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• Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2019

  Vispera: Visual Intelligence for Retail

  Yael Grushka-Cockayne and Gamze Yucaoglu

  The case opens in 2019 as Aytul Ercil, co-founder and CEO of Vispera, computer vision technology provider for retail, is contemplating the company’s agenda trying to decide how to prioritize the impeding options. The case chronicles the founding of Vispera, the iterations of its technology and its business model, and lays the ground for the competitive outlook. The case provides a detailed overview of how Vispera’s technology and its automated visual analysis help retail and fast-moving consumer goods companies around the world to minimize stock-outs, increase sales, reduce personnel costs, and improve operational efficiency. In 2016, the debut of Amazon Go urges the retail players to up their game vis-à-vis technology. Demand for automation and computer vision in the retail surges. In a land-grab market, Vispera strives to grow globally, differentiate itself, keep its technology cutting edge, and raise capital. In 2019, taking a step back from all of the daily to-dos, Ercil needs to consider the big picture for making Vispera a leading global player. She needs to consider the following: Should the team focus on developing shelf availability and out-of-stock prediction capabilities or focus on dynamic pricing, customization, and real-time campaign management? Should Vispera pivot to provide insights beyond the shelf as was already being done by players entering the space? How should the team think about data ownership: could Vispera leverage the data to drive cross industry insights or market level perspective?

  Keywords: Technology Industry; Retail Industry; Turkey;

  Citation:

  Grushka-Cockayne, Yael, and Gamze Yucaoglu. "Vispera: Visual Intelligence for Retail." Harvard Business School Case 620-022, September 2019.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | August 2019

  BlueVine Capital: Growth Factors

  Marco Di Maggio and Nathaniel Schwalb

  The start-up BlueVine Capital Inc. (BlueVine) used data and technology to help finance small businesses via factoring and lines of credit. The case explains the small business financing market in mid-2010s, how CEO Eyal Lifshitz identified the opportunity for BlueVine, and how he built the company through its first five years of operations. Through the case, Lifshitz and his team discover insights about their small business customers that inspire them to change their product portfolio. In December 2018, Lifshitz must decide which new products to launch next.

  Keywords: Business Startups; Small Business; Financing and Loans; Innovation Leadership; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry;

  Citation:

  Di Maggio, Marco, and Nathaniel Schwalb. "BlueVine Capital: Growth Factors." Harvard Business School Case 220-006, August 2019.  View Details

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

  The Value of Intermediation in the Stock Market

  Marco Di Maggio, Mark Egan and Francesco Franzoni

  Brokers continue to play a critical role in intermediating institutional stock market transactions. More than half of all institutional investor order flow is still executed by high-touch (non-electronic) brokers. Despite the continued importance of brokers, we have limited information on what drives investors' choices among them. We develop and estimate an empirical model of broker choice that allows us to quantitatively examine each investors' responsiveness to execution costs and access to research and order flow information. Studying over 300 million institutional trades, we find that investor demand is relatively inelastic with respect to commissions and that investors are willing to pay a premium for access to top research analysts and order-flow information. There is substantial heterogeneity across investors. Relative to other investors, hedge funds tend to be more price insensitive, place less value on sell-side research, and place more value on order-flow information. Furthermore, using trader-level data, we find that investors are more likely to trade with traders who are located physically closer and are less likely to trade with traders that have misbehaved in the past. Lastly, we use our empirical model to investigate the unbundling of equity research and execution services related to the MiFID II regulations. While under-reporting for the average firm is relatively small (4%), we find that the bundling of execution and research allows some institutional investors to under-report management fees by up to 15%.

  Keywords: financial intermediation; Institutional investors; research analysts; Financial Institutions; Investment; Financial Services Industry;

  Citation:

  Di Maggio, Marco, Mark Egan, and Francesco Franzoni. "The Value of Intermediation in the Stock Market." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-016, August 2019.  View Details

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