Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(3,296)
- Faculty Publications (893)
- May–June 2023
- Article
Should Your Start-up Be For-profit or Nonprofit?: A Guide for Social Entrepreneurs
By: Cait Brumme and Brian Trelstad
Years ago the line between nonprofit and for-profit enterprises was clear, but that has changed. Nonprofits now offer products that compete with those of the best for-profits, and for-profits can deliver as much social value as charities. Despite the blurred... View Details
- April 2023 (Revised September 2023)
- Case
Levels: The Remote, Asynchronous, Deep Work Management System
By: Joseph B. Fuller and George Gonzalez
Levels is a highly innovative startup in the health care space. They intend to revolutionize health by linking behavior—eating, exercise, sleeping, etc.—to changes in metabolism. They believe metabolic health can be managed through careful monitoring of changes in... View Details
- April 2023
- Case
Drive Capital: A New Road for Venture
By: Paul A. Gompers and Alicia Dadlani
Founded by two former Sequoia Capital partners, Columbus-Ohio-based Drive Capital’s mission was to build a world-class venture capital firm in the middle of the U.S., an area historically overlooked by VCs. Drive faced early challenges of attracting investors, sourcing... View Details
- March 2023
- Teaching Note
VideaHealth: Building the AI Factory
By: Karim R. Lakhani
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 621-021. The case “VideaHealth: Building the AI Factory” examines the creation of dental startup VideaHealth (Videa) and the development of its artificial intelligence (AI)-led business strategy through the eyes of founder and CEO Florian... View Details
- March 24, 2023
- Article
What Silicon Valley Bank Did Right
By: Lou Shipley
There’s a reason Silicon Valley Bank became such a fixture among startups: it understood their needs better than any other bank. Even now, many banks don’t have the flexibility and understanding to make banking easy for startups. With SVB gone, a lot of young companies... View Details
- March 2023
- Case
Mirakl: Growing The Marketplace Economy
By: Antonio Moreno, Santiago Gallino and Emilie Billaud
Mirakl provided the technology and seller network required for companies like Macy's, Best Buy, Walmart, Siemens, or Carrefour to simply design, launch, and administer a marketplace that included products from third-party sellers. What began as a basic business idea in... View Details
- March 2023
- Case
FinTunes, Inc., Board of Directors
By: Lynn S. Paine and Jennifer Fonstad
The board of FinTunes, Inc., a start-up aimed at helping musicians distribute their work and manage their finances, must decide among three candidates to serve as the company’s first independent director. The terms of FinTunes’ last round of financing provided that the... View Details
- March 2023 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
Doing Business in Kigali, Rwanda
By: Andy Zelleke, A. Zelleke, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Wale Lawal
This case examines the challenges and opportunities of doing business in Rwanda. It highlights Rwanda's economic transformation in the decades leading up to 2023 in the context of its history, culture, and politics. The case gives an overview of some of the main... View Details
- March 2023 (Revised May 2025)
- Case
On (A)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Karolin Frankenberger and Sascha Mader
Founded in 2010, in just one decade, the Swiss company On had established itself as a main player in global sports footwear and apparel. Based on an unconventional strategy which one of the founders labeled as “obsessively distinct,” On grew its sales with a compound... View Details
Keywords: Brands and Branding; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Business Startups; Business Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Digital Marketing; Disruptive Innovation; Distribution Channels; Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Global Strategy; Initial Public Offering; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Marketing Strategy; Product Design; Product Development; Product Marketing; Social Media; Strategy; Supply Chain Management; Technological Innovation; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Retail Industry; Sports Industry; Europe; Switzerland; Germany; United States
- February 2023
- Case
Enstitute
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Kumba Sennaar and Sarah Mehta
Shaila Ittycheria (MBA ’10) founded the nonprofit organization Enstitute, in 2012 in New York City. Determined to challenge the status quo within higher education, Shaila and her cofounder sought to expand opportunities for talented young people by placing them in... View Details
- February 2023
- Case
Kapor Capital
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Lindsay N. Hyde and Julia Kelley
Kapor Capital, a leading impact investment venture capital (VC) firm, is on the cusp of a generational transition. The two rising managing directors are about to take over the firm from the VC’s eponymous founders. How should they think about strategy, brand, and... View Details
- February 2023
- Supplement
Astyanax Kanakakis at norbloc: A Founder's Experience with the DIFC Fintech Hive
By: Linda A. Hill and Lydia Begag
norbloc was founded in 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden, by Astyanax Kanakakis and his co-founders, Vitalii Demianets and Sam Saatchi. Kanakakis and Demianets got to work to address a key gap in the industry: Know Your Customer (KYC) data sharing. As the first distributed KYC... View Details
Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Organizations; Leadership; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Digital Transformation; Digital Strategy; Digital Platforms; Technology Adoption; Technological Innovation; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Business and Government Relations; Business Startups; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Banking Industry; Information Technology Industry; Sweden; Europe; Singapore; London; United Arab Emirates; Dubai; Middle East; Athens; Greece
- January 2023 (Revised May 2023)
- Case
Steve Jobs: Changing the World
By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun
This case traces the life of Steve Jobs who throughout his career flaunted convention and chose an unusual path to success. The case describes how Jobs, as young man, acquired an appreciation for aesthetics and the liberal arts, but was also quick to recognize and... View Details
- January 2023
- Case
Kavnia Coffee
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Kumba Sennaar, Sarah Mehta and Jiyoon Han
Case on a coffee hardware startup where a series of experiments and pivots led founder to conclude that the venture was no longer viable. View Details
- January 2023
- Case
Proday: Calling the Right Play
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
Sarah Kunst knew the elements of a successful startup from her tenure at venture capital firms. In April 2018, however, her own app – Proday, a home fitness platform featuring exercises filmed by professional sports stars – was floundering. Kunst theorized that... View Details
- January–February 2023
- Article
External Interfaces and Internal Processes: Market Positioning and Divergent Professionalization Paths in Young Ventures
By: Alicia DeSantola, Ranjay Gulati and Pavel Zhelyazkov
We explore how the initial market positioning of entrepreneurial ventures shapes how they professionalize over time, focusing specifically on the development of functional roles. In contrast to existing literature, which has presumed a uniform march toward... View Details
- January–February 2023
- Article
The Overlooked Key to a Successful Scale-Up
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Davide Sola and Martin Kupp
Many start-ups experience enormous popularity and runaway growth, but only a few go on to become stable giants. What separates them from the pack? They all go through a developmental stage called extrapolation, say three business school professors.
View Details
- December 2022 (Revised September 2024)
- Case
Sword Health
By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Annelena Lobb and Carin-Isabel Knoop
Virgilio “V” Bento, CEO of Sword Health—a startup that provided virtual physical therapy to patients in self-insured firms via AI and sensor technology with supervision by a physical therapist with a doctorate—considered how to increase its U.S. market share. To do so,... View Details
- 13 Dec 2022
- Interview
Why Some Start-Ups Fail to Scale
By: Jeffrey Rayport and Curt Nickisch
Managing rapid growth is a huge challenge for young businesses. Even start-ups with glowing reviews and skyrocketing sales can fail. That’s because new ventures and corporate initiatives alike have to sustain profitability at scale, according to Harvard Business School... View Details
- December 2022 (Revised August 2023)
- Case
Ribbit Capital and the Gauntlet Investment Opportunity
By: Shai Bernstein and Allison M. Ciechanover
Ten-year-old, Palo Alto-based Ribbit Capital is best-known for its global investments in fintech. The firm was also an early advocate of crypto and blockchain, having invested in more than two dozen startups in the space in the past decade. In the Spring of 2022,... View Details