Why Are Web Sites So Confusing?
| Published: | October 19, 2009 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Just as bread and milk are often found at far-away ends of the supermarket, Web sites that match consumers with certain products have an incentive to steer users to products that yield the highest margins. The result: a compromise between what users want and what produces the most revenues, say HBS professor Andrei Hagiu and Toulouse School of Economics researcher Bruno Jullien. A look inside the world of search.
Mixed Source
| Authors: | Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Gastón Llanes |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 15, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
As most managers know, commercial firms may benefit from participating in open source software development by selling complementary goods or services. Open source has the potential to improve value creation because it benefits from the efforts of a large community of developers. Proprietary software, on the other hand, results in superior value capture because the intellectual property remains under the control of the original developer. While the straightforward rationale for "mixed source" (a combination of the two) is appealing, what does it mean for a business model? Under what circumstances should a profit-maximizing firm adopt a mixed source business model? How should firms respond to competitors' adoption of mixed source business models? And what are the right pricing structures under mixed source compared with the proprietary business model? In this paper the researchers analyze a model where firms with modular software must decide which modules to open and which to keep proprietary. Findings can be directly applied to the design of optimal business strategies.
Breakthrough Inventions and Migrating Clusters of Innovation
| Author: | William R. Kerr |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 30, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
In just a short period of time the spatial location of invention can shift substantially. The San Francisco Bay Area grew from 5 percent of U.S. domestic patents in 1975-1984 to over 12 percent in 1995-2004, for example, while the share for New York City declined from 12 percent to 7 percent. Smaller cities like Austin, Texas, and Boise, Idaho, seem to have become clusters of innovation overnight. Despite the prevalence of these movements, we know very little about what drives spatial adjustments in U.S. invention, the speed at which these reallocations occur, and their economic consequences. In this paper, HBS professor William R. Kerr investigates whether breakthrough inventions draw subsequent research efforts for a technology to a local area. Evidence strongly supports the conclusion that centers of breakthrough innovations experience subsequent growth in innovation relative to their peer locations.
Informed and Interconnected: A Manifesto for Smarter Cities
| Authors: | Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Stanley S. Litow |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 23, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | June 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
To make our cities and communities smarter, we must become a little smarter ourselves, seeking information and an agenda to forge connections enabling collaboration, according to HBS professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter and IBM's Stanley S. Litow. Their vision is that someday soon, leaders will combine technological capabilities and social innovation to help produce a smarter world. That world will be seen on the ground in smarter cities composed of smarter communities that support the well-being of all citizens. This paper outlines eight challenges facing cities and the communities they encompass, based on experience in the United States. Kanter and Litow provide examples of practices and programs led by both government and nonprofit organizations, many technology-enabled, that point the way to solutions, and they conclude with a call for leaders to embrace an agenda for change.
Markets or Communities? The Best Ways to Manage Outside Innovation
| Q&A with: | Karim R. Lakhani |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 20, 2009 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
No one organization can monopolize knowledge in any given field. That's why modern companies must develop a new expertise: the ability to attract novel solutions to difficult or unanticipated problems from outside sources around the world. A conversation with Harvard Business School professor Karim R. Lakhani on the keys to managing distributed innovation.
Technology Innovation and Diffusion as Sources of Output and Asset Price Fluctuations
| Authors: | Diego A. Comin, Mark Gertler, and Ana Maria Santacreu |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 2, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | May 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
A central challenge to modern business cycle analysis is that standard macro models are unable to generate fluctuations in the stock market with the amplitude, persistence, and lead-lag pattern observed in the data. At the same time, standard macro models predict that good news about future, such as those received during 1994-1995 on the arrival of IT, lead to recessions rather than expansions. HBS professor Diego Comin and coauthors develop a model that overcomes these two problems by explicitly incorporating an endogenous speed of diffusion of technologies that is increasing in the resources spent in adoption. Revisions in beliefs about future profits generate fluctuations in the stock market with the amplitude and lead over output observed in the data. The firms' investment decisions in adoption leads to a shift in labor demand that increases hours worked and output.
