Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 30, 2014

Call 2014 the year of innovation. Google Trends reveals that interest in disruptive innovation crept up to peak levels this year. It seems that every time you hop on a quarterly earnings call, the CEO mentions innovation. If innovation is the foundation to building the future, this focus should be reassuring.

Long-term 11

Long-term Innovation Company IPO 11

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

Yelp's IPO filing comes hot on the heels of successful IPOs and high valuations for Angie's List and Groupon. Yelp's timing reflects both a tech-friendly market and the company's current position as the dominant consumer-review web site. But new ways of searching for products may start to change this dynamic.

IPO 15

IPO Business Model Review Advertising 15

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Venture capitalists are increasingly interested in emerging markets, and in working with local funds based in those markets (despite the fact that reverse innovation in venture capital seems counterintuitive). In contrast, emerging-market VCs such as Nadathur Holdings (established in 2000 by N.S.

Marketing 15

Marketing Venture Capitalist Biotechnology IPO 15

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 21, 2016

When financial services company Square priced its IPO at $9 a share last November, well under the $15+ price that private investors paid the year before, it was a cold shower of reality for the 6-year-old company. Until the IPO, Square had been one of more than 130 unicorns: privately owned tech companies valued at $1 billion or more.

IPO 8

IPO Innovation Price Operations 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 2, 2017

For decades, we have heard that emerging markets are poised for huge growth that will yield even greater prosperity. Much like their famed Silicon Valley counterparts, emerging market accelerators aim to boost startups’ potential for raising growth capital.

Marketing 8

Marketing Venture Funding Entrepreneur IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 7, 2011

billion market valuation. As a price strategy consultant, it's common for managers and sales people to enthusiastically pitch me on a strategy of "let's get them in the door with a big discount, they'll love our product or service, and then return to pay full price." Consumers, of course, love big discounts. Yes, "50%-off" is catchier.

IPO 10

IPO Discount Price Business Model 10

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 8, 2017

For instance, Snapchat’s recent IPO filing revealed that the company grew revenues by 600% (to $404 million) in 2016. The explosive growth of ride sharing is a big reason why Hertz reported dismal quarterly results in November 2016, leading to a 23% drop in its market value. Many of them have been growing at a ferocious pace.

Innovation 8

Innovation Bureaucracy IPO Bottom-up 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 23, 2013

The most motivated and productive people I’ve seen recently work in an older company on the American East Coast deploying innovative technology products to transform a traditional industry. Their products are early stage, which means daily frustrations as they run through successive iterations.

Motivation 12

Motivation IPO Norton Open-book 12

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 26, 2011

In the last year, however, early-stage investments in clean energy production technologies have fallen substantially (see the table at the end of this piece for more detail). A star example is Google, which raised a mere $40 million in private funding before its IPO at a $23 billion valuation.

Energy 11

Energy Finance IPO Biotechnology 11

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 1, 2011

Microfinance has come under fire in the past 18 months, triggered in part by SKS Microfinance's IPO. It was always meant to be a "social innovation," a way for corporations to make a profit at the same time that they do something good for society. And all of those innovations are opportunities for businesses.

Microfinance 13

Microfinance IPO Bottom-up Finance 13

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 2, 2016

True platform innovators aren’t just market matchmakers using data-driven algorithms to drive better buyer-seller matches; they invest in new value creation. In platform markets, cultivating user capability becomes as strategically important as reducing transaction costs. What really makes them work? Insight Center.

IPO 8

IPO Human Capital Insurance Business Model 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Great universities will spur firms to design and manufacture products locally. With Facebook’s $115 billion market cap on its IPO day, Mark Zuckerberg created wealth nearly equivalent to half of Nigeria’s GDP in 2012. The value created by Facebook and a few other tech IPOs exceeds the GDP of most African regions.

Education 8

Education Technology IPO GDP 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 21, 2014

Is there a market opportunity the company is overlooking? Clearly articulate this need as soon as you begin, because no matter how well researched or innovative your solution, you won’t get support if the need isn’t apparent or convincing. An 8-fold increase in the marketing budget. ” says Sheen. The price tag?

