Publications

January 2021 (Revised February 2021)
Case

Tech with a Side of Pizza: How Domino's Rose to the Top

By: Boris Groysberg, Sarah L. Abbott and Susan Seligson

After hitting an all-time low in 2008, Domino’s Pizza underwent a vigorous rebranding, product development, and embraced innovative technologies to become the world’s leading international fast-food retailer. Domino’s considered itself as much a tech company as it was... View Details

October 2018
Case

Accomplice: Scaling Early Stage Finance

By: Ramana Nanda, Raffaella Sadun and Olivia Hull

Accomplice, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Boston, is raising its second fund in November 2017. Since 2009, the firm has followed a seed-led investment model, investing in tech companies at the earliest stages, often when products and business models are... View Details

Keywords: Early Stage Finance; Seed Finance; Scouts; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Private Equity; Investment Portfolio; Organizational Structure; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Partners and Partnerships; Networks; Adaptation; Corporate Strategy; Technology; Financial Services Industry; Massachusetts; Boston; Cambridge; United States

18 Oct 2010
Lessons from the Classroom

Venture Capital’s Disconnect with Clean Tech

different from the historically well-funded Internet start-up industry. In the Internet start-up world, VCs can reasonably assume that a company can go from launching a product to getting acquired—or even going public—within a few years.... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Energy; Utilities; Financial Services

December 2023 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Research In Motion: Launching and Scaling the World's First Smartphone Empire (A)

By: Tatiana Sandino and Samuel Grad

In 2005, Research In Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry smartphone was a sensation. After its launch in 1999, the groundbreaking BlackBerry had captured the hearts and minds of corporate America through its secure wireless email service. The device was so addictive and... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Innovation and Management; Technological Innovation; Business or Company Management; Management Style; Product Development; Managerial Roles; Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Industry; United States; Canada

12 Mar 2024
Research & Ideas

Publish or Perish: What the Research Says About Productivity in Academia

To succeed in academia, professors often feel the pressure to “publish or perish.” But in evaluating professors’ productivity based on total published studies and grant funding, are institutions overlooking other factors that affect a... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Education

Teaching Interest

Launching Technology Ventures

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport

This course takes the perspective of founders struggling to achieve product market fit in their early-stage startups. Our cases focus on founder decision during this search and discovery phase, both in the experiments that they design and run as well as the... View Details

January–February 2025
Article

Want Your Company to Get Better at Experimentation?: Learn Fast by Democratizing Testing

By: Iavor Bojinov, David Holtz, Ramesh Johari, Sven Schmit and Martin Tingley

For years, online experimentation has fueled the innovations of leading tech companies, enabling them to rapidly test and refine new ideas, optimize product features, personalize user experiences, and maintain a competitive edge. The widespread availability and lower... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science; Product Development; Competitive Advantage

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19 Feb 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 19, 2019

hired. The data is consistent with horizontal differentiation of CEO behavioral types and firm-CEO matching frictions. We estimate that 17% of sample CEOs are mismatched and that mismatches are associated with significant productivity... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2024 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Epic: The Future of Health Information Technology

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Brian L. Walker

What are the next steps for a firm that has scaled up?
The case focuses on how the founder and leadership team of a health IT company with over 45 years of market leadership should prepare for the future, while navigating founder transitions and industry... View Details