Publications

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

25 Apr 2023
Op-Ed

How SHEIN and Temu Conquered Fast Fashion—and Forged a New Business Model

information technology to directly match consumer demand to dispersed production by a collection of factories in China. This method of reaching customers should inspire any business that provides products or services that come from many... View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton; Fashion; Retail; Consumer Products

05 Dec 2011
Research & Ideas

It’s Alive! Business Scholars Turn to Experimental Research

A large amusement park. A long line at an airport. A children's summer camp in Italy. What do these places have in common? Surprisingly, all are settings for serious research by Harvard Business School faculty. There's a sea change afoot... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

19 Oct 2016
Book

Three Critical Mistakes Digital Businesses Make With Content

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail; Music

29 Jan 2007
Research & Ideas

The Business Press Is a Watchdog that Bites

When tales of financial fraud hit the newsstands, business people and academics usually assume that it was analysts or auditors who brought the wrongdoing to light. Journalists, they believe, are only repeating what they've been told.... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Journalism & News; Publishing

March 2018
Case

Summit Public Schools (A)

By: John J-H Kim and Aldo Sesia

Summit Public Schools was a very successful charter management organization with schools in California and Washington State. The students came from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, many from economically disadvantaged households. While nearly all of its students... View Details

Keywords: K-12; Online Learning; Virtual Learning; Blended Learning; Secondary Education; Middle School Education; Early Childhood Education; Learning; Business Model; Performance Improvement; Technology

December 2012 (Revised September 2022)
Case

BabbaCo

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Gaurav Jain

Having just raised a Series B financing, the case protagonist is faced with a tough decision: should she "step on the gas" and scale the customer base, or continue focusing on fine-tuning the product and business model. The case describes the various marketing channels... View Details

Keywords: Subscription; Marketing; Scaling; Product-market Fit; Online Marketing; Customers; Decisions; Expansion; Marketing Channels; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Marketing; Marketing Strategy

September–October 2022
Article

Should Your Company Sell on Amazon?: Reach Comes at a Price

By: Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Matt Higgins and Sabir Semerkant

Selling on Amazon allows brands to reach millions of consumers—but that exposure comes with costs. They include smaller margins, more competition, the risk of commoditization, and less knowledge about customers. In this article, the authors present a scorecard to... View Details

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12 Dec 2016
HBS Case

Business Lessons from Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson

terrific working relationship makes the story really unique.” Elberse hopes that the case study will help students understand what it takes for stars like Johnson to build a successful media business that cuts across film, television, and... View Details

Keywords: Re: Anita Elberse; Motion Pictures & Video; Entertainment & Recreation

26 Jun 2000
Research & Ideas

What’s an Internet Business Model? Ask a Health Care Professional

Though the Internet has woven itself into most aspects of life, few fields have adopted it more actively, and at times controversially, than health care. What new business models in health care, based on the Internet, are rising to the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

December 2015 (Revised February 2016)
Case

Ocado

By: José Alvarez, David E. Bell and Damien McLoughlin

In 2015, U.K.-based Ocado was the world's largest pure player in the online home-delivery grocery business and was gaining a growing share of the highly competitive U.K. grocery market. Ocado had made heavy investments in technology, including a highly automated... View Details

05 Nov 2024
Book

Building the Road to 'Small Business Utopia' with AI and Fintech

evidence suggests the opposite. If new intelligence is developed that will help them succeed, small businesses will find a way to adopt it. Small businesses are hungry for new solutions. They responded so... View Details

Keywords: by Karen G. Mills; Financial Services

February 2019 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Amazon in Fashion

By: John R. Wells, Benjamin Weinstock and Gabriel Ellsworth

According to many analysts and industry observers, in 2018 Amazon became the largest retailer of apparel in the United States and the second largest in the world, behind Alibaba. Much of Amazon’s apparel was made by third-party retailers on its platform, but Amazon had... View Details

27 Jul 2019
Op-Ed

Does Facebook's Business Model Threaten Our Elections?

business strategy, part of Facebook’s business model since at least 2010. That’s when Facebook opened up its Graph application programming interface (API) to advertisers, giving them access to user data... View Details

Keywords: by George Riedel

13 Apr 2020
Research & Ideas

Small Businesses Are Worse Off Than We Thought

survey of nearly 6,000 small-business owners conducted by a team of researchers in partnership with Alignable, an online business networking platform with 4.5 million members. The survey results paint a... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Financial Services

June 2015
Case

Beacon Group of Hong Kong: Finding Light in the Shadow Education Industry

By: Christopher Marquis, Qi Li and Guy Leung

After more than 25 years of operation, Beacon Group had grown from having 3 small classrooms on the fourth floor of a commercial building, to a network of 21 centers across Hong Kong with over 60,000 students enrolled per year. The key long-term challenge for the... View Details

Keywords: Online Education; Education; Tutoring; Incentives; Hong Kong; Motivation and Incentives; Internet and the Web; Family Business; Education Industry; Hong Kong

November 2021 (Revised November 2023)
Case

Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary's Place

By: Paul M. Healy, Debora L. Spar and Amy Klopfenstein

In 2020, Amazon, the $386 billion online retail behemoth, built an eight-story shelter for women and families experiencing homelessness on its expanding headquarters in Seattle, Washington. The shelter, operated in partnership with a non-profit organization known as... View Details

Keywords: Business Ethics; Homelessness; Business And Society; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Corporate Accountability; Urban Development; Society; Information Technology; Ethics; Technology Industry; Seattle; United States; North America