Publications
Publications
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(1,593)
- Faculty Publications (328)
- December 2018 (Revised February 2020)
- Case
Fishbowl: Scaling Up
By: Leslie K. John
Fishbowl is a social media app that allows professionals to connect with other relevant professionals both within their company and across industry. Unlike many other social media apps, on which users typically present idealized portraits of themselves, on Fishbowl,... View Details
Keywords: Communication Technologies; Customer Value; Value Chain; Interpersonal Communication; Talent and Talent Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Advertising; Product Marketing; Digital Platforms; Consumer Behavior; Network Effects; Emotions; Motivation and Incentives; Trust; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Social Media; Communications Industry; Employment Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; United States
- December 2018 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Husk Power: Scaling the Venture
In January 2018, Manoj Sinha—founder and CEO of Husk Power—was contemplating raising $20 million to scale operations for a second time. From 2007 through 2013, Husk built 80 biomass waste plants that provided electricity to 250,000 villagers and shop owners spread... View Details
- November 2018 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
ofo
By: Mitchell Weiss
Dai Wei and his co-founders grew Beijing-based ofo from a school-based startup to a bike-share behemoth in a matter of months, topped an all-out market-share battle fueled with almost $1 billion in venture capital, provided 2 billion bicycle rides, soaked up the... View Details
Keywords: Ofo; Bikeshare; Scale; Platforms; Government As A Platform; Platform Mechanics; Dai Wei; Dockless Bikes; Mobike; Bike-share; Online-to-offline; Mobility; Digital Platforms; Infrastructure; Transportation; Bicycle Transportation; Growth and Development Strategy; Bicycle Industry; China; Beijing
- November 2018
- Case
David Hysong and SHEPHERD Therapeutics
By: Ananth Raman, John Masko and Aldo Sesia
In 2016, David Hysong, at age 27, found out he had a rare, incurable cancer. Rather than wait around to die, Hysong, a recent graduate of Harvard Divinity School, decided to launch a biotechnology company called Shepherd Therapeutics to development treatments for his... View Details
- October 2018
- Case
Recipe for Success: Growth and Evolution at Cafe Cupcake
By: Anthony Mayo and Heather Beckham
Café Cupcake (CC) is a fast-casual restaurant chain that offers artisan cupcakes and light fare throughout the southeastern United States and Texas. This case chronicles the growth and evolution of Café Cupcake. It also considers the specific human resource challenges... View Details
- September 2018
- Teaching Note
City Year at 30: Toward Long-Term Impact
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen
This teaching note assists in the classroom instruction of the HBS No. 318-089, “City Year at 30: Toward Long-Term Impact.” It offers to instructors a case summary and analysis, along with student preparation questions and a guide for classroom discussion of the case.... View Details
Keywords: Scaling; Education Entrepreneurship; Education; Service Operations; Nonprofit Organizations; Growth and Development Strategy; Performance Efficiency; Resource Allocation; Change Management; Social Entrepreneurship; Middle School Education; Secondary Education; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Human Capital; Growth Management; Service Delivery; Organizational Design; Social Enterprise; Poverty; United States
- August 2018
- Teaching Note
IguanaFix
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Thomas Eisenmann
Teaching Note for HBS No. 817-056. IguanaFix, based in Argentina, is a platform business that connects consumers with home improvement contractors. The founders are evaluating growth options and an investment offer. The case focuses on scaling issues for a venture... View Details
- August 2018
- Case
BlackBuck (A)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
The case presents the challenges of scaling an asset-heavy company (that relies on its operations). It highlights how decisions on the early team impact a company’s ability to scale, linkage between growth and cash flows, as well the organizational impact of high... View Details
- August 2018
- Article
Growth Through Heterogeneous Innovations
By: Ufuk Akcigit and William R. Kerr
We build a tractable growth model where multi-product incumbents invest in internal innovations to improve their existing products, while new entrants and incumbents invest in external innovations to acquire new product lines. External and internal innovations generate... View Details
- July 2018
- Article
Reimagining Health Data Exchange: An Application Programming Interface-Enabled Roadmap for India
By: Satchit Balsari, Alexander Fortenko MD, MPH, Joaquin A. Blaya PhD, Adrian Gropper MD, Malavika Jayaram LLM, Rahul Matthan LLM, Ram Sahasranam, Mark Shankar MD, Suptendra N. Sarbadhikari PhD, Barbara Bierer, Kenneth D. Mandl MD, Sanjay Mehendale MD, MPH and Tarun Khanna
In February 2018, the Government of India announced a massive public health insurance scheme extending coverage to 500 million citizens, in effect making it the world’s largest insurance program. To meet this target, the government will rely on technology to... View Details
