Publications

01 Sep 2008
News

Say “Green Cheese”

HOUSENBOLD: Picture perfect. All over America, shoeboxes full of print photos are gathering dust. But hard copy is not dead: There’s a growing demand for homemade picture books and scrapbooks whose pages people can design online themselves and fill with their own View Details

Keywords: News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information; Printing and Related Support Activities; Manufacturing

January 2018 (Revised February 2018)
Technical Note

Making Markets

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Scott Duke Kominers

Explains how to identify and capitalize on marketplace design opportunities. Defines markets and marketplaces and describes the basic functions of each. Discusses attributes (e.g., heterogeneity of participants' preferences and asymmetry in available information) that... View Details

Keywords: Marketplaces; Two-Sided Markets; Entrepreneurship; Market Design; Digital Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Market Participation; Market Transactions; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Auctions

June 2019
Case

ClearLife: From Prospect to Platform

By: Alexander Braun, Lauren Cohen, Mauro Elvedi and Jiahua Xu

ClearLife’s first product was a trading and analytics platform for participants in the U.S. life settlement market, the secondary market for life insurance. ClearLife played a key role in facilitating transactions and devising a common language for expressing value and... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Insurance; Entrepreneurship; Expansion; Diversification; Strategy

2016
Working Paper

Controlling Versus Enabling

By: Andrei Hagiu and Julian Wright

Revenue sharing between principals and agents is commonly used to balance double-sided moral hazard. We provide a theory of how, when such revenue-sharing is optimal, a principal allocates control rights over decisions that either party could make. We show that the... View Details

Keywords: Control Rights; Decision Authority; Employment; Independent Contractors; Organizational Theory; Digital Platforms; Governance Controls; Ethics; Vertical Integration

SSRN

Read Now

Web

4.0 Technology, Copyright, & Publishing Policies | MBA

4.0 Technology, Copyright, & Publishing Policies Student Handbook 5.1 Information Technology 5.2 Use of Harvard Name & Logo 5.3 Annual Notice: Digital Millennium Copyright Act View Details

March 2020 (Revised June 2023)
Case

Scaling Nextdoor

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Thomas O. Jones and Jeff Huizinga

Nextdoor, striving to solidify its position as the leading global social media platform for neighborhoods, works to scale audience, geography, and revenue. View Details

Keywords: Platforms; Information Technology; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Social Media; Digital Platforms

January 2018
Case

Viacom: Democratization of Data Science

By: Shane Greenstein and Christine Snively

In two short years, Viacom’s Data Science & Advanced Analytics team built a web platform called Science Central that allowed employees from Viacom’s 20+ cable networks to access television audience insights through three data science apps. In the past, employees would... View Details

Keywords: Data Science; Big Data; Digital Platforms; Analytics and Data Science; Expansion; Strategic Planning

October 2012 (Revised August 2013)
Case

Global Unichip Corporation (A)

By: Willy Shih and Chen-Fu Chien

Global Unichip Corporation (GUC) is a design services company that acts as a front-end to TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor foundry. In so doing, it masked the complexity of the latest process technologies, and reduced the entry barriers for small firms to... View Details

Web

About Baker Library | Baker Library

Library you can engage with cultural artifacts and vital historical records; utilize our world-class digital collections, research tools, and curriculum support; explore the inspiring physical and digital... View Details

27 Oct 2016
News

Paying It Forward

(photo by Neal Hamberg) Ask Malay Kundu (MBA 2003) about StopLift Checkout Vision Systems, and he’s more than happy to talk about his thriving software company, which deploys video and scanning technologies to stop retail theft. The... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

July 2006
Article

Dynamic Mixed Duopoly: A Model Motivated by Linux vs. Windows

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pankaj Ghemawat

This paper analyzes a dynamic mixed duopoly in which a profit-maximizing competitor interacts with a competitor that prices at zero (or marginal cost), with the cumulation of output affecting their relative positions over time. The modeling effort is motivated by... View Details

Find at Harvard

August 2021 (Revised September 2022)
Case

Patch Technology: Making It Easy to Do the Right Thing

By: Tomomichi Amano, Robert J. Dolan and Carol Zhang

In 2021, the growing threat of climate change pushed companies around the world to understand that significant behavioral change was necessary. While many recognized that decreasing emissions was critical, more sophisticated players such as Microsoft began to recognize... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Management; Marketing; Digital Platforms; Climate Change

01 Apr 2001
News

William Fung: E-Commerce and Efficiency

Ask fund managers covering the Hong Kong market about smart technology plays in these days of crashing dot-coms and you’re likely to hear one company name repeated often. Li & Fung has become the firm to watch for post-frenzy investors.... View Details

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

08 Feb 2016
Research & Ideas

The Civic Benefits of Google Street View and Yelp

use it. In the paper, Luca, Edward L. Glaeser and Scott Duke Kominers (PhDBE 2011) of Harvard University, and PhD student Nikhil Naik of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, cite three trends that make cities particularly... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consumer Products

Profile

Fabian Frick

making; I wanted more of a management role,” says Fabian. A consulting assignment with McKinsey gave him the opportunity to explore strategic digitization projects. “In Germany,” Fabian notes, “we have lots of large, traditional companies... View Details

Keywords: Consulting; Tech

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