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- July 2025
- Case
Mitsui & Co., Ltd.
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Akiko Saito
In 2025, Kenichi Hori, President and CEO of Mitsui & Co., Ltd.—one of Japan’s most prominent Sogo Shosha (investment and trading companies with sprawling global footprints)—reflected on the company’s record-breaking profits. Its operations spanned multiple... View Details
- June 2025
- Case
(Family) Size Matters: Nico Oprée and the Decreasing Power of Family Unity over Time
By: Lauren Cohen, Octavian Graf Pilati, Dominik V. Eynern and Sophia Pan
Nico Oprée, a fourth-generation (G4) member of his family’s heavy manufacturing business, found himself reflecting on how the firm would navigate a deepening shareholder conflict. While the second generation (G2) had managed the business in harmony, dynamics shifted... View Details
Keywords: Ownership; Family Businesses; Family; Family Functioning And Support; Family Business; Family and Family Relationships; Family Ownership; Acquisition; Governance; Resignation and Termination; Leadership Style; Management Succession; Size; Negotiation Offer; Private Ownership; Business and Shareholder Relations; Trust; Conflict of Interests; Conflict Management; Manufacturing Industry; Germany
- June 2025
- Case
Scale AI Scales Up
By: Boris Groysberg and Sarah L. Abbott
Scale AI, the data labeling and AI infrastructure company, had grown rapidly since it was founded in 2016; however, as Scale’s generative AI business was taking off, Alexandr Wang, Scale’s founder and CEO, became concerned that Scale was slowing down. Wang and the... View Details
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Technology And Innovation Management; Start-ups; Entrepreneur; Managing Growth; Hiring; Generative Ai; Data Labeling; Scale; AI and Machine Learning; Entrepreneurship; Talent and Talent Management; Growth Management; Leadership; Culture; Technology Industry; United States
- June 2025
- Supplement
Full-Funnel Advertising on TikTok: An Experiment
By: Jeremy Yang and Ayelet Israeli
TikTok’s Marketing Science team developed a new type of advertising strategy beyond branding and performance advertising, called full-funnel advertising. Branding ads focused on brand building at the top of the funnel by generating consumer awareness, while performance... View Details
- June 2025
- Exercise
Full-Funnel Advertising on TikTok: An Experiment
By: Jeremy Yang and Ayelet Israeli
TikTok’s Marketing Science team developed a new type of advertising strategy beyond branding and performance advertising, called full-funnel advertising. Branding ads focused on brand building at the top of the funnel by generating consumer awareness, while performance... View Details
- June 2025
- Exercise
Full-Funnel Advertising on TikTok: An Experiment (Solution)
By: Jeremy Yang and Ayelet Israeli
TikTok’s Marketing Science team developed a new type of advertising strategy beyond branding and performance advertising, called full-funnel advertising. Branding ads focused on brand building at the top of the funnel by generating consumer awareness, while performance... View Details
- May 2025
- Case
IQanat: Empowering Rural Youth in Kazakhstan
By: Boris Groysberg and Maxim Pike Harrell
In June 2025, IQanat CEO Aliya Salikova considered scaling opportunities for the foundation, which provided educational opportunities for children from rural regions of Kazakhstan. Established by Kazakhstani businessman and philanthropist Aidyn Rakhimbayev, IQanat... View Details
- May 2025
- Case
'Net Zero in Action': Impact Investing at the McKnight Foundation
By: Lauren Cohen, Christina R. Wing and Sophia Pan
Elizabeth McGeveran, Vice President of Investments at the McKnight Foundation, reflected on how to effectively advance the organization’s net-zero strategy. The foundation had committed 10% of its endowment to building a portfolio of impact investments and was among... View Details
Keywords: Foundation; Impact Investing; ESG; Family Business; Forecasting and Prediction; Private Sector; Renewable Energy; Social Entrepreneurship; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Financial Strategy; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Institutional Investing; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Private Ownership; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Social Issues; Sustainable Cities; Financial Services Industry; Minnesota; United States
- May 2025
- Case
Windsurf and the AI Code Assistant Market
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Sudhanshu Nath Mishra and Radhika Kak
In April 2025, the founding team of Windsurf, an AI start-up specializing in code generation gathered in Mountain View, California, to assess its remarkable year of growth. The company had scaled from a niche GitHub Copilot alternative to a breakout player with over... View Details
- 2025
- Chapter
Institutional Entrepreneurship and Climate Change
By: Ann-Kristin Bergquist and Geoffrey Jones
This chapter explores when and why private regulatory governance systems became the primary form of global environmental governance. The chapter explores two different historical paths in such private regulation and how they came about. The first path involved... View Details
- April 2025 (Revised May 2025)
- Case
Adobe: GenAI Opportunity or Threat?