File-Sharing and Copyright
| Authors: | Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 1, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | May 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The researchers argue that file-sharing technology has not undermined the incentives of artists and entertainment companies to create, market, and distribute new works. The advent of new technology has allowed consumers to copy music, books, video games, and other protected works on an unprecedented scale at minimal cost. Such technology has considerably weakened copyright protection, first of music and software and increasingly of movies, video games, and books. While policy discussion surrounding file-sharing has largely focused on the legality of the new technology and the question of whether declining sales in music are due to file-sharing, the debate has been overly narrow. Copyright protection exists to encourage innovation and the creation of new works—in other words, to promote social welfare. This essay analyzes the landscape and identifies areas for more research.
Do Friends Influence Purchases in a Social Network?
| Authors: | Raghuram Iyengar, Sangman Han, and Sunil Gupta |
|---|---|
| Published: | May 21, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | April 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
In spite of the cultural and social revolution in the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace (and in South Korea, Cyworld), the business viability of these sites remains in question. While many sites are attempting to follow Google and generate revenues from advertising, will advertising be effective? If friends influence the purchases of a user in a social network, it could potentially be a significant source of revenue for the sites and their corporate sponsors. Using a unique data set from Cyworld, this study empirically assesses if friends indeed influence purchases. The answer: It depends. Findings are relevant for social networking sites and large advertisers.
The IT Leader's Hero Quest
| Q&A with: | Robert D. Austin, Richard L. Nolan, and Shannon O'Donnell |
|---|---|
| Published: | May 11, 2009 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Think you could be CIO? Jim Barton is a savvy manager but an IT newbie when he's promoted into the hot seat as chief information officer in The Adventures of an IT Leader, a novel by HBS professors Robert D. Austin and Richard L. Nolan and coauthor Shannon O'Donnell. Can Barton navigate his strange new world quickly enough? Q&A with the authors, and book excerpt.
Catering to Characteristics
| Authors: | Robin Greenwood and Samuel Hanson |
|---|---|
| Published: | March 20, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | March 2009 (revised June 2009) |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Can patterns of corporate net stock issuance help identify times when particular characteristics, such as industry, size, or book-to-market ratio, are mispriced? The authors of this study argue that differences between the characteristics of issuers and repurchasers can shed light on characteristic related stock returns. Consider the case in which analysts were interested in forecasting the returns of Google. The standard approach would be to collect Google's characteristics (e.g., large, technology, non-dividend paying, etc) and associate these characteristics with an average return in the cross-section. The authors argue that if other stocks with these characteristics are issuing stock, this bodes poorly for Google's future returns, even if Google is itself not issuing. This research by HBS professor Robin Greenwood and Harvard doctoral student Samuel Hanson has implications for studying the stock market performance of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs), initial public offerings (IPOs), and recent acquirers.
Published in 2008
The Sciences of Design: Observations on an Emerging Field
| Authors: | Sandeep Purao, Carliss Y. Baldwin, Alan Hevner, Veda C. Storey, Jan Pries-Heje, Brian Smith, and Ying Zhu |
|---|---|
| Published: | November 26, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | October 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
This paper examines the sciences of design as an emerging field of study that cuts across disciplinary boundaries. The paper summarizes and synthesizes the positions, reflections, opportunities, and challenges expressed at the first doctoral consortium to explore the topic, held in 2008. It thus provides a useful agenda for clarifying and articulating important strands of this nascent field.
