Publications

April 2013 (Revised October 2014)
Case

SaferTaxi: Connecting Taxis and Passengers in South America

By: Peter Coles and Benjamin Edelman

SaferTaxi, a taxi booking service in South America must develop its mobilization strategy; that is, it must attract enough passengers and drivers to make its service worthwhile for all. Drivers hesitate to pay for SaferTaxi's smartphones and service unless these will... View Details

Keywords: Taxi Booking; Smartphone; Transportation Networks; Network Effects; Laws and Statutes; South America; Argentina; Brazil; Chile

July 2008 (Revised October 2024)
Supplement

UpDown: Confidential Instructions for PHUC

By: Noam Wasserman and Deepak Malhotra

Michael Reich is having severe doubts about how he split the equity with his co-founders two months ago, when they completed a one-page "November Agreement." Since then, Michael has found an angel investor and has worked non-stop on the business, while one co-founder... View Details

Keywords: Negotiation Participants; Agreements and Arrangements; Business Startups; Ownership Stake

19 Nov 2013
News

Q&A With Harvard’s Top Entrepreneurship Professor

15 Sep 2021
News

Impact Investing’s Next Challenge

22 Apr 2021
Video

If You Want Your Startup to Succeed, You Need to Understand Why Startups Fail

September 2024 (Revised October 2024)
Case

Anker Innovations (A)

By: Feng Zhu, Jiangyong Lu and Nancy Hua Dai

An Amazon-native brand, Anker is the world’s No. 1 mobile charging brand and a leading consumer electronics company. Over the years, Anker developed an effective model of proving new products online first by leveraging customer insights from its proprietary Voice of... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Product; Distribution; Product Launch; Electronics Industry; Consumer Products Industry

November 2022
Case

Para: Pay Transparency and Gig Drivers' Rights

By: Christopher Stanton and George Gonzalez

The case presents the founding vision and early days of a young startup that seeks to empower delivery drivers with tools and transparency. The company's flagship mobile app has been taken up by tens of thousands of delivery drivers across major U.S. cities who use it... View Details

Keywords: Gig Workers; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Applications and Software; Disruptive Innovation; Compensation and Benefits; Technology Industry; San Francisco

February 2020 (Revised August 2022)
Case

Anomalie

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Thomas O. Jones

In early 2019, the founders of Anomalie, an online direct-to-consumer provider of bridal gowns, have just agreed to a $13.6 million Series A investment from a Silicon Valley VC. They are considering three major initiatives as they move forward. (1) To scale their very... View Details

Keywords: Direct-to-consumer; Entrepreneurship; Internet and the Web; Growth and Development Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Technology Industry

2015
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Howard Fischer, Eric Jacobsen, and Gratitude Railroad's Impact Investing

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Daniel Lennox-Choate

In 2013, Howard Fischer (hedge fund founder) and Eric Jacobsen (serial entrepreneur and private equity investor) established Gratitude Railroad as a community of impact investors in nine different "tracks." Each track represented a different concept for using... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Environmental And Social Sustainability; Social Change; Sustainable Business And Innovation; Investment; Social Issues; Environmental Sustainability; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Leadership; United States

December 2016 (Revised May 2018)
Case

Ebony Magazine

By: Steven Rogers and Derrick Jackson

For nearly 75 years, the Johnson Publishing Company has been the most successful African American magazine publisher. Its flagship Ebony magazine was an iconic coffee table fixture for decades in black households of all classes, making founder John H. Johnson... View Details

November 2016 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Mark43

By: Thomas Eisenmann, Mitch Weiss and Halah AlQahtani

The founders of Mark43, an early-stage startup that provides software for law enforcement agencies, must decide whether to bid on a request for proposals (RFP) from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). On the one hand, LAPD would be a second large and influential... View Details

Keywords: Start-up; Software Applications; Government Markets; Rapid Growth Stage; Public Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Business Startups; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; United States; New York (city, NY)

October 2016 (Revised February 2017)
Teaching Note

Alvogen

By: Daniel Isenberg, William R. Kerr and Alexis Brownell

Alvogen is an Icelandic pharmaceutical company that makes and sells generic drugs. Founder and CEO Robert Wessman is deciding whether to take on private equity investors willing to buy out all shareholders, merge with a large and publicly-traded US pharmaceutical... View Details

Keywords: Biotechnology; Globalization; Entrepreneurship; Biotechnology Industry

August 2015
Case

Whistle Sports: An Online Sports Network for Millennials

By: Robert F. Higgins and Christine Snively

By January 2015, Whistle Sports, a multi-platform sports network for millennials, had attracted over 54 million online subscribers on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Vine. It established partnerships with several professional sports leagues and... View Details

Keywords: Technology; Internet; Websites; Technology Networks; Sports; Entrepreneurship; Information Infrastructure; Business Startups

March 2015
Case

West Coast Chill

By: William A. Sahlman, Robert F. White and Stephanie Puzio

The fall of 2010 marked the 20th year that Mitchell Joseph, a fourth generation beverage executive, serial entrepreneur, and the founder of the Joseph Company (the "Company"), had been working on developing the technology for a self-chilling can. Mitchell was at an... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

November 2012 (Revised January 2013)
Case

SANY: Going Global

By: Rajiv Lal, Stefan Lippert, Nancy Hua Dai and Di Deng

April 17, 2012, was a special day for SANY Group and for its founder Liang Wen'gen. Headquartered in Changsha, SANY Group had transformed itself in two decades from a small welding material factory in 1989 to a leading global construction equipment manufacturer with 5... View Details

Keywords: China; Expansion; Business Growth; Heavy Industry; Strategy Development; Globalization; Growth and Development; Emerging Markets; Strategy; Construction Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Asia; China; Europe; Germany; India; North and Central America; South America

March 1991 (Revised May 1991)
Case

TBIRD: The Thai Business Initiative in Rural Development

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

During the period of 1987 to 1990, while Thailand had one of the fastest growing economies in the world (average growth rate of 12%), the income disparity between its rural and urban population (especially Bangkok City) was growing increasingly worse. Mechai... View Details

Keywords: Economic Growth; Management Skills; Programs; Wealth and Poverty; Thailand