The On-Demand Economy

Cynthia A. Montgomery; James  Weber; Elizabeth Anne Watkins

Technical Note | HBS Case Collection | September 2015

The On-Demand Economy

by Cynthia A. Montgomery, James Weber and Elizabeth Anne Watkins

Abstract

This note describes the emerging on-demand economy, also referred to as the sharing economy. The note highlights several companies including Uber and Airbnb that exemplify this new mode of competition, a model that threatens to disrupt traditional firms. Uber provides ride services much like a traditional taxi company, but it owns no cars and employs no drivers, and instead matches independent car owners with customers looking for rides. Airbnb provides a lodging service, but owns no hotels, and instead matches home owners with extra rooms with customers looking for a place to stay. The note allows students to explore what impact such companies might have on traditional business models, what impact they might have on labor and how people work, and whether existing regulations aimed at traditional business models are adequate for the new model.

Keywords: regulation; reform; Disruption; Disruptive Innovation; Strategy; Technological Innovation; Labor; Employment; Working Conditions; Human Capital; Rights; Organizational Design; Social and Collaborative Networks; Service Industry;

Language: English

Format: Print

24 pages

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Citation:

Montgomery, Cynthia A., James Weber, and Elizabeth Anne Watkins. "The On-Demand Economy." Harvard Business School Technical Note 716-405, September 2015.

The case describes the investment of hedge fund, Totem Point Management in Analog Semiconductors (ADI) as a way to discuss forecasting and valuation in growth companies. In June 2016, hedge fund Totem Point invested in ADI at around $55 a share. In general, Totem Point aimed for their investments to yield 50 percent returns over a two-year time horizon. It was now 2018, and Totem Point was evaluating whether to maintain its position in ADI, expand it, or close it and walk away with its (substantial) winnings from the investment. Though the stock had done well in the prior two years, it had recently seen numerous downgrades by sell-side analysts, as its price slid 15 percent from a historic high. The question facing Totem Point, was whether it would grow by a further 50 percent over the next two years. To answer this question, Totem Point considered growth trends in each of ADI’s main end-markets: industrial applications, consumer applications, automotive applications, and telecommunications applications. If these end-markets expanded over the coming two years, ADI would do very well, but if they failed to expand, the stock would stagnate. Totem Point’s task was to figure out which scenario was most likely and what that scenario would mean for the stock’s price.

Relative total shareholder returns (rTSR) has become the predominant metric to isolate managers' idiosyncratic performance. Among _rms that explicitly use rTSR in relative performance contracts, 60%―those that choose specific peers as benchmarks―select rTSR metrics that do a remarkable job of filtering out the systematic component of returns in adherence to the informativeness principle. However, firms that choose index-based benchmarks retain substantial systematic noise in their rTSR metrics. We document that the selection of noisy benchmarks is associated with compensation consultants' preferences, which are uncorrelated with observable firm attributes. Firms with weak governance are more likely to choose indexes, not because of opportunism, but because they do not adequately scrutinize outside experts' advice. Collectively, our findings provide a new explanation for why some executives are evaluated based on systematic noise, and novel evidence on how compensation consultants can impact firms.

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The On-Demand Economy

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