Was the Wealth of Nations Determined in 1000 B.C.?
| Authors: | Diego A. Comin, William Easterly, and Erick Gong |
|---|---|
| Published: | November 20, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | October 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
To the extent that history is discussed at all in economic development, it is usually either the divergence associated with the Industrial Revolution or the effects of colonial regimes. Is it possible that precolonial, preindustrial history also matters significantly for today's national economic development? The authors find that technology adoption circa 1500 A.D., prior to the era of colonization and extensive European contacts, predicts approximately 50 percent of cross-country differences in both current per capita income and technology in a large cross-section of countries. When exploring the causes of this extreme persistence in technology, they find evidence in favor of the importance of the effect of current adoption on subsequent adoption as the main driver. This leaves a limited role to country-specific factors such as institutions, geography, or genes to explain the persistence of technology.
Social Media Leads the Future of Technology
| Published: | November 10, 2008 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | HBS Business Summit |
From Facebook to smartphones, advances in technology are changing the way we work and communicate. Professor David Yoffie led three experts in a recent panel discussion on "The Technology Revolution and its Implications for the Future" at the HBS Centennial Business Summit.
Technology, Identity, and Inertia through the Lens of 'The Digital Photography Company'
| Author: | Mary Tripsas |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 31, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Why do established firms find some technological change so challenging? While existing research has identified numerous sources of inertia in established firms exploring new technological domains, identity is a critical piece of the puzzle. As the core essence of an organization, identity directs and constrains action. The routines, procedures, capabilities, knowledge base, and beliefs of an organization all reflect its identity. So when a technology is identity-challenging to an organization—when pursuing it would violate the core beliefs of both insiders and outsides about what the firm represents—organizations face significant obstacles to adopting it. This study by Tripsas highlights the importance of recognizing and evaluating the tradeoffs associated with technological opportunity and organizational identity.
Platform Rules: Multi-Sided Platforms as Regulators
| Authors: | Kevin J. Boudreau and Andrei Hagiu |
|---|---|
| Published: | October 24, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | October 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Using case studies of Facebook, Tokyo's Roppongi Hills "mini-city," Harvard Business School, and TopCoder, a vendor of outsourced software products, Boudreau and Hagiu explore how multi-sided platforms (MSPs) regulate an industry ecosystem. An MSP is a platform that enables interactions between multiple groups of surrounding consumers and complementors. As the authors demonstrate, the regulatory role played in these cases by MSPs was pervasive and at the core of their business models. That regulatory role goes beyond price-setting and includes imposing rules and constraints, creating inducements, and generally shaping behaviors. These various non-price instruments essentially solve problems that could otherwise lead to market failure. The authors' analytical framework suggests a two-step approach for a platform owner: (1) maximize value created for the entire ecosystem, and (2) maximize the value extracted. "Platform Rules" is a chapter in the forthcoming book Platforms, Markets and Innovation, Gawer, A. (ed) (2009), Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, U.S.: Edward Elgar.
The Agglomeration of U.S. Ethnic Inventors
| Author: | William R. Kerr |
|---|---|
| Published: | August 14, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | July 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The higher concentration of immigrants in certain cities and occupations has long been noted. There has been very little theoretical or empirical work to date, however, on the particular agglomeration of U.S. immigrant scientists and engineers. This scarcity is disappointing given the scale of these ethnic contributions and the importance of innovation to regional economic growth. William R. Kerr's study contributes to our empirical understanding of agglomeration and innovation by documenting patterns in the city-level agglomeration of ethnic inventors (e.g., Chinese, Indian) within the United States from 1975 through 2007. It is hoped that the empirical platform developed in this study provides a foothold for furthering such analyses.
Diffusing Management Practices within the Firm: The Role of Information Provision
| Authors: | Michael J. Lenox and Michael W. Toffel |
|---|---|
| Published: | April 17, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | March 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Managers face a range of options to diffuse innovative practices within their organizations. This paper focuses on one such technique: providing practice-specific information through mechanisms such as internal seminars, demonstrations, knowledge management systems, and promotional brochures. In contrast to corporate mandates, this "information provision" approach empowers facility managers to decide which practices to actually implement. The authors examine how corporate managers diffused advanced environmental management practices within technology manufacturing firms in the United States. The study identifies several factors that encourage corporate managers to employ information provision, including subsidiaries' related expertise, the extent to which the subsidiaries were diversified or concentrated in similar businesses, and the geographic dispersion of their employees.
