The (Pro) Consumer Genome: The Rise of Customer Agents in the Personal Data Market

MBA Research Fellowship paper

Commerce – the activities related to the buying and selling of goods and services — relies on an effective exchange of personal data. In its simplest form, the seller solicits personal information from the buyer (what she likes, what she doesn’t, what she’s looking to spend) and the buyer responds with data that either helps or hurts the chances of transacting a deal. If the information swap is successful, a sale may result. And so the sharing of data greases the wheels of trade.Read More

Enter the Disrupters: How New Law Firm Rivals are Disrupting the Market for High-end Legal Services in the U.S.

MBA Research Fellowship paper

The U.S. legal industry, a nearly $300 billion industry and one of the most profitable in the world, is experiencing fundamental change that is accelerating the need for top law firms to innovate. Relatively flat market demand for the corporate legal services of top law firms has many firms focused on “stealing” market share from competitor law firms and trying to move further up market to preserve high profit margins.Read More

Mobile Consumer Health: The New Frontier of Technological Innovation

MBA Research Fellowship paper

Over the last five years, rapid innovations in mobile technology have resulted in the explosive adoption of smartphones and tablets (and applications built for them) that not only allow users to access an endless amount of information, but that can collect a wide variety of real-time user data, regardless of location. The implications of this within the health industry are vast.Read More

Acqui-Hires: Revolutionizing Strategy & Transforming Organizational Structures

MBA Research Fellowship paper

This paper explores the phenomenon of “acqui-hires”, defined as acquisitions of early-stage startups made purely to acquire talent. Acqui-hires are prevalent among Northern California’s high-technology companies, who use these to fill gaps in their strategic roadmaps. Taking the perspective of an acquirer, we examine the different ways acquirers approach acquir-hires relative to conventional acquisitions.Read More

Bringing MRI Scanners to the Brachytherapy Suite: A Study of Innovation in the Field of Radiation Oncology

MBA Research Fellowship paper

Radiation therapy has been used to treat human disease for more than 100 years. Currently, radiation therapy is a mainstay of cancer therapy, used to treat approximately 1 million patients per year in the United States. Radiation works by causing damage to cellular DNA. It is particularly useful in treating cancer because neoplastic cells, which lack many normal DNA repair capabilities, making them more susceptible to radiation-induced DNA damage than healthy cells.Read More

EBook Rentals – Implications for the Book business

MBA Research Fellowship paper

The market for EBooks has truly taken off, and at this point, a paid eBook rental service appears to be a natural extension of the technology. While there is the public library system with its small collection and limited number of copies, and certain websites providing rentals on a smaller scale, a full-fledged “all you can eat” eBook rental service is not being offered at this time.Read More