Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,438)
- Faculty Publications (223)
- April 2020
- Case
The Board's Role in Refocusing Bahrain Development Bank
By: Paul M. Healy and Alpana Thapar
In March 2016, Bahrain Development Bank’s (BDB) existing board term came to an end and Khalid Al Rumaihi was appointed the new chairman. Determining a need for change, he immediately overhauled the board and replaced BDB’s long-standing CEO. The new board quickly... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
EyeControl: Inspiring Communication
By: Paul A. Gompers and Danielle Golan
Eye-controlled communication device startup EyeControl was founded in Tel Aviv, Israel in 2016 by cofounders with a shared personal connection to locked-in syndrome—a neurological disorder that left sufferers cognitively sound, yet paralyzed, with the exception of eye... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised June 2020)
- Case
Social Salary Setting at Spiber
By: Ashley Whillans and John Beshears
Can a “set your own salary” system boost employee happiness and motivation? Spiber made synthetic silk built from proteins mimicking the proteins found in spider silk, the world’s toughest known material by weight. Kazuhide Sekiyama and Junichi Sugahara established... View Details
- March 2020
- Article
Organizing Knowledge Production Teams Within Firms for Innovation
By: Vikas A. Aggarwal, David H. Hsu and Andy Wu
How should firms organize their pool of inventive human capital for firm-level innovation? While access to diverse knowledge may aid knowledge recombination, which can facilitate innovation, prior literature has focused primarily on one way of achieving that: diversity... View Details
- February 2020 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Wellthy: The Economics of Caring
By: Brian L. Trelstad and Joseph B. Fuller
In 2014, Lindsay Jurist-Rosner (MBA ’09) founded Wellthy, a B2C business that coordinates care for working professionals seeking help to support loved ones with chronic diseases or aging parents. With personal experience as a young professional providing care for her... View Details
- January 2020
- Case
Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language
By: Ashley V. Whillans, Esel Çekin and Alpana Thapar
Jordanian entrepreneur, Nour Al Hassan, founded Tarjama in 2008, tapping into an underserved and high demand need: Arabic translation service. Its lean model comprised of hiring full-time employees, mainly women, who worked from home. It steadily grew over the... View Details
- November 2019
- Case
Celebrity Fashions Limited (A)
By: V.G. Narayanan, Tanvi Deshpande and Shreya Ramachandran
In May 2017 in Chennai, India, the chairman of Celebrity Fashions doubted whether the company could last until the end of the year. Venkatesh Rajagopal had found that the company, a readymade garment manufacturing and exporter he founded in 1989, was having a hard time... View Details
- October 2019
- Case
GRIT Fitness
By: Lynda M. Applegate and Olivia Hull
In December 2018, GRIT Fitness was a growing chain of boutique fitness studios offering a variety of workout classes, including weightlifting, high intensity interval training, and cardio dance. With 400 members and three Dallas studios, CEO Brittani Rettig believed... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Mission and Purpose; Corporate Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; Forecasting and Prediction; Business Plan; Trends; Experience and Expertise; Talent and Talent Management; Training; Health; Selection and Staffing; Leadership Style; Leadership Development; Management Style; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Motivation and Incentives; Sports; Competition; Diversification; Expansion; Value Creation; Health Industry; Sports Industry; Texas
- October 2019 (Revised February 2020)
- Case
Relevent and LaLiga: Bringing Spanish Soccer to America
By: Anita Elberse and David Moreno Vicente
“Barcelona backs out of proposed LaLiga match in Miami.” It is December 2018, and Daniel Sillman, chief executive officer of sports and entertainment company Relevent, is tasked with finding a way forward after a significant setback. Relevent had found success by... View Details
- September 2019
- Exercise
Difficult Conversations (A)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
The exercises can be used as a follow-up to the Yesware (A) case (#816-039), or in conjunction with any case that involves replacing a founding team member (and/or providing feedback to a top executive). This is a role-playing exercise, and has been carried out in the... View Details
- September 2019
- Exercise
Difficult Conversations (B)
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
The exercises can be used as a follow-up to the Yesware (A) case (#816-039), or in conjunction with any case that involves replacing a founding team member (and/or providing feedback to a top executive). This is a role-playing exercise, and has been carried out in the... View Details
- September 2019
- Case
Dementia Discovery Fund
By: Richard G. Hamermesh, Kathy Giusti and Sarah Gulick
The case is set in March 2019, and tells the story of the founding of the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF). The idea for the fund began in 2015, when then-Prime Minister David Cameron spoke about the importance of making breakthroughs in dementia research, and pledged... View Details
- August 2019
- Case
Preserving Trust at Care.com (A)
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Julia Kelley
Care.com was an online platform designed to match caregivers with individuals seeking care for themselves, others, and pets, through job postings, caregiver profiles, and directories of local day care centers. In March 2019, the Wall Street Journal had just published a... View Details
- August 2019 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
Paradigm Capital Value Fund
By: Luis M. Viceira and Elena Corsi
Karl Jan Erick Hummel had founded Paradigm Capital Value Fund in 2007 together with Columbia Business School Professor Bruce Greenwald, an expert in value investing and now chairman of the fund. The fund followed the principles of value investing to their target... View Details
- August 2019
- Case
Huawei and the U.S.-China Trade War
By: Elie Ofek and John Masko
In 2019, Chinese smartphone maker and telecommunications empire Huawei was preparing to launch its new flagship smartphone series, the Mate 30. After years of explosive growth, the previous 18 months had been a challenge for the company. In early 2018, Huawei’s planned... View Details
- July 2019
- Case
Instabeat—One More Lap?
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Nicole Tempest Keller and Alpana Thapar
This case follows Lebanese entrepreneur, Hind Hobeika, an engineer and competitive swimmer who spends seven years trying to launch a wearable heartrate monitor and motion sensor to help swimmers track their performance while swimming. While the Beirut-based... View Details
- July 2019 (Revised May 2020)
- Case
AT&T, Retraining, and the Workforce of Tomorrow
By: William R. Kerr, Joseph B. Fuller and Carl Kreitzberg
By the late 2000s, rapid changes in the telecommunications industry forced AT&T’s management team to take on a task that CEO Randall Stephenson called the “biggest logistical challenge” they had ever seen: retraining 100,000 workers by 2020. In 2012, internal company... View Details
Keywords: AT＆T; Workforce; Skills; Future Of Work; Telecommunications; Unions; Technological Change; Layoffs; MOOCS; Strategic Planning; Employees; Training; Competency and Skills; Labor; Learning; Labor Unions; Technology Adoption; Talent and Talent Management; Telecommunications Industry; Communications Industry; United States
- June 2019
- Case
Athena Bancorp
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Sarah Abbott
Athena Bancorp was founded in 2016 by Beth Daniels, a banking professional with 15 years of experience in the industry. Daniels took advantage of what she perceived as a gap in the market caused by recent industry consolidation, a decreasing industry focus on branch... View Details
- May 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
The Video-Streaming Wars in 2019: Can Disney Catch Netflix?
By: Anita Elberse and Monica Cody
Bob Iger, CEO of entertainment conglomerate Disney, thrilled investors with details about Disney’s upcoming foray into video streaming in April 2019. Disney’s move was only the latest in a series of actions taken by new and established entertainment companies in a... View Details
- May 2019
- Background Note
Founders' Agreements
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Shweta Bagai and Sanchali Pal
Crafting a Founders’ Agreement is an important component of startup infrastructure as it documents a complex set of decisions that build a company’s roots. Its four key elements are: roles and responsibilities, rights (decision rights, rewards, position on board),... View Details