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- November 2022
- Case
Para: Pay Transparency and Gig Drivers’ Rights
By: Christopher Stanton and George Gonzalez
The case presents the founding vision and early days of a young startup that seeks to empower delivery drivers with tools and transparency. The company's flagship mobile app has been taken up by tens of thousands of delivery drivers across major U.S. cities who use it...
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- February 2021
- Article
Trust and Disintermediation: Evidence from an Online Freelance Marketplace
By: Grace Gu and Feng Zhu
As an intermediary improves trust between the two sides of its market to facilitate matching and transactions, it faces an increased risk of disintermediation: with sufficient trust, the two sides may circumvent the intermediary to avoid the intermediary’s fees. In...
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- October 7, 2020
- Editorial
Time Confetti and the Broken Promise of Leisure
By: Ashley Whillans
It’s true: we have more time for leisure than we did fifty years ago. But leisure has never been less relaxing, mostly because of the disintermediating effects of our screens. Technology saves us time, but it also takes it away. This is known as the autonomy paradox....
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- April 2020
- Teaching Note
Indigo Agriculture: Harnessing Nature
By: Michael W. Toffel and James Barnett
Teaching Note for HBS No. 620-024. Indigo Agriculture used a digital-enabled research and development (R&D) process to launch its initial product, microbial coatings for agricultural seeds, which increase crop yields while reducing the need for fertilizers. In doing...
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- February 2020
- Supplement
Indigo Agriculture: Harnessing Nature
By: Michael W. Toffel and James Barnett
Indigo Agriculture used a digital-enabled research and development (R&D) process to launch its initial product, microbial coatings for agricultural seeds, which increase crop yields while reducing the need for fertilizers. In doing so, the company developed direct...
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Keywords:
Operations;
Supply Chain;
Social Enterprise;
Product Development;
Distribution Channels;
Business Strategy;
Digital Platforms;
Environmental Sustainability;
Science-Based Business;
Climate Change;
Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry;
Green Technology Industry;
United States;
Massachusetts
- November 2019 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Indigo Agriculture: Harnessing Nature
By: Marco Iansiti, Michael W. Toffel and James Barnett
Indigo Agriculture used a digital-enabled research and development (R&D) process to launch its initial product, microbial coatings for agricultural seeds, which increase crop yields while reducing the need for fertilizers. In doing so, the company developed direct...
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Keywords:
Carbon Sequestration;
Operations;
Supply Chain;
Social Enterprise;
Product Development;
Distribution Channels;
Business Strategy;
Digital Platforms;
Environmental Sustainability;
Science-Based Business;
Climate Change;
Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry;
Green Technology Industry;
United States;
Massachusetts
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 16 Capturing Value by Controlling Bottlenecks in Open Platform Systems
The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the means by which firms capture value in open platform systems. I begin by arguing that the surplus value created by complementarities within a technical system will be split among the owners of the unique and essential...
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- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 17 The Wintel Standards-based Platform
The purpose of this chapter is to use the theory of bottlenecks laid out in previous chapters to better understand the dynamics of an open standards-based platform. I describe how the Wintel platform evolved from 1990 through 2000 under joint sponsorship of Intel and...
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- 2018
- Working Paper
Executive Education in the Digital Matrix: The Disruption of the Supply Landscape
By: Mihnea Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas
Even as the demand for managerial skills continues to grow, executive education worldwide has entered a period of disruption caused by the digitalization of content, connectivity, and communication. The current offerings of many executive education program providers...
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- March 2018 (Revised October 2019)
- Supplement
ZBJ: Building a Global Outsourcing Platform for Knowledge Workers (B)
By: Feng Zhu, Weiru Chen and Shirley Sun
Supplements the (A) case.
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- February 2018 (Revised March 2018)
- Case
Artificial Intelligence and the Machine Learning Revolution in Finance: Cogent Labs and the Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
By: Lauren Cohen, Christopher Malloy and William Powley
This case examines the intersection of two firms (Cogent Labs—a machine learning software firm in Tokyo; and Google, the technology infrastructure giant) attempting to exploit the benefits of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the financial services...
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- January 2018 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
ZBJ: Building a Global Outsourcing Platform for Knowledge Workers (A)
By: 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...
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- March 27, 2017
- Article
How the Water Industry Learned to Embrace Data
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Amir Peleg
Most current talk about “big data” seems to assume the disintermediation or replacement of physical assets by digital technologies. But a bigger and more impactful trend is the use of online tools to improve physical asset utilization in many traditional off-line...
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- 2016
- Working Paper
The Skills Gap and the Near-Far Problem in Executive Education and Leadership Development
By: Mihnea Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas
Executive development programs have entered a period of rapid transformation, driven on one side by the proliferation of a new technological, cultural, and economic landscape commonly referred to as “digital disruption” and on the other by a widening gap between the...
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- July 2016
- Case
Disintermediating the Banks: ThinCats and the Peer-to-Peer Lending Industry
By: Lauren Cohen, Tom Grant, Christopher Malloy and William Powley
- May 2016
- Case
The Priceline Group: Booking a Place for the Future
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Anish Pathipati
The Chairman of the Priceline Group is considering the actions he must take to confront an evolving external environment, new direct competition, disintermediation and substitute offerings. Does his response require an increased coordination of each historically...
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- Article
The Disintermediation of Financial Markets: Direct Investing in Private Equity
By: Lily Fang, Victoria Ivashina and Josh Lerner
We examine twenty years of direct private equity investments by seven large institutions. These direct investments perform better than public market indices, especially buyout investments and those made in the 1990s. Outperformance by the direct investments, however,...
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- January 2001
- Background Note
Online Brokers
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alastair Brown
Describes online brokers, companies that use the Internet to help clients identify prospective trading partners and sometimes help their clients complete transactions. First, summarizes the various ways that online brokers create value for their clients. Then analyzes...
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- December 2000
- Background Note
Online Retailers
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alastair Brown
Describes online retailers, companies that use the Internet to sell physical goods. Defines online retailers and describes different ways to categorize them. Explores their economic model and value proposition for consumers in comparison with offline retailers. Next,...
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- Teaching Interest
Digital Marketing Strategy
By: John A. Deighton
When the tools of marketing change, strategies change too. The focus of this course is on firms trying to navigate the transition from offline to online market-making and strategy development. Our concern is primarily with corporations that have products and... View Details