Publications
Publications
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(8,923)
- Faculty Publications (4,174)
- June 2022
- Case
The SAH Group: The Time is Right
By: Juan Alcacer and Alpana Thapar
In January 2021, Jalila Mezni, cofounder and CEO of the SAH Group, was preparing to present the company’s future growth plans to its board of directors. The Tunisian company was a leading producer and distributor of personal care and packaged hygiene products. In 2019,... View Details
- June 2022
- Teaching Note
Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 721-419. On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised November 2023)
- Case
Platinum Capital
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
How should a venture capital firm divide compensation and decision rights between its founders and its next-generation partners? Platinum Capital faced this decision in July 2020. Platinum’s younger partners had just requested a piece of the firm’s highly lucrative... View Details
- May 2022
- Supplement
Maestro Pizza (B): The Competition Awakens
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Fares Khrais
Maestro pizza opened its first store in 2013 after its founder, Khalid Al Omran, recognized an opportunity in Saudi Arabia to offer high quality pizza at affordable prices. The business grew rapidly and under the radar at first, but soon enough caught the attention of... View Details
Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Competition; Market Entry and Exit; Emerging Markets; Business Startups; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Product Positioning; Disruption; Disruptive Innovation; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Social Media; Forecasting and Prediction; Crisis Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Product Development; Production; Service Delivery; Business Growth and Maturation; Financial Statements; Cost Management; Analysis; Quality; Performance Consistency; Customer Satisfaction; Profit; Family Ownership; Food and Beverage Industry; Saudi Arabia; Middle East
- May 2022
- Supplement
Maestro Pizza (C): Taking the Fight Outside
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Fares Khrais
Maestro pizza opened its first store in 2013 after its founder, Khalid Al Omran, recognized an opportunity in Saudi Arabia to offer high quality pizza at affordable prices. The business grew rapidly and under the radar at first, but soon enough caught the attention of... View Details
Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Competition; Market Entry and Exit; Emerging Markets; Business Startups; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Product Positioning; Disruption; Disruptive Innovation; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Social Media; Forecasting and Prediction; Crisis Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Product Development; Production; Service Delivery; Business Growth and Maturation; Financial Statements; Cost Management; Analysis; Quality; Performance Consistency; Customer Satisfaction; Profit; Family Ownership; Food and Beverage Industry; Middle East; Saudi Arabia
- May 2022
- Case
Maestro Pizza: Coming in Hot!
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Fares Khrais
Maestro Pizza opened its first store in 2013 after its founder, Khalid Al Omran, recognized an opportunity in Saudi Arabia to offer high quality pizza at affordable prices. The business grew rapidly and under the radar at first, but soon enough caught the attention of... View Details
Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Competition; Market Entry and Exit; Emerging Markets; Business Startups; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Product Positioning; Disruption; Disruptive Innovation; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Social Media; Forecasting and Prediction; Crisis Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Product Development; Production; Service Delivery; Business Growth and Maturation; Financial Statements; Cost Management; Analysis; Quality; Performance Consistency; Customer Satisfaction; Profit; Family Ownership; Food and Beverage Industry; Middle East; Saudi Arabia
- May 2022
- Case
Rawbank's Illico Cash: Can 'Fast Money' Overcome Cash Dependency in the DRC?
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
Thomas de Dreux-Brézé, the Head of Strategy and Project Management at Rawbank Congo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was perplexed as he reviewed annual adoption rates for the bank’s launch of Illico Cash 2.0. As the bank’s mobile money app, Illico Cash... View Details
Keywords: Fintech; Inflation; Deflation; Rural; Urban; Emerging Market; Mobile Technology; Finance; Money; Inflation and Deflation; Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Demographics; Developing Countries and Economies; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Behavioral Finance; Currency; Banks and Banking; Commercial Banking; Financial Strategy; Rural Scope; Urban Scope; Innovation Strategy; Emerging Markets; Network Effects; Consumer Behavior; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Technology Adoption; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Congo, Democratic Republic of the
- May 2022 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
Founder Collective
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
Founder Collective ("FC") launched in 2009 with a clear mission: to be the most aligned fund for founders at the seed stage. In keeping with its mission, FC maintained smaller fund sizes and was not a lifecycle investor. By November of 2021, the seed market had become... View Details
- May 2022
- Case
From GOP to NFT: Anthony Scaramucci and the Launch of Flatter NFT
By: Lauren Cohen, Richard Ryffel and Grace Headinger
Anthony Scaramucci, Managing Director of SkyBridge Capital, considered whether he should officially greenlight the launch of SkyBridge’s own NFT platform — Flatter NFT. He had led the investment firm to push first into Bitcoin and then Ethereum to make SkyBridge a... View Details
Keywords: Business Startup; Fintech; Technology; Cryptocurrency; Web3; Business Startups; Volatility; Decision Making; Entertainment; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Strategic Planning; Adoption; Competitive Advantage; Technology Adoption; Finance; Currency; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; New York (city, NY)
- May 2022
- Case
What to Propose?