On Best-Response Bidding in GSP Auctions
| Authors: | Matthew Cary, Aparna Das, Benjamin G. Edelman, Ioannis Giotis, Kurtis Heimerl, Anna R. Karlin, Claire Mathieu, and Michael Schwarz |
|---|---|
| Published: | February 6, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | January 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Keyword auctions have become a critical source of revenue for Google and Yahoo!, among others. This new form of advertising has provided a new way for advertisers to reach customers. But advertisers also face the complex task of optimizing bids to increase their exposure while avoiding unnecessary costs. HBS professor Benjamin Edelman and colleagues analyzed a class of bidding strategies that attempt to increase advertiser utility under limited assumptions about other players' behavior. Under a strategy they call Balanced Bidding (BB), advertisers converge to the advertiser-preferred equilibrium—achieving stability of bids and reducing advertisers' costs relative to other possible outcomes.
Published in 2007
The Changing Face of American Innovation
| Q&A with: | William R. Kerr |
|---|---|
| Published: | November 5, 2007 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Chinese and Indian scientists and engineers have made an unexpectedly large contribution to U.S. technology formation over the last 30 years, according to new research by HBS professor William R. Kerr. But that trend may be ebbing, with potentially harmful effects on future growth in American innovation.
HBS Cases: The Evolution of Apple
| Published: | July 25, 2007 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Lessons from the Classroom |
Apple's continuing development from computer maker to consumer electronics pioneer is rich material in a number of Harvard Business School classrooms. Professor David Yoffie discusses his latest case study of Apple, the 5th update in 14 years, which challenges students to think strategically about Apple's successes and failures in the past, and opportunities and challenges in the future.
Managing Proprietary and Shared Platforms: A Life-Cycle View
| Author: | Thomas R. Eisenmann |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 11, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | June 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The challenges facing platform managers vary systematically depending on (1) whether the platform is proprietary or shared and (2) the stage of platform development. This article summarizes the results of a multiyear research project on platform strategies, including interviews with 30 companies. It describes 3 stages of the platform life cycle—platform design, network mobilization, and platform maturity—and reviews in depth the strategic decisions and management issues for each stage.
Platform Envelopment
| Authors: | Thomas Eisenmann, Geoffrey Parker, and Marshall Van Alstyne |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 10, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | June 2007 (revised October 2009) |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Established platform providers can be difficult to displace. This paper explores a path to platform leadership change that does not rely on breakthrough innovation or Schumpeterian creative destruction: a phenomenon the authors call "platform envelopment." In practical terms, envelopment entails one platform provider adding another platform's functionality to its own, and then offering a multiplatform bundle. Eisenmann and his colleagues describe a variety of envelopment attacks based on the relationship between the attacker's platform and its target's, and then discuss the economic and strategic motivations for each attack type.
Multi-Sided Platforms: From Microfoundations to Design and Expansion Strategies
| Author: | Andrei Hagiu |
|---|---|
| Published: | June 21, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | May 2007, revised April 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The term "platform" is increasingly popular among executives today. Platforms, and multi-sided platforms (MSPs) in particular, serve the needs of interdependent constituents. Although MSPs have existed for centuries in the form of matchmakers and village markets, information technology has increased tremendously the opportunities for building larger, more powerful, and more valuable platforms. At the same time, by expanding the potential scope of platforms, information technology has also increased the number and complexity of factors, both economic and technical, that drive the strategic design of MSPs. Surprisingly, few companies rigorously analyze the underlying drivers of their MSPs, and the emerging business and economics literature on two-sided markets has not been very helpful in this direction, either. This article provides a general framework to help organize managerial thinking about MSPs.
