Publications

September 2022
Teaching Note

Applied Intuition: Powering Autonomy at Scale

By: Andy Wu and Matt Higgins

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 722-407. View Details

2024
Working Paper

Scaling New Ventures for Successful Growth

By: Ranjay Gulati

March 2012
Case

1366 Technologies: Scaling the Venture (Abridged)

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Ramana Nanda, Evan Richardson and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

2021
Working Paper

Accounting for Workforce Impact at Scale

By: Adel Fadhel, Katie Panella, Ethan Rouen and George Serafeim

Using new data on workforce composition and wages, we systematically measure the employment impact at U.S. firms from 2008 to 2020, including 2,682 unique firms and 22,322 firm-year observations. We document significant variation across industries and firms within each... View Details

Keywords: Impact Accounting; ESG; Employee Turnover; Wages; Employment; Measurement and Metrics; Human Capital; Diversity; United States

SSRN

Read Now

12 Dec 2022
News

Why Some Startups Fail to Scale

October 2018
Case

Accomplice: Scaling Early Stage Finance

By: Ramana Nanda, Raffaella Sadun and Olivia Hull

Accomplice, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Boston, is raising its second fund in November 2017. Since 2009, the firm has followed a seed-led investment model, investing in tech companies at the earliest stages, often when products and business models are... View Details

Keywords: Early Stage Finance; Seed Finance; Scouts; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Private Equity; Investment Portfolio; Organizational Structure; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Partners and Partnerships; Networks; Adaptation; Corporate Strategy; Technology; Financial Services Industry; Massachusetts; Boston; Cambridge; United States

18 Mar 2016
Video

The Team Sport of Scaling a Business

May 2023
Teaching Note

Away: Scaling a DTC Travel Brand

By: Joseph B. Fuller and Jill Avery

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 520-051. Away, a direct-to-consumer, digital native e-commerce seller of travel luggage, is debating how to invest its latest round of venture funding. How quickly could and should Away scale and what were the most promising growth... View Details

Keywords: Distribution; Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Segmentation; Venture Capital; Consumer Products Industry

May 2021 (Revised February 2025)
Teaching Note

Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations

By: Antonio Moreno and Anibha Singh

Teaching Note for HBS Case Nos. 621-026, 621-027, and 621-062. As Migros, one of Turkey’s largest grocery chains, forays into online groceries, the company faces operational challenges related to inventory management, fulfillment and last mile delivery and strategics... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Internet and the Web; Growth and Development Strategy; Operations; Management; Competitive Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Turkey

November 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Warby Parker: Scaling a Startup

By: Ranjay Gulati and Sam Yogi

January 2018 (Revised February 2025)
Teaching Note

Collage.com: Scaling a Distributed Organization

By: Christopher Stanton and Shikhar Ghosh

Teaching Note for HBS No. 817-038. View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Organizational Structure; Competitive Strategy; Employees; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy

06 Jul 2017
News

Leadership on a Global Scale

When the inaugural West Point All-Academies Asia Summit opened in Singapore in June 2015, Ray Jefferson (MBA 2000) celebrated a personal moment of triumph. For the Summit’s point person, this first-ever gathering in Asia for graduates of US service academies was a... View Details

05 Dec 2016
News

Scaling Up at Five Below

(photo by Jane M. Von Bergen / Philadelphia Inquirer) (photo by Jane M. Von Bergen / Philadelphia Inquirer) It’s the holiday season and emoji merchandise is flying off the shelves—especially poop emoji (sorry). Chalk it up to the whimsical tastes of the teen and... View Details

Keywords: Miscellaneous Store Retailers; Retail Trade

March 2003 (Revised April 2006)
Background Note

Scale and Scope in Professional Service Firms

By: Ashish Nanda

This case discusses why economies (and diseconomies) of scale and scope exist in professional service firms (PSFs) and how they influence the amount and range of services that PSFs offer. It is distributed with a case that focuses on determining the optimal scale/scope... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Operations; Microeconomics; Service Industry

04 May 2017
News

Helping MBA Students Scale Mount Everest

Web

Scaling Work - Research Computing Services

Compute Cluster Scaling Work 2ms There are numerous ways to scale up your work on the HBSGrid, including parallel processing and GPUs . Parallel Processing Also commonly called parallel computing or... View Details

October 2016
Teaching Note

CLHS: Scaling a New Venture

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Gabriele Piccoli and Joaquin Rodriguez

Teaching Note for HBS No. 817-053. View Details

August 2023
Teaching Note

Newlab: Scaling an Innovation Engine

By: Tarun Khanna and Felicia Belostecinic

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 723-364. View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Social and Collaborative Networks; Global Range; Partners and Partnerships; Networks; Growth and Development Strategy; Opportunities; Brooklyn