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- 2024
- Working Paper
Determinants of Top-Down Sabotage
By: Hashim Zaman and Karim R. Lakhani
We investigate the conditions that motivate managers to impede the growth of talented
subordinates due to fears of future competition for their own positions. Our research expands on
existing tournament and contest theory literature that considers peer-to-peer... 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
- Working Paper
Visual Uniqueness in Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces: Machine Learning Model Development, Validation, and Application
By: Flora Feng, Charis Li and Shunyuan Zhang
Peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces have seen exponential growth in recent years featured by unique offerings from individual providers. Despite the perceived value of uniqueness, scalable quantification of visual uniqueness in P2P platforms like Airbnb has been largely... View Details
- February 2022
- Teaching Note
AptDeco: Circular Economy Furniture Marketplace
By: Ayelet Israeli
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 521-069. AptDeco, a used furniture marketplace, was growing rapidly in the tri-state area. The co-founders were confident that the business model, financial position, and unit economics positioned AptDeco for scaling in the massive $120... View Details
Keywords: E-Commerce Strategy; Mobile; Word-of-Mouth; Word Of Mouth; Word-of-mouth Marketing; Internet Marketing; Growth Strategy; Platform; Platforms; Two Sided Markets; Two-sided Market; Two-sided Marketplace; Two-Sided Markets; Two-sided Network; Black Entrepreneurs; Black Leadership; African Americans; African-American Protagonist; Circular; Peer-to-peer Markets; Furniture Industry; Growth Hacking; Monetization Strategy; Growth Management; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Marketing Channels; Digital Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Acquisition; Retention; Growth and Development Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; Expansion; Brands and Branding; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; United States; North America; New York (city, NY); New York (state, US)
- July 2021
- Article
Outsourcing Tasks Online: Matching Supply and Demand on Peer-to-Peer Internet Platforms
By: Zoë Cullen and Chiara Farronato
We study the growth of online peer-to-peer markets. Using data from TaskRabbit, an expanding marketplace for domestic tasks at the time of our study, we show that growth varies considerably across cities. To disentangle the potential drivers of growth, we look... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
AptDeco: Circular Economy Furniture Marketplace
By: Ayelet Israeli and Jamie Merkrebs
AptDeco, a used furniture marketplace, was growing rapidly in the tri-state area. The co-founders were confident that the business model, financial position, and unit economics positioned AptDeco for scaling in the massive $120 billion furniture market, despite its... View Details
Keywords: E-Commerce Strategy; Mobile; Word-of-Mouth; Word-of-mouth Marketing; Word Of Mouth; Internet Marketing; Growth Strategy; Platform; Platforms; Two Sided Markets; Two-sided Market; Two-sided Marketplace; Two-Sided Markets; Two-sided Network; Black Entrepreneurs; Black Leadership; African Americans; Circular; Peer-to-peer Markets; Furniture Industry; Furniture; Growth Hacking; Monetization Strategy; African-American Protagonist; Growth Management; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Marketing Channels; Digital Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Acquisition; Growth and Development Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; United States; North America; New York (city, NY); New York (state, US)
- February 2021
- Case
China Rapid Finance: The Collapse of China’s P2P Lending Industry
By: William C. Kirby, Bonnie Yining Cao and John P. McHugh
China’s peer-to-peer (P2P) lending industry had over 3,000 platforms at its height in 2015. China Risk Finance (CRF) was one of the country’s P2P success stories. With over 1 million borrowers using CRF’s platform, it raised $60 million in its 2016 IPO on the New York... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Effects of Structured Sharing of Best Practices in an Unstructured Information Sharing System
By: Shelley Xin Li and Tatiana Sandino
Unstructured information sharing systems, such as certain enterprise social networks (ESNs), can
supplement top-down knowledge transfer with a wide array of ideas through peer-to-peer
knowledge sharing. However, the unstructured nature of such systems can also lead... View Details
- April 2020
- Teaching Note
Glossier: Co-Creating a Cult Brand with a Digital Community
By: Jill Avery
Teaching Note for HBS No. 519-022. Flush with cash from its Series C fundraise, cult beauty brand Glossier considers its next phase of growth, facing critical decisions on how to allocate its capital to support various marketing communications and distribution... View Details
Keywords: Digital Marketing; Crowdsourcing; CRM; Startup; Direct-to-consumer; DTC; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior; Customer Relationship Management; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Social Media; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; United States
- January–February 2020
- Article
Give Your Colleague the Rating He Deserves—or the One He Wants?
