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- February 2022 (Revised July 2022)
- Supplement
InstaDeep: AI Innovation Born in Africa (B)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Esel Çekin
Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim were the co-founders of InstaDeep, a deep tech startup focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. Instadeep was one of the few companies globally that were partnering with DeepMind, an AI subsidiary of Google [Alphabet Inc.].... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
The Transformation of Self Employment
By: Innessa Colaiacovo, Margaret Dalton, Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr
Over the past half-century, while self-employment has consistently accounted for around one in ten of the United States workforce, its composition has changed. Since 1970, industries with high startup capital requirements have declined from 53% of self-employment to... View Details
- 2022
- Book
Corporate Explorer: How Corporations Beat Startups at the Innovation Game
By: Andrew Binns, Charles A. O'Reilly III and Michael Tushman
Innovation used to be seen as a game best left to entrepreneurs, but now a new breed of corporate managers is flipping this logic on its head. These Corporate Explorers have the insight, resilience, and discipline to overcome the obstacles and build new ventures from... View Details
- 25 Jan 2022
- Interview
How Footwear Startup Allbirds Is Decarbonizing Fashion
- January 2022
- Supplement
Somatus: Value-Based Kidney Care (B)
By: Ariel D. Stern, Robert S. Huckman and Sarah Mehta
Set in early 2020, this (B) case provides an update to the (A) case (no. 622-009) and provides additional context regarding the challenges facing Somatus. View Details
- January 2022
- Case
Tomorrow.io Goes to Space
By: Joshua Lev Krieger, Abhishek Nagaraj and James Barnett
This case study explores the evolution of Tomorrow.io, a weather forecasting technology company, as it pivoted toward building and launching space-based weather radar satellites. This strategic shift was driven by the company's ambition to overcome data limitations in... View Details
- January 2022 (Revised November 2023)
- Supplement
Uber in China (C): The Cost of Success for Didi
By: William C. Kirby and Noah B. Truwit
On June 30, 2021, ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing (Didi) raised $4.4 billion in its initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the largest IPO of a Chinese company listed on an American exchange since Alibaba raised $25 billion in 2014.... View Details
- January 2022 (Revised September 2023)
- Case
Simplifyy
By: Paul A. Gompers and Alicia Dadlani
Jake Lisby, co-founder and CEO of Simplifyy, a property technology startup in Kansas City, Missouri, was both exhausted and exhilarated by the flurry of activity surrounding the pivot of the business model in late 2021. Simplifyy, a venture-backed PropTech company, was... View Details
- January 2022
- Case
Dating Ring
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Lindsay N. Hyde
In 2015, the co-founders of Dating Ring, an online dating startup that relied on human matchmakers to arrange dates between its members, were deciding whether to either shut down the service or instead manage Dating Ring as a "lifestyle company," ramping down growth... View Details
- January 2022
- Case
Somatus: Value-Based Kidney Care (A)
By: Ariel D. Stern, Robert S. Huckman and Sarah Mehta
When Dr. Ikenna Okezie founded Somatus, a value-based kidney care provider, his goal had been nothing short of transforming kidney care delivery in the United States. Rather than relying on dialysis, a costly and intensive treatment for late-stage kidney disease, the... View Details
- December 2021 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Katerra (A)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
In April 2020, Katerra executives struggled with a series of decisions that would determine the fate of one of the best-funded construction startups in history. Katerra was founded in 2015 by technology-industry executive Michael Marks and commercial real estate... View Details
- December 2021 (Revised January 2023)
- Supplement
Katerra (B)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
In May 2020, SoftBank executives, having invested nearly $2 billion in Katerra, decided the vision of an end-to-end, vertically-integrated construction process was worth saving—with some major changes to company structure. The SoftBank Vision Fund invested $200 million... View Details
- December 2021 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Troverie (A)
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Lindsay N. Hyde and Olivia Graham
Six months after the August 2018 launch of Troverie, a U.S.-based online retailer of luxury watches, the average cost of acquiring a customer is much higher than originally projected, and the startup is incurring a substantial loss on each sales transaction. Could... View Details
- December 2021
- Supplement
Troverie (B)
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Lindsay N. Hyde and Olivia Graham
Resolves the questions raised in Troverie (A); recounts pivots and efforts to raise capital from strategic investors and sell Troverie; and shares the founder's post-mortem reflections on what went wrong and what he might have done differently. View Details
- 30 Nov 2021
- Interview
TikTok: Super App or Supernova?
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Brian Kenny
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around the simple idea of helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. By May 2020, TikTok operated in 155 countries and had roughly 1 billion monthly active users, placing... View Details
- November 2021
- Case
Steve Schwarzman on Dealmaking I: “Becoming a ‘Friend of the Situation’” (A)
By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green
Blackstone Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman, whom Forbes has called “Wall Street’s Greatest Dealmaker,” played a major role in the negotiations that transformed Blackstone from a fragile startup in 1985 with $400,000 in capital into a dominant... View Details
- November 2021
- Case
Steve Schwarzman on Dealmaking II: When They Hold All the Cards (A)
By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green
Blackstone Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman, whom Forbes has called “Wall Street’s Greatest Dealmaker,” played a major role in the negotiations that transformed Blackstone from a fragile startup in 1985 with $400,000 in capital into a dominant... View Details
- November 2021 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
AppHarvest: Rebuilding the Appalachian Economy Through Agriculture
By: Joshua Lev Krieger, William R. Kerr and Christian Godwin
In 2021, AppHarvest completed construction of a 60-acre indoor farming facility, one of the world’s largest, recorded its first sales, and went public in a multi-billion dollar IPO. Described as “a force of nature,” Jonathan Webb founded the company to bring jobs back... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised January 2022)
- Case
Chia Network: Reimagining Programmable Money
By: William A. Sahlman and George Gonzalez
Chia Network developed a novel blockchain platform that was more eco-friendly, decentralized, and scalable than Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other blockchains. Now, company leadership must decide how to scale the startup and prioritize various partnerships, use cases, and... View Details
- October 2021
- Case
Unshrinking the Pie: Desirée Stolar's Negotiation Saga (A)
By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green
When Desirée (“Des”) Stolar’s wool sweater shrank two sizes, the Harvard Business School student worked with classmates to develop a solution that both fixed her problem and launched Unshrinkit, a successful consumer goods company with a widely-available product for... View Details