Platforms and Networks

Sam Clemens is co-founder and Chief Product Officer of InsightSquared, a Boston-based startup. Sam has been a frequent guest instructor in the Product Management 101 elective at Harvard Business School. My students and I have learned a lot about product...

This guest post from my Harvard Business School student, MBA candidate Jenny Jao, describes a learning-by-doing project she completed for academic credit this semester. Jenny helped produce a podcast and hosted an episode.
I hijacked Tom’s blog to share with you a cool side project I worked on this semester....

What I’ve said that turned out to be right will be considered obvious, and what was wrong will be humorous.
—Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, 1995
In 2001, I wrote a book explaining why accelerated growth strategies created value for some Internet companies and destroyed value for others. The book, Speed Trap, was poised for publication as I came up for promotion that year at Harvard Business School...

Originally published at HBR.org.
Coverage of Google’s restructuring has focused on the idea of Alphabet as a new kind of internet-era conglomerate. Optimists compare the new entity to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway; skeptics point out that the conglomerate model seldom works....