By: Sunil Gupta, Rajiv Lal and Allison Ciechanover
In December 2022, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen faced a pivotal strategic decision due to the rapid rise of generative AI image models from OpenAI, Midjourney, and StabilityAI. Adobe, a leader in digital media and marketing software with a 40-year legacy of innovation and... View Details
- April 2025 (Revised May 2025)
- Background Note
Customer Acquisition and the Cash Flow Trap
By: E. Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller
Startups as well as existing firms recognize the need to invest in order to acquire customers for their new ventures. And as each customer is expected at some point to have generated sufficient gross margins to cover their CAC, management expects that, soon enough, the... View Details
- April 2025
- Case
Techint: Strategic Choices for Community Impact
By: Lauren Cohen, Virak Prum, Kenneth Charman, Pedro Levindo and Mariana Cal
In early 2024 Erika Bienek, Chief Community Relations Officer at Techint, had to decide whether to invest in a new company-owned and operated technical school in Veracruz, Mexico, or invest instead in strengthening the city’s public education system. Techint, a global... View Details
Keywords: Technical Institutes; Community Relations; Social Impact; Argentina; Mexico; Brazil; Conglomerate; Stakeholder Management; Government And Business; Community Impact; Philanthropy; Business Conglomerates; Business Subsidiaries; Business Headquarters; Family Business; Decision Making; Private Sector; Public Sector; Education; Curriculum and Courses; Middle School Education; Secondary Education; Teaching; Training; Learning; Energy; Engineering; Construction; Values and Beliefs; Geography; Global Range; Local Range; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Globalized Firms and Management; Government Legislation; Recruitment; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Knowledge; Resource Allocation; Industry Clusters; Infrastructure; Family Ownership; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Business and Community Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business and Government Relations; Creativity; Reputation; Social and Collaborative Networks; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Poverty; Strategy; Construction Industry; Education Industry; Energy Industry; Industrial Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Steel Industry; Europe; Italy; Latin America; North and Central America; Mexico; North America; United States; South America; Argentina; Buenos Aires; Brazil
- April 2025
- Case
Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters: Vickers Oils and Resolving Family Conflict over Generations
By: Lauren Cohen, Octavian Graf Pilati and Sophia Pan
Will Vickers, a seventh-generation (G7) member of the Vickers Family, grappled with a pressing challenge: how to re-integrate family members into the firm to recover lost talent. His father, Peter Vickers, was the lone leader of the Vickers Oils—despite having stepped... View Details
Keywords: Shareholder; Involvement; Family Office; Family Firms; Family Business; Business Growth and Maturation; Experience and Expertise; Retention; Leadership Development; Business or Company Management; Management Succession; Organizational Structure; Family Ownership; Family and Family Relationships; Diversification; Conflict and Resolution; Consumer Products Industry; United Kingdom
- April 2025
- Article
Serving with a Smile on Airbnb: Analyzing the Economic Returns and Behavioral Underpinnings of the Host’s Smile
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Elizabeth Friedman, Kannan Srinivasan, Ravi Dhar and Xupin Zhang
Non-informational cues, such as facial expressions, can significantly influence judgments and interpersonal impressions. While past research has explored how smiling affects business outcomes in offline or in-store contexts, relatively less is known about how smiling... View Details
- March 2025 (Revised May 2025)
- Case
Xfund and Sam Altman: Finding Harvard's Best Generative AI Founders
By: Suraj Srinivasan
On May 1, 2024, Xfund Managing Partners Patrick Chung and Brandon Farwell, hosted a high-stakes venture pitch session designed to select one startup for a minimum $100,000 investment. This “Xperiment Stake” competition, dedicated to startups in the Generative AI... View Details
- March 2025
- Case
YouTube: Bidding for NFL Sunday Ticket
By: Anita Elberse and Crystal Yao
In December 2022, Erin Teague, a senior director and the global head of sports, movies and shows at YouTube, technology giant Alphabet Inc.’s video- sharing platform, received the news that Sundar Pichai, the chief executive officer of Alphabet and its subsidiary... View Details
- March 2025
- Case
Metaphysic AI: Rethinking the Value of Human Expertise
By: Zoë B. Cullen, Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
In early 2025, Thomas Graham, CEO of Metaphysic, a leading AI generative video company confronted fundamental questions about who should control digital identity in a world where AI could perfectly recreate human likeness. Founded in 2021, Metaphysic first rose to fame... View Details
- March 2025 (Revised March 2025)
- Case
Good for the Seller, Good for the Buyer and Good for Society: Sampo-yoshi, Sustainability and Trust at ITOCHU
By: Sandra J. Sucher and Bethelehem Y Araya
In 2024, ITOCHU CEO Masahiro Okafuji was at a crossroads. As the thirteenth CEO since ITOCHU’s founding in 1858, he had fueled the company’s growth since 2011 by bringing ITOCHU’s founding philosophy of Sampo-yoshi (good for the seller, good for the buyer and... View Details
- March 2025
- Article
Do Public Financial Statements Influence Private Equity and Venture Capital Financing?
By: Brian K. Baik, Natalie Berfeld and Rodrigo S. Verdi
We study whether private firm public financial statements influence the probability of raising venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) financing. In particular, we propose that private firms’ public financial statements can help the VC/PE search process by... View Details