Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,265)
- Faculty Publications (1,222)
- 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 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Project Maji: Pricing Water in Sub-Saharan Africa
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Esel Çekin
In July 2021, Sunil Lalvani, founder and CEO of Project Maji, a non-profit social enterprise headquartered in Dubai that had already provided sustainable, clean water solutions to 80,000 people living in rural communities across Ghana and Kenya, was facing an important... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised September 2022)
- Case
SmartOne: Building an AI Data Business
By: Karim R. Lakhani, Pippa Armerding, Gamze Yucaoglu and Fares Khrais
The case opens in August 2021, as Habib and Shahysta Hassim, husband and wife co-founders of the data labeling company SmartOne, contemplate the strategy of the high growth company. Between 2016 and 2021, SmartOne had kept doubling its size every two years and now,... View Details
- September 2021 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
On the Bubble: Startup Bootstrapping
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Tom Quinn and Annelena Lobb
Bubble was a software company in the low-code/no-code market, making tools that allowed users without traditional programming backgrounds or technical skills to build software. The case covers cofounder Joshua Haas’s engineering background, as he experienced a high... View Details
Keywords: Business Startups; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Business Plan; Disruption; Transformation; Trends; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Relationship Management; Cost vs Benefits; Decisions; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Equity; Executive Compensation; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Job Interviews; Growth and Development Strategy; Ownership Stake; Opportunities; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; New York (city, NY); California; France
- September 2021 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Bühler: Mobilizing Industry around a Common Purpose
By: Ranjay Gulati, Franz Wohlgezogen and Malini Sen
Bühler Group, a Swiss multinational processing technology provider, started by selling machines for processing grains and later transitioned into selling food processing solutions. A family-owned business in the fifth generation, Bühler’s high-end milling, grinding,... View Details
- September 2021 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
Mission edX: Balancing Social Good and Financial Sustainability
By: John J-H Kim, David J. Collis and James Barnett
In March 2021, online education platform edX considers how to achieve financial sustainability without compromising its mission to provide universal access to high-quality education. View Details
- August 2021
- Case
Yummy: Delivering Value to Venezuela
By: Ayelet Israeli, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Carla Larangeira
By June 2021, Yummy had become Venezuela’s first and largest food delivery app and last-mile logistics company. In Caracas, the nation’s capital, Yummy held a 55% market share, while operations in other cities had already started to take place, including in three of... View Details
- August 2021
- Case
Livongo: Scaling a Purpose-Driven Organization in Healthcare
By: Ranjay Gulati, Aseem Shukla and Reva Nohria
When seasoned entrepreneur Glen Tullman founded the chronic health care startup Livongo in 2014, it was personal. His son lived with diabetes, and Tullman knew firsthand how taxing it could be to manage such an unrelenting disease. Livongo set out to empower people... View Details
- August 2021
- Case
Mylestone: Can Multiple Pivots Preserve the Life of a Death Tech Startup?
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Marilyn Morgan Westner
Dave Balter and Jim Myers co-founded Mylestone, a death tech startup that applied technology to transform how grieving people memorialize the dead. The startup addressed a cultural problem and promised to solve a pressing need in the antiquated, multi-billion dollar... View Details
- August 2021 (Revised February 2022)
- Case
Lexoo: Building a Long-Lasting Platform (Abridged)
By: Chiara Farronato and Elena Corsi
Lexoo, a UK-based online marketplace for legal services, was facing the strategic choice of how to grow from early start-up to mature platform. Daniel van Binsbergen, Lexoo's CEO, and web developer Chris O'Sullivan, CTO, had set up Lexoo to help Small and Medium-Sized... View Details
- August 2021
- Case
Andreessen Horowitz’s Cultural Leadership Fund (A)
By: Anita Elberse, Briana Richardson and Cydni Williams
In May 2020, Chris Lyons, a partner at leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz receives the news that his company has reached a verbal agreement with one of Silicon Valley’s hottest social-media startups to lead its ‘Series A’ funding round, in a deal that... View Details
- August 2021
- Case
Apax Digital
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
The Apax Digital team faced important decisions as they contemplated raising a second fund. Apax Digital Fund I was a $1.1 billion vehicle focused on mid-market growth equity and growth buyouts in the technology sector. The fund had performed well, and the Managing... View Details
- July 2021
- Case
A Close Shave at Squire
In 2020, just after closing a $34 million Series B financing round, Dave Salvant and Songe LaRon consider how to adjust their business, Squire Technologies, to the new realities posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their barbershop technology, including tools to run a shop... View Details
- July 2021 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Fynd
By: Ranjay Gulati, Kairavi Dey and Rachna Tahilyani
Fynd is a fast-growing venture that in 7 years since its founding has become India's largest omnichannel retail company with real-time access to over 9,000 stores' offline inventory. It started as a B2B business supporting retailers who didn’t have an online business,... View Details
- July 2021
- Teaching Note
Digital Transformation 2.0: CEO Elie Girard at Atos
By: Tsedal Neeley
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 421-024. Elie Girard has taken the helm as CEO of multinational IT giant Atos to lead the company into the next era of digital transformation. Noticing that customers’ digital needs were evolving to become even more specialized and global... View Details
- July–August 2021
- Article
Lowering the Bar? External Conditions, Opportunity Costs, and High-Tech Startup Outcomes
By: Annamaria Conti and Maria P. Roche
We assess the heterogeneous impact of economic downturns on individuals’ decisions to bring high-technology ideas to the market in the form of new ventures. We thereby examine how worsening labor market conditions influence individuals’ opportunity costs of starting... View Details
- Summer 2021
- Article
Platform Leadership and Supply Chains: Intel, Centrino, and the Restructuring of Wi-Fi Supply
By: Roberto Fontana and Shane Greenstein
In this paper we examine Intel’s launch of Centrino and interpret it as platform leaders attempt to restructure a supply chain. We provide a narrative of key actions and how they coordinated changes and offer a framework of the predictable consequences for... View Details
- June 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Supplement
CFM International (B): LEAPing Into the Future
By: Ranjay Gulati, Yves Doz and Kerry Herman
By 2017, after a long and highly successful run, the joint venture CFM’s and its parent firms’ leadership faces new challenges and must once again reconsider their commitment to the JV. CFM’s engines have come to dominate the narrow body aircraft market, but technology... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Studying the U.S.-Based Portfolio Companies of U.S. Impact Investors
By: M. Diane Burton, Gurveen Chadha, Shawn A. Cole, Abhishek Dev, Christina Jarymowycz, Leslie Jeng, Laura Kelley, Josh Lerner, Jaime R. Diaz Palacios, Yue (Cynthia) Xu and T. Robert Zochowski
Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the reliance on market-based solutions to social and environmental problems around the world (Barman 2016; Horvath and Powell 2020). The growth of impact investing is a vivid example of this trend and, although there have... View Details
- May 2021
- Case
Inclusive Innovation at Mass General Brigham
By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman and Olivia Hull
Massachusetts General Brigham (MGB) Chief Innovation Officer Christopher Coburn had overseen a period of exciting transformation and growth in healthcare innovation at MGB. In November 2019, the health system was the largest recipient of National Institutes of Health... View Details
Keywords: Inclusion; Innovation; Invention; Gender; Business Startups; Investment Funds; Private Equity; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Intellectual Property; Copyright; Patents; Research; Research and Development; Diversification; Technology; Health Industry; Massachusetts; Boston