Publications

2016
Article

The Mirroring Hypothesis: Theory, Evidence, and Exceptions

By: Lyra J. Colfer and Carliss Y. Baldwin

The mirroring hypothesis predicts that organizational ties within a project, firm, or group of firms (e.g., communication, collocation, employment) will correspond to the technical dependencies in the work being performed. This article presents a unified picture of... View Details

Keywords: Modularity; Mirroring Hypothesis; Organization Design; Conway's Law; Knowledge Boundaries; Relational Contracts; Open Source Software; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Boundaries; Knowledge Management; Applications and Software

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October 2009 (Revised July 2012)
Case

Emotiv Systems Inc.: It's the Thoughts that Count

By: Elie Ofek, Jason Riis and Paul Hamilton

Emotiv is getting ready to launch its innovative brain-computer interfacing (BCI) technology. The company has developed a special headset, called EPOC, and highly sophisticated software that can translate a person's emotions, cognitive thoughts, and facial expressions... View Details

Keywords: Technology Adoption; Sales; Technological Innovation; Demand and Consumers; Marketing Strategy; Partners and Partnerships; Entrepreneurship; Forecasting and Prediction; Product Launch; Business Startups; Technology Industry

09 Jan 2020
Book

Rethinking Business Strategy in the Age of AI

a traditional business—the gym—into an $8 billion digital offering that pulled in more than $700 million in revenue during the last fiscal year. Foley credits the magic of today’s technology, including software, data, and communication... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

16 May 2023
In Practice

After Silicon Valley Bank's Flameout, What's Next for Entrepreneurs?

Like: Why Digital Is a State of Mind, Not Just a Skill Set Tech Hubs: How Software Brought Talent and Prosperity to New Cities Is A/B Testing Effective? Evidence from 35,000 Startups Feedback or ideas to share? Email the Working Knowledge... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman; Technology; Financial Services

16 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Restaurant Revolution: How the Industry Is Fighting to Stay Alive

investment firm Act III Holdings, said that although sales at restaurants in his investment portfolio were initially down more than 80 percent, he’s seen incremental improvements each week as more locations implement creative ways to improve sales, such as View Details

Keywords: by Michael S. Kaufman, Lena G. Goldberg, and Jill Avery; Food & Beverage

06 Feb 2020
Research & Ideas

What We Learned from Reading Jeff Bezos’ Patents

businesses, including e-commerce and logistics, followed by devices, digital content, and computing. However, he also participated in two patents tied to unmanned aerial vehicles and one related to advertising. One of the busiest CEOs in... View Details

Keywords: by Tricia Gregg and Boris Groysberg; Retail

08 Jul 2019
Research & Ideas

Are Paywalls Saving Newspapers?

Media outlets large and small have adopted digital paywalls to augment dramatic declines in print revenues, but given their negative effect on website traffic (and, in turn, online advertising), are paywalls an effective sales strategy? A... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Journalism & News; Media & Broadcasting

26 May 2022
HBS Case

Apple vs. Feds: Is iPhone Privacy a Basic Human Right?

governments wanted more control than Apple allowed, including location-tracking data that was protected as part of Apple’s encryption. Apple again refused. In France, where the government had petitioned Apple to exempt contact tracing from the phones’ typical privacy... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

March 2022 (Revised May 2022)
Case

Reclaiming the Land of Purple: Purpl’s Mission to Unlock Finance in Lebanon

By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger

Karl Naim, Co-Founder and CEO of Purpl, embarked on a venture to lower remittance costs for his native Lebanon. Since October 2019, the Lebanese economy had entered a free fall as its banking sector collapsed and large swathes of its population were plunged into... View Details

Keywords: Business Startup; Fintech; Inflation; Deflation; Cross-border Frictions; Remittances; Business Startups; Diasporas; Financial Crisis; Money; Entrepreneurship; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Poverty; Financial Institutions; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Lebanon

February 2020 (Revised August 2020)
Case

San Francisco Ballet: On 'Pointe' for the Future

By: Rohit Deshpandé and Nicole Tempest Keller

The SF Ballet was regarded as one of the top ballet companies in the world. It had an enviable earned revenue percentage of almost 50% and had an internationally recognized ballet school. However, by 2019 the Ballet faced a number of challenges. Ballet was a European... View Details

Keywords: Arts; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Demographics; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Strategic Planning; Social Enterprise; Cultural Entrepreneurship; United States; San Francisco

May 2020 (Revised December 2022)
Case

Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Amy Klopfenstein and Amram Migdal

In November 2019, Sandra Richter, co-founder and CEO of Soofa, a network of advertising-supported digital bulletin boards, must decide between two different fundraising and expansion plans for her company. One plan entails raising $15 million in a Series A round and... View Details

08 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Silos That Work: How the Pandemic Changed the Way We Collaborate

study of hundreds of billions of emails between workers at thousands of organizations globally in 2019 and 2020 reveals an unintended side-effect of remote operations: Many companies around the world became more siloed during the emergency work-at-home measures of... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

20 Nov 2017
Research & Ideas

How Independent Bookstores Have Thrived in Spite of Amazon.com

line of research “technology reemergence.” It began with his study of the Swiss watch industry, which collectively reinvented itself (and thus survived) in the wake of digital watches. Five years ago, he set out to discover how... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel (with video by Amelia Kunhardt); Retail

February 2021 (Revised March 2022)
Case

TikTok in 2020: Super App or Supernova?

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dan Maher and Dan O'Brien

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around a simple idea – helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. In less than a decade, it had become one of the world’s most valuable private companies, with investors... View Details

February 2023
Case

Roblox: Virtual Commerce in the Metaverse

By: Ayelet Israeli and Nicole Tempest Keller

In 2022, Roblox had 58.8 million daily active users, including over half of all children and teens under the age of 16 in the United States. Roblox, a free-to-use “co-experience platform”, allowed users to come together in immersive 3D experiences to socialize, work,... View Details

December 2018
Case

CIR Group: Passing Wealth through the Generations

By: Lauren Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy and Elena Corsi

Rodolfo, Marco, and Edoardo De Benedetti had received from their father his controlling shares in COFIDE, a publicly listed holding company that held 45.8% of CIR Group, another publicly listed holding. The latter held majority shares in GEDI, Italy’s largest print... View Details

Keywords: Succession Planning; Transferring Shares; Wealth Management; Holding Structures; Family Ownership; Ownership Stake; Management Succession; Governing and Advisory Boards; Policy; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Health Industry; Italy

2018
Working Paper

Black Out-Migration and Southern Political Realignment

By: Leah Boustan and Marco Tabellini

Can emigration from less democratic and economically less developed areas induce political and economic change? We study this question in the context of the second Great Migration of African Americans (1940–1970), when more than 4 million blacks left the U.S. South and... View Details

Keywords: Great Migration; Immigration; Race; Government and Politics; Economics; United States

2017
Book

Global Marketing Management: A Casebook

By: John A. Quelch

During the last quarter century, international business was shaken by a revolution in global competition unlike any previously experienced. As companies move through the twenty-first century, they need to be aware of the range of powerful, dynamic, and often... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Management; Globalization; Competitive Strategy