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In early May 2011, Daphne Zohar, founder and managing partner of PureTech Ventures, a life science venture creation company in Boston, MA, was reviewing a term sheet she had just received from a venture capital (VC) firm for one of PureTech's portfolio companies. The term sheet was due to expire in a week, but through negotiations of term sheet items, PureTech could probably leave the discussions with the venture firm open for another month. PureTech had a unique position in the life sciences ecosystem. It aimed to tackle important medical needs by translating scientific innovations into commercially viable technologies, and in order to do that optimally, was structured as an operating company that created start-ups rather than a typical venture fund that simply invested in them. The VC term sheet Zohar was considering outlined a Series A funding round for one of PureTech's newly created companies. Meanwhile, Zohar's team was also in discussions with several large pharmaceutical companies that were interested in partnering or even acquiring the company. These discussions were progressing nicely but would not lead to a transaction by the due date set by the VC term sheet (or an additional month from then). The current situation presented her with a unique challenge. Should PureTech accept the "bird in hand" VC term sheet or turn it down and wait for the negotiations with the pharmaceutical companies to play out? The latter route offered the potential for a desirable, near-term partnership, but risked that the negotiations would fall through, in which case PureTech would end up losing both time and the opportunity for near-term external validation of its portfolio company.

AppDirect is a start-up that offers small businesses software-as-a-service solutions through a business app marketplace and portal. Daniel Saks, cofounder and co-CEO, is faced with the key question of deciding distribution strategy: should AppDirect find channel partners or create a self-branded platform? The case describes the evolving business app market by analyzing the strategies and business models of competitors for both the marketplace and portal products. The marketplace offers small businesses search, trial, and purchase of software-as-a-service apps for a wide range of business needs, from customer management to human resources, while the portal service gives businesses the ability to manage all their apps in one place, from user management to single sign-on. The case encourages discussion on the evolution and future direction of this nascent market.

During the past five to 10 years, several different intermediation business models have emerged for the intellectual property (IP) market. This note describes the most prominent ones: nonpracticing entities (or patent trolls), defensive patent aggregators, online IP platforms, live IP auctions, and IP exchanges.

Gazelle has pioneered a reCommerce intermediation model: it buys used electronics from consumers and resells them on eBay or to wholesalers. Going forward, its two main strategic challenges are: 1) deciding how much to rely on partnerships with large retailers for growth; 2) deciding whether to continue as a "merchant," i.e., buying and reselling goods (and thereby taking inventory risk), or to transform itself into a "two-sided platform" connecting sellers and buyers without taking inventory risk.

This short case presents the epilogue of The Auction for Travelport (A). Blackstone decided to bid on its own, acquired Travelport for $4.3 billion and subsequently went on to acquire another GDS, Travelspan, for $1.4 billion. It then merged the two GDSs and partially spun off in an IPO its online travel businesses, re-named Orbitz Worldwide; it retained the GDS and wholesale travel businesses. By the end of that year (2006), Blackstone had generated cost savings of $270 million. In 2007 Blackstone also undertook a major capital market transaction with Travelport, issuing a new $1.1 billion Senior Unsecured PIK Term Loan, which allowed Blackstone to take back all of its equity in the transaction. Subsequently, during the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, Blackstone and Travelport repurchased the majority of the $1.1bn PIK loan and other debt in the open market at prices ranging from 18% to 57% of par value, generating a $610 million gain.

A senior Blackstone director is deciding how aggressively to bid for Travelport, a travel distribution business containing several key services and platforms. Travelport's most important properties were Galileo, one of the top 3 global distribution systems (GDSs), CheapTickets and Orbitz, two online travel agencies. Blackstone was competing in an auction against several other large private equity firms with multi•billion dollar investment funds. The auction was about to enter its final round of bidding, with bids having reached $4 billion in the prior round. The Blackstone director (Schorr) and his team have to make three key judgments regarding Travelport. First, they need to develop a point of view on the structural attractiveness of the travel GDS industry. Secondly, they need to decide whether Travelport was a good business to own and identify the key sources of its value. The Travelport business is composed of many different sub•businesses that play in different parts of the travel value chain and some of these sub•businesses are more strategic than others. Thirdly, like most leveraged buyouts, Travelport will need to support a significant amount of debt as a result of the transaction. Chip and his team need to make a judgment on the stability of Travelport's businesses and its ability to generate consistent, predictable cash flows to service its debt obligations.

