Publications

March 2015 (Revised January 2024)
Case

CV Ingenuity (A): How to Evaluate the Commercial Viability of New Health Care Technologies

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Andrew Otazo

Duke Rohlen (HBS MBA ’01) hoped to win over a prominent venture capital investor for Series B financing of his firm CVI that was creating a drug-eluting balloon (DES) to treat peripheral arterial disease. As a second-mover, Duke felt he was more likely to acquire... View Details

06 May 2022
Blog Post

Career Advice: Starting a Sustainable Startup

life, I began thinking more about how urbanization might stress our existing systems, and how technology can help make urban living more sustainable. With this lens in mind, I applied to HBS with the goal of exploring the exciting world... View Details

19 Feb 2016
News

Giving Up Goldman for a Startup

Keywords: Miller, Katherine

25 Sep 2015
Blog Post

4 Challenges All Early-Stage Startups Face

diversity of skill-sets on the team. Through the process, we tackled four challenges that every early stage startup will face. Here's how we approached each of them. 1. Choosing a team Choosing a team can be difficult because there are... View Details

07 Mar 2012
News

Fashion Tech Startups Emerge from HBS

Keywords: online retail; online shopping; fashion; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information; Apparel Manufacturing; Manufacturing; Clothing and Clothing Accessories Stores; Retail Trade

May 2022
Case

From GOP to NFT: Anthony Scaramucci and the Launch of Flatter NFT

By: Lauren Cohen, Richard Ryffel and Grace Headinger

Anthony Scaramucci, Managing Director of SkyBridge Capital, considered whether he should officially greenlight the launch of SkyBridge’s own NFT platform — Flatter NFT. He had led the investment firm to push first into Bitcoin and then Ethereum to make SkyBridge a... View Details

December 1998 (Revised March 1999)
Case

Disruptive Technology a Heartbeat Away: Ecton, Inc.

By: Clayton M. Christensen and Edward G Cape

Describes an innovating start-up company with a disruptive technology to the large, expensive echocardiography machines that leading cardiologists use to create images of heart functions for diagnostic purposes. Ecton's machine is small, cheap, portable, and can't... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Disruption; Machinery and Machining; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Marketing; Product; Commercialization; Technology; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

01 Mar 2018
News

Making Sense of the Modern Startup

structured experiment aimed at learning something specific. If the experiment was successful, maybe another group of investors gave the entrepreneur a little bit more money to run another experiment. In other words, it was an iterative and disciplined process, which... View Details

Keywords: Jeffrey L. Cruikshank (PMD 51, 1986)

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

26 Nov 2017
News

‘Entrepreneurs here think technology can solve everything’

June 2013
Teaching Note

Rock Health

By: Robert Higgins and Ian McKown Cornell

This is the teaching note associated with HBS Case #813035. The case should enable students to identify emerging challenges, evaluate Rock Health's funding model, debate the effectiveness of its incubation service and assess its long-term viability. 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

March 2024 (Revised June 2024)
Case

Miami’s Climate Tech Potential (A): The State of Play

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Miami-Dade County led the work to get South Florida designated a national climate resilience tech hub, the only one of 31 focused on climate change, an urgent major issue for the region in light of global warming and sea level rise. Venture capitalists saw the... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Climate; Entrepreneur; Development; Startup; Climate Change; Venture Capital; Investment; Entrepreneurship; Green Technology; Government Administration; City; Miami

June 2024
Teaching Note

Miami’s Climate Tech Potential (A): The State of Play

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 324-119. Miami-Dade County led the work to get South Florida designated a national climate resilience tech hub, the only one of 31 focused on climate change, an urgent major issue for the region in light of global warming and sea level... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Climate; Entrepreneur; Development; Startup; Climate Change; Venture Capital; Investment; Entrepreneurship; Green Technology; Government Administration; City; Miami

19 Apr 2017
News

Chicago Becomes a Hub of Startup Action

city’s South Side through 1871, BLUE1647 (a technology skills center), and a $30 million startup fund for neighborhood businesses, among other efforts. “I have one goal,” he said. “If a child walking out of... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Emmanuel

September 2019
Case

Funding Sources for Science & Technology Start-ups in India

By: Tarun Khanna, Arjun Swarup and Rachna Tahilyani

India's start-up ecosystem is amongst the largest globally, with a variety of funding options from angel investors, venture capital and corporate venture capital to debt. Classic consumer focused start-ups which look to leverage technology have been able to raise... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Business Startups; Science; Information Technology; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; India; South Asia

May 1997 (Revised July 1997)
Case

Vermeer Technologies (F): FrontPage 97

By: Ashish Nanda

Vermeer engineers work at the breakneck pace of "Internet time" to develop the next version of their software product, winning accolades from Microsoft management. Even before this version ships, however, they are faced with another punishing development schedule for... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Applications and Software; Business Startups; Product Development; Information Technology Industry

January 2013
Supplement

EverTrue: Mobile Technology Development (B)

By: William R. Kerr and Alexis Brownell

Brent Grinna has one customer signed up for his alumni-networking mobile app, and is now trying to choose among three possibilities for a CTO. He decided to contract with a friend's company, Dashfire, to create a prototype of the app, and has signed up Brown University... View Details

Keywords: Start-up; Mobile App; CTO; Hiring; Scaling; Business Startups; Decisions; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development; Mobile Technology; Technology Industry; Massachusetts; Boston

December 1999 (Revised May 2002)
Case

CNBC (A): NBC and Its Startup Friends

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter

NBC expands further on to the Internet with CNBC.com. NBC's Internet strategy, supported by corporate parent General Electric, involves numerous investments as well as new ventures like CNBC.com. Soon after CNBC.com is launched in 1999, NBC brings in a new CEO, Pamela... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Change Management; Management Teams; Corporate Strategy; Leadership Development; Internet and the Web; Expansion; Media; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Telecommunications Industry