Publications
Publications
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(2,517)
- Faculty Publications (582)
- March 2020
- Teaching Note
onefinestay: Building a Luxury Experience in the Sharing Economy
By: Jill Avery and Anat Keinan
onefinestay was a two-sided marketplace that offered high-end home rentals to travelers who sought a more authentic and local experience than a typical upscale hotel might provide. After five years of rapid growth, it was time to do a comprehensive analysis of the... View Details
Keywords: Two-sided Marketplace; Two-sided Market; Hospitality Industry; Hotels; Luxury Brand; Sharing Economy; Startup; Scaling; Growth; Customer Segmentation; Brand Positioning; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Luxury; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Business Model; Venture Capital; Customers; Segmentation; Growth and Development Strategy; Travel Industry; Tourism Industry; Accommodations Industry; United Kingdom; London; Europe
- March 11, 2020
- Editorial
A Bolder Vision for Business Schools
By: P. Tufano
Business schools teach to a model that dates back to the 1950s. Given the growing demands on business to take a lead in confronting societal challenges, business schools need to update how they train business leaders and how they compete, argues Oxford’s Saïd School... View Details
- February 2020 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
Catalant's Operating System for the Future of Work
By: Christopher Stanton, William R. Kerr, James Palano and Kendall Smith
This case touches on the topics of project-based work, agile methodology, and skill and talent management through Catalant's evolution as a company. Catalant’s journey to becoming a software platform and talent marketplace provides context for students to explore new... View Details
- January–February 2020
- Article
Competing in the Age of AI
By: Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani
Today’s markets are being reshaped by a new kind of firm—one in which artificial intelligence (AI) runs the show. This cohort includes giants like Google, Facebook, and Alibaba, and growing businesses such as Wayfair and Ocado. Every time we use their services, the... View Details
- January 2020
- Case
Terra Nova: A Social Business Trying to Unlock Land Rights for the Urban Poor in Brazil
By: Julie Battilana, Ruth Costas, Marissa Kimsey and Priscilla Zogbi
Brothers André and Daniel Albuquerque founded the company Terra Nova in 2001 to mediate land disputes between poor families illegally living in urban areas and the official landowners—with the aspiration to improve the lives of the poor. A business-led approach to the... View Details
- 2020
- Book
Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World
By: Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani
In industry after industry, data, analytics, and AI-driven processes are transforming the nature of work. While we often still treat AI as the domain of a specific skill, business function, or sector, we have entered a new era in which AI is challenging the very... View Details
- January 2020 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
Zara: An Integrated Store and Online Model (A)
By: Antonio Moreno
In 2010, amidst the growth of ecommerce and the emergence of new, purely online, fashion players, Zara launched its first online store, Zara.com. Since then, Zara’s online business had grown at a fast pace. By 2018, 12% of Inditex Group’s total sales came from the... View Details
Keywords: Stores; Integration; Operations; Business Model; Strategy; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Europe
- December 2019 (Revised November 2021)
- Course Overview Note
The Entrepreneurial Manager: Spring 2022
By: Mitchell Weiss and Benjamin Henkes
This is the course overview note for “The Entrepreneurial Manager,” taught in the first year at Harvard Business School. Students will learn how to be opportunity-driven managers and how to lead under uncertainty. They'll learn how to identify opportunities, how to... View Details
- December 2019
- Article
Costly Concessions: An Empirical Framework for Matching with Imperfectly Transferable Utility
By: Alfred Galichon, Scott Duke Kominers and Simon Weber
We introduce an empirical framework for models of matching with imperfectly transferable utility and unobserved heterogeneity in tastes. Our framework allows us to characterize matching equilibrium in a flexible way that includes as special cases the classic fully- and... View Details
- December 16, 2019
- Article
Why Your Startup Won't Last
By: Ranjay Gulati and Vasundhara Sawhney
Why do some startups that have crossed the threshold of “product-market fit” and have a viable business model still fail? This article begins by exploring the argument that most startups need more professionalization to thrive. Founders resist putting in place... View Details
