Publications

February 2010 (Revised January 2014)
Case

Tennant Company

By: Toby E. Stuart, Lynda M. Applegate and James Weber

Tennant, a leading producer of floor cleaning equipment, must determine how to create, finance, structure, staff, govern, measure, and manage a new venture for developing a fundamentally new product line. In 2005, Tennant Company had developed an innovative,... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Change Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Disruptive Innovation; Product Development; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Research and Development

March 2022 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Emeritus: Achieving Impact, Providing Access (A)

By: Ashish Nanda and Zack Kurtovich

In June 2019, Emeritus cofounders Ashwin Damera (HBS MBA 2005) and Chaitanya Kalipatnapu were thrilled with the rapid growth of Emeritus. Damera and Kalipatnapu believed that Emeritus, established in July 2015 to offer online executive education, was only in the early... View Details

Keywords: Education Technology; Professional Service Firm; Startup; Digital Strategy; Global Business; Global Firm; Platform Business; Business Startups; Growth and Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Executive Education; Strategy; Education Industry; India

April 2018 (Revised July 2018)
Case

Maersk: Betting on Blockchain

By: Rajiv Lal and Scott Johnson

In March 2018, international shipping giant Maersk is getting ready to debut a trade digitization platform. Maersk hopes the platform will help streamline global trade since shipping goods internationally is an extraordinarily complicated and inefficient process.... View Details

Keywords: Maersk; IBM; Blockchain; Shipping; Shipping Line; Trade; Bitcoin; Digitization; Container Shipping; Joint Ventures; Ship Transportation; Transportation Networks; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Technology Adoption; Applications and Software; Technology Industry; Technology Industry

Career Coach

Lauren Weston

Lauren enjoys helping students navigate career paths in investment banking, venture capital/growth equity, and impact investing. In the six years prior to HBS, she worked in a number of roles across capital markets, equity research, View Details

January 2015 (Revised May 2018)
Case

$19B 4 txt app WhatsApp...omg!

By: David Collis, Ashley Hartman and Aakash Mehta

In February 2014, Facebook announced the acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion. WhatsApp, founded in 2009, was a relatively young company that employed only 50 people and earned merely $10 million in revenue in 2013. It was one of many mobile messaging services that... View Details

June 2010 (Revised August 2011)
Case

Tennant Company: Innovating Within and Beyond the Core

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Toby E. Stuart and James Weber

Tennant, a leading producer of floor cleaning equipment, must determine the business model to use for its new chemical-free cleaning technology. In 2005, Tennant Company had developed an innovative, environmentally friendly cleaning technology that could potentially... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Disruptive Innovation; Organizational Structure; Business Strategy; Value Creation; Consumer Products Industry; Industrial Products Industry

October 2023 (Revised November 2023)
Case

Recycle & Re-Match: The Future of Soccer Turfs

By: George Serafeim, Lena Duchene and Carlota Moniz

By August 2023, Re-Match, an artificial turf waste-to-value company, had operations in Denmark and the Netherlands and had recycled over 160,000 tons of waste and plastic fiber. With recent capital injection from the VC firm Verdane and a dual revenue business model,... View Details

07 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

XTV: Xerox’s Attempted Recovery From “Fumbling the Future”

product line within Xerox. He had the support of Xerox's chief executive officer, David Kearns, for establishing the new internal structure. This structure would work much like an internal venture capital firm. Xerox would exploit Adams's... View Details

Keywords: by Henry Chesbrough

25 Apr 2014
Video

Girish Nadkarni - Making A Difference

13 Jun 2017
Blog Post

Benefits of the MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences Program

Bussgang, and Karen Mills; and gleaned leadership lessons on a daily basis from the cases and curriculum. Given Damjan’s combined interest in technology ventures and leadership, and his background and work... View Details

2011
Other Unpublished Work

From Farms to Fuel Tanks: Collective Actors and New-Venture Innovation in the U.S. Biodiesel Fuel Sector

By: Shon R. Hiatt

Little is known about the influence of collective actors on innovative technological recombinations by new ventures. Using data from U.S. biodiesel producers, I examine how the efforts of multiple collective actors (farm associations) to promote varying types of... View Details

Keywords: Alliances; Agribusiness; Energy Sources; Innovation and Invention; Green Technology Industry; Green Technology Industry; Green Technology Industry; United States

2003
Case

Analog Devices, Inc.: Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS)

By: Vijay Govindarajan, Chris Trimble and Julie Lang

In the late 1980s, Analog Devices, Inc., a semiconductor company, developed a technology known as Microelectromagnetic Machines, or MEMS. The technology allows tiny moving parts to be embedded within traditional silicon chips. The potential applications are widespread.... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Commercialization; Semiconductor Industry

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Research Summary

Overview

Start Up Strategy and Management

Bussgang’s research focuses on applying Lean Startup principles to early-stage technology companies as well as the challenges and opportunities when scaling startups. His work led to the creation of the MBA elective course... View Details

Research Summary

Overview

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang

Start Up Strategy and Management
Bussgang’s research focuses on applying Lean Startup principles to early-stage technology companies as well as the challenges and opportunities when scaling startups. His work led to the creation of the MBA elective... View Details

14 Aug 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Are ‘Better’ Ideas More Likely to Succeed? An Empirical Analysis of Startup Evaluation

Keywords: by Pian Shu; Financial Services

December 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Camber Creek & Measurabl Inc.

By: Marco Di Maggio and Lauren G. Pickle

In late 2017, Camber Creek, a real estate technology focused venture capital firm, had to evaluate a potential investment in Measurabl Inc. which provides real estate companies of all sized with a full SaaS solution for sustainability data. View Details

Keywords: Real Estate; Venture Capital; Investment; Decision Making; Applications and Software; Environmental Sustainability

July 2019 (Revised November 2019)
Case

Osaro: Picking the Best Path

By: William R. Kerr, James Palano and Bastiane Huang

The founder of Osaro saw the potential of deep reinforcement learning to allow robots to be applied to new applications. Osaro targeted warehousing, already a dynamic industry for robotics and automation, for its initial product—a system which would allow robotic arms... View Details

November 2023
Article

Open Source Software and Global Entrepreneurship

By: Nataliya Langburd Wright, Frank Nagle and Shane Greenstein

This is the first study to consider the relationship between open source software (OSS) and entrepreneurship around the globe. This study measures whether country-level participation on the GitHub OSS platform affects the founding of innovative ventures, and where it... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Applications and Software; Business Ventures; Development Economics; Innovation and Invention; Global Range

SSRN

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September 1985 (Revised January 1986)
Case

Peter Wendell

By: William A. Sahlman

Contains a description of a decision confronting an employee of IBM in late 1981. Should he leave IBM to become head of a new venture capital fund which will specialize in technology investments? The case is designed to expose students to the nature of the opportunity... View Details

Keywords: Personal Development and Career; Jobs and Positions; Opportunities; Valuation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Resignation and Termination; Venture Capital; Financial Services Industry; Computer Industry