By: Anthony J. Mayo, Joshua D. Margolis and Amy Gallo
The article presents a case study on business friendship and its possible effect on employee ratings. It mentions a hypothetical case where one member of a team didn't meet his deadlines on the development of a new product, the use of a peer-to-peer employee rating... View Details
- January 2019 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
Glossier: Co-Creating a Cult Brand with a Digital Community
By: Jill Avery
Glossier’s proclaimed strategy was “born from content; fueled by community.” The digital-first, direct-to-consumer beauty brand had experienced rapid growth, with sales up 600% in 2017 and a customer portfolio that grew by threefold. But, its founder, Emily Weiss, was... View Details
Keywords: Brands; Brand Management; Brand Communication; Retailing; DTC; Influencer; Startup; Internet Marketing; Big Data; Crowdsourcing; Growth and Development Strategy; Social Media; E-commerce; Internet and the Web; Digital Marketing; Consumer Products Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Retail Industry; United States; North America
- August 2018 (Revised September 2018)
- Case
LendingClub (A): Data Analytic Thinking (Abridged)
By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler
LendingClub was founded in 2006 as an alternative, peer-to-peer lending model to connect individual borrowers to individual investor-lenders through an online platform. Since 2014 the company has worked with institutional investors at scale. While the company assigns... View Details
- September 2017 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
Dianrong: Marketplace Lending, Blockchain, and 'The New Finance' in China
By: Christopher J. Malloy, Lauren H. Cohen and Anthony K. Woo
This case examines the strategic positioning of Dianrong, one of the largest online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms in China, in its attempt to become a foundational player in the expansion of the FinTech sector in Asia. Dianrong had recently announced the... View Details
- 2016
- Article
Peer-to-Peer Markets
By: Liran Einav, Chiara Farronato and Jonathan Levin
Peer-to-peer markets such as eBay, Uber, and Airbnb allow small suppliers to compete with traditional providers of goods or services. We view the primary function of these markets as making it easy for buyers to find sellers and engage in convenient, trustworthy... View Details
- July 2016
- Case
Disintermediating the Banks: ThinCats and the Peer-to-Peer Lending Industry
By: Lauren Cohen, Tom Grant, Christopher Malloy and William Powley
- November 2015 (Revised January 2017)
- Case
Uber: Changing the Way the World Moves
By: Youngme Moon
In 2015, Uber is building what may be the largest point-to-point transportation network of its kind; it is literally changing the way the world moves. But unlike traditional transportation logistics companies like FedEx, Uber has an incredibly lightweight... View Details
- January 2015 (Revised April 2015)
- Case
Zeal: Launching Personalized and Social Learning
By: John J-H Kim and Christine S. An
Set in 2014, this case follows John Danner and his team at Zeal as they consider their product development strategy. In February 2013, serial entrepreneurs John Danner and Sanjay Noronha co-found Zeal, an education technology start up providing a web-based, mobile... View Details
- Spring 2014
- Article
Leveraging Crowdsourced Peer-to-Peer Assessments to Enhance the Case Method of Learning
By: Jill Avery
Many marketing educators use the case method to help their students strengthen their decision-making skills. Rigorous class participation is essential to achieving learning objectives in case method learning. One challenge for case method instructors is the assessment... View Details
- Article
Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and the Market for Digital Information Goods
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Andres Hervas-Drane
We study competitive interaction between two alternative models of digital content distribution over the Internet: peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing and centralized client-server distribution. We present microfoundations for a stylized model of p2p file sharing where all... View Details
- 2010
- Article
Competing against Online Sharing
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Andres Hervas-Drane
This paper aims to explore online sharing of copyrighted content over peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing networks and its impact on the music industry and to assess the viable business models for the industry in the future. View Details