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• Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2019 (Revised November 2019)

  Pinduoduo

  Feng Zhu, Krishna G. Palepu, Bonnie Yining Cao and Dawn H. Lau

  Founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneur, Colin Huang, Pinduoduo Inc. (PDD) had become China’s fastest-growing e-commerce platform in history. PDD pioneered a new approach to online shopping that allowed shoppers to share products, invite friends to form shopping teams, and purchase together at discounted prices. The company’s rapid development helped it debut on the Nasdaq in July 2018, only three years after its inception. The fast growth was partly boosted by PDD’s heavy investment in marketing and branding, such as through coupons and promotions. How should the company make its competitive advantages more sustainable? Could its business model be replicated outside China?

  Keywords: Disruption; Growth and Development Strategy; Transformation; Business or Company Management; Emerging Markets; Technology Platform; Online Technology; Technology Industry; Retail Industry; China;

  Citation:

  Zhu, Feng, Krishna G. Palepu, Bonnie Yining Cao, and Dawn H. Lau. "Pinduoduo." Harvard Business School Case 620-040, September 2019. (Revised November 2019.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | October 2019

  TSG Hoffenheim: Football in the Age of Analytics (B)

  Feng Zhu, Sascha L. Schmidt, Karim R. Lakhani and Sebastian Koppers

  Keywords: football; soccer; Bundesliga; analytics; innovation; innovation and strategy;

  Citation:

  Zhu, Feng, Sascha L. Schmidt, Karim R. Lakhani, and Sebastian Koppers. "TSG Hoffenheim: Football in the Age of Analytics (B)." Harvard Business School Case 620-055, October 2019.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | January 2018 (Revised October 2019)

  ZBJ: Building a Global Outsourcing Platform for Knowledge Workers (A)

  Feng Zhu, Weiru Chen and Shirley Sun

  ZBJ.com (ZBJ), an online platform that connects knowledge workers to small- and medium-sized enterprises, is China’s largest outsourcing platform. Founded by Mingyue Zhu in 2006, ZBJ had grown into a unicorn with 4,000 employees and a daily transaction volume of RMB15 million by 2017. During the company’s 11-year history, ZBJ had launched ten transformation campaigns to overcome various challenges by changing its products, operations, and business model. For example, it encountered a winner-takes-all competition, disintermediation (when service providers and clients took transactions off the platform to avoid the platform’s 20% commission fees), the rise of fake transactions, member management issues, and difficulties in delivering satisfactory services to large enterprises. Zhu must decide how to use the next campaign to address challenges that had emerged since the last campaign as well as how ZBJ should expand globally.

  Keywords: outsourcing; disintermediation; Two-Sided Platforms; Information Technology; Problems and Challenges; Global Strategy; Information Technology Industry; China;

  Citation:

  Zhu, Feng, Weiru Chen, and Shirley Sun. "ZBJ: Building a Global Outsourcing Platform for Knowledge Workers (A)." Harvard Business School Case 618-044, January 2018. (Revised October 2019.)  View Details

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