Publications

December 2018 (Revised January 2020)
Case

Husk Power: Scaling the Venture

By: Benjamin N. Roth, Joseph B. Lassiter III and Natalia Rigol

In January 2018, Manoj Sinha—founder and CEO of Husk Power—was contemplating raising $20 million to scale operations for a second time. From 2007 through 2013, Husk built 80 biomass waste plants that provided electricity to 250,000 villagers and shop owners spread... View Details

Keywords: Scaling; Energy; Entrepreneurship; Emerging Markets; Growth and Development Strategy; Energy Industry; India

30 Apr 2018
Blog Post

HBS Grad Drives Lori Systems to Success

vendors with trucks, one of the greatest barriers to African economic growth could be mitigated or even overcome. Hence the birth of Lori Systems, Josh's Kenyan-based start-up that uses a centralized electronic platform to connect willing... View Details

November 1999 (Revised March 2001)
Case

Russell Reynolds Associates, 1999

By: Tarun Khanna, Krishna G. Palepu and Rakesh Khurana

The president and CEO of Russell Reynolds examined the company's expansion strategy, especially in emerging markets. He evalulates how quickly the company should open new offices abroad and in which countries. View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Emerging Markets; Expansion; Consulting Industry

November 2019
Case

Scaling at Chief

By: Katherine B. Coffman, Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Kathleen L. McGinn, Julia Kelley and Katherine Chen

Chief is a New York-based peer network that provides mentorship, support, networking opportunities, and a sense of community to women executives. Co-founders Carolyn Childers and Lindsay Kaplan launched the company in January 2019, and just two months later, Chief has... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Leadership Development; Expansion; Growth Management; Customer Satisfaction; North and Central America; United States; New York (state, US); New York (city, NY)

July 2017 (Revised July 2018)
Case

Entrepreneurship for All

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Julia Kelley

Entrepreneurship for All (EforAll) is a Lowell, Massachusetts–based nonprofit that hosts business accelerators for entrepreneurs in underserved communities. By mid-2017, EforAll has five office locations in Massachusetts, and its leadership and the Board of Directors... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions

Research Summary

The Value of Family Ownership, Control, and Management

In collaboration with Professor Raphael Amit of Wharton, Belén Villalonga is investigating how family ownership, control, and management affect firm value. Their forthcoming Journal of Financial... View Details

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Women Leading Business: A New Kind of Conversation

Education staff.EE: What led you to develop the "Women Leading Business" forum? Hart: I'd observed in the School's Executive Education programs—AMP, PMD, and OPM, for example—that the women... View Details

Keywords: Re: Myra M. Hart & Cynthia A. Montgomery

20 Oct 2021
Blog Post

Mobilizing Private Sector Action For Racial Equity in Milwaukee: SE Summer Fellow Zach Komes (MBA 2022)

development organization. My hometown of Milwaukee faces the dual challenge of how to catalyze local economic growth in the face of decades of deindustrialization and... View Details

September 2003 (Revised November 2003)
Case

Raiser Organization, The

By: John A. Davis and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

Jennifer and Philip Raiser, a sibling partnership who inherited a real estate management and ownership company from their father, ponder the strategic and financial challenges facing their family business. Reviews the history of the business and asks what the best... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Family Business; Growth and Development Strategy; Real Estate Industry

November 2008 (Revised April 2010)
Case

Youth Villages

By: Allen S. Grossman, Cathy Ross and William Foster

Tennessee-based nonprofit Youth Villages had an impressive record of serving emotionally and behaviorally troubled youth and their families, with higher success rates and lower costs than most child services providers. Yet expanding to offer its services on a broader... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Service Operations; Business and Government Relations; Nonprofit Organizations; Expansion; Tennessee

March 2023 (Revised May 2023)
Case

Akamai Technologies: Expanding the Talent Pipeline

By: Christopher Stanton, Lynda M. Applegate, Allison Ciechanover, Emily Grandjean and Sophie Beck

In 2022, senior executives of Cambridge, MA-based Akamai Technologies met to consider whether and how to scale a successful technical training program. The program, Akamai Technical Academy (ATA), was launched in 2016 to address a key challenge at Akamai and in the... View Details

Keywords: Leading Change; Growth and Development Strategy; Diversity; Talent and Talent Management; Technology Industry; United States; Boston

01 Dec 2003
News

The Next Big Thing

It's a case of competition and strategy on a global scale, and the stakes could hardly be higher. The prize? Leadership in the realm of life sciences, a field that experts say... View Details

Keywords: life sciences; Scientific Research and Development Services

August 2005 (Revised April 2006)
Case

Rambus Inc., 2005

By: David B. Yoffie

Rambus is grappling with the ever-changing dynamics of the DRAM/semiconductor industry. The company is actively defending its patent portfolio through litigation and exploring both partnerships and industry standards for keys to future profitability and growth. How can... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Partners and Partnerships; Lawsuits and Litigation; Growth and Development Strategy; Semiconductor Industry; United States

March 2017 (Revised March 2017)
Case

OpenNotes

By: Jeffrey Rayport and Annelena Lobb

In 2017, executives at OpenNotes, a national movement to improve the relationship between doctors and patients by sharing doctors’ visit notes about patients with patients, were considering options in efforts to achieve scale. The movement hoped to reach 50 million... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Technology Adoption; Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Industry; Health Industry; United States

October 2010
Case

innocent

By: William A. Sahlman and Harry Wake

This case describes a set of issues confronting the founders of innocent, a 10-year old beverage company that dominated the UK smoothie market. The team must decide how to proceed with expansion of the product line and outside the UK and Ireland. They must also decide... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Expansion; Capital Structure; Corporate Finance; Growth and Development Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry

22 Jun 2017
Cold Call Podcast

ShotSpotter: A Gunfire Detection Business Looks for a New Market

Keywords: Re: Mitchell B. Weiss; Technology

24 Jun 2016
News

Reinventing Pharma

2004) began her career as a research scientist. Eventually expanding her responsibilities into business development led her to HBS, where she hoped to solidify her understanding of the intersection of science View Details

Keywords: Scientific Research and Development Services

June 2024 (Revised September 2024)
Case

Driving Scale with Otto

By: Rebecca Karp, David Allen and Annelena Lobb

This case asks how startup founders make scaling decisions in light of their priorities for their business and for themselves. Otto was a technology company that applied artificial intelligence technology to sales. It deployed natural language processing to find sales... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Natural Language Processing; B2B; B2B Innovation; Scaling; Scaling Tech Ventures; Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Finance; Sales; Business Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology Industry; United States; Cambridge; New York (city, NY); Spain

December 2010 (Revised February 2012)
Case

Yum! China

By: David E. Bell and Mary Shelman

Since the first KFC opened in China in 1987, Yum--under Sam Su's leadership--had built the largest restaurant company by far in mainland China. Averaging one new restaurant opening a day for the past five years, in 2010 Yum ran over 3,600 restaurants in 650 cities and... View Details

Keywords: Business Processes; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Strategy; Business Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Beijing Shi