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- February 2025
- Teaching Note
Influencer-Led Brand Building: Hairitage and the McKnights
By: William R. Kerr and James Palano
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 825-066. Mindy McKnight started in 2009 as an early influencer on social media whose videos of creative hairstyles for girls launched her family on an entrepreneurship journey. The McKnights transitioned from YouTube ad revenue to brand... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
New Product Diffusion Within Retailers: The Effect of Managerial Quality on Rollout
By: Tomomichi Amano and Jorge Tamayo
Retailers are key intermediaries through which consumers encounter innovation in the form of new products. How are these products rolled out within retailers? We observe significant variation in the availability of new products across stores in a large retail chain in... View Details
- February 2025
- Case
Managing Complexity at mymuesli
By: Thomas Graeber and Stacy Straaberg
In April 2009, direct-to-consumer e-commerce muesli brand mymuesli faced a flood of customer questions. The breakfast cereal startup enabled users to order personalized muesli on its website by choosing from 75 organic ingredients for a total of 566 quadrillion... View Details
- January 2025
- Case
Duolingo: On a 'Streak'
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Nicole Tempest Keller and Nicole Luo
In December 2024, Severin Hacker, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Duolingo, reflected on the remarkable evolution of the language-learning app he helped launch in 2011. As the #1 most downloaded education app in the world, Duolingo had over 100 million... 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
- January 2025
- Case
Intuition Robotics: An AI Companion for Older Adults
By: Amit Goldenberg, Elie Ofek and Orna Dan
Intuition Robotics, a startup that makes an AI companion robot to alleviate older adults’ loneliness, debates whether to pursue a B2C model or B2G route. If it opts for the government vertical, it must determine how to negotiate a favorable deal. Two weeks after... View Details
- November 2024
- Case
Demond Martin and WellWithAll
By: Hise Gibson, Archie L. Jones and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone
This case study chronicles the transformative entrepreneurial path of Demond Martin, co-founder and CEO of WellWithAll, a health and wellness startup. Motivated by a pivotal life experience and deep concern for racial health inequities, Martin transitions from a... View Details
Keywords: Customers; Diversity; Ethnicity; Race; Health; Recruitment; Leadership Style; Management Style; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Organizational Culture; Mission and Purpose; Relationships; Trust; Business Strategy; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Investment; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; Chicago; Boston; Atlanta; North Carolina; District of Columbia
- November 2024
- Case
Innovation at Master Kong Beverages
By: David E. Bell and Shu Lin
Hong-Chen Wei (HBS MBA 2014), Chairman of KSF Beverage Holding Co., Ltd. (KSFB), was steering the company toward the premium segment with the launch of “InheriTea,” a premium, sugar-free tea product. Traditionally, KSFB’s flagship brand, Master Kong, catered to the... View Details
Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Trends; Behavior; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Product Launch; Product Development; Segmentation; Organizational Culture; Product Positioning; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Asia; China
- November 2024 (Revised December 2024)
- Case
Moonfare and the Democratization of Private Equity
By: Victoria Ivashina and Srimayi Mylavarapu
Founded in 2016, Moonfare headquartered in Europe, was a pioneer in the “democratization” of private equity investments. Historically, private equity was accessible only to institutional investors like pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, and large family... View Details
- November 2024
- Case
Ather Energy: The Future of Mobility
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Kannan Srinivasan and Malini Sen
Ather Energy, India’s third-largest electric scooter maker by volume, was founded in 2013. Five years later, the start-up launched its first electric scooter, Ather 450, which was powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), to navigate... View Details
- October 2024
- Article
Sampling Bias in Entrepreneurial Experiments
By: Ruiqing Cao, Rembrand Koning and Ramana Nanda
Using data from a prominent online platform for launching new digital products, we document that ‘sampling bias’—defined as the difference between a startup’s target customer base and the actual sample on which early ‘beta tests’ are conducted—has a systematic and... View Details
- September 2024
- Case
Comun: Partners in Peril
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Alexis Lefort
In spring 2023, Abiel Gutierrez and Andres Santos, co-founders of Comun, faced a critical decision at their fintech startup serving Latino immigrants. Having launched their product the previous year, they experienced rapid growth but encountered rising fraud and... View Details
- 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
- September 2024
- Supplement
Anker Innovations (B)
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
- September 2024 (Revised January 2025)
- Exercise
Building an AI First Snack Company: A Hands-on Generative AI Exercise
By: Iavor I. Bojinov
Although the term 'Generative AI' (GenAI) is widely recognized, its practical application in daily workflows has yet to be understood. This exercise introduces students to GenAI tools, demonstrating how they can be seamlessly integrated into professional work practices... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Patent Hunters
By: Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun, Katie Moon and Paula Suh
Analyzing millions of patents granted by the USPTO between 1976 and 2020, we find a pattern where specific patents only rise to prominence after considerable time has passed. Amongst these late-blooming influential patents, we show that there are key players (patent... View Details
- June 2024
- Case
Growing Foodology into Latin America's Largest Platform for Virtual Restaurants
By: Jorge Tamayo, Rembrand Koning and Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago
This case delves into the expansion strategy of Foodology, a cloud kitchen startup based in Bogotá that operated across four Latin American countries (Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru). Co-founders Daniela Izquierdo and Juan Guillermo Azuero (both HBS, 2019) grappled... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Food; Digital Platforms; Product Launch; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Strategy; Business Model; Business Startups; Profit; Marketing Strategy; Expansion; Diversification; Food and Beverage Industry; Latin America; South America; Colombia; Brazil; Mexico; Peru
- June 2024
- Case
Tremblant Capital: Launching an Active ETF
By: Robin Greenwood, Luis M. Viceira and Robert Ialenti
The case highlights deliberations led by Brett Barakett, CEO and chief investment officer of Tremblant Capital, just months prior to launching an actively managed ETF, Tremblant Global (TOGA). However, his team continued to have reservations around the launch. On the... View Details
- June 2024
- Article
Real Growth in Space Manufacturing Output Substantially Exceeds Growth in the Overall Space Economy
By: Tina Highfill and Matthew Weinzierl
Accurately measuring real economic output in the space economy is made difficult by the rapid increase in capabilities and decrease in prices of launch and satellite technologies achieved over the past two decades. Nominal measures of output in space will tend to... View Details
- May 2024
- Case
Pernod Ricard: Uncorking Digital Transformation
By: Iavor Bojinov, Edward McFowland III, François Candelon, Nikolina Jonsson and Emer Moloney
This case study explores the opportunities and challenges of the digital transformation journey of French wine and spirits company Pernod Ricard. As part of the transformation, the company launched four key digital programs (KDPs) aimed at using data and artificial... View Details
Keywords: Business Organization; Business Divisions; Talent and Talent Management; Global Strategy; AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science; Digital Transformation; Digital Strategy; Advertising; Sales; Organizational Culture; Product Development; Decision Making; Technology Adoption; Alignment; Expansion; Food and Beverage Industry; France; Europe