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- October 19, 2021
- Article
The Facebook Trap
By: Andy Wu
Facebook has a clear mission: Connect everyone in the world. Clarity is good, but in Facebook’s case, it has also put the company in a bind because the mission—and the company’s vision for creating value through network effects—has also become the source of its biggest...
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- October 2021
- Case
upGrad: Delivering Career Outcomes Online: Degree by Degree
By: John J-H Kim, Anjali Raina and Rachna Chawla
In August 2021, the founders of upGrad, the latest unicorn in the Indian higher education online space, were deciding how to best use the funds to execute on their ambitious growth plans. Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompalli had envisioned upGrad as an...
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- September 24, 2021
- Article
A Labor Movement for the Platform Economy
By: Li Jin, Scott Duke Kominers and Lila Shroff
Platforms are fundamentally changing the contract between workers and companies—and the workers and creatives that create value for platform companies, and rely on platforms for their livelihoods, often have little power when it comes to getting their concerns...
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- September 2021
- Case
edX in 2021
By: John J-H Kim, David J. Collis and James Barnett
In March 2021, online education platform edX considers how to achieve financial sustainability without compromising its mission to provide universal access to high-quality education.
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- August 2021
- Case
Lexoo: Building a Long-Lasting Platform (Abridged)
By: Chiara Farronato and Elena Corsi
Lexoo, a UK-based online marketplace for legal services, was facing the strategic choice of how to grow from early start-up to mature platform. Daniel van Binsbergen, Lexoo's CEO, and web developer Chris O'Sullivan, CTO, had set up Lexoo to help Small and Medium-Sized...
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- August 2021
- Case
Camera IQ: Building Augmented Reality Brand Experiences in Social Media
By: Jill Avery and Rayan Nahas
Camera IQ, a camera marketing software company that empowered brands to create and launch augmented reality experiences (AREs) across social platforms, had just raised an additional $5 million to fund further product development and expand its marketing and sales...
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Keywords:
Brand Management;
Social Media;
Digital Marketing;
Virtual Reality;
Augmented Reality;
B2B;
E-commerce;
Technology Platform;
Marketing;
Marketing Communications;
Marketing Strategy;
Brands and Branding;
Online Advertising;
Online Technology;
Growth Management;
Customer Relationship Management;
Customer Value and Value Chain;
Advertising Industry;
United States
- 2021
- Working Paper
The Value of Data and Its Impact on Competition
By: Marco Iansiti
Common regulatory perspective on the relationship between data, value, and competition in online platforms has increasingly centered on the volume of data accumulated by incumbent firms. This view posits the existence of "data network effects," where more data leads to...
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- July 2021
- Case
Fynd
By: Ranjay Gulati, Kairavi Dey and Rachna Tahilyani
Fynd is a fast-growing venture that in 7 years since its founding has become India's largest omnichannel retail company with real-time access to over 9,000 stores' offline inventory. It started as a B2B business supporting retailers who didn’t have an online business,...
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- July 2021
- Article
Information Transparency, Multihoming, and Platform Competition: A Natural Experiment in the Daily Deals Market
By: Hui Li and Feng Zhu
Platform competition is shaped by the likelihood of multi-homing (i.e., complementors or consumers adopt more than one platform). To take advantage of multi-homing, platform firms often attempt to motivate their rivals’ high-performing complementors to adopt their own...
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- July 2021
- Case
Kevin D. Johnson: To Be a Venture Capitalist or an Operator?
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
In May of 2021, Kevin D. Johnson had just graduated from a rigorous Executive MBA program, and he quickly needed to decide on his next career move. Johnson was the founder and CEO of a successful media company, Johnson Media Inc., but his career goals had shifted while...
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- July 2021
- Article
Outsourcing Tasks Online: Matching Supply and Demand on Peer-to-Peer Internet Platforms
By: Zoë Cullen and Chiara Farronato
We study the growth of online peer-to-peer markets. Using data from TaskRabbit, an expanding marketplace for domestic tasks at the time of our study, we show that growth varies considerably across cities. To disentangle the potential drivers of growth, we look...
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- July 2021
- Article
The Effect of Price on Firm Reputation
By: Michael Luca and Oren Reshef
While a business's reputation can affect its pricing, prices can also affect its reputation. To explore the effect of prices on reputation, we investigate daily data on menu prices and online ratings from a large rating and ordering platform. We find that a price...
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- May 24, 2021
- Article
What Makes an Online Marketplace Disruptive?
By: Clifford Maxwell and Scott Duke Kominers
Platforms like Airbnb, eBay, and Angie’s List have changed how markets work. But while many are innovative and make life easier for consumers, which are truly disruptive? Hewing to Clay Christensen’s theory of disruption, platforms—which operate as online...
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- May 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Teaching Note
THE YES: Reimagining the Future of E-Commerce with Artificial Intelligence (AI)
By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery
THE YES, a multi-brand shopping app launched in May 2020 offered a new type of buying experience for women’s fashion, driven by a sophisticated algorithm that used data science and machine learning to create and deliver a personalized store for every shopper, based on...
