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Publications
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- October 2020 (Revised November 2023)
- Case
COVID-19 Testing at Everlywell
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Olivia Hull
In March 2020, as COVID-19 spreads rapidly across the U.S., Everlywell founder Julia Cheek considers how to respond as a small start-up specializing in at-home lab testing. After making dramatic budget cuts, she decides to pivot the organization to address the... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Strategy; Venture Capital; Health Care and Treatment; Health Disorders; Leading Change; Technology Adoption; Digital Platforms; Competitive Strategy; Science; Adaptation; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Crisis Management; Social Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Government Legislation; Health; Health Testing and Trials; Health Pandemics; Consumer Products Industry; Health Industry; Technology Industry; Texas; United States
- September 2020
- Case
Disrupting Justice at RightNow: Persevere, Pivot or Perish
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Amir Reza Rezvani
The case examines the focus of an early stage company, and how an unexpected external incidence can threaten or void the business model. It encompasses issues such as defining and pivoting a business model, organizational requirements for a pivot, investor relations,... View Details
- September 10, 2020
- Article
The COVID Two-Step for Leaders: Protect and Pivot
By: Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden
- July 2020
- Case
Pivotal Ventures: Bending the Curve on Women’s Power and Influence
By: Lynda Applegate and Ankita Panda
- June 24, 2020
- Article
Wolfgang Puck on Leading His Restaurants Through the Pandemic
By: Boris Groysberg
Chef Wolfgang Puck shares his experience leading his restaurants and other businesses through the pandemic crisis. He explains how his company has pivoted to find new sources of revenue and how he has become a vocal advocate for the restaurant industry. He also... View Details
- May 2020
- Case
Trust Merchant Bank
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Salim Dewji
Trust Merchant Bank (TMB), a leading bank in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), needs to decide whether to enter the soon-to-be-liberalized insurance industry. Since its founding in 2004, TMB has played a pivotal role in reshaping the DRC banking landscape by... View Details
Keywords: Retail Banking; Financial Services; Financial Inclusion; Turnaround; Fintech; Banks and Banking; Financial Condition; Insurance; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Business Model; Family Business; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Monopoly; Banking Industry; Insurance Industry; Africa; Congo, Democratic Republic of the
- May 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Justice-as-a-Service at RightNow
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Amir Reza Rezvani
The case examines the focus of an early stage company, and how an unexpected external incidence can threaten or void the business model. It encompasses issues such as minimal viable product, defining and pivoting a business model, organizational requirements for a... View Details
- May 2020 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Amy Klopfenstein and Amram Migdal
In November 2019, Sandra Richter, co-founder and CEO of Soofa, a network of advertising-supported digital bulletin boards, must decide between two different fundraising and expansion plans for her company. One plan entails raising $15 million in a Series A round and... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Model; Business Plan; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Decisions; Ethics; Geography; Geopolitical Units; Finance; Investment; Markets; Market Entry and Exit; Demand and Consumers; Network Effects; Media; Society; Urban Development; Sustainable Cities; Information Technology; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms; Strategy; Business Strategy; Expansion; Relationships; Partners and Partnerships; Capital; Venture Capital; Advertising Industry; Technology Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Cambridge
- May 5, 2020
- Article
Why the Crisis Is Putting Companies at Risk of Losing Female Talent
By: Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg
There has been a massive shift in how work gets done inside many companies and the global pivot to working remotely will likely change how many think about face time and rigid work schedules. Might these changes benefit women? The authors argue that will depend on how... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
On the Representativeness of Voter Turnout
By: Louis Kaplow and Scott Duke Kominers
Prominent theory research on voting uses models in which expected pivotality drives voters' turnout decisions and hence determines voting outcomes. It is recognized, however, that such work is at odds with Downs's paradox: in practice, many individuals turn out for... View Details
- February 2020 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Wellthy: The Economics of Caring
By: Brian L. Trelstad and Joseph B. Fuller
In 2014, Lindsay Jurist-Rosner (MBA ’09) founded Wellthy, a B2C business that coordinates care for working professionals seeking help to support loved ones with chronic diseases or aging parents. With personal experience as a young professional providing care for her... View Details
- Article
Detecting Adversarial Attacks via Subset Scanning of Autoencoder Activations and Reconstruction Error
By: Celia Cintas, Skyler Speakman, Victor Akinwande, William Ogallo, Komminist Weldemariam, Srihari Sridharan and Edward McFowland III
Reliably detecting attacks in a given set of inputs is of high practical relevance because of the vulnerability of neural networks to adversarial examples. These altered inputs create a security risk in applications with real-world consequences, such as self-driving... View Details
- December 2019
- Case
WeWork Files for an IPO
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
For the board of The We Company—better known as WeWork—August 14, 2019, promised to be a pivotal day. It was then that WeWork’s IPO prospectus, known as an S-1 filing, would be made public, giving potential investors, the media, and the general public a window into the... View Details
- October 2019
- Teaching Note
Anthology: Pivoting the Business Model
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
Teaching Note for HBS No. 817-066. View Details
- May 2019
- Teaching Note
Triangulate: Stay, Pivot or Exit
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
Teaching Note for HBS No. 817-059. View Details
- April 2019 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
From Globalization to Dual Digital Transformation: CEO Thierry Breton Leading Atos Into 'Digital Shockwaves' (A)
By: Tsedal Neeley, JT Keller and James Barnett
Thierry Breton, chairman and CEO of IT company Atos, faced a pivotal juncture. After spending eight intense years scaling the company globally to over 100,000 employees in 70 countries, he was ready to take the next crucial step. Breton was convinced that rapid digital... View Details
- March 2019
- Case
HOPI: Turkey's Shopping Companion
By: Sunil Gupta, Donald Ngwe and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in 2017 as Onur Erbay, CEO of HOPI, a multi-vendor loyalty platform, is contemplating a critical decision. The case chronicles the origins of Boyner Group, the parent company of HOPI and a major retailer in Turkey, and development of retail and customer... View Details
Keywords: Loyalty Programs; Multi-vendor Platform; Retail; Big Data; Customer Relationship Management; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Business Model; Analytics and Data Science; Competitive Strategy; Decision Making; Applications and Software; Digital Platforms; Technology Industry; Retail Industry; Turkey
- January 15, 2019
- Article
Is Your Company's Strategy Aligned with Your Ownership Model?
By: Josh Baron
The legacy of Vanguard founder John Bogle has brought attention to the transformative influence of ownership structures within the business world. Bogle's revolutionary insight into the limitations of active fund management led to the widespread adoption of index... View Details
- January 2019 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
SoundCloud: Subscription Streaming?
Established in 2007, SoundCloud already boasted the second largest number of active music listeners among all streaming services and was recognized as the go-to platform for new artists by early 2014. Yet, its founders were questioning the robustness of the firm’s... View Details
Keywords: Audio; Recording; Artist; Music; Music Downloads; Streaming; Radio; Subscription; Subscription Model; Mainstream; Growth; Lawsuit; Licensing; Customers; Platform; Pivot; Music Entertainment; Strategy; Leadership; Business Model; Decision Making; Advertising; Digital Platforms; Music Industry; Europe; Germany; Sweden; United States
- November 2018 (Revised June 2022)
- Teaching Note
AirFox (A): Embracing the Blockchain and an ICO
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Nathaniel Schwalb
Teaching Note for HBS No. 818-097. In summer 2017, Victor Santos, CEO of AirFox, considered whether to pivot his startup towards a new product built with blockchain—a quickly growing technology at the time. AirFox was an early stage startup that sold... View Details