Provides a brief overview of the standards battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray, focusing on the events which precipitated the Blu-ray victory in early 2008.

Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated, smiled as he reflected on the success of Qualcomm's code division multiple access (CDMA) technology. By the summer of 2009, CDMA was the basis for all third generation technologies available for cellular transmissions. However, while Qualcomm seemed poised for growth, Jacobs wondered how successful the company's contributions to new generation technologies would be and if they should aggressively develop their new service offerings into profitable business units.

Intellectual Ventures creates and acquires intellectual property, which it then seeks to monetize through non-exclusive licensing. In early 2009, as an increasing number of companies were trying to position themselves as leading intermediaries in the market for intellectual property, IV was looking for the best business model to become such a leading intermediary. Its model was predicated on making it easy for small inventors to monetize their inventions and IP (by selling it to IV) and then using its scale and aggregate IP portfolio to extract revenues from potential licensees (usually technology companies).

Multisided platforms can lower your transaction costs and increase customer reach. But powerful MSPs like Microsoft, Google, and Apple have also tended to extract most of the value from their platforms, mainly because companies that played with them didn't adequately understand their motives and operating strategies. As a result, firms can easily find themselves ceding control over customers to MSPs or being unwittingly turned into commodities. Hagiu and Yoffie, both professors at Harvard Business School, explore how MSPs can use their power to "hold up" companies that join them. The authors offer guidelines to help managers create an effective strategy for dealing with MSPs, identifying three basic issues that managers must address: (1) Whether to play with existing MSPs, build their own platform, or do both; (2) once they've concluded that at least one third-party MSP can benefit their business, deciding how many to join; and (3) figuring out how to play - that is, which features or services they should adopt and which they should reject in order to maintain their company's competitive advantage. Some companies that lack the power to influence an MSP's actions may have few options. But many firms - either on their own or in alliances - can make choices that will differentiate them from competitors and curb MSPs' power over their businesses.

After years of gaming console industry leadership, how should Sony respond to the overwhelming success of competitor Nintendo's user-friendly Wii over Sony's high-tech PlayStation 3? It was August 2008 and Kazuo Hirai, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI), was contemplating questions from reporters about how Sony planned to respond to Nintendo's Wii console, which was dramatically leading Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 consoles in sales. The Wii's supremacy was especially disconcerting to Hirai, given that Sony had dominated the videogame industry and largely defined its course since 1995. But the tables had turned dramatically in the current generation. Though the Wii was technologically much less advanced than were PS3 and Xbox 360, the Wii's ease of use, innovative motion-sensitive controller, and simple but fun games had made the console a hit with all demographics: nine to 65 years old, male and female. As a result, Nintendo had stolen a march on its two larger rivals by appealing to people who were traditionally not avid videogame users. Microsoft's and Sony's more powerful machines remained targeted at the traditional "core gamer" audience: 18-to-65-year-old males. Hirai was determined to restore that supremacy in the current generation or the next. He knew that whether or not he publicly defined SCEI's strategy as a response to Wii, he had to find a way for his company to deal with the new order of the videogame industry that Nintendo had created. In seeking to do so, Hirai might find guidance in the history of the industry, which had been marked by rapid and frequent changes of fortune.

Paul Maritz took the helm of VMware in July 2008, just as the company confronted a radically new competitive environment. Since its founding in 1998, VMware had been the leading provider of virtualization software. Now it faced the kind of threat that every software company dreaded most: Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, was taking direct aim at its core market. As of June 2008, buyers of Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 operating system received a free, bundled version of Hyper-V, an advanced virtualization platform product. Looming over the impending competition between these two companies was the story of the "browser wars," in which Microsoft overwhelmed browser maker Netscape Communications by bundling the Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system. Did a similar fate await VMware? Maritz moved quickly and boldly to respond to the Microsoft threat--by deciding to offer a version of VMware's own virtualization platform product for free. But he still had to determine whether VMware's overall strategy was the right one. The case offers an overview of virtualization technology, a brief history of VMware, including descriptions of its acquisition by computer storage giant EMC, its August 2007 IPO, and Maritz's arrival as CEO; a summary of its product lines; a discussion of the ecosystem in which the company operates; and a survey of key competitors, including not only Microsoft, but also Citrix Systems and other providers that use the Xen virtualization platform. Finally, the case offers a description and analysis of several strategic options available to VMware.

