Publications

10 Jan 2023
Op-Ed

Time to Move On? Career Advice for Entrepreneurs Preparing for the Next Stage

partner to be your listening guide as you talk them through; be sure to encourage them just to listen and be curious about insights versus helping you try to solve things. The prompts below are very career-centric, geared towards startup... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

01 Feb 2022
Book

Innovation Isn’t Just for Startups: How Big Companies Can Succeed

What if more managers at big corporations channeled some of the same magic that helped Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos lead their startups to great success? Large companies are actually... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

06 Feb 2020
Research & Ideas

What We Learned from Reading Jeff Bezos’ Patents

From an early age, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had a passion for inventing. In The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, journalist Brad Stone wrote that even as a child, “Bezos had dreams of becoming an inventor like Thomas... View Details

Keywords: by Tricia Gregg and Boris Groysberg; Retail

22 Nov 2016
First Look

November 22, 2016

Care Thaddeus Fulford-Jones and Eric Weiss, founders of healthcare technology startup Radial Analytics, have been busy developing a software program designed to save hospitals money and improve patient... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

12 Aug 2019
Research & Ideas

How Scale Changes a Manager's Responsibilities

I've experienced first-hand the excitement and pain that come as companies with a few founders scale to hundreds or thousands of employees. At somewhere around 75 to 100 employees, running a business becomes more complicated, demanding... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

May 2019 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Mobike and ofo: Dancing with Titans (A)

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Haibo Zhao

This case address pacing issues – how fast does a company need to scale? It also examines the role of investors in determining company strategy and exit.
Mobike and ofo were two dominant players in China’s emerging dockless bike-sharing market, that allowed users... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Venture Capital; Financing and Loans; Competition; Value Creation; Governance; Economics; Business Startups; Strategy; Business Exit or Shutdown; Entrepreneurship; Infrastructure; Transportation; Bicycle Transportation; China

21 Jun 2022
HBS Case

Free Isn’t Always Better: How Slack Holds Its Own Against Microsoft Teams

who are accustomed to team messaging. “It’s early in the game,” Yoffie says. “We’re in the second or third inning. There’s plenty of time to develop the competition and for new outcomes to emerge.” Microsoft plays catch up to Slack Canadian entrepreneur and Flickr... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Information Technology; Technology

August 2011 (Revised October 2011)
Case

PureTech Ventures in 2011

By: Andrei Hagiu, Cesar Castro and Sarah Murphy

In early May 2011, Daphne Zohar, founder and managing partner of PureTech Ventures, a life science venture creation company in Boston, MA, was reviewing a term sheet she had just received from a venture capital (VC) firm for one of PureTech's portfolio companies. The... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Investment; Innovation and Invention; Negotiation; Partners and Partnerships; Science-Based Business; Opportunities; Boston

18 Feb 2019
Book

What’s Really Disrupting Business? It’s Not Technology

following the steps a customer takes to select, buy, and consume a product or service. You call these situations “decoupling.” Could you give an example? Teixeira: A great example of decoupling is an insurance startup called Trov. It’s an... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Beauty & Cosmetics; Insurance; Service; Retail

February 2009 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Shanghai Diligence Law Firm (A)

By: Robert G. Eccles and Catherine Zhang

Shanghai Diligence Law Firm, started in January 2006, is a rapidly growing law firm in China's burgeoning legal services market. In addition to the usual challenges facing all professional service firms (picking and retaining talent and building a desired client... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Compensation and Benefits; Retention; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Operations; Motivation and Incentives; Legal Services Industry; China

11 Feb 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

10 Rules Entrepreneurs Need to Know Before Adopting AI

software engineers and UX designers. AI can be magical, but sales still win. Fred Wilson, venture capitalist and popular blogger, holds the view that “marketing is for companies who have sucky products.” Similarly, many AI founders... View Details

Keywords: by Rocio Wu

13 Jun 2011
HBS Case

Mobile Banking for the Unbanked

we need.” The Harvard Business School case study Mobile Banking for the Unbanked explores two very different examples of mobile financial service models: WIZZIT, a third-party startup that teamed with a major bank to provide standard... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Banking; Communications; Telecommunications

13 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

Why Your Company Wants to be a 'Cognitive Referent' (Hint: SpaceX)

When Rory M. McDonald was working on his PhD at Stanford University in 2007, it was the heyday of the lean startup in Silicon Valley. “It seemed like pretty much every week there was some new market category being touted as the next big... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Aerospace; Food & Beverage; Retail

05 Sep 2019
Sharpening Your Skills

Making the Right Technical Hire

If I had a nickel for every time I get an email or text asking if I know any full stack developers for hire, I could cover the cost of my next trip to San Francisco. I’m also struck by the number of founders who say they’re raising more... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin; Technology

30 Jun 2021
In Practice

The Harvard Business School Faculty Summer Reader 2021

a Terrorist, a deeply powerful memoir by Patrisse Cullors, the founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. Cullors shares her incredible journey from childhood to adulthood as a Black queer woman in LA. It is an emotional, yet insightful... View Details

Keywords: by Kathryn Haviland

22 May 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

A Luxury Industry Veteran Teaches the Importance of Aesthetics to Budding Business Leaders

former MTV VJ) Sian-Pierre Regis, founder of the online publication Swagger and a frequent pop culture contributor to CNN Headline News and Men’s Journal; Michelle Goldman, a partner at the venture capital firm Ignition Partners, who sits... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Beauty & Cosmetics; Apparel & Accessories; Auto; Tourism

2011
Book

Detour: My Unexpected, Amazing, Life Changing Journey With OnStar

By: Chet Huber

Detour is the story behind the launch of OnStar’s now well known blue button, as told through the eyes of its founder and CEO of over fourteen years, Chet Huber. It’s a personal narrative that describes the events that led up to General Motors’ unexpected choice... View Details

Keywords: General Motors; OnStar; Technological Innovation; Business Startups; Transportation; Safety; Personal Development and Career; Creativity; Success; Business History; Auto Industry

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