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• Case | HBS Case Collection | 2012

  Blink Booking

  William R. Kerr, Magnus Thor Torfason and Alexis Brownell

  Rebeca Minguela hopes to create an arbitrage platform, similar to Rocket Internet, that can bring start-up ideas and opportunities to Spain. However, Blink Booking, her first venture and proof of concept, is rocked by a co-founder's breach of confidence and departure. Minguela must repair the damage to Blink's management team, restore investor confidence, and continue Blink's rapid growth to deliver on the venture's initial promise. The case explores management team roles, equity splits, and related entrepreneurial challenges that Minguela must navigate. Minguela must also decide whether her long-term goal of an incubator-like platform for Spain is really feasible. The case describes how her vision differs from Rocket Internet—a large German incubator that also provides its entrepreneurs with ready-made business models from existing companies—allowing students to compare the models and discuss the ethics of cloning.

  Keywords: entrepreneurship; clones; cloning; ethics; Rocket Internet; start-up; equity split; arbitrage; incubator; mobile app; Expansion; Spain; Europe; Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Information Technology Industry; Accommodations Industry; Travel Industry; Spain; Europe;

  Citation:

  Kerr, William R., Magnus Thor Torfason, and Alexis Brownell. "Blink Booking." Harvard Business School Case 813-121, December 2012.

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2012

  With Us or Against Us? Networks, Identity and Order in a Virtual World

  Magnus Thor Torfason

  Social networks and social groups have both been seen as important to discouraging malfeasance and supporting the global pro-social norms that underlie social order, but have typically been treated either as pure substitutes or as having completely independent effects. In this paper, I propose that interpersonal relationships between individuals with different social identities play a key role in linking local and global norms, and in supporting social order. Specifically, I show that social identity derived from group memberships moderates the effects of social relationships on pro-social norm observance. I test my predictions using a novel empirical setting consisting of a large online virtual environment. I show that the number of within-group relationships increases and the number of an individual's across-group relationships reduces the prevalence of anti-normative behavior. Furthermore, I show that network closure has a qualitatively different effect between within-group ties and across-group ties. The effects of within-group and across-group ties are moderated by both group characteristics and actor experience, providing boundary conditions on the mechanisms presented here. My findings illustrate the need for a more nuanced view of the complex interrelations between institutions, identity, and networks.

  Keywords: Social Norms; social networks; Triadic Closure; Social groups; Group Identity;

  Citation:

  Torfason, Magnus Thor. "With Us or Against Us? Networks, Identity and Order in a Virtual World." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 13–019, August 2012. (Revise and Resubmit, American Journal of Sociology.)

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• Article | City & Community | March 2011

  Restaurant Organizational Forms and Community in the U.S. in 2005

  Glenn R. Carroll and Magnus Thor Torfason

  Recent sociological theory and research highlights food, drink, and restaurants as culturally meaningful and related to social identity. An implication of this view holds that the prevalence of corporate chain restaurants affects the sociological character of communities, as many activists, popular-based movements, and theorists contend. The analysis we report here seeks to identify the ecological niche properties of chain and independent restaurants—which kinds of communities support restaurant chains and which kinds of communities tend to support independent local restaurants and food service providers instead. We analyze data from a 2005 sample of 49 counties across the United States with over 17,000 active restaurants. We argue that demographic stability affects the community composition of organizational forms, and we also investigate arguments about a community's income distribution, age distribution, population trends, geographic sprawl, and commuter population. We find that communities with less stable demographic makeups support more chain restaurants, but that other factors, including suburban sprawl and public transit commuters, also have some impact.

  Keywords: Research; Society; Supply Chain Management; Income Characteristics; Age Characteristics; Theory; Culture; Identity; Civil Society or Community; Demographics; Balance and Stability; Service Industry; United States;

  Citation:

  Carroll, Glenn R., and Magnus Thor Torfason. "Restaurant Organizational Forms and Community in the U.S. in 2005." City & Community 10, no. 1 (March 2011): 1–25.

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