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- February 2021
- Teaching Plan
Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Amy Klopfenstein
This teaching plan serves as a supplement to the case “Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?” HBS 820-098. The case explores the tension between two different financing and expansion plans for a startup, and explores issues related to business model pivots and industry... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Model; Business Plan; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Decisions; Judgments; Ethics; Geography; Geopolitical Units; Finance; Investment; Markets; Market Entry and Exit; Demand and Consumers; Media; Society; Urban Development; Sustainable Cities; Information Technology; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms; Strategy; Business Strategy; Expansion; Relationships; Capital; Venture Capital; Advertising Industry; Technology Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Cambridge
- December 2020
- Case
Tencent: Combining Technology and Culture
By: Elie Ofek, Billy Chan and Dawn H. Lau
Tencent, one of the largest Internet conglomerates in China, had a vision to become a "Tech+Culture" firm. With dominant market shares in online games and social networking, it had built a vast Internet-based entertainment ecosystem, and was now focused on cultural... View Details
Keywords: Media Franchise; Marketing; Market Entry and Exit; Product Launch; Strategy; Culture; China
- December 2020 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
Kerry Group: Inspiring Food, Nourishing Life
By: Forest L. Reinhardt, José B. Alvarez, Damien McLoughlin, Tonia Labruyere and Tonia Junker
The Irish company Kerry Group, one of the leading global players in the taste and nutrition industry, wants to ensure its future growth in developing and developed markets. Founded in 1972 as a dairy cooperative, it had grown into a provider of taste and nutrition... View Details
- December 2020 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
Riverstone
By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred
In 2020, Luke Minion and the leadership team at Riverstone, a hog producer founded in 2013 in Shandong, China, were evaluating Riverstone’s strategy as it rebounded from outbreaks of African Swine Fever (ASF) in two of its three farm complexes. Riverstone was a joint... View Details
Keywords: Strategy; Globalization; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers; Disruption; Risk and Uncertainty; Risk Management; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Consulting Industry; United States; China
- December 2020
- Article
Different Founders, Different Firms: A Comparative Analysis of Academic and Non-academic Startups
By: Maria P. Roche, Annamaria Conti and Frank T. Rothaermel
What role do differences in founders' occupational backgrounds play in new venture performance? Analyzing a novel dataset of 2,998 founders creating 1,723 innovative startups in biomedicine, we find that the likelihood and hazard of achieving a liquidity event are... View Details
- October 2020 (Revised July 2023)
- Case
UCK Partners: Gong Cha
By: Victoria Ivashina and Sangyun Lee
In the Spring of 2017, Soomin Kim, Founding Partner of UCK Partners, and his team were debating the potential exit of UCK Partner’s investment in Gong Cha Korea, the sole local franchisor of the premium milk tea brand that they proprietarily sourced three years ago.... View Details
- September 2020
- Case
Disrupting Justice at RightNow: Rich or King
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Amir Reza Rezvani
The case examines issues such as cascading problems within the organization, changing founder roles, founder success criteria, as well as company exit consideration. In 2017, Dr. Torben Antretter, a former competitive tennis player and academic researcher, founded... View Details
- September 2020
- Case
Uber at a Crossroads (2017)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes the history of Uber, its business model—including the ways it differed from that of the traditional taxi industry—and its competition with Lyft. The case is set in 2017, a year in which Uber was plagued by even more scandals than usual, though its... View Details
Keywords: Business Startups; Business Model; Customer Satisfaction; Fairness; Values and Beliefs; Price; Profit; Revenue; Investment; Government Legislation; Business History; Compensation and Benefits; Resignation and Termination; Employment; Wages; Lawfulness; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Management Style; Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Product Design; Organizational Culture; Problems and Challenges; Attitudes; Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Expansion; Transportation Networks; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Valuation; Transportation Industry; Technology Industry; United States
- August 2020 (Revised November 2021)
- Case
Beyond Beer: Brewing Innovation at Molson Coors
By: Derek C. M. van Bever, Stephen P. Kaufman, James Barnett and Shaye Roseman
