Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

Associate Professor
Marvin Bower Fellow

Unit	Strategy
Contact	Work (617) 495-6099 Send E-Mail
Interests	corporate governance, economic sociology, networks, power and influence, strategy, more >

Overview

Biography

Publications & Course Materials

Current Research

Areas of Interest

Mikołaj Jan Piskorski, who often goes by Misiek, is an Associate Professor of Business Administration and Marvin Bower Fellow in the Strategy Unit at the Harvard Business School. Professor Piskorski received his B.A and M.A. (Cantab) from University of Cambridge where he read Economics and Politics at Christ's College. Subsequently, he received A.M. in Sociology and Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University. After completing his Ph.D. Professor Piskorski became a faculty member in the Organizational Behavior area at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. In 2004, he returned to Harvard to teach the Required Curriculum Strategy course in the MBA Program. He is now teaching his own Elective Curriculum class: Competing With Social Networks. In addition, Professor Piskorski teaches in Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage, Strategic Agility and Media Strategies Executive Education programs as well as in a number of external programs. Professor Piskorski is also Managing Director at Market Platform Dynamics where he consults extensively to large corporations in the financial services industry.

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Featured Work

Understanding Users of Online Social Networks

If the ongoing social networking revolution has you scratching your head and asking, "Why do people spend time on this?" and "How can my company benefit from the social network revolution?" you've got a lot in common with Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski.

Only difference: Piskorski has spent years studying users of online social networks (SN) and has developed surprising findings about the needs that they fulfill, how men and women use these services differently, and how Twitter—the newest kid on the block—is sharply different from forerunners such as Facebook and MySpace. He has also applied many of the insights to help companies develop strategies for leveraging these various online entities for profit.

Networks as Covers: Evidence from an On-line Social Network
Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

This paper proposes that networks can act as covers which allow actors to participate in markets while maintaining a plausible excuse that they are not. Such covers are most valuable to actors in long-term relationships, as those who are already employed or in a long-term romantic relationship should not be seen as participating in the market for a new relationship. Data in support of this view are provided on the basis of fieldwork and large dataset from a social on-line network with a global presence. Results show that men in relationships and with large on-line networks are more like to look at women they do not know. In contrast, single men with large networks are more likely to look at women they do know. Implications for network theories as they pertain to organizations are explored.

Where are the 70 million MySpace users?

Both traditional and social media have declared MySpace dead. Even a brief scan of articles reveals that media mavens "don't know anybody who uses MySpace anymore," which reportedly is not a huge loss as the site "is ridden by spammers" and "its atrocious HTML, bLiNgY graphics, and horrific backgrounds" are offensive. Many of you reading this post probably do not know anyone who uses the site either.

Yet MySpace is the 11th most visited site in the world, with unique 60 to 70 million U.S. visitors every month. Even though the site is not growing, it is a far cry from "dead" if you ask me. So, how is it possible for so many millions of people to use MySpace and for no-one to know anyone who does? One possibility is that those who opine on the state of social media don't use MySpace and neither do their friends. After all, MySpace users are younger and reportedly less well-off than average news makers. Another possibility is that MySpace users are geographically segregated from those who proclaim which sites are "in", which could explain how the twain shall never meet.

Facebook's Platforms
Thomas Eisenmann, Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, Brian Feinstein, David Chen, Harvard Business Publishing, Mar 18, 2008

In early 2009, Facebook was the largest global on-line social network, with 175 million members. However, it generated relatively little revenue from its advertising programs. The case asks students to consider two options of improving the top line. First, the company could deepen its commitment to advertising, particularly by using profile data to better target ads. Second, the company could help other businesses develop new on-line applications that used Facebook Connect- a second-generation platform released in late 2008. Connect allowed members to use their Facebook credentials to log onto third-party websites and bring their on-line social network with them, which can then be used to power social functionalities on these websites. For example, CNN used Connect to help people find their friends' comments, while the Starbucks community volunteer program used Connect to "spread the word." In the future, Connect could, for example, help friends coordinate their travel plans on Expedia. If Expedia could charge for such services, or use Connect to reduce its customer acquisition costs, Facebook could conceivably appropriate some of the value.

Faculty and Research