- 2019
- Book
Operations in an Omnichannel World
By: Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno
The world of retailing has changed dramatically in the past decade. Sales originating at online channels have been steadily increasing, and even for sales transacted at brick-and-mortar channels, a much larger fraction of sales is affected by online channels in... View Details
- October 2019
- Case
Agility Africa
By: Juan Alcacer, Caroline M. Elkins and Esel Çekin
This case illustrates the challenge and opportunities that firms face when developing and executing new business models in high-risk, low-infrastructure, low-trust countries. It features a global logistics group, Agility, that aimed to become the leader in supplying... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 8 Rationalizing Flow Processes
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the value structure of flow production processes and to explain why it is necessary to rationalize flow processes using the tools of systematic management. I first explain the problems facing managers of multi-step flow... View Details
- August 2019 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Family Matters: Governance at the Zamil Group
By: Christina R. Wing, Suraj Srinivasan and Esel Çekin
This case focuses on a large Saudi Arabian industrial conglomerate and family business Zamil Group’s corporate and family governance journey. The 12 sons of the founder led and grew the group successfully after taking over from their father in 1961. The secret to their... View Details
- August 2019
- Article
When and How to Diversify—A Multicategory Utility Model for Personalized Content Recommendation
By: Yicheng Song, Nachiketa Sahoo and Elie Ofek
Sometimes we desire change, a break from the same or an opportunity to fulfill different aspects of our needs. Noting that consumers seek variety, several approaches have been developed to diversify items recommended by personalized recommender systems. However,... View Details
- July 2019
- Case
Christmas Inc. (A)
By: Susanna Gallani, Gregory Sabin, Lexor Adams and Nicholas Haberling
Santa Claus is facing increasing pressures to contain costs. The economic model that has worked for centuries is starting to show some cracks, to the point that he is considering outsourcing part of its toy production. Evaluating the bids his team collected from... View Details
- April 2019
- Case
Afterpay U.S.: The Omnichannel Dilemma
By: Antonio Moreno, Donald Ngwe and George Gonzalez
In 2018, Nick Molnar, the founder of the Australia-based online payment service Afterpay began its expansion to the U.S. market. The service had gained a loyal following in Australia by enabling customers to pay for online purchases through four interest-free... View Details
Keywords: Omnichannel Retail; Multi-sided Platforms; Value Creation; Business Model Innovation; Fintech; Digital Marketing; Disruptive Innovation; Business Startups; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Business Organization; For-Profit Firms; Change Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Satisfaction; Financing and Loans; Microfinance; Global Strategy; Marketing Channels; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Product Development; Supply Chain Management; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Networks; Network Effects; Internet and the Web; Financial Services Industry; Retail Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Australia
- Spring 2019
- Article
Fluid Teams and Knowledge Retrieval: Scaling Service Operations
By: Melissa A. Valentine, Tom Fangyun Tan, Bradley R. Staats and Amy C. Edmondson
To scale service operations requires retrieving knowledge across the organization. However, prior work highlights that individuals on the periphery of organizational knowledge networks may struggle to access useful knowledge at work. A knowledge repository has the... View Details
- April 2019
- Article
Internalizing Global Value Chains: A Firm-Level Analysis
By: Laura Alfaro, Pol Antràs, Davin Chor and Paola Conconi
In recent decades, advances in information and communication technology and falling trade barriers have led firms to retain within their boundaries and in their domestic economies only a subset of their production stages. A key decision facing firms worldwide is the... View Details
- April 2019 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
Wayfair
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie L. Ma and Matthew G. Preble
In 2016 Niraj Shah and Steve Conine, founders of online home goods retailer Wayfair, are faced with a decision about how to improve user experience on their e-commerce sites. A key driver of consumer interest and conversion to purchase in the home category is visual... View Details