Publications

January 2015 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Nasty Gals Do It Better

By: David Collis, Diane Chang, Matthew Shaffer and Ashley Hartman

In 2006, Sophia Amoruso started Nasty Gal, an eBay boutique selling vintage clothes. With a strong sense of style and personality, Amoruso poured herself into building the brand and developing relationships with her customers—typically the slightly edgy 18–24 year old.... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth; Brand Management; Online Retail; Clothing; Apparel; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Management; Marketing Strategy; Strategic Planning; Social Media; E-commerce; Digital Marketing; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States

Article

Experiments in Open Innovation at Harvard Medical School

By: Eva C. Guinan, Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani

Harvard Medical School seems an unlikely organization to open up its innovation process. By most measures, the more than 20,000 faculty, research staff and graduate students affiliated with Harvard Medical School are already world class and at the top of the medical... View Details

Keywords: Health Disorders; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Boston

Find at Harvard

23 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 23, 2019

expression of corporate purpose and guide for decision-making for most publicly owned firms in the United States (and the United Kingdom). I argue that narrowing the compatibility gap between capitalism and justice and reversing declining... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

October 2012 (Revised October 2013)
Case

Rock Health

By: Robert F. Higgins and Ian McKown Cornell

Rock Health was a San Francisco–based nonprofit organization offering accelerator services to spur innovation at the intersection of healthcare and technology. The company was the creation of Halle Tecco (HBS '11) and her HBS classmate Nate Gross (HBS '11), who met... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Incubation; Healthcare Technology; Startups; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Management; Health Care and Treatment; Business Startups; Health Industry; San Francisco; California; United States

18 Mar 2014
First Look

First Look: March 18

and Fortune 500 executives. The bet-by providing "no-strings-attached" help to ecosystem partners, the partners might someday reciprocate by steering founders seeking funding to a16z. The case closes by asking whether a16z... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

10 Jan 2023
Op-Ed

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

lowlights What are 1-2 highlights from your experience? This could be a memory of your first big product launch, closing a hard funding round or even just that night that all hell broke loose and you fixed a hairy bug at 2 a.m. What made... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

24 Feb 2016
Research & Ideas

Why It's Best to Take Tests Early in the Day

The research provides food for thought as policymakers debate the efficacy and fairness of education initiatives like No Child Left Behind, the 2001 United States Act of Congress requiring federally funded... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

01 Jan 2012
News

E. Roe Stamps IV, MBA 1974

Summit reins to five of their partners in 2001. “From the very beginning, we knew that we wanted to build the kind of firm that could succeed without us,” says Stamps, whose low-key, friendly manner belies—or perhaps accounts for—his remarkable success. While Summit’s... View Details

November 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Rebuilding Puerto Rico

By: Laura Alfaro, Laura Phillips Sawyer and Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason

On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria swept over Puerto Rico, devastating the island’s infrastructure and agriculture. The natural disaster was layered atop years of mounting financial distress. Before the hurricane, Puerto Rico had accumulated $74 billion in debt and... View Details

Keywords: Natural Disasters; Financial Crisis; Infrastructure; Borrowing and Debt; Economy; Strategic Planning; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Puerto Rico

January 2015 (Revised March 2017)
Case

New Urban Mechanics

By: Mitchell Weiss

Funding to scale Citizens Connect, Boston's 311 app, is both a blessing and a burden and tests two public entrepreneurs. In 2012, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts provides Boston's Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics with a grant to scale Citizens Connect across the... View Details

January 2014 (Revised May 2015)
Case

Open English

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Lisa Mazzanti

Open English, a Miami-based startup offering online English language learning services, had more than 30,000 active students across Latin America in 2012. The company had just closed a $43 million financing round in order to rapidly scale its service to the next level.... View Details

Keywords: Technology Strategy; Product Management; Startup; Online Learning; Digital Platforms; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Technology Industry; Miami; Venezuela

June 2020 (Revised August 2020)
Supplement

Vanguard Retail Operations (B)

By: Willy C. Shih and Antonio Moreno

The first two cases in this series are set in the financial services industry, and explore whether it is better for back-office workers to be generalists who provide the flexibility of being able to handle the complete range of transactions that the company faces or... View Details

Keywords: Pooling; Generalist Model; Specialist Model; Service Operations; Management; Financial Services Industry; United States