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Keywords:
Data;
Data Analytics;
Artificial Intelligence;
AI;
AI Algorithms;
AI Creativity;
Fashion;
Retail;
Retail Analytics;
Digital Marketing;
E-commerce;
E-Commerce Strategy;
Platform;
Platforms;
Big Data;
Preference Elicitation;
Predictive Analytics;
App Development;
＂Marketing Analytics＂;
Advertising;
Mobile App;
Mobile Marketing;
Apparel;
Referral Rewards;
Referrals;
Female Ceo;
Female Entrepreneur;
Female Protagonist;
Data and Data Sets;
Analysis;
Creativity;
Marketing Strategy;
Brands and Branding;
Consumer Behavior;
Demand and Consumers;
Forecasting and Prediction;
Marketing Channels;
Online Advertising;
Online Technology;
Mobile Technology;
Fashion Industry;
Retail Industry;
Apparel and Accessories Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
United States
- April 2021
- Case
Codecademy: Where to Next?
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Max Mailman and Sarah Ascherman
In March 2020, Zach Sims, co-founder and CEO of online education platform Codecademy, prepared for a meeting with his Chief of Staff Kunal Ahuja to discuss the company’s goals. Codecademy billed itself as the largest online resource for computer science literacy and...
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Keywords:
Monetization Strategy;
Business Model;
Change Management;
Venture Capital;
Leading Change;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Growth Management;
Management Teams;
Marketing Channels;
Product Marketing;
Network Effects;
Product Development;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Strategic Planning;
Online Technology;
Technology Platform;
United States
- April 2021 (Revised July 2021)
- Case
StockX: The Stock Market of Things (Abridged)
By: Chiara Farronato, John J. Horton, Annelena Lobb and Julia Kelley
Founded in 2015 by Dan Gilbert, Josh Luber, and Greg Schwartz, StockX was an online platform where users could buy and sell unworn luxury and limited-edition sneakers. Sneaker resale prices often fluctuated over time based on supply and demand, creating a robust...
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Keywords:
Markets;
Auctions;
Bids and Bidding;
Demand and Consumers;
Consumer Behavior;
Data and Data Sets;
Market Design;
Market Platforms;
Two-Sided Platforms;
Multi-Sided Platforms;
Market Transactions;
Marketplace Matching;
Supply and Industry;
Analysis;
Price;
Product Marketing;
Product Launch;
Apparel and Accessories Industry;
Fashion Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
Michigan;
Detroit
- 2021
- Article
Does Fair Ranking Improve Minority Outcomes? Understanding the Interplay of Human and Algorithmic Biases in Online Hiring
By: Tom Sühr, Sophie Hilgard and Himabindu Lakkaraju
Ranking algorithms are being widely employed in various online hiring platforms including LinkedIn, TaskRabbit, and Fiverr. Prior research has demonstrated that ranking algorithms employed by these platforms are prone to a variety of undesirable biases, leading to the...
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- March 2021
- Case
CashDrop (A)
By: Rembrand Koning, Paul A. Gompers and Sarah Gulick
In July 2020, Ruben Flores-Martinez had launched a startup, CashDrop, which provided easy and cheap sales options for small businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic helped CashDrop quickly grow. Flores-Martinez, who had previously sought and been denied venture capital...
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- March 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Hotwire.com: Navigating Through Turbulence
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Manny de Zarraga and Eric Levine
On September 10, 2001, after speaking at an industry conference at New York’s World Trade Center, Hotwire co-founder Spencer Rascoff boarded a flight from Newark to San Francisco. After returning home, Rascoff awoke the next morning to a phone call informing him that...
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Keywords:
September 11;
Corporate Entrepreneurship;
Business Growth and Maturation;
Disruption;
Decisions;
Job Cuts and Outsourcing;
Growth Management;
Two-Sided Platforms;
Problems and Challenges;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Expansion;
Internet;
Online Technology;
Web Sites;
Leading Change;
Leadership Style;
Air Transportation Industry;
Tourism Industry;
San Francisco
- March 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Teaching Note
Afterpay U.S.: The Omnichannel Dilemma
By: Antonio Moreno and Anibha Singh
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 519-086. In 2018, Nick Molnar, the founder of the Australia-based online payment service Afterpay began its expansion to the U.S. market. The service had gained a loyal following in Australia by enabling customers to pay for online...
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Keywords:
Omnichannel Retail;
Online Advertising;
Business Startups;
Business Growth and Maturation;
Business Model;
Business Organization;
For-Profit Firms;
Change Management;
Customer Value and Value Chain;
Customer Relationship Management;
Customer Satisfaction;
Financing and Loans;
Microfinance;
Global Strategy;
Marketing Strategy;
Market Entry and Exit;
Market Platforms;
Multi-Sided Platforms;
Product Development;
Supply Chain Management;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Networks;
Network Effects;
Online Technology;
Financial Services Industry;
Technology Industry;
United States;
Australia