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- November 2022
- Case
Replika AI: Monetizing a Chatbot
By: Julian De Freitas and Nicole Tempest Keller
In early 2018, Eugenia Kuyda, co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based chatbot Replika AI, was deciding how to monetize the app she had built. Launched in 2017, Replika was a consumer AI “companion app” developed by a team of AI software engineers originally based in...
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- September 10, 2022
- Article
NFT Sales: Clearing the Market, Avoiding Gas Wars
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Tim Roughgarden
Instead of letting the market decide the price for their primary sale offerings, many NFT projects choose to initially sell their NFTs at prices below the market-clearing level. But what happens when market designers trade off efficiency for equity; or when demand far...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
Automating Short-Term Payroll Savings: Initial Evidence from a Large U.K. Experiment
By: Sarah Holmes Berk, John Beshears, James J. Choi and David Laibson
Automatic enrollment is often used to increase retirement plan participation. Can it be used to increase short-term savings as well? We evaluate preliminary data from an experiment at a large U.K. employer. After years of offering opt-in short-term payroll savings via...
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- July 2022
- Case
boAt Lifestyle
By: Rajiv Lal and Kairavi Dey
boAt began as a lifestyle brand in the consumer electronics category in 2016 with the aim of bringing affordable, durable, and fashionable audio products and accessories to millennials and Gen-Z customers in India. Born in 2016 with Amazon India as its only sales...
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- May 2022
- Case
Byte
By: Boris Groysberg, Katherine Connolly Baden and Julia Kelley
In January 2021, Byte co-founders Scott Cohen and Blake Johnson reflected on how far their Los Angeles-based direct-to-consumer (DTC) orthodontics company had come since launching its clear aligners just a little over two years earlier. Cohen and Johnson were both...
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- April 2022
- Case
Mastercard: Creating a World Beyond Cash
In late 2021, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach and Chairman and former CEO Ajaypal “Ajay” Banga considered how Mastercard could best position itself for continued success in the years to come. Since Mastercard’s initial public offering in 2006, the company had grown and...
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Keywords:
Technological Innovation;
Leadership;
Leading Change;
Organizational Culture;
Business Strategy;
Change;
Change Management;
Money;
Cash;
Credit;
Financial Institutions;
Banks and Banking;
Central Banking;
Financial Instruments;
Credit Cards;
Financial Markets;
Globalization;
Innovation and Invention;
Innovation and Management;
Innovation Strategy;
Leadership Style;
Competitive Advantage;
Corporate Strategy;
Diversification;
Information Technology;
Banking Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
New York (state, US)
- March 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Swvl: Smart Mobility for the Masses
By: Krishna Palepu, Esel Çekin and Menna Hassan
The case focuses on strategy and governance issues at Swvl, a tech-enabled mass mobility marketplace. It describes the journey of CEO and Chairman Mostafa Kandil on his journey from founding the company to its listing on Nasdaq. Since its founding in Egypt in 2017,...
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- 2022
- Article
Social Interactivity in Live Video Experiences Reduces Loneliness
By: Benjamin T. Kaveladze, Robert R. Morris, Rosa Victoria Dimitrova-Gammeltoft, Amit Goldenberg, James J. Gross, Judd Antin, Melissa Sandgren and Melissa C. Thomas-Hunt
Background: Loneliness, especially when chronic, can substantially reduce one's quality of life. However, positive social experiences might help to break cycles of loneliness by promoting more prosocial cognitions and behaviors. Internet-mediated live video...
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- March 2022
- Article
Learning to Rank an Assortment of Products
By: Kris Ferreira, Sunanda Parthasarathy and Shreyas Sekar
We consider the product ranking challenge that online retailers face when their customers typically behave as “window shoppers”: they form an impression of the assortment after browsing products ranked in the initial positions and then decide whether to continue...
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- February 2022 (Revised June 2022)
- Case
Resident 2020
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Thomas O. Jones
Launched in 2016, Resident was a leading player in the direct-to-consumer bed-in-a-box mattress market, where it was one of at least 175 venture-backed companies competing in the space. By late 2020, it had realized over $500 million in revenue, profitability in the...
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- February 2022 (Revised September 2022)
- Case
Lilium: Preparing for Takeoff
By: Navid Mojir, Vincent Dessain, Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej and Emer Moloney
Lilium is a German company focused on developing electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (eVTOLs) that can be used to offer air taxi services. The company went public in September 2021 through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) deal, raising more than...