Merchant or Two-Sided Platform?
| Author: | Andrei Hagiu |
|---|---|
| Published: | June 21, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | May 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
With ever more sophisticated logistics and the rise of information technologies, intermediaries and market platforms have become increasingly ubiquitous and important agents in the digital economy. While market intermediation is not a new phenomenon, the digital economy has revealed that there can be two polar types of intermediaries: "merchants," which acquire goods from sellers and resell them to buyers, and "two-sided platforms," which allow affiliated sellers to sell directly to affiliated buyers. As examples, retailers like Walmart.com and Amazon.com are (mostly) merchants; eBay is a pure two-sided platform; and Apple's iTunes digital music store exhibits both merchant and platform features. This research is a first pass at delineating the economic tradeoffs between the merchant and two-sided platform modes.
Electronic Hierarchies and Electronic Heterarchies: Relationship-Specific Assets and the Governance of Interfirm IT
| Authors: | Andrew McAfee, Marco Bettiol, and Maria Chiarvesio |
|---|---|
| Published: | February 13, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | January 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Scholars have long been interested in the impact of information technology on the organization of work. As Andrew McAfee and colleagues argue in this study, the appropriate governance mechanism for an IT-facilitated collaboration depends on the type of IT being deployed: When an enterprise technology is required, so is an electronic hierarchy. The paper explores the issue of relationship specificity of IT assets, proposes a categorization of information technologies based on their levels of relationship specificity, and uses data from more than forty Italian industrial districts to test three hypotheses around governance of interfirm IT. These districts typically have close ties, both horizontal and vertical, and have historically worked in close collaboration with each other.
The Immigrant Technologist: Studying Technology Transfer with China
| Q&A with: | William R. Kerr and Michael J. Roberts |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 22, 2007 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Immigrants account for almost half of Ph.D.-level scientists and engineers in the U.S., and are prime drivers of technology development. Increasingly, however, Chinese technologists and entrepreneurs are returning home rather than staying in the U.S. to pursue opportunities. Professor William Kerr discusses the phenomena of technology transfer and implications for U.S.-based businesses and policymakers. From New Business.
Published in 2006
The Industry R&D Survey: Patent Database Link Project
| Authors: | William R. Kerr and Shihe Fu |
|---|---|
| Published: | December 8, 2006 |
| Paper Release Date: | November 2006 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The development and diffusion of new innovations are central to economic growth, and understanding the firm-level underpinnings of technology progress is important to academics, policymakers, and business managers. While many researchers have examined (either separately or together) corporate research and development and technology diffusion, they run into two significant data constraints. William R. Kerr and Shihe Fu describe how they developed a new dataset for studying corporate innovation that encompasses three important existing datasets. This paper summarizes the Industry R&D Survey for researchers who want to study innovation through the Census Bureau's data.
Surviving Success: When Founders Must Go
| Published: | October 4, 2006 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Lessons from the Classroom |
At some point, a start-up's founder usually cedes CEO responsibilities to a seasoned manager. But what roles does the founder assume next? Professor Noam Wasserman discusses a recent case study and what students learn from it in the classroom. From HBS Alumni Bulletin.
Scale without Mass: Business Process Replication and Industry Dynamics
| Authors: | Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, Michael Sorell, and Feng Zhu |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 28, 2006 |
| Paper Release Date: | August 2006 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Over the past ten years there's been a clear link between IT investment and productivity growth in the U.S. economy. But what impact has IT had on competition? This paper identifies several recent changes in the competitive dynamics of U.S. industries and shows that they are associated with IT intensity; the more IT and industry has, the greater the changes. Using case studies, previous research, and a simple model, the authors offer a theory that explains these patterns in the data. They argue that IT allows the rapid spread of business process innovations, which in turn leads to more turbulent and concentrated industries.
