Digital Winners and Losers

February 11, 2020

Read The Full Prompt

Digital technologies are upending many industries and companies. Think about Uber’s impact on the taxi business or Amazon’s impact on retail stores.

For this assignment, we would like you to identify companies/organizations that you think are winning or losing. Just work on either winners or losers. Please focus on just one organization. Tell us why they are a winner or loser. Discuss elements of how they create and/or capture value that is leading you to call them a winner or loser.

Create an approximately 750-word post to make your contribution on digit.hbs.org by 6pm on Feb 11. Please create appropriate tags for your post including if it is a “winner” or “loser.” Please also respond to and comment on three other posts. Feel free to use graphics, data, videos and links to other sites to corroborate your points.

Selected posts will be discussed in class.

Submitted (79)

Wealthsimple – A Winner in Investment Management
Russell
Last modified on February 11, 2020 at 5:57 pm
Why Wealthsimple has taken the Canadian investment management industry by storm
Polaroid: Commitment Issues Led to a Breakup with the Camera Industry
HK
Posted on February 10, 2020 at 7:31 pm
It wasn’t too long ago when the only way to instantly see your pictures was with a Polaroid camera. Unfortunately, once digital photography was introduced, Polaroid was too fixated on their existing revenue streams to pivot to the wave of [...]
HBS: Potential to win at teaching digital by harnessing digital teaching
tf
Posted on February 11, 2020 at 5:55 pm
The Harvard Business School’s stated mission is “to educate leaders who make a difference in the world.” It is hard to imagine how world leaders of the future will make a difference without effectively and ethically harnessing digital tools, whether [...]
Betterment: Winning in the wealth management space
Ashima_Singh
Posted on February 11, 2020 at 4:15 pm
Betterment: Winning in the wealth management space
Highsnobiety: Writing the Digital Fashion Content Playbook, from the Street to the Runway
hbs51369394
Last modified on February 10, 2020 at 9:48 pm
From personal passion blog to street style and digital media authority, Highsnobiety created a one stop shop for 18-24 year old affluent, style-seeking males and built a B2B brand services business to show everyone else how to do it.
KRY – Disruptive Digital Healthcare WINNING in the Swedish Welfare Economy
Eve
Last modified on February 11, 2020 at 5:33 pm
Digital healthcare company KRY has offered a potential solution to one of the most prominent growing challenges and politically relevant topics in the Swedish welfare economy: provision of equitable and high-quality healthcare provision.
Touch Surgery: The Uberization of Surgical Education
Partha Ray
Last modified on February 11, 2020 at 5:51 pm
Touch Surgery has been #winning the medical education game through its groundbreaking platform, which has expanded globally to offer step by step instructions for over 300 surgical procedures spanning 17 specialties. The platform has over 2 million users and has [...]
Intuit: Embracing the “Innovator’s Dilemma”
Reinaldo Fioravanti
Last modified on March 24, 2020 at 9:52 am
Intuit is a digital winner as it found a way to fully embrace the innovator's dilemma, and has been successful in anticipating disruptions in its industry and organically responding to them.
Bloomberg: Four victorious decades
ssingayapally
Last modified on February 10, 2020 at 11:09 pm
Founded in 1981, the Bloomberg LP revolutionized the financial services sector through technology. Nearly 40 years later, its flagship product, the Terminal, continues to dominate trading desks even as it faces a number of competitors trying to take on the [...]
Omada Health: A winning digital solution in chronic disease management
lumos
Last modified on February 9, 2020 at 5:35 pm
Omada’s digital behavioral health solution is a winning formula combining smart devices, personalized coaching, and innovative integration into existing healthcare structures to offer an outcomes-based model that improves health and lower costs.
Procore – managing the construction management space
Nicholas Dimitruk
Posted on February 11, 2020 at 12:58 am
Procore is looking to harness the digital disruption happening in construction by being the glue that holds it all together
NAVER Webtoon: Winning through Content Crowdsourcing
vertigo
Last modified on February 9, 2020 at 5:02 pm
NAVER Webtoon is a platform that led the revolutionary transition of Comics medium from print to digital in South Korea. It leveraged a crowdsourcing mechanism to develop quality content and creators.
Daojia.com—delivered service to home
Haoran
Last modified on February 10, 2020 at 9:30 pm
Daojia (https://bj.daojia.com/) is a platform linking consumers and service providers directly. It provides different kinds of services, including massage, manicure, baby care, housekeeping and house maintenance. I view Daojia as a winner in digital area because it benefits millions of [...]
Convoy – The Future of Freight
James Eckfeldt
Last modified on February 11, 2020 at 3:56 pm
The "Uber for freight" entered the market in 2015 to disrupt an old, massive and highly fragmented industry that had not seen much change since e-mail was created. How have they gone about this transformation?
SWEAT – The Rise of Kayla Itsines’ Fitness Empire
Jane Doe
Posted on February 20, 2020 at 6:02 pm
The SWEAT App, created by fitness influencer Kayla Itsines, emerges a winner in the fitness industry’s digital revolution.
Ghost kitchen attacks 7-eleven’s food business
H&M
Last modified on February 11, 2020 at 5:44 pm
Seeing potential in Japanese food delivery market, Uber Eats, Door Dash and several other platformers are entering Japan. This competition has just begun and it is difficult to predict who will win, but since it seems that food delivery business [...]
Commonwealth Bank achieves digital primacy in the Australian banking market
Brian Westlake
Last modified on March 11, 2020 at 9:04 am
Commonwealth Bank has Australia's (and maybe the World's) best banking app
Samsara and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
Jared V.
Last modified on February 11, 2020 at 6:02 pm
The shift to “Industry 4.0” presents a unique opportunity for startups to emerge and win. One of the early winners in this race so far is Samsara, which provides its customers with end-to-end solutions across a variety of industries, giving [...]
China Literature: Winner in Content Creation
PZ
Last modified on February 10, 2020 at 6:15 pm
Company Overview China Literature is the leader in the online literature market in China. It is an online platform that connects writers and readers. As of June 30, 2019, China Literature had approximately 8 million writers, 12 million online literary [...]
Introducing a digital winner Wattpad! “A place where stories live and discovered”.
Viria Vichit-Vadakan
Last modified on February 11, 2020 at 5:50 pm
Wattpad! "A place where stories live and discovered”. A new destination for writers.
EverlyWell: A digital health platform for user-driven lab testing
Matt B
Last modified on February 11, 2020 at 5:22 pm
In healthcare, digital disruption often occurs via strategic business model innovation as opposed to radical technological transformation. EverlyWell is winning in the lab testing space using exactly that approach.
Uber vs. Taxi
Carla SanchezArmas
Posted on March 31, 2020 at 9:21 pm
Previous to entrance of Uber in public transportation market (in 2009) the service provided by taxis, in general, was very deficient and expensive. Uber’s entrance broke the monopoly that taxi drivers had in each city, particularly in airports. Uber’s unique [...]
FedEx: Navigating disruption storms with no clear skies ahead
Leonardo Hugo Lujan
Posted on February 11, 2020 at 1:24 am
FedEx is facing the threat of two of the most severe digital disruptors: Amazon and Uber. As e-commerce operations gain more relevance in supply chain distribution networks, the tech giant is aggressively increasing the vertical integration of its distribution network. [...]
AWS: Cloudy With a Chance of World Domination
Jon Snow
Posted on February 11, 2020 at 6:07 pm
AWS led the cloud revolution, now they continue to dominate the landscape through rapid innovation and a top-notch services ecosystem.
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