Ocean Tomo's management team sought to turn the company into the leading intermediary for intellectual property. Despite its increasingly important role in the global marketplace, IP remained a notoriously illiquid asset--difficult to value, harder to trade, and often underutilized by owners. CEO Jim Malackowski and his colleagues hoped to capitalize on this inefficiency by designing and operating innovative marketplaces for intellectual property. After a successful live IP auction in the spring of 2008 (62% of 85 offered lots were sold for a total of $19.6 million), Ocean Tomo had to decide which of its five business lines to emphasize. Indeed, from its inception, Ocean Tomo had been designed as a "one-stop shop" for IP services, with five inter-related lines of business. Which of these services provided the largest market opportunity for Ocean Tomo? How should the company allocate its scarce resources (it had not sought outside funding yet) in order to get the most leverage going forward?

In 2008, the Japanese consumer payments landscape featured ongoing widespread use of cash, limited use of credit cards and rapid rise of e-money systems based on contactless technology embedded in cards and especially mobile phones. The case details the alliances that created new products, as well as the regulations that sometimes stood in the way. Throughout, the case identifies incentives for both consumers and merchants, including direct costs, efficiency benefits, rebates, and treatment in case of loss or fraud.

In 2008, the US consumer payments landscape was characterized by the ongoing prevalence of credit and debit card networks, the decline of checks, the rise of stored value cards, and the growth of new payment methods such as PayPal, Bill Me Later and decoupled debit. This case presents the structure of these payment methods, focusing on incentives for both consumers and merchants, including direct costs, efficiency benefits, rebates, and treatment in case of loss or fraud.

In 2007, PCCW had to formulate a strategy for growth of its successful NOW TV platform and its quadruple play implementation outside of Hong Kong. Launched in September 2003 by PCCW (Hong Kong's largest telecommunications operator), NOW TV had swiftly become the world's most successful commercial IPTV deployment. By the end of June 2007, the service had an installed subscriber base of almost 820,000 and offered a choice of 143 TV channels, 71 of which were exclusive. However, opportunities for growth were inherently limited to Hong Kong (7 million inhabitants), which meant PCCW had to find ways to expand its NOW platform or seek to license parts of it internationally.

Minoru Mori is the CEO of Mori Building, which has built Roppongi Hills, an ambitious large-scale, mixed-use development in Tokyo, Japan that includes high-end retail, restaurants, hotel, office, library, and art museum. A destination site for tourists and local people, the performance of the development was strong, with the exception of the art museum, which posted losses. Also, the branding efforts by Mori was at odds with other tenants and he needed to manage "the town". Last, another competing development was in the works just blocks away and Mori needed to determine how to address this new competitor.

Companies looking to launch a two-sided platform--between, for example, credit card users and merchants or search engine users and advertisers--must overcome the reluctance of one side to sign on until it's confident the other side will be well populated. It's a common business quandary, but Google and Charles Schwab both found a way around it.

PlaNet Finance was a French NGO providing technical support and training services to microfinance institutions (i.e., institutions providing financial services to the poor) and other microfinance actors, rating of microfinance institutions and management, and advisory services to microfinance investors and investment funds. Furthermore, it was creating a network of microfinance banks through a microfinance holding company. However, in a context of rapid change and explosive growth of the microfinance sector, Jacques Attali, the founder and president, wondered whether PlaNet Finance's scope was sufficiently broad to fulfill its mission or, on the contrary, whether it needed to be narrowed in order to eliminate organizational challenges and external perceptions of conflicts of interest.

Firms that aspire to develop two-sided platforms face a formidable challenge. Prospective users on each side will not invest in the platform until they are confident there will be enough users on the other side. Traditional strategies for dealing with this dilemma--subsidizing users or securing their exclusive affiliation--are costly and risky. Describes less costly staged strategies for building two-sided platforms. With the "vendor to two-sided platform" strategy, a firm starts as a vendor selling products or services to customers on just one side of a potential--but not yet existing--two-sided network. Once the first side is firmly established, it proves easier to attract users to the network's other side during stage two. With the "merchant to two-sided platform" strategy, a firm starts as a merchant buying goods from many different suppliers and reselling them, in the process absorbing all the risk of platform failure. In stage two, the firm shifts risk and control back to some or all of its suppliers, giving them more responsibility for managing inventory, pricing, and merchandising their wares. Presents examples and offers guidelines for when to use each strategy.