect of having a large dominant competitor and show the conditions under which focusing on a competitive threat, rather than hiding it, can actually help a brand. We demonstrate through lab and field studies that highlighting a large competitor's size... View Details

Keywords: Brands; Brand Management; Brand Positioning; Competitive Positioning; Brands and Branding; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Air Transportation Industry; United States

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Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and Faculty Chair of the Leadership Initiative. Hill is regarded as one of the top experts on leadership and innovation. Hill is... View Details

Jeffrey F. Rayport

Jeffrey F Rayport is a faculty member in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School, where he teaches in the School’s MBA and Executive Education Programs and on HBS Online. His primary focus in teaching and research is growth-stage technology... View Details

Article

The Functional Alibi

By: Anat Keinan, Ran Kivetz and Oded Netzer

Spending money on hedonic luxuries often seems wasteful, irrational, and even immoral. We propose that adding a small utilitarian feature to a luxury product can serve as a functional alibi, justifying the indulgent purchase and reducing indulgence guilt. We... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Product Marketing