How Software Platforms Revolutionize Business
| Published: | September 25, 2006 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Cell phones, the Game Boy, and PCs are examples of products based upon software platforms—ecosystems where independent companies can provide products and services tied to the core technology. Playing in a software platform world can make you rich—ask ringtone creators—but it also demands special management skills that emphasize cooperation over competition. Professor Andrei Hagiu discusses his new book, Invisible Engines.
Capturing Benefits from Tomorrow's Technology in Today's Products: The Effect of Absorptive Capacity
| Author: | Daniel Snow |
|---|---|
| Published: | August 23, 2006 |
| Paper Release Date: | July 2006 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
It seems clear that firms with an existing R&D function are better able to use related outside research than firms without an R&D function. But can specific products also "absorb" a firm's knowledge of related technologies? Using patent data and the example of automobile carburetors, Daniel Snow studied how companies may adapt a component of a "radical innovation" technology for their own current-technology products. He also poses a far-reaching question for companies: Can they capture the returns of these inventive activities?
Career Advancement Without Experience
| Published: | August 9, 2006 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Lacking experience, contract workers find it difficult to advance to a job with expanded responsibilities. But it can be done. Siobhan O'Mahony discusses research into the concept of "stretchwork" and the increasing complexity of career management.
Lessons from the Browser Wars
| Q&A with: | Pai-Ling Yin |
|---|---|
| Published: | April 10, 2006 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
The first-mover advantage is well chronicled, but it didn't help Netscape when Microsoft launched Internet Explorer. What drives technology adoption, and do browser upstarts such as Firefox stand a chance? A Q&A with professor Pai-Ling Yin.
New Research Explores Multi-Sided Markets
| Q&A with: | Andrei Hagiu |
|---|---|
| Published: | March 13, 2006 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Dating clubs, credit cards, and video games are all examples of multi-sided markets, where firms need to get two or more distinct groups of customers on the same platform. Professor Andrei Hagiu discusses this new field of business research—and why it matters to you.
The China Dilemma for U.S. Firms: Comply, Resist, or Leave?
| Published: | March 6, 2006 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | What Do YOU Think? |
| Forum: | closed | 34 Comments posted |
If you were an advisor to the senior managements of these companies doing business in China, what would you propose that they do?
Are Company Founders Underpaid?
| Q&A with: | Noam T. Wasserman |
|---|---|
| Published: | February 20, 2006 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Company founders have a tough time convincing their boards to increase compensation, says HBS professor Noam Wasserman. He discusses his research into "founder frustration" areas.
The Hidden Market for Babies
| Q&A with: | Debora L. Spar |
|---|---|
| Published: | February 13, 2006 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Surrogates. Fertility clinics. Egg donors. Adoption. It's time to recognize (and perhaps regulate) the huge market being created by reproductive technologies, says HBS professor Debora L. Spar. She discusses her new book, The Baby Business.
The Trouble Behind Livedoor
| Q&A with: | Robin Greenwood |
|---|---|
| Published: | February 6, 2006 |
| Feature: | Views on News |
When Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie was arrested last month, it shook the economic underpinnings of Japan. Professor Robin Greenwood discusses what went wrong with one of that country's most-watched Internet companies.
Sorting Out the Patent Craze
| Q&A with: | Josh Lerner |
|---|---|
| Published: | February 6, 2006 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Some companies patent anything that moves to block innovation by competitors. But what does this mean for standard setting organizations? Professor Josh Lerner explains the challenges facing SSOs in this HBS Working Knowledge Q&A.
Economic and Technical Drivers of Technology Choice: Browsers
| Authors: | Timothy F. Bresnahan and Pai-Ling Yin |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 5, 2006 |
| Paper Release Date: | February 2006 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Did Microsoft defeat Netscape in the browser war because its technology was better, or because MS created a better business strategy? The authors draw on the 1996-1999 browser battles to examine technical progress versus economic forces in driving diffusion on new technologies.
