Publications

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2017
Case

DigiPlex: Future-Ready Data Centers

By: Y. Grushka-Cockayne and Y. Yemen

July 1987
Case

Frito-Lay, Inc.: The New Data Center

By: James I. Cash Jr.

Keywords: Information Technology; Food and Beverage Industry

Find at Harvard

May 2009 (Revised October 2009)
Case

Verne Global: Building a Green Data Center in Iceland

Verne Global, a pioneering startup created to build the first large-scale data center in Iceland, faces critical challenges regarding its green strategy. Verne Co-Founder Isaac Kato is tasked with evaluating how the company can most successfully market and sell the... View Details

Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Business Startups; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Sales; Environmental Sustainability; Pollutants; Green Technology Industry; Service Industry; Iceland

09 Oct 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Where the Cloud Rests: The Economic Geography of Data Centers

Keywords: by Shane Greenstein and Tommy Pan Fang

October 2021 (Revised September 2022)
Case

SmartOne: Building an AI Data Business

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Pippa Armerding, Gamze Yucaoglu and Fares Khrais

The case opens in August 2021, as Habib and Shahysta Hassim, husband and wife co-founders of the data labeling company SmartOne, contemplate the strategy of the high growth company. Between 2016 and 2021, SmartOne had kept doubling its size every two years and now,... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Data Labeling; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Operations; Business Model; Growth Management; Growth and Development Strategy; AI and Machine Learning; Africa; Madagascar; Europe; France; United States

2021
Working Paper

The Value of Data and Its Impact on Competition

By: Marco Iansiti

Common regulatory perspective on the relationship between data, value, and competition in online platforms has increasingly centered on the volume of data accumulated by incumbent firms. This view posits the existence of "data network effects," where more data leads to... View Details

Keywords: Online Platforms; Data Network Effects; Analytics and Data Science; Value; Competition; Digital Platforms

SSRN

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September 2017 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Great Lakes Banking Group: Data Management

By: Shane Greenstein and Christine Snively

In May 2016, Michael Rechtin, an expert in international data center law, advised global financial services firm Great Lakes Banking Group (GLBG) on its plans to upgrade its data centers. The bank’s data processing and storage systems were in need of an update, and... View Details

Keywords: Information Infrastructure; Infrastructure; Operations; Information Management

July 2023 (Revised July 2023)
Background Note

Generative AI Value Chain

By: Andy Wu and Matt Higgins

Generative AI refers to a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that can create new content (e.g., text, image, or audio) in response to a prompt from a user. ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude are examples of text generating AIs, and DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion are... View Details

Keywords: AI; Artificial Intelligence; Model; Hardware; Data Centers; AI and Machine Learning; Applications and Software; Analytics and Data Science; Value

2010
Working Paper

Do Call Centers Promote Education? Evidence from India

By: Emily Fair Oster and Mary Bryce Millett

Over the last two decades in India there have been large increases in outsourced jobs and large increases in schooling rates, particularly in English. Existing evidence suggests the trends are broadly related. In this paper we explore how localized these impacts are;... View Details

Keywords: Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Education; Training; Geographic Location; Technology Industry; India

June 2020
Case

Agile Consumer Product Innovation with Alibaba's Tmall Innovation Center

By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and James Palano

Consumer products companies were beset by changes on all sides during the 2010s. Customers were increasingly turning to ecommerce platforms rather than shopping in-store. Meanwhile, nimble, digitally-savvy competitors were gaining market share by capitalizing on the... View Details

Keywords: Future Of Work; Retail; Ecommerce; Alibaba; Consumer Products; Innovation; Innovation and Invention; Product Development; Consumer Behavior; E-commerce; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; China

December 2020 (Revised April 2021)
Case

IBM Watson at MD Anderson Cancer Center

By: Shane Greenstein, Mel Martin and Sarkis Agaian

After discovering that their cancer diagnostic tool, designed to leverage the cloud computing power of IBM Watson, needed greater integration into the clinical processes at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the development team had difficult choices to make. The Oncology... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Innovation Strategy; Knowledge Management; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Operations; Failure; Information Technology; Applications and Software; Health Care and Treatment; Product Development; Health Industry; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Houston; Texas

23 Jul 2001
Research & Ideas

How One Center of Innovation Lost its Spark

How do once-thriving centers of innovation slow down, falter, and in some cases all but grind to a halt? That's a question that fascinates HBS professor Donald N. Sull. In a new working paper describing his in-depth research, Sull focused... View Details

Keywords: by Donald Sull; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

28 Jun 2010
HBS Case

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

considered itself to be among the best hospitals in the country, even though it had scant evidence to benchmark its performance against others. But data co-collected by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation instead showed that the outcome for... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Health

16 Nov 2010
Lessons from the Classroom

Data.gov: Matching Government Data with Rapid Innovation

participants should think about innovation opportunities in data curation, he suggested. "Some US government data is still on COBOL-based platforms," Kundra reminded the class. "So we think an... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Technology

Teaching Interest

Overview

Paul is primarily interested in teaching data science to management students through the case method. This includes technical topics (programming and statistics) as well as higher-level management issues (digital transformation, data governance, etc.) As a research... View Details

Keywords: A/B Testing; AI; AI Algorithms; AI Creativity; Algorithm; Algorithm Bias; Algorithmic Bias; Algorithmic Fairness; Algorithms; Analytics; Application Program Interface; Artificial Intelligence; Causality; Causal Inference; Computing; Computers; Data Analysis; Data Analytics; Data Architecture; Data As A Service; Data Centers; Data Governance; Data Labeling; Data Management; Data Manipulation; Data Mining; Data Ownership; Data Privacy; Data Protection; Data Science; Data Science And Analytics Management; Data Scientists; Data Security; Data Sharing; Data Strategy; Data Visualization; Database; Data-driven Decision-making; Data-driven Management; Data-driven Operations; Datathon; Economics Of AI; Economics Of Innovation; Economics Of Information System; Economics Of Science; Forecast; Forecast Accuracy; Forecasting; Forecasting And Prediction; Information Technology; Machine Learning; Machine Learning Models; Prediction; Prediction Error; Predictive Analytics; Predictive Models; Analysis; AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science; Applications and Software; Digital Transformation; Information Management; Digital Strategy; Technology Adoption

26 Sep 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Shifting Centers of Gravity: Host Country versus Headquarters Influences on MNC Subsidiary Knowledge Inheritance

Keywords: by Prithwiraj Choudhury, Mike Horia Teodorescu, and Tarun Khanna

16 Apr 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Can Biometric Tracking Improve Healthcare Provision and Data Quality? Experimental Evidence from Tuberculosis Control in India

Keywords: by Thomas Bossuroy, Clara Delavallade, and Vincent Pons; Health; Medical Devices & Supplies

16 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

At the Center of Corporate Scandal Where Do We Go From Here?

equity—grew from 8 percent to 66 percent. Almost all of that was due to option programs that made relatively poor use of market information and were poorly designed. The compensation committees rely on consultants to provide market-based View Details

Keywords: by Kim B. Clark

September–October 2023
Article

Prospective Evaluation of the Cost of Performing Breast Imaging Examinations Using Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing Method: A Single Center Study

By: Aamir Ali, Jordana Phillips, Damir Ljuboja, Syed S. Shehab, Etta D. Pisano, Robert S. Kaplan and Ammar Sarwar

We use time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) to measure the cost of performing breast imaging using different modalities: full-field digital mammography (FFDM), digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT), contrast-enhanced mammography (CEM), US and MRI exams, and... View Details

Keywords: Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Health Care; Breast Cancer; Health Care and Treatment; Cost; Cost Accounting; Health Industry