By: David G. Fubini
Two audit and financial services firms, one of which your consulting firm has supported extensively, have merged to create one of the largest audit firms in the world. The audit firm's Executive Team has requested proposals aimed at re-evaluating their internal... View Details
- May 2022
- Case
TikTok and National Security: Investment in an Age of Data Sovereignty?
By: Jeremy Friedman, Sarah Bauerle Danzman and David Lane
This case covers TikTok’s purchase of Musical.ly and the reaction of the United States government, including the review of the purchase by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and the reaction of the presidential administration of Donald... View Details
- 2022
- Chapter
Lessons Learned from Support to Business during COVID-19
By: Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Benjamin Iverson and Adi Sunderam
The authors survey the new federal subsidies and loans provided to businesses in the first year of the pandemic—including the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, and aid targeted at specific industries such as airlines... View Details
- April 2022
- Case
Pear Venture Capital
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
Keith Bender, Principal at Pear Venture Capital, is working over the weekend to prepare for a Monday morning investment meeting. He has three startup pitch decks in front of him, and he must choose one to recommend at the meeting. He finds that each company has its... View Details
- April 2022
- Teaching Note
CVS Health: Prescription for Transformation
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Catarina Martinez
In 2021, new CEO Karen Lynch (named the most powerful woman in business) considered the next transformation phase for CVS Health (a Fortune 5 corporate giant). The 2018 acquisition of Aetna insurance brought her to the company as part of its long evolution from a... View Details
Keywords: Health; COVID-19 Pandemic; Primary Care; Leadership; Change Management; Women Executives; Retail; Pharmacy; Pharmacy Benefit Manager; Clinical Trials; Vaccination; Acquisition; Innovation and Invention; Transformation; Retail Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Health Industry; United States
- April 2022
- Supplement
PG&E and the First Climate Change Bankruptcy
By: Stuart C. Gilson
- April 2022 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Mastercard Labs (A) (Abridged)
When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, he shifted the company’s competitive focus from card networks to cash itself. Mastercard’s new vision of a “World Beyond Cash” distilled into a three-pronged framework: Grow the core business, Diversify... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Culture; Organizational Culture; Culture Change; Organizational Adaptation; Organizational Effectiveness; Alignment; Leadership; Leadership Development; Innovation; Innovation Ecosystems; Diversity; Collaboration; Co-creation; Learning Organizations; Empowerment; Ecosystem; Agility; Prototype; Experiment; Partnerships; Operating Model; Risk Management; Metrics; Payments; Financial Inclusion; Financial Industry; Ambidexterity; Corporate Innovation; Innovation Lab; Accelerator; Start-up; Intrapreneurship; Competitive Strategy; Business Model; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Transformation
- March 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Swvl: Smart Mobility for the Masses
By: Krishna Palepu, Esel Çekin and Menna Hassan
The case focuses on strategy and governance issues at Swvl, a tech-enabled mass mobility marketplace. It describes the journey of CEO and Chairman Mostafa Kandil on his journey from founding the company to its listing on Nasdaq. Since its founding in Egypt in 2017,... View Details
- March 2022 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Reclaiming the Land of Purple: Purpl’s Mission to Unlock Finance in Lebanon
By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
Karl Naim, Co-Founder and CEO of Purpl, embarked on a venture to lower remittance costs for his native Lebanon. Since October 2019, the Lebanese economy had entered a free fall as its banking sector collapsed and large swathes of its population were plunged into... View Details
Keywords: Business Startup; Fintech; Inflation; Deflation; Cross-border Frictions; Remittances; Business Startups; Diasporas; Financial Crisis; Money; Entrepreneurship; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Poverty; Financial Institutions; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Lebanon
- March 2022
- Case
The Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program: 2009-2021
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Julia Kelley
In December 2021, more than a decade after its founding, Goldman Sachs’s 10,000 Small Businesses program was still going strong — and the firm now needed to evaluate potential program modifications to reach a wider group of small business owners. Launched in the... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Small Business; Business Education; Curriculum and Courses; Government and Politics; Knowledge; Knowledge Dissemination; Labor; Employment; Human Capital; Management; Goals and Objectives; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Programs; Networks; Social Enterprise; Society; Strategy; Demographics; Diversity; Financial Services Industry; North and Central America; United States; New York (city, NY); New York (state, US)
- March 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Clara Wu Tsai and Brooklyn Loan Innovation
Philanthropist Clara Wu Tsai is committed to racial equity and investing in Brooklyn-based minority business owners. In the wake of the George Floyd murder, she decides to create a new initiative called the Social Justice Fund and commit an initial $50 million over 10... View Details