Publications

January 2017 (Revised August 2019)
Supplement

X Fire Paintball & Airsoft: Is Amazon a Friend or Foe? (B)

By: Feng Zhu and Angela Acocella

Three years after launching his brick-and-mortar store, X Fire Paintball and Airsoft, Steve Herbert Sr. and his sons began selling products on Amazon.com’s third-party Marketplace and online sales expanded rapidly. Over time, X Fire noticed that products of which it... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Competition; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Small Business; Retail Industry; Canada

November 2015
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Daniella Suarez and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Beatriz Cardoso, founder of Laboratório de Educação (Education Laboratory) had a dream to propel Brazilian education. However challenges in fundraising made it difficult to scale up her project, based on helping adults help children improve their literacy skills. To... View Details

2011
Working Paper

Inside the Black Box of the Corporate Staff: An Exploratory Analysis Through the Lens of E-Mail Networks

The corporate staff is central in theories of the multi-business firm, but empirical evidence on its function is limited. In this paper, we examine the high-level role of two units of a corporate staff through analysis of electronic communications. We find sharp... View Details

Keywords: Theory; Business Ventures; Internet and the Web; Communication; Employment; Management Teams; Networks

Read Now

01 Feb 2000
News

Filling a Vacuum

According to the headline in the Wall Street Journal (October 26, 1999), Gregory Slayton (MBA '90) is a "Silicon Valley Hybrid: A Boss Who Makes Others' Ideas Pay Off." Slayton, president and CEO of ClickAction, Inc., an Internet... View Details

Profile

Paul Luning

No stranger to entrepreneurship, Paul Luning launched one Internet startup in high school and helped grow two more while at Rice: an online marketing firm and a wireless hardware company. But a semester in Australia broadened Paul's... View Details

26 Feb 2014
News

The First Five Years: Morgan Hermand-Waiche (MBA 2010)

HERMAND-WAICHE What's the story behind Adore Me? "I had always wanted to start a company in the United States and after three years at McKinsey & Company, and following my graduation from HBS, I felt ready to take the plunge. Prior to launching Adore Me, I partnered... View Details

Keywords: online shopping; fashion; Apparel Manufacturing; Manufacturing; Clothing and Clothing Accessories Stores; Retail Trade

01 Apr 2001
News

Jimmy Lai Chee-ying: Rags, Riches, and Risk

the Internet craze with Admart. “I just lost the prudence a businessman should have,” he confesses. “I wouldn’t have gone so deeply into it if the market hadn’t given us such crazy valuations. It was unreal.” Going forward, says Lai, “the... View Details

Keywords: Alejandro Reyes; Clothing and Clothing Accessories Stores; Retail Trade

Profile

Ravi Belani

Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), a leading venture capital firm that has backed some of the most successful start-ups in the Internet era. Discovering a fresh environment for growth “To be honest,” Ravi says, “the partners [at DFJ] pushed me to... View Details

18 May 2015
News

The First Five Years: Anjali Vaidya (MBA 2010)

Yahoo, the challenge is to catalyze growth at an Internet company with tremendous assets. I’m learning every day how to inspire people to challenge conventional wisdom, use data to drive decisions, and tackle roadblocks proactively. I’ve... View Details

Keywords: Google; Yahoo; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information

01 Jun 2002
News

Blue No Longer

said. In another bold move, Gerstner and IBM opted early on for open systems — despite the company's tradition of developing its own technology — and embraced the nascent Internet. Thus, when the Internet took off, creating a vast new... View Details

July 7, 2022
Other Article

Are Online Prices Higher Because of Pricing Algorithms?

By: Zach Y. Brown and Alexander J. MacKay

This article reviews recent work examining pricing strategies of major online retailers and the potential effects of pricing algorithms. We describe how pricing algorithms can lead to higher prices in a number of ways, even if some characteristics of these algorithms... View Details

Keywords: Pricing Algorithms; Online Marketplace; Digital Strategy; Internet and the Web; Retail Industry

Read Now

February 2020 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Anomalie

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Thomas O. Jones

In early 2019, the founders of Anomalie, an online direct-to-consumer provider of bridal gowns, have just agreed to a $13.6 million Series A investment from a Silicon Valley VC. They are considering three major initiatives as they move forward. (1) To scale their very... View Details

Keywords: Direct-to-consumer; Entrepreneurship; Internet and the Web; Growth and Development Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Technology Industry

Article

Repairing the Damage: The Effect of Price Knowledge and Gender on Auto-Repair Price Quotes

By: Meghan Busse, Ayelet Israeli and Florian Zettelmeyer

In this paper we investigate whether sellers treat consumers differently on the basis of how well informed consumers appear to be. We implement a large-scale field experiment in which callers request price quotes from automotive repair shops. We show that sellers alter... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Price Discrimination; Automobiles; Field Experiment; Information; Fairness; Price; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Internet and the Web; Gender; Service Industry; Auto Industry

Find at Harvard

September 2006 (Revised August 2007)
Case

Warner Bros. and BitTorrent

Involves the copyright issues associated with Bram Cohen's revolutionary program BitTorrent, which makes it possible to transfer very large files, such as movies, at a high speed over the Internet. The program, which is available for free over the Internet, is used for... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Copyright; Lawfulness; Distribution; Internet and the Web; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

January 2006 (Revised March 2010)
Case

Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and the Market for Digital Information Goods

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Andres Hervas and Jordan Mitchell

We study competitive interaction between two alternative models of digital content distribution over the Internet: peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing and centralized client-server distribution. We present microfoundations for a stylized model of p2p file sharing where all... View Details

Keywords: Price; Profit; Distribution; Competition; Internet and the Web; Information Infrastructure