Publications

12 Feb 2025
Video

What does ownership look like in the next frontier of innovation?

November 2009 (Revised August 2010)
Case

NovoCure Ltd.

By: William A. Sahlman and Sarah Flaherty

Venture capitalist William Doyle must raise $35 million for a portfolio company with a promising, novel cancer therapy, just as global capital markets are imploding in the fall of 2008. NovoCure, Ltd., has developed an electrical-field-based therapy, called Tumor... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment; Health Care and Treatment; Health Testing and Trials; Technological Innovation; Financial Services Industry

December 2001
Case

Qwest Communications International Inc.

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Christopher Hackett

Describes the evolution of Qwest from a small fiber-optic construction firm in 1996 to a global telecommunications giant in 2001. Focuses on Qwest's pivotal acquisition of "Baby Bell" US West, a regional Bell operating company many times Qwest's size. Discusses the... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Asset Pricing; Business History; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Organizational Culture; Partners and Partnerships; Vertical Integration; Telecommunications Industry

25 Feb 2019
News

A Seat at the Head of the Table

Video

Julio Cedeno (MBA 2020) Talks the Case Method and Work-Life Balance

11 Jul 2013
News

Ballmer’s game plan to put Microsoft back on top

November 2022
Case

Goonj: Growing in the Face of a Pandemic

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Priyank Narayan

Founded by the husband and wife team of Anshu and Meenakshi Gupta in 1999, Goonj had quickly emerged as one of the leading disaster relief and rural development organizations in India. Their main mode of development was through providing a clothing kit to the village... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Management; Family Business; Natural Disasters; Social Issues; Entrepreneurship; Operations; Business and Community Relations; Strategy; India

November 2022 (Revised March 2024)
Case

Replika AI: Monetizing a Chatbot

By: Julian De Freitas and Nicole Tempest Keller

In early 2018, Eugenia Kuyda, co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based chatbot Replika AI, was deciding how to monetize the app she had built. Launched in 2017, Replika was a consumer AI “companion app” developed by a team of AI software engineers originally based in... View Details

Keywords: Mental Health; Subscriber Models; TAM; Monetization Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; AI and Machine Learning; Applications and Software; Product Positioning; Health Disorders; Technology Industry

February 2024 (Revised July 2024)
Case

Taffi: Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia

By: Paul A. Gompers and Fares Khrais

Taffi was a tech-enabled fashion styling startup founded by Shahad Geoffrey in Saudi Arabia in 2020. Within three years of operating, Geoffrey had pivoted the business multiple times. In 2023, Geoffrey was attempting the business’s most ambitious pivot yet, shifting... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Disruption; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Strategy; AI and Machine Learning; Fashion Industry; Technology Industry; Saudi Arabia; Arabian Peninsula

Video

Tech Community Facebook Live

03 Nov 2011
News

Harvard Business School Professor Paul. R. Lawrence Dies at 89

18 Oct 2017
Blog Post

4 Advantages of the MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences Program

potentially pivot away from my STEM roots towards the MBA, which I initially believed would focus only on the development of softer skills. If the MS/MBA: Engineering Sciences Program had been an option for me I would have definitely... View Details

15 Nov 2019
Blog Post

Julio Cedeno (MBA 2020) Talks the Case Method and Work-Life Balance

Julio Cedeno was born in Texas just months after his mother and father (originally from Mexico and Venezuela respectively) arrived in the United States from Venezuela. Julio became an electrical engineer and worked at Chevron in Australia after college. Julio pursued... View Details

28 Apr 2025
Blog Post

How to onboard recently graduated MBAs

For large numbers of Harvard Business School MBA graduates, the first post-degree position is not merely a return to the workforce, but a deliberate pivot toward a new ambition. “Many MBAs are switchers,” notes Kristin Brennan, HBS Career... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

28 Apr 2020
Blog Post

A Crash Course in Saving a Family Business

Jiyoon Han (MBA 2021) is getting a taste of what it’s like to be a case protagonist—learning how to pivot while measuring unforeseen challenges against new opportunities. When news broke in March about how COVID-19 would affect the... View Details

August 2023
Case

Floward

By: Krishna Palepu and Namrata Arora

In 2022, Abdulaziz B. Al Loughani, CEO and co-founder of Floward, an online flower and gifting company established in Kuwait in 2017, contemplated the firm's growth trajectory. Floward, an e-commerce enterprise that offered fresh-cut flowers sourced directly from... View Details

Keywords: Initial Public Offering; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Information Technology Industry; Middle East; North Africa; Saudi Arabia; Kuwait; United Arab Emirates; Jordan

March 2024 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Out of Hand Theater: Monetizing Creativity

By: Christina Wallace, Henry McGee, Rohit Deshpandé and Max Hancock

Ariel Fristoe co-founded the Out of Hand Theater ensemble (OOH) in Atlanta in 2001. OOH began as a traditional theater nonprofit, which Ariel and her colleagues ran on a shoestring budget. But over the years, the group transformed: First, around 2010, OOH pivoted to... View Details

Keywords: Business Transformation; Theatre-company; Arts Marketing; Transformation; Theater Entertainment; Social Marketing; Business Model; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Atlanta