Publications

Read Now

26 Jul 2022
Research & Ideas

Burgers with Bugs? What Happens When Restaurants Ignore Online Reviews

scathing review. "Review sites should be careful in making sure that the freshness of reviews is coherent with current status." It cuts both ways: Restaurants can manipulate users to write positive reviews by offering discounts—or even by writing reviews themselves.... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Entertainment & Recreation; Food & Beverage; Retail

August 2021
Case

Orchadio's First Two Split Experiments

By: Iavor I. Bojinov, Marco Iansiti and David Lane

Orchadio, a direct-to-consumer grocery business, needs to conduct its first two A/B tests—one to evaluate the effectiveness and functioning of its newly redesigned website, and one to market-test four versions of a new banner for the website. To do so, it will rely on... View Details

Keywords: Information Management; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Resource Allocation; Marketing; Measurement and Metrics; Customization and Personalization; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Information Technology Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

Research Summary

Mobile web advertising: maximum entropy banner allocation

The worldwide mobile advertising market, currently $3 billion in size, is expected to grow to $20 billion by 2011. Online and mobile advertising employs two main pricing models: pay-per-click (CPC) and pay-per-impression (CPM). To date, most of the... View Details

January 2017 (Revised March 2017)
Case

IBM Transforming, 2012–2016: Ginni Rometty Steers Watson

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen

To transform IBM for the next technology wave, Ginni Rometty, who became CEO in 2012, led divestment of declining businesses, made acquisitions in digital innovation and cloud computing, formed partnerships with former competitors such as Apple and tech startups, and... View Details

Keywords: Digital; Technological Change; Artificial Intelligence; Data; IBM; Watson; Internet Of Things; Innovation and Invention; Management; Sales; Information Technology; Technological Innovation; Transformation; AI and Machine Learning

February 2020 (Revised April 2021)
Case

StockX: The Stock Market of Things

By: Chiara Farronato, John J. Horton, Annelena Lobb and Julia Kelley

Founded in 2015 by Dan Gilbert, Josh Luber, and Greg Schwartz, StockX was an online platform where users could buy and sell unworn luxury and limited-edition sneakers. Sneaker resale prices often fluctuated over time based on supply and demand, creating a robust... View Details

November 2012 (Revised May 2013)
Case

ASUSTeK and the Google Nexus 7 Tablet

By: Willy C. Shih and Jyun-Cheng Wang

Days after Jerry Shen introduced a new tablet computer at the Consumer Electronics Show, a Google meeting convinced him to go with a lower price point and co-branding as the Nexus 7. While his company would have a premier position at launch, companies like Samsung... View Details

September – October 2008
Article

Care Platforms: A Basic Building Block for Care Delivery

By: Richard Bohmer and David Lawrence

Without significant operational reform within the nation's health care delivery organizations, new financing models, payment systems, or structures are unlikely to realize their promise. Adapting insights from high-performing companies in other high-risk, high-cost,... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Management Systems; Standards; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Business Processes; Organizational Design; Customization and Personalization; Health Industry

Find at Harvard

November, 2016
Article

Fixing Discrimination in Online Marketplaces

By: Ray Fisman and Michael Luca

Online marketplaces such as eBay, Uber, and Airbnb have the potential to reduce racial, gender, and other forms of bias that affect the off-line world. And in the early days of Internet commerce, the relative anonymity of transactions did make it harder for... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Race; Gender

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

September 2012
Case

SCMS: Battling HIV/AIDS in Africa

By: Ananth Raman, Noel Watson, Santiago Kraiselburd and Emmanuel Akili

In 2005, USAID and the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), created the Supply Chain Management System (SCMS) to procure and distribute essential medicines and supplies; provide technical assistance to transform existing supply chains; and... View Details

September 2023
Module Note

Live Case Exercise for Financial Reporting

By: Tatiana Sandino and Marshal Herrmann

Harvard Business School employs the case method as a cornerstone of its pedagogy, providing students with opportunities to engage in discussions related to difficult or contentious decisions confronted by real-world organizations. In this “live case,” we depart from... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Research; Corporate Disclosure

November 1998 (Revised February 1999)
Case

Microsoft Office: Finding the Suite Spot

By: Stefan H. Thomke and Steven Sinofsky

Describes a key decision-making process within Microsoft's Office products division. At a time when the PC software business has a great deal of uncertainty, Microsoft's management has to make a key decision regarding the future of software suites. A strengthening of... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Applications and Software; Strategic Planning; Organizational Design; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Product Development; Managerial Roles; Growth and Development Strategy; Risk and Uncertainty; Goals and Objectives; Digital Platforms; Innovation and Management; Computer Industry; Information Technology Industry

28 Apr 2015
First Look

First Look: April 28

value" by issuing perpetual preferred stock, dubbed iPrefs. Henry Blodget, CEO of The Business Insider, disagrees saying, "You can't just wave your magic wand and make something of nothing." This short case is designed to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2019
Teaching Note

Hacking Heroin

By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah Mehta

This teaching note pairs with a case that is used in a course on Public Entrepreneurship, for a first module on "ideas." The case is designed to help students work through the question: where do new ideas to stubborn problems come from? And, in particular, the question... View Details

Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Hackathon; Heroin; Opioids; Crowdsourcing; Public Sector; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Health Pandemics; Public Administration Industry; Health Industry; Ohio; Cincinnati

2007
Working Paper

Competition in Modular Clusters

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin and C. Jason Woodard

The last twenty years have witnessed the rise of disaggregated "clusters," "networks," or "ecosystems" of firms. In these clusters the activities of R&D, product design, production, distribution, and system integration may be split up among hundreds or even thousands... View Details

Keywords: Price; Profit; Digital Platforms; Industry Clusters; Competition; Horizontal Integration; Vertical Integration