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- November 2024
- Case
Demond Martin and WellWithAll
By: Hise Gibson, Archie L. Jones and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone
This case study chronicles the transformative entrepreneurial path of Demond Martin, co-founder and CEO of WellWithAll, a health and wellness startup. Motivated by a pivotal life experience and deep concern for racial health inequities, Martin transitions from a... View Details
Keywords: Customers; Diversity; Ethnicity; Race; Health; Recruitment; Leadership Style; Management Style; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Organizational Culture; Mission and Purpose; Relationships; Trust; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Investment; Business Startups; Transition; Entrepreneurship; Equality and Inequality; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Health Industry; United States; Chicago; Boston; Atlanta; North Carolina; District of Columbia
- November 2024
- Case
Fyffes International SA
By: David E. Bell, Damien McLoughlin and Tonia Labruyère
Helge Sparsoe, CEO of Fyffes since 2020, had taken the tropical produce importer and distributor back to a path of stable level of profitability since he joined in 2020. He was now thinking about next steps for the business, which mainly traded in bananas. He was... View Details
Keywords: Plant-Based Agribusiness; Change Management; Environmental Sustainability; Brands and Branding; Demand and Consumers; Supply Chain; Competition; Price; Value Creation; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Switzerland; United Kingdom; Republic of Ireland; Colombia; Guatemala; Costa Rica; Ecuador
- November 2024 (Revised January 2025)
- Case
Precision Agriculture at AGCO
By: Rajiv Lal, Alicia Dadlani and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone
In 2024, AGCO, a leading agricultural equipment manufacturer, sought to improve its customers net farm income by 20% over five years by becoming a comprehensive one-stop precision agriculture solutions provider and strengthening its dual channel sales approach—retrofit... View Details
- November 2024
- Supplement
AlphaGo (C): Birth of a New Intelligence
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
This case, the final of a three-part series, explores DeepMind's pivotal transition from mastering games to solving real-world scientific challenges. In December 2020, DeepMind's AI system AlphaFold 2 achieved a breakthrough by solving protein folding—a 50-year-old... View Details
Keywords: Autonomy; Deep Learning; Drug Discovery; Healthcare Innovation; Neural Networks; Scientific Research; Technology Startup; AI and Machine Learning; Technological Innovation; Research and Development; Business Model; Business Strategy; Open Source Distribution; Technology Industry; United States
- November 2024
- Case
Group AMANA: Built to Last
By: Hise Gibson and Fares Khrais
The case chronicles the Bsaibes brothers’ journey in founding and operating Group AMANA; a contracting business founded in 1993, based in the United Arab Emirates with operations across the Middle East. Over the years, the business found itself grappling with major... View Details
- November 2024 (Revised July 2025)
- Case
Polish Agro: Where Do We Grow from Here?
By: Willy C. Shih, Lena Duchene and Daniela Beyersdorfer
By July 2024, Polish Agro had grown into one of Poland’s fastest-growing agribusinesses, with €230 million in revenue, 82 employees, and operations across Northern Poland. The company supported farmers with essential agricultural inputs like fertilizers and seeds,... View Details
Keywords: Plant-Based Agribusiness; Distribution; Volatility; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Climate Change; Environmental Regulation; Profit; Trade; Digital Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Crisis Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Resource Allocation; Advertising; Brands and Branding; E-commerce; Business and Community Relations; Networks; Adaptation; Adoption; Competitive Advantage; Business Model; Health Pandemics; War; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Europe; Poland
- 2024
- Working Paper
Priceless: How to Create, Trade, and Protect What Matters Most
By: Debora L. Spar
This article explores the concept of the "sacred economy," a realm of human interactions and exchanges that transcends traditional market dynamics. It illustrates the emotional and relational aspects of human connections that cannot be quantified or traded like... View Details
- November 2024 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
Cheerful Music
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Feng Zhu and Nancy Hua Dai
Established by Snow Jiang in 2019 in Shenzhen, China, Cheerful Music was a record label company that had created many hit songs in China. “Yi Xiao Jiang Hu,” its most famous hit song, gained billions of views on social media platforms in China and overseas as the... View Details
- November 2024
- Teaching Note
Mercado Bitcoin: M&A, IPO, or Series B?
