Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,864)
- Faculty Publications (382)
- January 2019 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
Liulishuo: AI English Teacher
By: John J-H Kim and Shu Lin
Educators and entrepreneurs alike are excited about the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to change the way learning will look like in the future. There is a confluence of factors such as the availability of large sources of rich,... View Details
- January 2019 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
SoundCloud: Subscription Streaming?
Established in 2007, SoundCloud already boasted the second largest number of active music listeners among all streaming services and was recognized as the go-to platform for new artists by early 2014. Yet, its founders were questioning the robustness of the firm’s... View Details
Keywords: Audio; Recording; Artist; Music; Music Downloads; Streaming; Radio; Subscription; Subscription Model; Mainstream; Growth; Lawsuit; Licensing; Customers; Platform; Pivot; Music Entertainment; Strategy; Leadership; Business Model; Decision Making; Advertising; Digital Platforms; Music Industry; Europe; Germany; Sweden; United States
- January 2019 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
Glossier: Co-Creating a Cult Brand with a Digital Community
By: Jill Avery
Glossier’s proclaimed strategy was “born from content; fueled by community.” The digital-first, direct-to-consumer beauty brand had experienced rapid growth, with sales up 600% in 2017 and a customer portfolio that grew by threefold. But, its founder, Emily Weiss, was... View Details
Keywords: Brands; Brand Management; Brand Communication; Retailing; DTC; Influencer; Startup; Internet Marketing; Big Data; Crowdsourcing; Growth and Development Strategy; Social Media; E-commerce; Internet and the Web; Digital Marketing; Consumer Products Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Retail Industry; United States; North America
- January 2019 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
Rural Taobao: Alibaba's Expansion into Rural E-Commerce
By: Tarun Khanna, Ryan Allen, Adam Frost and Wesley Koo
Alibaba's Rural Taobao initiative had been launched in 2014 as a public service initiative to increase e-commerce adoption in China’s remote rural areas. In the first two iterations of the initiative, dubbed “1.0” and “2.0,” Alibaba had partnered with local businesses... View Details
Keywords: Strategy; Business Growth; Ecommerce; Corporate Social Responsibility; Business And Government; Emerging Market; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Emerging Markets; Rural Scope; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Government Relations; Decision Making; E-commerce; China
- November 2018 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
The Reinvention of Kodak
By: Ryan Raffaelli and Christine Snively
The Eastman Kodak Company (Kodak) was a name familiar to most Americans. The company had dominated the film and photography industry through most of the 20th Century and was known for making affordable cameras (and the “Kodak Moment”) and supplying the movie industry... View Details
- November 2018 (Revised June 2022)
- Teaching Note
AirFox (A): Embracing the Blockchain and an ICO
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Nathaniel Schwalb
Teaching Note for HBS No. 818-097. In summer 2017, Victor Santos, CEO of AirFox, considered whether to pivot his startup towards a new product built with blockchain—a quickly growing technology at the time. AirFox was an early stage startup that sold... View Details
- November 2018
- Case
Attijariwafa Bank: Egypt Expansion
By: Victoria Ivashina and Alpana Thapar
This case follows Attijariwafa Bank, a leading Morocco-based commercial bank, giving insight into its risk management practices and its international expansion over time. In particular, the case focuses on its planned acquisition of Barclays Bank Egypt in 2017. At this... View Details
- 2018
- Chapter
The Orphan Drug Act at 35: Observations and an Outlook for the Twenty-First Century
By: Nicholas Bagley, Benjamin Berger, Amitabh Chandra, Craig Garthwaite and Ariel Dora Stern
On the 35th anniversary of the adoption of the Orphan Drug Act (ODA), we describe the enormous changes in the markets for therapies for rare diseases that have emerged over recent decades. The most prominent example is the fact that the profit-maximizing price of new... View Details
- October 2018
- Case
Zenefits Board of Directors (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
In early 2018, the time seemed right for Zenefits investor and director Lars Dalgaard to reflect on whether Zenefits had the right board of directors to shepherd the company through its next stages of growth. For the company whose name combined the words “benefits,”... View Details
Keywords: Ethics; Business Model; Corporate Accountability; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Leadership; Risk Management; Venture Capital; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States; California
- October 2018 (Revised July 2019)
- Case
Sidewalk Labs: Privacy in a City Built from the Internet Up
By: Leslie K. John, Mitchell Weiss and Julia Kelley
Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.