In March 2019, Molson Coors CEO Mark Hunter considered a request to pull forward $65 million CAD in anticipated future funding for Truss Beverages, a Toronto-based cannabis beverage company that Molson Coors created in a joint venture with a Canadian cannabis... View Details
- July 2020
- Supplement
CSL Capital Management: Patriot Proppants (B)
By: Victoria Ivashina and Yury Kapko
This two-part case series follows CSL Capital’s 2009 investment in the greenfield manufacturing company, Patriot Proppants. CSL, a recently established investment firm, employs a unique investment model, funding new ("greenfield") energy service businesses that serve... View Details
- May 2020 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Amy Klopfenstein and Amram Migdal
In November 2019, Sandra Richter, co-founder and CEO of Soofa, a network of advertising-supported digital bulletin boards, must decide between two different fundraising and expansion plans for her company. One plan entails raising $15 million in a Series A round and... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Model; Business Plan; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Decisions; Ethics; Geography; Geopolitical Units; Finance; Investment; Markets; Market Entry and Exit; Demand and Consumers; Network Effects; Media; Society; Urban Development; Sustainable Cities; Information Technology; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms; Strategy; Business Strategy; Expansion; Relationships; Partners and Partnerships; Capital; Venture Capital; Advertising Industry; Technology Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Cambridge
- April 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Amazon in China and India
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Kairavi Dey
Amazon has been unsuccessful in its efforts to develop a business in China. Even though Amazon was an early entrant into China’s e-commerce space, its domestic rivals, especially Alibaba, created innovative business models uniquely suited for the conditions in China. ... View Details
- April 2020
- Article
Technological Leadership (de)Concentration: Causes in Information and Communication Technology Equipment
By: Yasin Ozcan and Shane Greenstein
Using patent data from 1976 to 2010 as indicators of inventive activity, we determine the concentration level of where inventive ideas originate and then examine how and why those concentrations change over time. The analysis finds pervasive deconcentration in every... View Details
- March 2020
- Supplement
Poppy (B)
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Scott Duke Kominers, Jeff Huizinga and Allison Ciechanover
Avni Patel Thompson, founder and CEO of Poppy, an online marketplace for on-demand childcare, revisits the venture's final months, and discusses the steps she took in the wake of the shutdown. This case explores experiments the company conducted to refine its original... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Nadine Vogel: Transforming the Marketplace, Workplace, and Workforce for People with Disabilities
By: Lakshmi Ramarajan, Hannah Riley-Bowles and Michael Norris
In 2019, Nadine Vogel, founder and CEO of Springboard Consulting, a firm that worked with Fortune 500 companies on issues related to disability and their workforce, faced the decision of the best path forward to grow her small company. Should she build more and better... View Details
- February 2020
- Supplement
Theranos: Who Has Blood on Their Hands? (B)
By: Nien-he Hsieh, Christina R. Wing and John Masko
This supplemental case tracks the results of the Colman and Taubman-Dye class action suit against Theranos as well as Theranos’ other legal challenges and chronicles the final demise of the company in 2019. View Details
- February 2020 (Revised January 2022)
- Case
Getting Brexit Done
By: Alberto Cavallo
In the early hours of Friday, December 13, 2019, a triumphant Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, stood in front of his supporters and declared, “We did it – we pulled it off, didn’t we? We broke the deadlock, [. . .] we smashed the roadblock. [. . .] This election... View Details
- December 2019
- Case
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Shaping the Vaccine Manufacturing Ecosystem (Abridged)
By: Willy Shih
This case describes the efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to lower the cost of producing vaccines to prevent polio infections. It is an abridged version of HBS Case No. 620-021 with less emphasis on comparison between traditional and the new compact... View Details
- October 2019
- Case
Feeling Machines: Emotion AI at Affectiva
By: Shane Greenstein and John Masko
In 2016, Affectiva—a Boston-based emotion AI software company with a long track record of building emotion-sensing software for market research—had attempted to expand into new verticals by releasing a mobile software development kit (SDK) that downloaders could adapt... View Details
- October 2019 (Revised December 2019)
- Case
BC Partners: Acuris
By: Victoria Ivashina and Terrence Shu
This case follows Nikos Stathopoulos, Managing Partner of BC Partners, as he and his team evaluate the potential sale of one of BC Partners’ portfolio companies, Acuris. Acuris was a global financial intelligence, news, and data company that had been acquired by BC... View Details