IPO 10

IPO Audience Chief Information Officer Case Study 10

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 7, 2013

"Free" product competition strikes again and the latest casualty is Weight Watchers, whose CEO recently left the company in the midst of the onslaught of free weight loss and fitness applications. Advantages typically include an established customer base, brand equity, market knowledge, and financial resources.

Disruptive Innovation 8

Disruptive Innovation Advertising Discount IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 6, 2012

When big business leaders think about social media they tend to focus on three things: innovative technologies, marketing applications, and IPOs — the three factors that make Facebook and Twitter so hot. But if that's the focus, it's surely misplaced. The German car site motor-talk.de

White Paper 10

White Paper IPO Media Film 10

Harvard Business Review

MAY 16, 2016

Strategic alignment, for us, means that all elements of a business — including the market strategy and the way the company itself is organized — are arranged in such a way as to best support the fulfillment of its long-term purpose. Superior technical innovation is at the heart of its strategy and its organizational design.

Banking 14

Banking Strategy Film Operations 14

Harvard Business Review

JULY 27, 2017

Gimmy’s task was clear but highly demanding: to reimagine the way BMW innovates. To fill the void and build such a new BMW startup unit, Gimmy partnered with an experienced innovation manager from BMW, Matthias Meyer. Gregor and BMW faced a crucial question: “How can the BMW Group, as a company, co-innovate with startups?”

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Meyer Innovation Fixed Costs 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 16, 2012

One of our most striking findings was that of the entrepreneurs we surveyed who had a successful exit (that is, an IPO or sale to another firm), about 70% did NOT start with a business plan. Many start-up plans emphasize some gigantic potential market and how getting just the smallest sliver of it will make them and investors rich.

Planning 21

Planning Mintzberg IPO Entrepreneur 21

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 16, 2014

Icahn later reduced his buyback request to $50 billion, and in April 2014 Apple’s board approved a $30 billion program to be carried out by repurchasing its shares on the open market — either by just buying shares outright or doing it indirectly via accelerated share repurchases. Apple is a company with phenomenal products and profits.

Safe Harbor 9

Safe Harbor Hedge EPS Price 9

Rajesh Setty

DECEMBER 4, 2008

We used agile method to build the product using the latest open source stack and some mashups with a few online services. The product will be platform-agnostic as we mentioned and we think that we will “ cross the chasm &# because of the viral nature of the application. You can say that we are sort of using cloud computing a bit.

Blue Ocean Strategy 30

Blue Ocean Strategy CPM Licensing Open-book 30

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 4, 2016

Even when startups have great products and customer interest, they struggle with long-term growth. To borrow an analogy from our Harvard Business School colleague Shikhar Ghosh, their firms aren’t murdered by the market; they commit suicide because the founders can’t or won’t adapt to the organizations’ changing needs.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Sample IPO Long-term 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 9, 2014

The most successful, visionary entrepreneurs dream not of millions of dollars, but of a world where their products change culture. It is incredibly hard to hold an IPO. Ultimately, high-risk venture capital investors need to be rewarded, ideally with high returns, for an ecosystem of innovation to be sustainable.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur Venture Capitalist Mezzanine Short-term 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 18, 2012

Ever thought air mattresses in living rooms would grow into a billion dollar company that would take on the vacation rental market and the hotel industry? Billion-dollar companies do not happen if the founding team is not extremely well suited to the market (now called " founder/market fit "). No 20,000 tech jobs. What gives?

Venture Capitalist 17

Venture Capitalist Software Entrepreneur Engineering 17

Harvard Business Review

JULY 18, 2012

Ever thought air mattresses in living rooms would grow into a billion dollar company that would take on the vacation rental market and the hotel industry? Billion-dollar companies do not happen if the founding team is not extremely well suited to the market (now called " founder/market fit "). No 20,000 tech jobs. What gives?