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Keywords:
SPACs;
Business Model;
Forecasting and Prediction;
Green Technology;
Capital Markets;
Venture Capital;
Initial Public Offering;
Rural Scope;
Urban Scope;
City;
Disruptive Innovation;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Technological Innovation;
Demand and Consumers;
Market Timing;
Industry Growth;
Infrastructure;
Logistics;
Product Design;
Product Development;
Production;
Service Delivery;
Service Operations;
Strategic Planning;
Partners and Partnerships;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Urban Development;
Sustainable Cities;
Business Strategy;
Competitive Strategy;
Competitive Advantage;
Air Transportation;
Aerospace Industry;
Air Transportation Industry;
Green Technology Industry;
Transportation Industry;
Travel Industry;
Germany;
Munich;
Brazil;
United States;
Florida
- January 2022 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
ReNew Power: Leading the Energy Transition in India
By: Gunnar Trumbull and Malini Sen
Founder-CEO of one of India’s largest clean energy companies, ReNew Power, which develops, builds, and operates utility-scale wind and solar energy projects, has to decide the way forward for the company as the country and the world stand poised at the cusp of an...
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- January 2022
- Supplement
Uber in China (C): The Cost of Success for Didi
By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit
On June 30, 2021, ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing (Didi) raised $4.4 billion in its initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the largest IPO of a Chinese company listed on an American exchange since Alibaba raised $25 billion in 2014....
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Keywords:
China;
Uber;
Didi Chuxing;
Start-up Growth;
Regulation;
Ride-sharing;
Transportation;
Business Startups;
Business and Government Relations;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
Growth and Development;
Policy;
Competition;
Laws and Statutes;
Transportation Industry;
Technology Industry;
China
- Article
How Direct-to-Consumer Brands Can Continue to Grow
By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Daniel Corsten, Matt Higgins and Leonard A. Schlesinger
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands such as Allbirds, Casper, Peloton, and Warby Parker have creatively found a weakness in the marketing citadel of incumbent brands. By using data gleaned from daily interactions with customers, these brands have been able to adapt how...
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- October 2021 (Revised October 2022)
- Case
Ant Group (A)
By: Krishna G. Palepu, Feng Zhu, Susie L. Ma and Kerry Herman
In 2004, Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba created Alipay, an app to facilitate payments on its e-commerce sites. As Alibaba grew, so did Alipay, until Alipay spawned its own ecosystem of financial technology products and services under the name of Ant Group. By 2020,...
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- October 2022
- Case
Masdar City: Aiming for Sustainable and Profitable Real Estate
By: Boris Vallee and Fares Khrais
Masdar City broke ground in 2008 and was conceived by the Abu Dhabi government to be an international beacon of innovation in sustainable energy and real estate. It was also to be a profitable investment for the government. At first glance, the two goals pulled in...
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Keywords:
Analysis;
Green Building;
Business Growth And Maturation;
Decisions;
Public Sector;
Financial Crisis;
Construction;
Climate Change;
Green Technology;
Borrowing And Debt;
Corporate Finance;
Capital;
Capital Budgeting;
Capital Structure;
Cost Of Capital;
Equity;
REIT;
Financial Management;
Financial Strategy;
Initial Public Offering;
Innovation;
Growth And Development Strategy;
Emerging Markets;
Urban Development;
Middle East;
United Arab Emirates;
Sustainable Cities;
Green Buildings;
Business and Government Relations;
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Financing and Loans;
Real Estate Industry;
Construction Industry;
Energy Industry;
Green Technology Industry;
Abu Dhabi
- October 2021 (Revised January 2022)
- Case
Project Maji: Pricing Water in Sub-Saharan Africa
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Esel Çekin
In July 2021, Sunil Lalvani, founder and CEO of Project Maji, a non-profit social enterprise headquartered in Dubai that had already provided sustainable, clean water solutions to 80,000 people living in rural communities across Ghana and Kenya, was facing an important...
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- 2021
- Chapter
Building Small Business Utopia: How Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Can Increase Small Business Success
By: Karen G. Mills and Annie Dang
Small business lending has remained unchanged for decades, laden with frictions and barriers that prevent many small businesses from accessing the capital they need to succeed. Financial technology, or “fintech,” promises to change this trajectory. In 2010, new fintech...
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- July 2021
- Case
Amazon HQ2
By: James K. Sebenius and Ben Cook
Amazon’s failed bid for a second headquarters location (“HQ2”) in Long Island City, New York offers many lessons for negotiators looking to avoid similar high-profile defeats in strategically important deals. The company’s project – which promised to bring billions of...
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- May–June 2021
- Article
Eliminate Strategic Overload
As companies respond to intensifying competitive pressures and challenges, they ask more and more of their employees. But organizations often have very little to show for the efforts of their talented and engaged workers. By selecting fewer initiatives with greater...
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