A Survey-Based Procedure for Measuring Uncertainty or Heterogeneous Preferences in Markets
| Author: | Pai-Ling Yin |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 5, 2006 |
| Paper Release Date: | February 2006 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
People who buy retail prescription drugs, invest funds, or participate in auctions rarely have complete information about the product they are buying. Often the only auction information participants have is the number of bidders, observed bids, and product characteristics. If data from an auction, for instance, is a function of bidder behavior, then external survey data may help in testing hypotheses about bidding behavior. Researchers often avoid using surveys because they consume time and effort, but Yin presents a survey design technique and econometric tool to deal with a general population of survey respondents. Her application tested eBay online auctions selling personal computers.
Information Technology Ecosystem Health and Performance
| Authors: | Marco Iansiti and Gregory L. Richards |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 5, 2006 |
| Paper Release Date: | February 2006 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
An IT ecosystem is "the network of organizations that drives the creation and delivery of information technology products and services." To understand the health and well being of the IT industry in the context of an ecosystem, the authors looked at three crucial IT ecosystem metrics: productivity, robustness, and innovation.
Information Dispersion and Auction Prices
| Author: | Pai-Ling Yin |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 5, 2006 |
| Paper Release Date: | February 2006 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
How can auctions be used most effectively? Government and industry traditionally use auctions to price and allocate assets and contracts with high but unknown value. Millions of people use Internet auctions for goods that are often of unknown value (e.g., used goods, unknown brands). This paper asks: Do bidders behave in the way auction theory predicts they should? And, what are the effects of different types of information on prices? To answer these questions, Yin combined theory, econometric modeling, and survey data.
Empirical Tests of Information Aggregation
| Author: | Pai-Ling Yin |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 5, 2006 |
| Paper Release Date: | February 2006 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
While neither buyers nor sellers may be certain of the worth of used goods, both may possess private information about the value. Do prices become more informative as the number of bidders grows? Using data from a sample of eBay auctions for computers, Yin looked at how and under what conditions auction prices converge to the common value of a given item.
Published in 2005
The Broadband Explosion: Thinking About a Truly Interactive World
| Q&A with: | Robert D. Austin and Stephen P. Bradley |
|---|---|
| Published: | September 12, 2005 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
When true broadband arrives, everything will change—work, play, and society—say professors Robert Austin and Stephen Bradley. What a truly interactive world will look like is the subject of their new book The Broadband Explosion.
Why IT Matters in Midsized Firms
| Authors: | Marco Iansiti, George Favaloro, James Utzschneider, and Greg Richards |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 5, 2006 |
| Paper Release Date: | August 2005 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
What does IT actually contribute to a business? Is IT a commodity like electricity or is it a crucial element of competitive advantage? In a study of over 600 medium-sized global firms to analyze the business benefits that IT can enable, the authors found that IT capability was key to profitable business growth. This was true in both the U.S. product and services sectors as well as in Germany and Brazil.
Microsoft vs. Open Source: Who Will Win?
| Q&A with: | Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pankaj Ghemawat |
|---|---|
| Published: | June 6, 2005 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Using formal economic modelling, professors Pankaj Ghemawat and Ramon Casadesus-Masanell consider the competitive dynamics of the software wars between Microsoft and open source. Read our interview.
Amazon, eBay and the Bidding Wars
| Q&A with: | Alvin E. Roth |
|---|---|
| Published: | February 28, 2005 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
"Sniping" is a popular way of winning a bid in the world of online auctions. But how far can it change the playing field? HBS professor Alvin Roth takes a look at how bidding rules change the way the game is played.
How to Harness Auction Fever
| Q&A with: | Deepak Malhotra |
|---|---|
| Published: | February 28, 2005 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
HBS assistant professor Deepak Malhotra talks about the phenomena of "auction fever" in which bidders are driven to win at irrational costs.
