Publications

April 2006 (Revised March 2007)
Case

PayPal Merchant Services

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Lauren Barley

In early 2006, PayPal management is deciding how to respond to Google's entry into online payments. PayPal, owned by eBay, has targeted online merchants outside eBay's auction community for its next wave of expansion. Google represents a potential threat to PayPal's... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Competition; Expansion; Service Operations; Auctions; Web Services Industry; Service Industry

2024
Book

Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream: How Technology Is Transforming Lending and Shaping a New Era of Small Business Opportunity

By: Karen G. Mills

The second edition of Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream, builds on the groundbreaking 2019 book with new insights on how technology and artificial intelligence are transforming small business lending. This ambitious view covers the significance of... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; AI; AI and Machine Learning; Small Business; Economy; Technology Adoption; Credit; Financing and Loans; Analytics and Data Science

March 2010 (Revised May 2012)
Case

Bank of America: Mobile Banking

By: Sunil Gupta and Kerry Herman

In January 2010, Jen McDonald, head of Bank of America Corporation's (BAC) Digital Marketing group, was discussing the bank's mobile strategy with Douglas Brown, senior vice president, Mobile Product Development. BAC launched mobile banking in 2007 and within three... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Digital Marketing; Financial Services; Mobile Banking; Channels; Strategy; Banks and Banking; Marketing Strategy; Service Delivery; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Banking Industry; United States

12 Mar 2006
Research & Ideas

New Research Explores Multi-Sided Markets

the profits come from the other side. Can you give an example or two and explain why these markets are structured like this? A: Dating clubs usually charge only the men, and credit card companies make their... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Technology

August 2016 (Revised June 2017)
Case

Oversight Systems

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amram Migdal

The case, set in May 2016, discusses sales strategy and managing sales and service at Oversight Systems, an Atlanta, Georgia–based software firm that developed analytics for organizations to monitor their data for errors, fraud, and operational inefficiencies. Included... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Sales Strategy; Entrepreneurial Sales; Entrepreneurial Sales And Marketing; Software Sales; Marketing; Marketing Management; Pricing; Salesforce Management; Distribution Channels; Marketing Strategy; Technology Industry; North America; United States; Atlanta; Georgia (state, US)

August 2002 (Revised July 2003)
Case

LAE Enterprises Corp.

Jay Entrepreneur had to decide whether it was worth his time to plow through a 12-page term sheet for a Series A round of preferred stock prepared by HBS Investors, a well-established venture capital firm that did seed, early-round, and mezzanine financings. He could... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Contracts; Decision Choices and Conditions; Business Startups; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

August 2014 (Revised March 2015)
Case

Optimization and Expansion at OpenTable

By: Benjamin Edelman and Karen Webster

OpenTable considers adjustments to increase its benefits to merchants, including a novel payments service that lets customers skip the multi-step process of using a credit card. View Details

Keywords: Payments; Pricing; Mobile; Rollout; Incrementality; Innovation Strategy; Credit Cards; Accommodations Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States

October 2013 (Revised August 2016)
Case

NOWaccount

By: Ramana Nanda, William A. Sahlman and Lauren Barley

It was September 2013, and NOWaccount Network Corporation (NOW®) co-founders John Hayes and Lara Hodgson were putting the final touches on the presentation deck for their annual shareholders' meeting. Along with co-founder Stacey Abrams, the pair had designed NOW's... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Finance; Entrepreneurship

November 2011
Article

Social Strategies That Work

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

Although most companies have collected lots of friends and followers on social platforms such as Facebook, few have succeeded in generating profits there. That's because they merely port their digital strategies into social environments by broadcasting their commercial... View Details

Keywords: Social Platforms; Social Strategies; Social and Collaborative Networks; Customers; Relationships; Business Strategy; Profit

Find at Harvard

March 2012
Article

Subprime Foreclosures and the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform

By: Donald Morgan, Benjamin Iverson and Matthew Botsch

This article presents arguments and evidence suggesting that the bankruptcy abuse reform (BAR) of 2005 may have been one contributor to the destabilizing surge in subprime foreclosures. Before BAR took effect, overly indebted borrowers could file bankruptcy to free up... View Details

Keywords: Mortgages; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Borrowing and Debt; United States

Read Now

Winning in Emerging Markets: A Roadmap for Strategy and Execution

Most books thus far on emerging markets are either investing-oriented (Mobius, Pereiro), or country - or market-specific (Farrell, Lindahl), or descriptive (Friedman, van Agtmael). No book has definitively targeted the corporate strategists who need a practical... View Details

April 2022 (Revised May 2022)
Case

Mastercard Labs (A)

By: Linda A. Hill, Sunil Gupta, Emily Tedards and Julia Kelley

When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, he shifted the company’s competitive focus from card networks to cash itself. Mastercard’s new vision of a “World Beyond Cash” distilled into a three-pronged framework: Grow the core business, Diversify... View Details

Winning in Emerging Markets: A Roadmap for Strategy and Execution

Most books thus far on emerging markets are either investing-oriented, or country - or market-specific, or descriptive. No book has definitively targeted the corporate strategists who need a practical framework and assessment tools for analyzing emerging markets,... View Details

March 2016
Teaching Note

MasterCard: Driving Financial Inclusion

By: Sunil Gupta

Since joining MasterCard (MC) in 2010, CEO Ajay Banga had made advancing financial inclusion (FI)—bringing formal financial services to marginalized populations—an important goal for the company. In 2014, MC had entered a number of partnerships with governments and... View Details

Keywords: Financial Inclusion; Banking; Equality and Inequality; Credit Cards; Developing Countries and Economies; Banking Industry; South Africa; Nigeria

January 2020 (Revised May 2021)
Case

Salary Finance US

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In October 2019, Dan Macklin, the newly-appointed chief executive of Salary Finance Inc., was weighing his options for the future of the business. The company’s value proposition was quite simple: partner with employers to offer employees affordable loans that were... View Details

Keywords: Employees; Credit; Financing and Loans; Wages; Innovation and Invention; Expansion; Growth Management; Decision Making; Financial Services Industry; United States