Publications

Find at Harvard

26 Aug 2009
Op-Ed

Where Cash for Clunkers Ran Off the Road

short term but, in reality, the promotion stole largely from future sales with taxpayers subsidizing over half a million new car sales that would have occurred anyway. C4C disrupted the even flow of supply... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Auto

January 2008 (Revised November 2009)
Case

Linear Air: Creating the Air Taxi Industry

Linear Air is an air taxi start-up established to take advantage of the emergence of Very Light Jets, which incorporate new technology that cuts jet operating costs by about 40%. Air taxis could make use of the 5400 smaller regional airports throughout the US,... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Disruptive Innovation; Product Launch; Industry Structures; Competition; Air Transportation Industry

2009
Working Paper

Breakthrough Inventions and Migrating Clusters of Innovation

By: William R. Kerr

We investigate the speed at which clusters of invention for a technology migrate spatially following breakthrough inventions. We identify breakthrough inventions as the top one percent of US inventions for a technology during 1975-1984 in terms of subsequent citations.... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Immigration; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Patents; Industry Clusters; United States

SSRN

Read Now

06 Nov 2019
Op-Ed

Torched Planet: The Business Case to Reinvent Almost Everything

The world is. on. fire. The Earth is burning. We only have a little time to arrest climate change, and if we fail to do so the consequences will be both dire and irreversible. We have the technology and the resources to fix things, if we want to. We even have a... View Details

Keywords: by Rebecca Henderson; Energy

04 May 2020
Research & Ideas

Predictions, Prophets, and Restarting Your Business

accurate, they’re not managerially useful. Companies sell to customers, not to a trend, and priorities must be set. Make sure that key customers are aware of supply disruptions or other problems. Do not... View Details

Keywords: by Frank V. Cespedes

February 2009 (Revised December 2009)
Case

eReading: Amazon's Kindle

By: Bharat N. Anand, Peter W. Olson Esq. and Mary Tripsas

In November 2007, Amazon introduced the Kindle, the first electronic reader with wireless functionality. The case describes the launch of the Kindle and provides information on representative players in the industry (or broader ecosystem) who are likely to be affected... View Details

Keywords: Books; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Industry Structures; Standards; Distribution Channels; Competitive Strategy; Publishing Industry

July 2011 (Revised January 2013)
Case

Digital Microscopy Is Making Me Crazy!

By: Willy Shih

For Carl Zeiss Microimaging, modular hardware and software enabled customers to tailor Zeiss's broad range of microscopy systems hardware and software to meet a wide range of needs from basic scientific research in the biological and medical sciences to clinical... View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Corporate Strategy; Disruptive Innovation; Science-Based Business; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Business Conglomerates; Digital Platforms; Opportunities; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

22 Sep 2003
Research & Ideas

How Businesses Can Respond to AIDS

Much like how disruptive technologies can threaten established businesses, the growing epidemic of AIDS has the power to blindside and possibly topple companies who choose to ignore the threat, participants concluded at a Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

19 May 2015
First Look

First Look: May 19

The case forces students to grapple with the challenges and barriers involved in disrupting an established industry, examine alternative go-to-market strategies and the timing of implementing them, and consider different business models... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

24 Sep 2014
Op-Ed

Tackling Climate Change Will Cost Less Than We Think

No one knows how much it will cost to keep the risks of significant climate disruption to a reasonable level. One commonly cited estimate puts the cost at roughly 1 percent of world GDP a year, or about $840 billion. This is a large... View Details

Keywords: by Rebecca Henderson; Energy; Utilities

02 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 2, 2019

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55899 2019 Handbook of Advances in Marketing in an Era of Disruptions: Essays in Honour of Jagdish N. Sheth Daring to Understand and Change Thinking By: Zaltman, G. Abstract—We are in an era of massive View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

30 Jun 2020
Book

Capitalism Is More at Risk Than Ever

updating the 10 disruptive forces identified in the first edition, showing how managers can address these challenges, and describing how public confidence in the market system could be rebuilt. The revised edition includes examples of... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

January 2025
Case

A Tiger in The Tank: Exxon Sues Investors

By: Clayton S. Rose, Sarah Sasso and James Weber

In June 2024, investors were trying to make sense of ExxonMobil’s (Exxon) lawsuit against two impact investors, Arjuna Capital (Arjuna) and Follow This, that had just been dismissed by the U.S. District Court of Northern Texas. Exxon’s suit challenged the rights of two... View Details