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    • COVID-19 Business Impact Center
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      Cold Call
      A podcast featuring faculty discussing cases they've written and the lessons they impart.
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      • 23 Feb 2021
      • Cold Call Podcast

      Examining Race and Mass Incarceration in the United States

      The late 20th century saw dramatic growth in incarceration rates in the United States. Of the more than 2.3 million people in US prisons, jails, and detention centers in 2020, 60 percent were Black or Latinx. Harvard Business School assistant professor Reshmaan Hussam probes the assumptions underlying the current prison system, with its huge racial disparities, and considers what could be done to address the crisis of the American criminal justice system in her case, “Race and Mass Incarceration in the United States.”  Open for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

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      Multi-Sided PlatformsRemove Multi-Sided Platforms →

      Page 1 of 5 Results
      • 26 Mar 2019
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Managed Ecosystems and Translucent Institutional Logics: Engaging Communities

      by Elizabeth J. Altman, Frank Nagle, and Michael Tushman

      Organizations increasingly rely on engagement with external communities of contributors. This paper explores transitions to a managed-ecosystem governance mode and its implications for strategy and innovation. To be successful, firms must develop the capabilities to shepherd communities, leverage without exploiting them, and share intellectual property rights.

      • 17 Apr 2017
      • Research Event

      The Most Pressing Issues for Platform Providers in the Sharing Economy

      by Carmen Nobel

      Platform providers Rover.com, OpenBay, and Agora discussed “chicken-and-egg” and other challenges they face at a recent Digital Initiative event at Harvard Business School. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 16 Nov 2016
      • Research & Ideas

      Turning One Thousand Customers into One Million

      by Thales S. Teixeira and Michael Blanding

      In the second part of a series on growing startups, Thales S. Teixeira explains how Uber, Etsy, and Airbnb climbed from one thousand customers to one million. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 13 Jul 2016
      • HBS Case

      How Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy Attracted Their First 1,000 Customers

      by Michael Blanding

      Thales Teixeira studies three of the most successful “platform” startups to understand the chicken-and-egg challenge of how companies can attract their first customers. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

      • 10 Dec 2014
      • Working Paper Summaries

      Multi-sided Platforms

      by Andrei Hagiu & Julian Wright

      There is growing interest in the economics of multi-sided platforms (MSPs), which-like eBay, Uber, and Xbox-get two or more sides on board and enable interactions between them. In this article the authors study firms' strategic positioning decisions between a multi-sided platform (MSP) mode and three alternative modes. The main focus is on the choice between operating in MSP mode and operating in vertically integrated (VI) mode. The authors provide a formal model of this choice. The model highlights the key trade-off between the coordination benefits of the VI mode when there are spillovers across the decisions of individual professionals/employees and the benefits of the MSP mode in motivating unobservable effort on the part of professionals/employees. The authors also study how this trade-off shifts according to the nature of contracts available under the two different modes. Finally, they also highlight some of the key trade-offs that arise in the choice between operating as a MSP or as a reseller, and between operating as a MSP or as an input supplier. Key concepts include: Economic trade-offs drive organizations to position themselves closer to or further away from a MSP model, relative to more traditional alternatives such as retailers, vertically integrated firms, or input suppliers. The paper provides a comprehensive discussion of the defining features of MSPs, along with a new definition of MSPs that clarifies what makes them special. At the most fundamental level, MSPs have two key features beyond any other requirements (such as indirect network effects or non-neutrality of fees): 1) They enable direct interactions between two or more sides, and 2) Each side is affiliated with the platform. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

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