Video Games - Publications - Faculty & Research

William A. Sahlman

William Sahlman is a Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Mr. Sahlman received an A.B. degree in Economics from Princeton University (1972), an M.B.A. from Harvard University (1975), and a Ph.D. in Business... View Details

August 2015 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Amazon.com, 2021

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

In February 2021, Amazon announced 2020 operating profits of $22,899 million, up from $2,233 million in 2015, on sales of $386 billion, up from $107 billion five years earlier (see Exhibit 1). The shareholders expressed their satisfaction (see Exhibit 2), but not all... View Details

Citation

Educators

Purchase

04 May 2021
Book

Best Buy: How Human Connection Saved a Failing Retailer

Fewer slides, more soul-searching Perhaps what’s most important, he instituted a training program that cast aside PowerPoint presentations and videos and replaced them with soul-searching conversations between both executives and... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail

February 2023
Case

Roblox: Virtual Commerce in the Metaverse

By: Ayelet Israeli and Nicole Tempest Keller

In 2022, Roblox had 58.8 million daily active users, including over half of all children and teens under the age of 16 in the United States. Roblox, a free-to-use “co-experience platform”, allowed users to come together in immersive 3D experiences to socialize, work,... View Details

Citation

Educators

Purchase

Web

Sample Student Projects - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

Tourism Cluster (2013) Israeli Biotechnology Cluster (2006) Italy Italy Tourism (2011) The Italian Sports Car Cluster (2006) Japan Japan Automobile Cluster (2016) Japan Skin Care Cluster (2013) The Japanese Gaming Cluster (2012) Japan... View Details

23 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

How to Brand a Next-Generation Product

video game consoles, for example) or the complete name change approach (Nintendo's Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii). The professors conducted a series of experiments to determine when and why each approach made... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

27 May 2014
First Look

First Look: May 27

consumers make complementary choices in purchase decisions (e.g., chips and salsa), product inter-operabilities (smartphones and networks), and dynamic decisions (current exercise and future healthcare consumption). Multiple consumers make complementary choices when... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Sep 2023
News

That Was Then, This Is Now

It started with a question. But before that, it started in the classroom. Tony Deifell (MBA 2002) loved the discussions in his LEAD course, taught by Professor (and now former Dean) Nitin Nohria; wanting to make them more tangible, Deifell adapted the idea of... View Details

Keywords: Photographed by Tony Deifell (MBA 2002); edited by Julia Hanna. Above: Heidi Brooks, photographed in 2003 and 2023.; life experience; family; leadership

13 Feb 2012
Research & Ideas

The Case Against Racial Colorblindness

researchers conducted an experiment in which white participants engaged in a two-person guessing game designed—unbeknownst to them—to measure their tendencies toward attempted racial colorblindness. Each participant was given a stack of... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

06 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

Latest Isn’t Always Greatest: Why Product Updates Capture Consumers

eating gummies, and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s the revised gummy, yum yum, it tastes better,’” says John. In another study in which participants played a video game labeled as “version 5,” they even reported... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consumer Products; Retail

19 Oct 2022
Op-Ed

Cofounder Courtship: How to Find the Right Mate—for Your Startup

course neither of you have visited or playing a video game together can test how you collaborate or handle competition. You might also consider working on a start-up related project together to see how that... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

05 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

5 Companies Where Employees Move Up the Ladder Fast

wider pool of talent. Workers and potential employees can take control, too, by: Being realistic about which jobs are available where they live. Too often, says Fuller, young workers will study in fields like video View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

11 Mar 2024
Blog Post

A Day in the Life: Ben Hsieh

6:30 AM: I wake up – grateful that I’m naturally a morning person and our classes start at 9:30. The morning is my favorite time of day, and I begin my daily routine by reading with my coffee (my current fantasy binge is the Red Rising series), playing the NYT Word... View Details

09 Jun 2008
Lessons from the Classroom

Monetizing IP: The Executive’s Challenge

terms. One example is MPEG-2, a digital video compression standard used in products including DVD and high-definition television. The standard was developed by the International Organization for Standardization, but during the completion... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Video Game; Video Game

14 Jul 2014
Research & Ideas

Pay Attention To Your ‘Extreme Consumers’

What do Porsche fanatics, a video game hater, and a person who cooked two weeks' worth of meals in a rice cooker have in common? They are all "extreme consumers"—those whose tastes are so out there that... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

01 Jun 2023
News

Curb Appeal

York’s Finest from paper logs to digital apps and implemented tools like ShotSpotter, an audio gunshot-detection system, and the Domain Awareness System, a video surveillance platform that uses machine learning to detect potential... View Details

Keywords: Alexander Gelfand; photography by Vance Jacobs; Justice, Public Order, and Safety Activities; Government

21 Sep 2020
Research & Ideas

Are You Sabotaging Your Own Company?

at first company officials cited all kinds of outside influences that were doing damage, including the video game fad, increased global competition, and even dropping birth rates. But newly appointed... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

March 2016 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Reinventing Best Buy

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

On March 1, 2017, Best Buy Company, Inc., North America’s largest retailer of consumer electronics and appliances, announced a third year of comparable-store sales increases and a 20.8% increase in domestic comparable online sales. These results were in marked contrast... View Details

Citation

Educators

Purchase

01 Dec 2023
News

Case Study: Staking a Claim

Illustration by Nhung Lê Kate Terry (MBA 2005) knows that no one attends their fifth-grade career fair and comes home hoping to pursue a career in insurance—but that’s exactly where she wound up. “I really fell in love with it,” she says. As cofounder and CEO of... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Insurance Carriers and Related Activities; Finance

Web

Regional Winners - Alumni

faster to implement. Rajiv Singhal, MBA 2007, CEO & Founder Region: Europe and International Closing Theory Studios Closing Theory Studios is a mobile game development company creating games like Househunt,... View Details

Publications

Publications

Show Results For

Show Results For

William A. Sahlman

Amazon.com, 2021

Best Buy: How Human Connection Saved a Failing Retailer

Roblox: Virtual Commerce in the Metaverse

Sample Student Projects - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

How to Brand a Next-Generation Product

First Look: May 27

That Was Then, This Is Now

The Case Against Racial Colorblindness

Latest Isn’t Always Greatest: Why Product Updates Capture Consumers

Cofounder Courtship: How to Find the Right Mate—for Your Startup

5 Companies Where Employees Move Up the Ladder Fast

A Day in the Life: Ben Hsieh

Monetizing IP: The Executive’s Challenge

Pay Attention To Your ‘Extreme Consumers’

Curb Appeal

Are You Sabotaging Your Own Company?

Reinventing Best Buy

Case Study: Staking a Claim

Regional Winners - Alumni