Publications

September 2007
Case

Still Leading (B3): Gerry House—Impact of a Different Scale

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Lance P. Pierce

Describes how Gerry House made the transition from head of a large school district to leader of a small nonprofit. View Details

Keywords: Transition; Teaching; Secondary Education; Leading Change; Nonprofit Organizations; Transformation; Personal Development and Career; Education Industry

24 Apr 2014
News

Transforming nonprofits with business-oriented insights that scale impact

leadership development services to some 350 clients, including the Salvation Army World Service Office, Harlem Children’s Zone, National Council on Aging, and KIPP Foundation. The core of Bridgespan’s strategy is anchored in knowledge: to... View Details

July 2017 (Revised March 2018)
Case

Magic Bus: From Childhood to Livelihood

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Vikram Gandhi, Anjali Raina and Rachna Chawla

Founded in 1999 by Matthew Spacie to give poor children an opportunity to play, Magic Bus had evolved to a leading social enterprise engaged in sports for development, holistic childhood development, and livelihood training for youth between the ages of 6 to 18. By... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Management; Development; Growth And Scaling; Social Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Nonprofit Organizations; Management

February 2016 (Revised August 2020)
Case

InsightSquared: Developing the Sales and Marketing Plan

By: Mark Roberge, Tom Eisenmann and Frank Cespedes

Fred Shilmover and Sam Clemens prepared for their fourth quarter board meeting. They were excited to have scaled their software startup, InsightSquared, to $2 million in revenue and secured an $8 million round of venture capital. However, they disagreed on the path... View Details

Keywords: Sales Planning; Applications and Software; Marketing; Sales; Planning; Growth and Development Strategy

September 2020
Teaching Note

Mary Guerrero and the Advancement of Latinx Talent: Developing an Employee Resource Group at a Top Tier Bank (A) and (B)

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Amy Hernandez Turcios

Teaching Note for HBS Case Nos. 321-017 and 321-018. View Details

Keywords: Latinx; Bank; Latin America; Representation; Scale; Inclusion; Coalition; Resources; Talent and Talent Management; Diversity; Ethnicity; Banks and Banking; Leadership

13 Aug 2021
Blog Post

Exploring Racial Justice with the Scaling Minority Businesses Course

Segneri, now director of the Harvard Innovation Labs and formerly the Director of the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative, had described them. HBS seemed like the perfect place to learn how to become one! What is the Scaling Minority... View Details

July 2022
Case

Yinglan Tan: Scaling a Venture Capital Firm in Southeast Asia

By: Josh Lerner and Richard Zhu

Yinglan Tan considered the future of his young Singapore-based venture capital firm. On the one hand, the intuition that was behind the initial creation of Insignia in 2017 had been proven correct. The venture capital market in Southeast Asia had grown rapidly, driven... View Details

Keywords: E-commerce; Scalability; Globalized Markets and Industries; Venture Capital; International Finance; Growth and Development; Expansion

06 Sep 2022
Blog Post

To Go-Go: A Foodtech Startup Serves Up Scale in Latin America

eliminating the risk of placing one big bet on a single location or food concept. The model can scale up simply by adding more kitchens, and offerings can be tweaked rapidly in response to data-driven insights. For its part, Foodology... View Details

December 2023 (Revised January 2025)
Case

Research In Motion: Launching and Scaling the World's First Smartphone Empire (A)

By: Tatiana Sandino and Samuel Grad

In 2005, Research In Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry smartphone was a sensation. After its launch in 1999, the groundbreaking BlackBerry had captured the hearts and minds of corporate America through its secure wireless email service. The device was so addictive and... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Innovation and Management; Technological Innovation; Business or Company Management; Management Style; Product Development; Managerial Roles; Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Industry; United States; Canada

Summer 2018
Article

Scale versus Scope in the Diffusion of New Technology: Evidence from the Farm Tractor

By: Daniel P. Gross

Although tractors are now used in nearly every agricultural field operation and in the production of nearly all crops, they first developed with much more limited application. Early diffusion was accordingly rapid in these narrower applications but limited in scope... View Details

Keywords: Technology Diffusion; Spatial Technology Diffusion; Farm Tractors; R＆D; General-purpose Technologies; Technology Adoption; Agribusiness; Transportation; Research and Development; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States

18 Nov 2021
Op-Ed

5 Principles for Scaling Change from IBM’s High School Innovation

change the world. The conversation, including five key insights from the P-TECH experience, has been edited for length and clarity. 1. Plan for change at scale Kanter: Just to develop the first P-TECH... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz

September 2022
Case

AllSpice: GitHub for Hardware Engineers

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Mel Martin

AllSpice, a software-as-a-service company that built a GitHub-like revision control tool for hardware engineers, was in the midst of preparing for rapid scale when the 2022 market downturn left them with big decisions to make. Cofounder and CEO Valentina Ratner had to... View Details

Keywords: Scaling; SaaS; Strategy; Marketing; Growth and Development Strategy; Resource Allocation; Customer Focus and Relationships; Technology Industry; Electronics Industry; United States

TeachingInterests

Product Management

By: Sara McKinley Torti

A Product Manager is obsessed with the problem their product tries to solve and works to both define the product’s functional requirements and lead cross-functional teams to develop, launch and improve their product over time. Taught by an experienced former Google... View Details

September 2013 (Revised June 2017)
Supplement

IBM and the Reinvention of High School (B): Replicating & Scaling P-TECH and Partners

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

IBM's Corporate Citizenship office created an innovation in public education through a business-school partnership for widespread replication and diffusion. In 2012, while P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early College High School) was still in its first year operating,... View Details

Keywords: Social Enterprise; Partnerships; Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership; Partners and Partnerships; Social Entrepreneurship; Education; Business and Community Relations; Innovation and Invention; Growth Management; Chicago; Idaho

19 May 2023
News

Innovating, Funding, and Scaling Climate Solutions at Harvard Business School: Day Three of Harvard Climate Action Week

Web

Impact on a Global Scale | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

Impact on a Global Scale “We are living at an extraordinary point in the arc of history,” says Tom Tierney (MBA 1980). “Countless leaders, from social entrepreneurs to corporate executives to public servants, are aggressively committing... View Details

April 2019 (Revised June 2019)
Case

Western Governors University: 10x Vision

By: William R. Kerr and Susie L. Ma

Western Governors University (WGU) was a nonprofit institution of higher education whose online learning model served more than 100,000 students in 2019 and was scaling rapidly. President Scott Pulsipher wanted to expand WGU’s reach to millions more with a plan called... View Details

Keywords: Online Education; Enrollment; Scaling; Higher Education; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Education Industry; United States