Publications

May 2019 (Revised May 2020)
Case

fidentiaX: The Tradable Insurance Marketplace on Blockchain

By: Alexander Braun, Lauren H. Cohen and Jiahua Xu

Three years ago, Alvin Ang and his partner founded fidentiaX in Singapore, with the ambition to create the world’s first marketplace for tradable insurance policies on blockchain. With a 26-page white paper, the start-up closed a successful fundraising round through an... View Details

Keywords: Blockchain; Insurance; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Technology Adoption; Business Strategy; Insurance Industry; Technology Industry; Singapore

February 2023
Case

Ransomware Attack at Springhill Medical Center

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan (Jason) Ni

In July, 2019, Springhill Medical Center (“SMC”) in Mobile, Alabama, fell prey to a malicious ransomware attack that crippled the hospital’s internal network systems and public-facing web page. While the hospital rushed to securely restore the network, medical... View Details

February 2021
Article

Platform Diffusion at Temporary Gatherings: Social Coordination and Ecosystem Emergence

By: Tommy Pan Fang, Andy Wu and David R. Clough

Software platforms create value by cultivating an ecosystem of complementary products and services. Existing explanations for how a prospective complementor chooses platforms to join assume the complementor has rich information about the range of available platforms.... View Details

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September 2018 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Apple Pay and Mobile Payments in Australia (A)

By: Feng Zhu, Susan Athey and David Lane

In summer 2016, four of Australia’s top five banks petitioned regulators for permission to bargain collectively with Apple over the terms under which they would support its digital wallet, Apple Pay. They argued that doing so would force concessions from Apple that... View Details

Keywords: Payment Methods; Mobile Payment; Apple; Banks and Banking; Cooperation; Problems and Challenges; Policy; Digital Platforms; Banking Industry; Australia

11 Mar 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Finding Missing Markets (and a disturbing epilogue): Evidence from an Export Crop Adoption and Marketing Intervention in Kenya

Keywords: by Nava Ashraf, Xavier Giné & Dean Karlan; Food & Beverage

February–March 2013
Article

The Mobile Banking and Payment Revolution

By: Sunil Gupta

Mobile technology is revolutionizing the global banking and payment industry. It offers new opportunities for banks to provide added convenience to their existing customers in developed countries and reach a large population of unbanked customers in emerging markets.... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry

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September 2004 (Revised August 2007)
Case

Enterprise IT at Cisco (2004)

By: Andrew P. McAfee, F. Warren McFarlan and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

Illustrates the challenges associated with centralizing IT decisions at Cisco after a decade of decentralized planning and project funding. When Brad Boston became Cisco's new CIO in 2001, he found that managers were starting to get frustrated with the results of their... View Details

Keywords: Management; Resource Allocation; Information Technology; Problems and Challenges; Business Ventures; Change Management; Entrepreneurship; Projects; Planning; Corporate Finance; Information Technology Industry

September 2004 (Revised January 2005)
Case

IBM: Ordering Midrange Computers in Europe

IBM Europe is trying to expand business-to-business (B2B) efforts with its large distributors of midrange systems. These efforts aim to automate many transactions and business processes, removing the need for human involvement. IBM has completed an initial project with... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Information Technology; Information Infrastructure; Marketing Channels; Distribution Channels; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Germany; United States

March 2023
Case

Ransomware Attack at Colonial Pipeline Company

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni

On the morning of May 7, 2021, Colonial Pipeline Company became aware that the company had been the victim of a malicious ransomware attack that had stolen and locked up company data. The extortionists demanded 75 bitcoins (worth about $4.4 million at the time) in... View Details

October 1981 (Revised June 1985)
Case

Walton Instruments Manufacturing--1980

Provides an opportunity for students to examine the impact of different manufacturing control methods on the manufacturing infrastructure. Information flow, inventory control, quality control and process flows interact and different trade-offs are examined. Introduces... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Production; Management Practices and Processes; Infrastructure

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Teaching Interest

Data Science for Managers

Served as a teaching fellow; assisted MBA students with classroom coding exercises.
Developed course materials, including new case studies, technical notes, and code notebooks students used to analzye case data.
Developed interactive web... View Details

19 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

$15 Billion in Five Years: What Data Tells Us About MacKenzie Scott’s Philanthropy

finished giving, but with more than $15 billion granted to nearly 2,000 organizations, some meaningful patterns have begun to emerge. We parsed all the Yield Giving donation information available to date and matched it with Internal... View Details

Keywords: by Matthew Lee, Brian Trelstad, and Ethan Tran

16 Nov 2010
Lessons from the Classroom

Data.gov: Matching Government Data with Rapid Innovation

may have not ” Joined in class by the Chief Information Office (CIO) of the United States, Vivek Kundra, who oversees Data.gov, Lakhani led the case discussion for 50 technology executives in a weeklong HBS executive education course,... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Technology

August 2013 (Revised December 2014)
Case

Taking Dell Private

By: David J. Collis, David B. Yoffie and Matthew Shaffer

In July 2012, Michael Dell, CEO and founder of Dell, Inc., met with a representative of Silver Lake Partners to explore taking his company private. The company, which he had founded in his dorm room as a college freshman and which had made him the youngest Fortune 500... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Going Private; The PC Market; Market For Corporate Control; Corporate Strategy; Leveraged Buyouts; Change Management; Private Equity; Market Entry and Exit; Private Ownership; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Internet and the Web; Computer Industry; Technology Industry; United States

September 2017 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Dianrong: Marketplace Lending, Blockchain, and 'The New Finance' in China

By: Christopher J. Malloy, Lauren H. Cohen and Anthony K. Woo

This case examines the strategic positioning of Dianrong, one of the largest online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms in China, in its attempt to become a foundational player in the expansion of the FinTech sector in Asia. Dianrong had recently announced the... View Details

Keywords: Financing and Loans; Internet and the Web; Supply Chain; Finance; Innovation and Invention; Competition; Product Positioning; Strategy; Financial Services Industry; China

May 2020
Case

Trust Merchant Bank

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Salim Dewji

Trust Merchant Bank (TMB), a leading bank in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), needs to decide whether to enter the soon-to-be-liberalized insurance industry. Since its founding in 2004, TMB has played a pivotal role in reshaping the DRC banking landscape by... View Details

Keywords: Retail Banking; Financial Services; Financial Inclusion; Turnaround; Fintech; Banks and Banking; Financial Condition; Insurance; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Business Model; Family Business; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Monopoly; Banking Industry; Insurance Industry; Africa; Congo, Democratic Republic of the

Teaching Interest

Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Problems

By: Tarun Khanna

What problems do developing countries face, and how can individuals contribute to solutions rather than awaiting the largesse of the state or other actors? Intractable problems – such as lack of access to education and healthcare, forced reliance on contaminated... View Details

2013
Working Paper

Visualizing and Measuring Enterprise Architecture: An Exploratory BioPharma Case

By: Robert Lagerstrom, Carliss Baldwin, Alan MacCormack and David Dreyfus

We test a method that was designed and used previously to reveal the hidden internal architectural structure of software systems. The focus of this paper is to test if it can also uncover new facts about the components and their relationships in an enterprise... View Details

Keywords: Complexity; Applications and Software; Product Design; Pharmaceutical Industry