By the time Dan Doctoroff, CEO of Sidewalk Labs, began hosting a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session in January 2018, he had only nine months remaining to convince the people... View Details
By the time Dan Doctoroff, CEO of Sidewalk Labs, began hosting a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session in January 2018, he had only nine months remaining to convince the people... View Details
Keywords: Public Entrepreneurship; Govtech; CivicTech; Smart Cities; City Innovation; Government Innovation; Privacy; Sidewalk Labs; Dan Doctoroff; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Consumer Behavior; Governance; Business and Government Relations; Innovation and Invention; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Canada
- August 2018
- Background Note
Note on Hackathons
By: Ethan Bernstein
Organizations have often sought to meet the pressures of rapid change through novel ways of managing human capital to boost innovation and productivity. Hackathons have emerged as one of the latest approaches to do just that. How can those responsible for managing... View Details
Keywords: Hackathon; Crowdsourcing; Hack; Innovation; Productivity; Minimum Viable Product; Time; Transparency; Bootcamp; Design; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Management; Organizational Structure; Performance Productivity; Technology; Technology Industry
- August 2018
- Case
Christine Lagarde
By: Julie Battilana, Carin-Isabel Knoop, Vanessa Ampelas and Noemie Assenat
For a modular presentation of the same material, please see “Christine Lagarde (A): A French Prime Minister Calls” (HBS No. 419-017), “Christine Lagarde (B): Being a Public Servant” (HBS No. 419-018), and “Christine Lagarde (C): Managing the IMF” (HBS No. 419-019).... View Details
- 12 Aug 2018 - 14 Aug 2018
- Conference Presentation
Abstraction, Knowledge Flows, and the Rapid Dissemination of Emerging Technologies
By: Willy C. Shih
Many emerging technologies are remarkably complex and embody high levels of technological sophistication, and they often are key enablers for new products and services. Yet the speed of dispersal of the know-how required to employ these technologies and foster... View Details
- August 2018
- Case
MISHA: Modernizing the World of Shisha
By: William R. Kerr and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in 2017 with two of the five co-founders of MISHA telling the company’s CEO Michal Portz that they believe it is time for the global venture to shut down its operations and cease investments. Portz and another co-founder believe MISHA can still... View Details
Keywords: Innovation And Management; Entrepreneurship; Private Sector; For-profit Firms; Business Strategy; Decision; Business Startups; Emerging Markets; Business Model; Marketing Strategy; Distribution Channels; Market Entry and Exit; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Value Creation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Technology Industry; Qatar; United States
- July–August 2018
- Article
When Technology Gets Ahead of Society
By: Tarun Khanna
New technologies can be unsettling for industry incumbents, regulators, and consumers, because norms and institutions for dealing with them don’t yet exist. Interestingly, businesspeople in emerging economies face similar challenges: The rules are unclear and... View Details
- May 2018 (Revised February 2019)
- Case
The Powers That Be (Internet Edition): Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Julia Kelley and Nathaniel Schwalb
As of early 2018, five U.S. technology companies—Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft—were among the largest companies in the world. Similarly, three Chinese technology firms—Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, or BAT—had emerged as global players due in part to the... View Details
- May 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Case
AirFox (A): Embracing the Blockchain and an ICO
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Edward B. Berk and Nate Schwalb
In summer 2017, Victor Santos, CEO of AirFox, considered whether to pivot his startup towards a new product built with blockchain—a quickly growing technology at the time. AirFox was an early stage startup that sold Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to small telecom... View Details
- Article
Space, the Final Economic Frontier
After decades of centralized control of economic activity in space, NASA and U.S. policymakers have begun to cede the direction of human activities in space to commercial companies. NASA garnered more than 0.7% of GDP in the mid-1960s but is only around 0.1% of GDP... View Details
- March 2018
- Case
IBM: Watson and the Internet of Things
By: Rajiv Lal and Scott Johnson
IBM has recently launched a business unit devoted to the Internet of Things. The group's leadership team needs to figure out the best way to quickly scale its business in a fragmented and nascent market. View Details
- March 2018 (Revised March 2018)
- Teaching Note
OpenInvest
By: Boris Vallee and Caitlin Reimers Brumme
Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolio to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapon manufacturers stocks or overweighting LGBTQ... View Details