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- 2024
- Working Paper
Lessons from an App Update at Replika AI: Identity Discontinuity in Human-AI Relationships
By: Julian De Freitas, Noah Castelo, Ahmet Uğuralp and Zeliha Uğuralp
Can consumers form deep emotional bonds with AI and be vested in AI identities over time? We
leverage a natural app-update event at Replika AI, a popular US-based AI companion, to shed
light on these questions. We find that customers feel closer to their AI companion... View Details
- September 2024
- Case
Eat App: Building and Monetizing an End-to-End Dining Experience Solution
By: Elie Ofek and Ahmed Dahawy
Founded in 2015 in Bahrain, Eat App was an up-and-coming player in the global restaurant management software business. In early 2024, having shifted to a product-led growth strategy, the company’s co-founders faced a host of decisions that could greatly impact their... View Details
- May 2024
- Article
The Health Risks of Generative AI-Based Wellness Apps
By: Julian De Freitas and G. Cohen
Artifcial intelligence (AI)-enabled chatbots are increasingly being used to
help people manage their mental health. Chatbots for mental health and
particularly ‘wellness’ applications currently exist in a regulatory ‘gray area’.
Indeed, most generative AI-powered... View Details
- March 2024 (Revised July 2024)
- Case
WeightWatchers: Promoting Weight Health
In December 2023, the 60-year-old weight management industry stalwart WeightWatchers announced the launch of WeightWatchers Clinic, which incorporated GLP-1s , a new class of prescription weight-loss medications, into the company’s portfolio of products and mobile app... View Details
- March 2024 (Revised July 2024)
- Case
The CHIPS Program Office
By: Mitchell B. Weiss and Sebastian Negron-Reichard
In February 2023, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo weighed signing off on a Notice of Funding Opportunity (“NOFO”) with at least one unconventional provision: a pre-application (“pre-app”) to the actual application for parts of $39 billion in direct semiconductor... View Details
- January 2024 (Revised June 2024)
- Case
School of Rock: Tuning into Structured Empowerment (A)
By: Tatiana Sandino, Jeffrey Rayport, Samuel Grad and Stacy Straaberg
In summer 2021, School of Rock was a youth-oriented music education company with 291 franchise- and company-owned schools globally. Before CEO Rob Price’s hire in 2017, School of Rock’s nonconformist rock ‘n’ roll culture led to variability in teaching styles,... View Details
Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Plan; Change Management; Transformation; Communication Strategy; Decisions; Curriculum and Courses; Teaching; Employee Relationship Management; Knowledge Sharing; Leadership Style; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Style; Marketing Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Franchise Ownership; Performance Expectations; Performance Improvement; Strategic Planning; Attitudes; Conflict Management; Corporate Strategy; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Education Industry; Music Industry; Massachusetts; United States
- January 2024 (Revised June 2024)
- Supplement
School of Rock: Tuning into Structured Empowerment (B)
By: Tatiana Sandino, Jeffrey Rayport, Samuel Grad and Stacy Straaberg
In September 2022, Price and his team evaluated the past year’s strategies to increase Method App adoption and discussed new initiatives to consider. View Details
- January 2024
- Case
Flashfood: The Magic of Commitment
By: Reza Satchu and Patrick Sanguineti
Josh Domingues had accomplished what countless young entrepreneurs long to achieve: founding a promising company that aspires to make the world a tangibly better place. Shocked to learn that international food waste cumulatively amounted to the world’s third largest... View Details
- January 2024 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
OpenAI: Idealism Meets Capitalism
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
In November 2023, the board of OpenAI, one of the most successful companies in the history of technology, decided to fire Sam Altman, its charismatic and influential CEO. Their decision shocked the corporate world and had people wondering why OpenAI had designed a... View Details
- December 2023
- Case
TikTok: The Algorithm Will See You Now
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
In a world where attention is a scarce commodity, this case explores the meteoric rise of TikTok—an app that transformed from a niche platform for teens into the most visited domain by 2021—surpassing even Google. Its algorithm was a sophisticated mechanism for... View Details
- September 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
AI21 Labs in 2023: Strategy for Generative AI
By: David Yoffie, Orna Dan and Elena Corsi
Israeli generative artificial intelligence company AI21 Labs was founded in 2017 to realize the vision of true machine intelligence. It sought to reinvent writing and reading and in 2020 it launched Wordtune, an app using GenAI software to offer alternate text... View Details
- August 2023
- Supplement
Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (C)
By: Henry McGee, Nien-hê Hsieh and Kerry Herman
In September 2021, Apple decided to delay updates to iOS and iPadOS that included features to fight child sexual abuse. While many—including prominent privacy and security experts—praised Apple, others were opposed. They saw Apple introducing features that risked... View Details
- August 2023
- Case
Reimagining Hindustan Unilever (A)
By: Sunil Gupta and Rachna Tahilyani
In the fall of 2019, the CEO and MD of Hindustan Unilever (HUL), India’s largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) firm, is wondering what to do about their experiments to digitize distribution. Despite three years of intense efforts, their apps to empower retailers... View Details
- July 2023
- Case
Honeycomb
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Kumba Sennaar
Honeycomb, an audio app enabling seniors to record stories and save family memories, suddenly draws interest from a younger user demographic. The co-founders consider pivoting to better serve this new user demographic. How should they think about strategy, brand, and... View Details
- July 2023
- Supplement
Honeycomb (B): Jumping on The Generative AI Bandwagon?
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Kumba Sennaar
Honeycomb, an audio app enabling users to record stories and save family memories, considers pivoting to embrace generative AI. What should the co-founders business model look like if they pursued this new direction? View Details
- July 13, 2023
- Article
Threads Foreshadows a Big—and Surprising—Shift in Social Media
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Liang Wu
Threads, Meta’s Twitter competitor, has become the fastest downloaded app in history. One of the reasons for this is because it allows users to port over their profiles and follows from the already popular social media platform Instagram, also owned by Meta—a feature... View Details
- June 2023
- Case
ByteDance: TikTok and the Trials of Going Viral in 2023
By: William C. Kirby, Noah B. Truwit and John P. McHugh
In March 2023, Chew, with an army of well-paid U.S. lobbyists and TikTok creators, descended on Washington. In his testimony, he planned to highlight the 150 million daily active American users on TikTok and how the platform had benefitted small business owners and... View Details
- June 19, 2023
- Article
Should You Start a Generative AI Company?
Many entrepreneurs are considering starting companies that leverage the latest generative AI technology, but they must ask themselves whether they have what it takes to compete on increasingly commoditized foundational models, or whether they should instead... View Details
- April 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
AI Wars
By: Andy Wu, Matt Higgins, Miaomiao Zhang and Hang Jiang
In February 2024, the world was looking to Google to see what the search giant and long-time putative technical leader in artificial intelligence (AI) would do to compete in the massively hyped technology of generative AI. Over a year ago, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a... View Details
- March 2023 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
Metaverse Wars
By: Andy Wu, David B. Yoffie and Matt Higgins
In 2023, the term metaverse — a combination of “meta” and “universe” — had become a catch-all for a diverse set of expectations about online virtual worlds and the future of the internet. To some, the metaverse conjured images of a massive participatory videogame... View Details