- June 2018
- Case
Candor at Clever
By: Ethan Bernstein and Om Lala
Clever, a high-growth EdTech company based in San Francisco, had grown quickly in market share and headcount. As with many high-growth companies, however, early employees (many of whom had never managed people before) had been given the opportunity to manage teams, and... View Details
Keywords: Performance Feedback; Talent Development And Retention; Talent Management; Feedback; Difficult Conversations; Radical Candor; Scaling Start-ups; Scaling And Growth; Developing Effective Managers; Effective Managers; First-time Managers; Kim Scott; Clever; Bay Area; Silicon Valley; Interpersonal Communication; Talent and Talent Management; Human Resources; Leadership Development; Management Practices and Processes; Management Skills; Management Style; Organizations; Organizational Culture; Performance Evaluation; Conflict and Resolution; Technology Industry; Education Industry; San Francisco; United States
- April 2018 (Revised May 2018)
- Case
Goldman Sachs: Making an Imprint in Impact Investing
By: Shawn Cole, Vikram S. Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Lynn Schenk
Goldman Sachs acquired Imprint Capital Advisors, a small firm that specialized in advising clients on environmental/social/governance (ESG) and impact investments. The founders sold Imprint with the belief that joining a global financial firm would help to scale impact... View Details
- March 2018 (Revised September 2019)
- Case
Chewy.com (A)
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Matthew G. Preble
In late 2013, Ryan Cohen, cofounder and CEO of online pet products retailer Chewy.com, faces a “bet the company decision”—whether to stay with a third-party logistics provider (3PL) for all of its e-commerce fulfillment or to take the function in house. Cohen worries... View Details
- March 2018
- Supplement
Chaudhary Group: Rebuilding Nepal (B)
By: Christopher J. Malloy, Lauren H. Cohen and Inakshi Sobti
Supplements the (A) case. Having successfully spearheaded relief work in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake, the Chaudhary Foundation envisions creating a more comprehensive and sustainable development model. They are keen to build a model village that integrates... View Details
Keywords: Leadership; Family Business; Decision Choices and Conditions; Developing Countries and Economies; Social Entrepreneurship; Values and Beliefs; Venture Capital; Microfinance; Geographic Location; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Management; Crisis Management; Management Teams; Resource Allocation; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Natural Disasters; Social and Collaborative Networks; Social Issues; Business Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Banking Industry; Auto Industry; Real Estate Industry; Travel Industry; Nepal
- March 2018
- Case
IBM: Watson and the Internet of Things
By: Rajiv Lal and Scott Johnson
IBM has recently launched a business unit devoted to the Internet of Things. The group's leadership team needs to figure out the best way to quickly scale its business in a fragmented and nascent market. View Details
- February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
OpenInvest
By: Shawn Cole, Boris Vallée and Nicole Tempest Keller
Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolios to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapons manufacturers stocks or overweighting... View Details
- January 2018
- Supplement
Scaling Swagbucks (B)
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Matthew G. Preble
“Swagbucks (B),” HBS No. 817123, picks up in mid-2014 following the events described in “Swagbucks (A),” HBS No 817122. Davis and Gorowitz were successful in their efforts to position the company for scale without negatively affecting the company’s foundational... View Details
Keywords: Loyalty Management; Scaling; Scale; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Design; Leading Change; Growth Management; Religion; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Transition; Leadership; Web Services Industry; Technology Industry
- January 2018 (Revised February 2025)
- Teaching Note
Collage.com: Scaling a Distributed Organization
By: Christopher Stanton and Shikhar Ghosh
Teaching Note for HBS No. 817-038. View Details
- 2018
- Working Paper
Zig-Zagging Your Way to Transformative Impact
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Tricia Gregg
Achieving transformative impact has been much discussed by social entrepreneurs, funders, and consultants. These discussions have focused on issues of increasing impact and scale, but often with no clear distinction between the two terms. In order to provide clarity,... View Details
- January 2018
- Article
Big Data and Big Cities: The Promises and Limitations of Improved Measures of Urban Life
By: Edward L. Glaeser, Scott Duke Kominers, Michael Luca and Nikhil Naik
New, "big" data sources allow measurement of city characteristics and outcome variables at higher frequencies and finer geographic scales than ever before. However, big data will not solve large urban social science questions on its own. Big data has the most value for... View Details