By: Raymond Kluender, Emanuele Colonnelli and Sabrina Howell
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 825-047. In April 2021, Brazilian cryptocurrency platform Mercado Bitcoin, had to decide how to scale: go public, M&A with a bank, or take a VC big check. In a highly volatile market, Roberto Dagnoni, chairman of the board, viewed the... View Details
Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Decision Making; Going Public; Ownership Stake; Strategic Planning; Venture Capital; Problems and Challenges; Business Cycles; Digital Platforms; Emerging Markets; Market Timing; Expansion; Diversification; Valuation; Value Creation; Investment Funds; Initial Public Offering; Price; Price Bubble; Negotiation Offer; Information Technology Industry; Financial Services Industry; Brazil; Latin America
- November 2024 (Revised May 2025)
- Case
Indonesia Education Reform: Merdeka Belajar ('Emancipated Learning')
By: John Jong-Hyun Kim, Adina Wong, Nancy Hua Dai and Mary C. Sauer
This case is set in 2024 in Indonesia, as Nadiem Makarim, Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, reflects on his tenure as Minister shortly before stepping down. With the ambition to lift Indonesia out of the middle-income gap by raising K12 to... View Details
- November 2024 (Revised January 2025)
- Case
Balancing Impact: Modeling the Future at British International Investment
By: Shawn Cole and Jonah Zahnd
In 2022, British International Investment (BII), the £8.1 billion development finance arm of the British government, implemented a new impact measurement system called the Impact Score to align its financial and impact objectives systematically. The tool was designed... View Details
- November 2024
- Case
Innovation at Master Kong Beverages
By: David E. Bell and Shu Lin
Hong-Chen Wei (HBS MBA 2014), Chairman of KSF Beverage Holding Co., Ltd. (KSFB), was steering the company toward the premium segment with the launch of “InheriTea,” a premium, sugar-free tea product. Traditionally, KSFB’s flagship brand, Master Kong, catered to the... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Hidden Risk
By: Daniel Barth, Phillip Monin, Emil Siriwardane and Adi Sunderam
Since 2013, large U.S. hedge fund advisers have been required to report risk exposures in their regulatory filings. Using these data, we first establish that managers’ perceptions of risk contain useful information that is not embedded in fund returns. Investor flows... View Details
- November 2024
- Case
Grand Seiko—The Sleeping Lion
By: Rohit Deshpandé, Nobuo Sato and Akiko Kanno
In 2024, Akio Naito, President of Seiko Watch Corporation, reflected on the global expansion of Grand Seiko, the company’s luxury watch brand. Originally created more than 60 years ago as the luxury model of Seiko watches in Japan, Grand Seiko struggled to... View Details
Keywords: Global Strategy; Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Luxury; Expansion; Japan; United States
- November 2024 (Revised December 2024)
- Case
Moonfare and the Democratization of Private Equity
By: Victoria Ivashina and Srimayi Mylavarapu
Founded in 2016, Moonfare headquartered in Europe, was a pioneer in the “democratization” of private equity investments. Historically, private equity was accessible only to institutional investors like pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, and large family... View Details
- November 2024 (Revised March 2025)
- Case
Tim Ferriss: What Might This Look like If It Were Easy?
By: Reza Satchu and Denise Koller
In April 2024, writer-podcaster Tim Ferriss—celebrated as the “Oprah of audio” for his billion-download show and known for NYT-bestsellers like The 4-Hour Workweek—found himself at a crossroads. Despite generating a multi-million-dollar annual revenue with just three... View Details
- November 2024
- Teaching Note
Martine Rothblatt and United Therapeutics: A Series of Implausible Dreams
By: Debora L. Spar and Julia M. Comeau
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 323-039. In 1990, satellite expert and Sirius XM founder Martine Rothblatt was determined to save the life of her seven-year-old daughter, Jenesis, who was diagnosed with a terminal illness called Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH). At... View Details
Keywords: Pharmaceutical Companies; Technological And Scientific Innovation; Organ Donation; Health Care and Treatment; Health Disorders; Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Development; Pharmaceutical Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; United States; District of Columbia
- November 2024
- Case
Ather Energy: The Future of Mobility
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Kannan Srinivasan and Malini Sen
Ather Energy, India’s third-largest electric scooter maker by volume, was founded in 2013. Five years later, the start-up launched its first electric scooter, Ather 450, which was powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), to navigate... View Details
Keywords: Energy Policy; Climate Change; Alternative Energy; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Transportation; Transformation; Green Technology; Technology Adoption; Communication Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Business Strategy; Segmentation; Asia; India
- 2024
- Working Paper
Categorical Processing in a Complex World
By: Marco Sammon, Thomas Graeber and Christopher Roth
In real-world news environments, quantitative information is rarely presented in isolation; it is characterized through qualitative comparisons with various reference levels. Company earnings, for example, are commonly compared to analyst forecasts, previous earnings,... View Details
- October 2024
- Teaching Plan
Teamworks: Tackling a Forecasting Fumble
By: Lou Shipley and Stacy Straaberg
In late March 2018, Teamworks CEO Zach Maurides learned Q1 2018 sales were at risk for a large forecasting miss. Founded in 2004, Teamworks’s software application assisted support staff in messaging, scheduling, and sharing documents with collegiate and professional... View Details
Keywords: Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Communication Strategy; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Business Cycles; Technological Innovation; Sports; Growth and Development Strategy; Resource Allocation; Marketing; Sales; Business Strategy; Expansion; Sports Industry; Technology Industry; United States; North Carolina