Publications

2023
Working Paper

Scoring and Funding Breakthrough Ideas: Evidence from a Global Pharmaceutical Company

By: Joshua Krieger, Ramana Nanda, Ian Hunt, Aimee Reynolds and Peter Tarsa

We study resource allocation to early-stage ideas at an internal startup program of one the largest pharmaceutical firms in the world. Our research design enables us to elicit every evaluator’s scores across five different attributes, before seeing how they would... View Details

Keywords: Project Selection; Pharmaceuticals; Financing Innovation; Resource Allocation; Innovation and Invention; Research and Development

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October 2014 (Revised July 2015)
Case

Indus Towers: From Infancy to Maturity

By: Ranjay Gulati, Maxim Sytch and Rachna Tahilyani

Indus Towers, the world's largest telecom tower company, is a joint venture between three telecom rivals in India. These rivals—Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, and Idea Cellular—combined their telecom towers to provide "shared telecom infrastructure" to wireless telecom... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Judgments; Customer Focus and Relationships; Management; Information Technology; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Information Infrastructure; Telecommunications Industry; India

13 Nov 2014
News

Going Against the Flow: Michelle Zatlyn, Cofounder of CloudFlare

April 2024 (Revised August 2024)
Case

The Engine

By: Joshua Lev Krieger, Jim Matheson, Fiona Murray and Nicholas Christman

The Engine, a venture capital firm founded by MIT to fill a gap in the technology funding landscape by commercializing breakthrough science and technology. Led by managing partner and CEO Katie Rae, the Engine's unique approach involved an unusually longer fund life,... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Entrepreneurial Finance; Financial Services Industry

Web

Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

Roth and Nicole Tempest Keller In 2017, Core Innovation Capital invested $725,000 in Hugo Insurance, a pay-as-you-drive auto insurance startup targeting the non-standard market. Core followed with $300,000 in 2019 during a Seed II round.... View Details

January 2025
Case

Summer Health: Raising an AI-First Company?

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Sarah Mehta and Maxim Pike Harrell

In October 2023, Summer Health CEO Ellen DaSilva arrived at a defining juncture for her pediatric telehealth startup. Founded in 2021, Summer Health offered parents rapid access to licensed pediatricians via text message. DaSilva, an experienced telehealth executive,... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Technology Adoption; Entrepreneurship; Leadership; Business Startups; Health Care and Treatment; Business Strategy; Product Development; Health Industry; Telecommunications Industry; United States

March 2022
Case

DealShare: Social E-Commerce for the Indian Mass Market

By: Krishna G. Palepu and Malini Sen

Launched in September 2018, e-retail startup DealShare has created a tech-enabled model for the Indian mass market that allows customers to buy together, save money on good quality goods, and at the same time have fun. It targets customers who are still getting used to... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Disruption; Trends; Talent and Talent Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Value; Cost vs Benefits; Value Creation; Internet and the Web; India

2019
Book

VC: An American History

By: Tom Nicholas

An exploration of venture financing in America, from its origins in the whaling industry to the rise of Silicon Valley, that shows how venture capital (VC) created an epicenter for the development of high-tech innovation. The VC industry arose from the United States’... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Venture Capital; Innovation and Invention; Entrepreneurship; History; United States

Find at Harvard

September 2023 (Revised December 2023)
Case

TetraScience: Noise and Signal

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn

In 2019, TetraScience CEO “Spin” Wang needed advice. Five years earlier, he had cofounded a startup that saw early success with a hardware product designed to help laboratory scientists in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical spaces more easily collect data from... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Organization; Restructuring; Forecasting and Prediction; Digital Platforms; Analytics and Data Science; AI and Machine Learning; Organizational Structure; Network Effects; Competitive Strategy; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States; Boston

December 2019
Case

Walmart Ecommerce (A): Picking up the Pace

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman

This case is an abridged version (part 1 of 2) of "Walmart's Omnichannel Strategy: Revolution or Miscalculation?" HBS Case No. 720-370. The (A) case discusses Walmart's early forays into online retail, as well as improvements made under Doug McMillon beginning in 2014.... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Strategy; Internet and the Web; Distribution; Distribution Channels; Competitive Strategy; Retail Industry; Bentonville; Arkansas; United States

01 Oct 2019
News

Today’s venture capitalists owe something to 19th-century whalers

Program

Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management

policies, and major programs of their organizations Participating organizations must be public-serving nonprofits, fully operational, and out of the startup phase; they typically have operating budgets in excess of $1 million Not... View Details

TeachingInterests

Strategy and Technology (Elective Curriculum)

By: David B. Yoffie

This course explores the unique aspects of creating effective management and investment strategies for technology-intensive businesses. What strategies can win in markets with strong network effects? How can firms leverage technology to build multi-sided platforms?... View Details

2017
Working Paper

Cost of Experimentation and the Evolution of Venture Capital

By: Michael Ewens, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

We study how technological shocks to the cost of starting new businesses have led the venture capital model to adapt in fundamental ways over the prior decade. We both document and provide a framework to understand the changes in the investment strategy of VCs in... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Investing; Abandonment Option; Technological Innovation; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Investment

SSRN

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Web

Placement - Doctoral

Nataliya Langburd Wright Strategy, 2023 Placement: Columbia Business School, Management Division Dissertation: Where Growth Strategy Matters: Evidence from a Global Startup Field Study Advisors: Tarun Khanna (Chair), Shane M. Greenstein ,... View Details

November 2014 (Revised February 2016)
Case

DoubleDutch

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Matthew G. Preble

Lawrence Coburn and Pankaj Prasad, co-founders of the event solution startup DoubleDutch, have to make a significant decision about their young company's sales function. DoubleDutch's key product was a mobile application (app) and event management platform that... View Details

Keywords: Sales Management; Selling; Marketing Management; Strategy Implementation; Business Marketing; Sales Force Management; Salesforce Management; Marketing; Sales; Marketing Strategy; Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Technology Industry; United States; Europe; Asia

2024
Chapter

Managing, Preserving, and Unlocking Wealth through FinTech

By: Grace Headinger, Lauren Cohen and Zhaoheng Gong

In nearly every generation, a sentiment like Einstein’s has been expressed as a cautionary tale to constrain the development and application of technology. In spite of these calls, technology has time and again proven its utility and ability to improve across and upon... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Technological Innovation; Finance

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January 2022
Case

Tomorrow.io Goes to Space

By: Joshua Lev Krieger, Abhishek Nagaraj and James Barnett

This case study explores the evolution of Tomorrow.io, a weather forecasting technology company, as it pivoted toward building and launching space-based weather radar satellites. This strategic shift was driven by the company's ambition to overcome data limitations in... View Details

Keywords: Communication; Competency and Skills; Engineering; Globalization; Innovation and Invention; Performance; Information Technology; Aerospace Industry

October 2018 (Revised May 2019)
Teaching Note

Intuit: Turbo Tax PersonalPro - A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs

By: Joseph Fuller, Shikhar Ghosh and Monica Baraldi

Teaching Note for HBS No. 816-048. The case tells the story of a product manager within Intuit who develops an idea for a new product that spans two of the company's existing business units—professional tax software, sold to accountants, and the consumer focused... View Details

Keywords: Business Units; Business or Company Management; Applications and Software; Accounting; Product Development; Financial Services Industry