Venture Capitalist 17

Venture Capitalist Software Entrepreneur Engineering 17

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 27, 2014

But unlike most Japanese innovations, it did not come from a big established firm. The consummate loner, Harano would likely have stayed off our radar screen, except that one day his unpredictable behavior led to a fantastically successful product. In fact, the idea for the product itself came from a female secretary at Altus.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur Venture Capitalist Business Incubator IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 5, 2011

As Dick Morley — an MIT manufacturing innovator with deep experience in the auto industry — put it to us, "the trouble with big companies is that they take nice high-risk, high-return opportunities, then manage the risk out of them to the point that there's no return left." Certainly, that's a fair accusation.

Entrepreneur 15

Entrepreneur Innovation Intellectual Capital Mission Statement 15

Harvard Business Review

MAY 30, 2013

For that reason, the "Lean" mentality is one of the most powerful tools in the innovator''s arsenal — in startups and mature corporations alike. That has resulted in some misconceptions that can be counterproductive in the quest for innovation. In a good start-up, these characteristics are not hard to find.

Company 9

Company Ries Maturity Innovation 9

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 8, 2010

And unfortunately, it's also one of the most in need of radical institutional innovation. That's why the traditional understanding of everything from GDP to " jobs " to " profit " to " IPO " is limited. But prosperity is always going to accrue to those who innovate yesterday's rusting, creaking institutions.

GDP 16

GDP Hypercompetition IPO Information 16

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 21, 2014

One the most interesting challenges that 2014 is going to bring is the IPO of Alibaba in the United States. It makes its revenue and profits not on product sales but on advertising and premium services. Customers can only search for products inside the Alibaba website. China Disruptive innovation Strategy'

Business Model 9

Business Model Advertising Retail Disruptive Innovation 9

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 13, 2015

Warren Buffett has earned his nickname because he’s proven time and again that he has an eye for predicting how markets will change and which companies will succeed in the aftermath. When markets or technologies change, it often requires entire segments of the value network to be reimagined. What’s changed?

Software 8

Software Trends Mass Marketing Marketing 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 21, 2012

The Facebook IPO has ignited a predictable frenzy. Facebook, I think, has been smarter about this than many others; they began with niche markets and gradually expanded outward. I've written for a long time about the need for companies to create a complete "consumption chain" in order for their products or services to be successful.

Media 15

Media Advertising Niche Marketing Business Model 15

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 4, 2015

Innovation is widely regarded as important to long-term business performance. However, CEOs often don’t have the career background and education that would equip them to personally lead the process of new product development. For the rest, we found that other factors besides innovation drove strong shareholder returns.

CEO 8

CEO Innovation Pharmaceuticals Merchandising 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 1, 2015

For many consumer tech companies, this post-IPO pressure on financial returns is too high. Because they are innovative by nature, consumer tech companies need to invest heavily in research and development, which could be done if they had a portfolio of products at different stages of maturity, with some of them being established cash cows.

IPO 8

IPO Company Maturity Short-term 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 12, 2017

Digital players wield outsize market power. With products that rely on network effects, these players enjoy economies of scale and dominant market share. With products that rely on network effects, these players enjoy economies of scale and dominant market share. Digital markets are uneven.

Innovation 8

Innovation Policies Technology Politics 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 20, 2014

In this letter, I’d like to explain more fully why I view the $51 billion already spent by Apple on open market (including accelerated) share repurchases under your leadership as a major misallocation of resources for both the company and the U.S. Public shareholders, including Carl Icahn, do not invest in Apple’s productive capabilities.

Innovation 11

Innovation EPS Incentives Supply Chain 11

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 24, 2017

Then, via price dynamics determined by market supply and demand, the value is settled on by the network of participants, rather than by a central authority or government. As of March 2017, the market capitalization of the ether token was more than $4 billion.). Insight Center. Business in the Era of Blockchain.

Venture Capitalist 12

Venture Capitalist Due Diligence Finance Long-term 12

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 20, 2013

China leads all emerging markets with 89 companies on the latest Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest. To many skeptical consumers in developed markets, Brand China still means lower quality. Western brands also want access to China and recent global market turmoil has exposed many targets for astute Chinese brands.

Brand 8

Brand Globalization Company Development 8