Published in 2004
Radical Change, Entrepreneurial Opportunity
| Q&A with: | Michael J. Roberts and Mary Tripsas |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 5, 2004 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
A key to exploiting radical technological change is to clear your vision of historical constraints and see new opportunities with a fresh perspective. Michael J. Roberts interviews HBS professor Mary Tripsas.
Published in 2003
Why Europe Lags in Pharmaceuticals and Biotech
| Published: | December 8, 2003 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Governmental, cultural and academic differences are hurting Europe’s chances of gaining on the U.S. Can anything be done?
How Hot is the "Hot Spot" Business?
| Published: | May 12, 2003 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Wi-Fi hot spots and the future of broadband were on the minds of attendees at the Bandwidth Explosion colloquium at Harvard Business School.
Andy Grove on the Confident Leader
| Published: | April 14, 2003 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Intel’s famous chairman discusses decision making, intuition, and corporate governance with professor Clayton M. Christensen and Harvard Business School Publishing Editorial Director Walter Kiechel.
Making Biotech Work as a Business
| Published: | January 13, 2003 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
What will it take for biotechnology to fulfill its economic potential? Participants need to think twice about the strategies and assumptions that are driving the industry, says HBS professor Gary P. Pisano.
Published in 2002
Wrap-up: Software, Telecom, and Recovery
| Published: | February 18, 2002 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
How is the VC industry doing on its own and in partnership with software and telecoms? These were just three topics discussed in special panel sessions at the recent conference. Here, a few highlights from those conversations.
Published in 2001
Governance in India and Around the Globe
| Published: | December 10, 2001 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
India is not known for rigid corporate governance standards. Is software giant Infosys changing all that? A working paper by HBS professors Tarun Khanna and Krishna Palepu looks at how globalization may—or may not—foster convergence of corporate governance.
Alfred Chandler on the Electronic Century
| Published: | November 19, 2001 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alfred D. Chandler Jr. examines the development of two pivotal industries in post-World War II America—the consumer electronics and computer industries.
Why Evolutionary Software Development Works
| Published: | April 30, 2001 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
What is the best way to develop software? HBS professor Alan MacCormack discusses recent research proving the theory that the best approach is evolutionary. In this article from MIT Sloan Management Review, MacCormack and colleagues Marco Iansiti and Roberto Verganti uncover four practices that lead to successful Internet software development.
Published in 2000
More Than the Sum of Its Parts: The Impact of Modularity on the Computer Industry
| Published: | September 25, 2000 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
The "power of modularity," write HBS Dean Kim Clark and Professor Carliss Baldwin in their new book, rescued the computer industry from a problem of nightmarish proportions and made possible remarkable levels of innovation and growth in a relatively short period of time.
The Business of Biotech
| Published: | August 7, 2000 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
On the cusp of what most analysts agree will be the age of biotechology, Professor Gary P. Pisano and four HBS alums on the front lines of the biotech revolution offer their views of the challenges, issues and opportunities facing the industry in the laboratory, the boardroom and the marketplace.
Presentation Round-Up
| Published: | June 26, 2000 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
This round-up of other panels and presentations at the IS2K conference includes a look at the emerging "e-service" model, the future of the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure, and a discussion of "Genes on the Web."
Market Makers Bid for Success
| Published: | May 30, 2000 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Two CEOs at the forefront of the transformation in the way businesses buy and sell goods—Scott Randall of FairMarket (HBS MBA '87) and Glen Meakem of FreeMarkets (HBS MBA '91—spoke with Professor Bill Sahlman recently about their paths to new business models and what they've learned along the way.
The Simple Economics of Open Source
| Published: | May 16, 2000 |
|---|---|
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
What motivates thousands of computer programmers-and even the companies that employ them-to share their code with the world? The growing use of so-called "open source" software may not seem, at first glance, to make much economic sense. But according to research by HBS Professor Josh Lerner and his colleague Jean Tirole, economics may actually help explain why open source works as well as it does.
