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• Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2019 (Revised June 2019)

  Wayfair

  Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie L. Ma and Matthew G. Preble

  In 2016 Niraj Shah and Steve Conine, founders of online home goods retailer Wayfair, are faced with a decision about how to improve user experience on their e-commerce sites. A key driver of consumer interest and conversion to purchase in the home category is visual imagery, which has traditionally been generated not by the retail channel rather than by manufacturers. Catalog retailers, in particular, are famous for visually romancing the category. As a comprehensive offering, Wayfair hosts over seven million SKUs on its site, so it must solve for the lack of visual assets from manufacturers by generating visual assets of its own. Initially, the company embarks on a plan to produce these images using traditional photography studios and professional staffs, but costs mount and throughput is too slow. Seeking a solution, Shah and Conine assess the likelihood of using technology – specifically, high-resolution 3D modeling from low-resolution 2D images – to address the challenge. Resolving this issue is especially pressing, given that Wayfair has just launched private label lines and a host of what it calls lifestyle brands, which require support from high-end visual merchandising. As a consequence, the question of how to provision visual assets becomes a question of how fast Wayfair can grow. This case presents the factors involved in deciding what direction to take – a reliable path using traditional methods or a risky path using bleeding-edge technologies.

  Keywords: visual assets; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Business or Company Management; Growth Management; Innovation and Invention; Operations; Strategy; Technology; Retail Industry; Service Industry; United States; Massachusetts;

  Citation:

  Rayport, Jeffrey F., Susie L. Ma, and Matthew G. Preble. "Wayfair." Harvard Business School Case 819-045, April 2019. (Revised June 2019.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2018 (Revised June 2019)

  Universal Basic Income, Job Guarantees, or None of the Above?

  William R. Kerr, Reilly Kiernan and Jordan Bach-Lombardo

  How can policymakers and business leaders address AI and automation's potential for widespread labor market displacement? This case examines potential policy responses, looking closely at the United States' existing social safety net and the impacts of implementing Universal Basic Income or a federal job guarantee.

  Keywords: UBI; job guarantee; Managing the Future of Work; EITC; Employment; Labor; Social Issues; Income; Government and Politics; Policy; Problems and Challenges;

  Citation:

  Kerr, William R., Reilly Kiernan, and Jordan Bach-Lombardo. "Universal Basic Income, Job Guarantees, or None of the Above?" Harvard Business School Case 819-035, November 2018. (Revised June 2019.)  View Details

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

  Infrastructure and Finance: Evidence from India's GQ Highway Network

  Abhiman Das, Ejaz Ghani, Arti Grover, William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda

  We use the construction of India's Golden Quadrangle (GQ) central highway network, together with comprehensive loan data drawn from the Reserve Bank of India, to investigate the interaction between infrastructure development and financial sector depth. We identify a disproportionate increase in loan count and average loan size in districts along the GQ highway network using stringent specifications with industry and district fixed effects. Our results hold in straight-line IV frameworks and are not present in “placebo tests” with another highway that was planned to be upgraded at the same time as GQ but subsequently delayed. Importantly, however, results are concentrated in districts with stronger initial financial development, suggesting that while financing does respond to large infrastructure investments and help spur real economic outcomes, initial financial sector development might play an important role in determining where real activity will grow.

  Keywords: Infrastructure; Financing and Loans; India;

  Citation:

  Das, Abhiman, Ejaz Ghani, Arti Grover, William R. Kerr, and Ramana Nanda. "Infrastructure and Finance: Evidence from India's GQ Highway Network." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-121, June 2019.  View Details

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