Originally published in The Harvard Gazette. An ambitious retrofit of a pre-1940s building on Harvard’s campus into a living laboratory and energy-positive prototype for ultra-efficiency has opened its doors. HouseZero is intended to address one of the biggest energy problems in the world today — inefficient existing buildings. Its design was driven by the goals […]
The world is. on. fire. The Earth is burning. We only have a little time to arrest climate change, and if we fail to do so the consequences will be both dire and irreversible. We have the technology and the resources to fix things, if we want to. We even have a business case. It’s […]
Climate change is one of the most important issues of our time for both society and business. Military planners have referred to climate change as a “threat multiplier.” Major news outlets are now referring to climate change as the “climate crisis.” Without rapid decarbonization, business-as-usual in many industries and geographies will become increasingly untenable. Just […]
Hopes are high in the private space sector that the rapidly falling costs of accessing space will yield a wide range of profitable activities. In the near term, Earth observation and telecommunications opportunities will capitalize on swarms of newly-launched small satellites. Farther out, space manufacturing at scale, resource mining, and even solar energy capture bring […]
This article originally appeared in Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. Investors riding the wave of technology public offerings have been waiting for a powerhouse debut from Airbnb, which logged its 500 millionth customer booking in March. After all, the home-sharing giant isn’t your typical unicorn. Unlike some of its Silicon Valley neighbors, Airbnb’s disruptive power […]
This podcast was originally published in Harvard Business Review. In this episode of HBR’s podcast After Hours, Professors Youngme Moon, Felix Oberholzer-Gee, and Mihir Desai debate Airbnb’s recent emphasis on superhosts (professional investors) and how well the company is managing growth amid backlash from cities like New York City. “There are these amazing network economics, it’s […]
This article was originally published in the Harvard Business Review. Marriott recently teamed up with Amazon to offer a hospitality version of the e-commerce giant’s Echo devices in select hotel rooms. Now, when guests want to order room service or housekeeping, they can simply ask Alexa, the voice of their disembodied personal concierge. Travelers with […]
This article originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review. We’ve included an excerpt here. Blockchain has important implications for marketing and advertising. But according to The CMO Survey, only 8% of firms rate the use of blockchain in marketing as moderately or very important. Blockchain technology is not well understood and subject to a lot of […]
I had been working in an industry that was being roiled by digital disruption. From the rapid rise of powerful online intermediaries and consumer platforms, to the massive consumer shift to online purchase behavior, to the plummeting costs of technology that had allowed insurgent startups to bypass entry barriers that incumbents had spent decades and […]
What’s the best description of an academic library? The iconic heart of the campus? A quiet, contemplation study space? A buzzing collaboration hive? A vibrant faculty water cooler? Literally miles of unique and rare materials? A virtual gateway to the world of information? A complex organizational knowledge hub? All of the above? Although its shape […]