Publications

Find at Harvard

16 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 16, 2019

against the backdrop of a turbulent industry and consider the implications for the anesthesiologist. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55974 March 2019 Management Science Open View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

April 2005 (Revised January 2006)
Case

Epodia: Demise of the HBS case-writing Monopoly?

Karl Ulrich, Wharton professor, must decide between a commercial and "open source" model for his new business case venture. Students analyze a variety of open source and proprietary business models and formulate strategic recommendations. View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; Cases; Management; Open Source Distribution; Business Strategy

Find at Harvard

03 Dec 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Creating Leaders: An Ontological Model

Keywords: by Werner Erhard, Michael C. Jensen & Kari L. Granger

01 Mar 2025
News

Heartland

Let me tell you what’s fantastic about offal.” Jordan Kraft Lambert (MBA 2016), Colorado State University’s first director of agricultural innovation, is a full-body talker, and the topic of organ meat has her fired up. The parts of the cow typically seen as... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; photos by Vance Jacobs. OPEN CONCEPT: Lambert at Quail Ridge Dairy in Fort Morgan, Colorado.

08 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

Will the Japan Disaster Remake the Landscape for Green Energy in Asia?

Even before the recent earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in Japan, many parts of Asia had already begun investing in "green" energy. But the disaster has certainly upped the urgency of the discussions. “It's driven a lot of people to have a bit of a... View Details

Keywords: by Dennis Fisher; Energy; Utilities

13 Jan 2011
News

Untangling Code

Awards

Strategy Science Conference Best Paper Award

By: Maria P. Roche

Winner of the 2022 Strategy Science Conference Best Paper Award for “Beefing IT Up for Your Investor? Open Sourcing and Startup Funding: Evidence from GitHub” with Annamaria Conti and Christian Peukert. View Details

15 Jan 2007
Research & Ideas

The Business of Free Software

IT vendors including Oracle, IBM, and Sun that traditionally have built offerings based on proprietary technologies are now investing billions of dollars into open source software—arrangements that are... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Computer

October 2022
Case

Pricing at Echosec Systems

By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Annelena Lobb and Alexis Lefort

This case follows the evolution of pricing strategy at Echosec Systems, a Canadian open source intelligence firm. The case provides information on pricing as the company grows and diversifies its product offerings. View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning; Price; Product Development; Information Industry; Canada; United States

January 5, 2014
Article

Seven Things You Need to Know about CEO Lou Shipley

By: Lou Shipley and Michael B. Farrell

Globe reporter Michael B. Farrell recently spoke with Lou Shipley, the newly appointed chief executive of Black Duck Software Inc., a growing Burlington open source software company. Here's what he found out. View Details

Read Now

February 2024 (Revised January 2025)
Case

AGENTS.inc: Pathways to Growth at an AI Startup

By: Frank Nagle, Manuel Hoffmann, Karoline Ströhlein and Susan Pinckney

The case describes the history of AGENTS.inc. Despite being a small startup, with only four employees, that had never had a funding round, the company boasted an impressive client portfolio including multiple Fortune 500 companies. While AGENTS.inc had been an early... View Details

Karim R. Lakhani is the Dorothy & Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He specializes in technology management, innovation, digital transformation and artificial... View Details

Keywords: biotechnology; communications; computer; health care; high technology; information technology industry; internet; pharmaceuticals; software; video games

March 2019
Teaching Note

Numenta: Inventing and (or) Commercializing AI

By: David B. Yoffie

This teaching notes accompanies the Numenta case, HBS No. 716-469. The focus is how to scale a new artificial intelligence technology, how to build a platform and overcome chicken-or-the-egg problems, and how to utilize open source software and licensing. View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Strategy; Information Technology; Technological Innovation; Commercialization; AI and Machine Learning

July 2004 (Revised September 2004)
Background Note

A Conversation about Information Technology

Two managers discuss the benefits, costs, opportunities, and headaches of corporate computing. Topics include security, training, the Internet and Web, collaboration, productivity, Moore's Law, computer crashes, upgrades, open source software, network effects,... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Problems and Challenges

22 Apr 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Government Technology Policy, Social Value, and National Competitiveness

Keywords: by Frank Nagle

Research Summary

Competing business models

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell

Building on the literatures on competitive positioning and the theory of industrial organization, my work seeks to tackle previously unaddressed questions by studying situations where firms compete in dissimilar ways. Some examples of these questions include:View Details

April 2006 (Revised March 2007)
Case

Black Duck Software

By: Constance E. Bagley and David Lane

Black Duck Software involves a venture-backed start-up that converted software developers' concerns about violating copyright licensing agreements or open source protocols into an opportunity to help firms use technology to better manage their compliance efforts.... View Details

Keywords: Value Creation; Law; Open Source Distribution; Applications and Software; Business Startups; Copyright

February 2001
Case

Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Solaris Strategy

In the late 1990s, Sun Microsystems' Solaris has emerged as the dominant UNIX-based alternative to Microsoft for server operating systems. At the same time, the open source operating system Linux has appeared unexpectedly, and it is generating significant excitement... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Competition; Open Source Distribution; Standards