Digital Tools - Publications - Faculty & Research

February 2011
Case

oDesk: Changing How the World Works

By: Boris Groysberg, David A. Thomas and Jennifer M. Tydlaska

It is 2010, and Gary Swart, CEO of oDesk, is contemplating the next steps for his organization. Founded in 2004 in California, oDesk operates an online marketplace which matches Employers with Contractors. oDesk provides fact-based information on Contractors, including... View Details

Keywords: Recruitment; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Corporate Strategy; Internet and the Web; Consulting Industry

Citation

Educators

Purchase

07 Mar 2023
HBS Case

ChatGPT: Did Big Tech Set Up the World for an AI Bias Disaster?

co-author of The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI. The case, and its reverberations as ChatGPT’s success escalates the AI race, offers lessons for those who are interested in AI... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis; Technology

10 Nov 2015
First Look

November 10, 2015

Strengthening the Brand with Digital Marketing Accor, the world's leading hotel operator with a portfolio of fourteen hospitality brands (including Sofitel and Novotel) in 92 countries, prided itself on living up to its motto, "To... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

15 Nov 2022
Op-Ed

Why TikTok Is Beating YouTube for Eyeball Time (It’s Not Just the Dance Videos)

At the end of June 2022, a video was posted on TikTok with the theme, “I know Victoria’s secret.” The secret was that Victoria was “an old man who lives in Ohio making money off of girls like me cashing in on body issues.” The song was written by Jax, a View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

24 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 24, 2018

overlook our most powerful tool for effecting change: our own thoughts. Through a variety of exercises called Think Keys, Zaltman guides the reader through the mind’s most important unconscious and conscious dynamics. Zaltman has used... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

28 Nov 2018
HBS Case

On Target: Rethinking the Retail Website

provide new opportunities,” Datar says. “Even today, not all retailers have embraced data fully to the point where they think of themselves as data companies, and it might be why many companies are suffering.” Several traditional retailers are indeed tripping over the... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail

2025
Working Paper

Algorithmic Assortment Curation: An Empirical Study of Buybox in Online Marketplaces

By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno

Most online sales worldwide take place in marketplaces that connect sellers and buyers. The presence of numerous third-party sellers leads to a proliferation of listings for each product, making it difficult for customers to choose between the available options. Online... View Details

Keywords: Algorithms; E-commerce; Sales; Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Customer Satisfaction

Citation

SSRN

11 Jan 2021
Research & Ideas

Is A/B Testing Effective? Evidence from 35,000 Startups

with Sharique Hasan and Aaron Chatterji of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, examined 35,262 high-tech startups founded globally between 2008 and 2013. They detailed their results in the working paper, Digital Experimentation... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

16 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

Your Customers Have Changed. Here's How to Engage Them Again.

management and digital marketing tools for entertainment venues and sports teams (largely unused during the pandemic), switched to targeting small- and medium-sized traditional businesses struggling to... View Details

Keywords: by Rohit Deshpandé, Ofer Mintz, and Imran S. Currim; Retail; Service

04 May 2015
Research & Ideas

Need to Solve a Problem? Take a Break From Collaborating

Got a problem? Throw some collaboration software at it. It's a common strategy among today's managers: Organizations spend a lot of money on technology that enables employees to tackle problems collectively. Hence, the market is rife with connectivity View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Video Game; Web Services

21 Aug 2000
Research & Ideas

Inside the OR: Disrupted Routines and New Technologies

specialized arena of MICS, but can be applied, they write, to technologies of a much broader scope, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in manufacturing, or interactive software tools that continue to revolutionize the way... View Details

Keywords: by Hilah Geer

29 Jan 2013
First Look

First Look: Jan. 29

highlights that a process we term toolmaking, whereby experts adopt, adjust, and reconfigure tools that embody their expertise, is central to the way in which the risk managers in our study attempt to gather influence in their... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Feb 2022
Book

Innovation Isn’t Just for Startups: How Big Companies Can Succeed

book Corporate Explorer: How Corporations Beat Startups at the Innovation Game. In fact, venture-minded managers in big corporations often have the tools and infrastructure to become more successful than their peers at startups, say... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

24 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

The Yelp Factor: Are Consumer Reviews Good for Business?

digital age is a fertile area of his research. Luca is looking at rankings, expert evaluations, online consumer reviews, and quality disclosure laws to see how they work in market settings, and which are most important for consumers. To... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage

21 Jun 2022
HBS Case

Free Isn’t Always Better: How Slack Holds Its Own Against Microsoft Teams

launched Slack in 2014 as a work-team communications tool he hoped would be an “email killer,” as he put it. Slack made it easy for new customers to use, with a three-click signup and a bot driven by artificial intelligence that guided... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Information Technology; Technology

26 Jul 2022
Research & Ideas

Burgers with Bugs? What Happens When Restaurants Ignore Online Reviews

tend to violate less on the hygiene issues mentioned in reviews, suggesting that restaurants may indeed take reviews into account when cleaning up. Farronato believes digital tools could streamline the... View Details

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

23 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

8 Strategies to Sustain Business Innovation

fail to meet their projected targets and 75 percent of new products fail.” McDonald and co-author Christopher Bingham explore eight central tensions in the new book, Productive Tensions: How Every Leader Can Tackle Innovation’s Toughest Trade-Offs, published in April.... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

19 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

Birth of the American Salesman

Bockhoff of National Automatic Tool also worked at NCR, as did Joseph E. Rodgers of Addressograph-Multigraph, Henry Theobold of Toledo Scale, William Sherman of Standard Register, and Thomas J. Watson of International Business Machines.... View Details

Keywords: by Laura Linard

28 Jan 2020
Book

Advanced Leadership Requires More Than Outside-The-Box Thinking

fence-sitters. It’s important to know who’s who. First, determine who holds the power tools you need—the resources, information or expertise, and support or legitimacy, and then persuade them to invest in the effort. They will also be... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

03 May 2023
Research & Ideas

Why Confronting Racism in AI 'Creates a Better Future for All of Us'

people in the room to guess what prompts he had provided to the AI tool DALL-E2 to create the image. People in the audience were stumped. After about 40 seconds, Turner—a visiting fellow at HBS’s Institute for the Study of Business in... View Details

Keywords: by Barbara DeLollis

Publications