Adina Sterling, Sheila Melvin
2020
GoDaddy had long been known for polarizing television commercials that were focused on generating attention and buzz—CNBC called its brand “synonymous with controversial advertisements with scantily clad women.” But the company decided that the ads did…
Robert Siegel, Jeffrey Conn
2020
This case describes 23andMe CEO and cofounder Anne Wojcicki’s founding story and her recent attempts to scale the company’s direct-to-consumer genetic testing franchise while simultaneously expanding its pharmaceutical development aspirations.
George Foster, Jeffrey Conn
2020
This case provides an overview of the founding and scaling story of British health and wellness company Clinova. The case outlines the fledgling company’s early marketing successes signing up-and-coming athletes and sports franchises, as well as the…
Robert Chess, Jocelyn H. Hornblower
2020
This case is primarily about the opportunity for mid-career professionals to return to work after a career break. It focuses on the company iRelaunch, which helps companies develop and implement career re-entry programs and connects employees and…
Robert Chess, Jeffrey Conn
2020
This case examines Nike’s push to develop a sneaker specifically engineered for walking and a luxury apparel line which are both purposefully marketed to an older demographic, a first for the company. The case focuses on legendary sneaker designer Tinker…
Robert Siegel, Nick Hubbard
2020
Majid Al Futtaim, a retail and entertainment conglomerate based in the United Arab Emirates, undergoes a digital transformation under CEO Alain Bejjani in response to disruption in its four core industries: retail, hospitality, food/beverage and grocery…
William Barnett, Gary Mekikian, Christy Johnson
2020
Marcos Galperin, a graduate of Stanford Graduate School of Business, founded Mercado Libre in 1999 with a vision to build an e-commerce company focused on serving the nascent but fast- growing Spanish and Portuguese-speaking markets in Latin America. In…
Peter Ziebelman, Joseph Golden
2020
The main purpose of the Venus Medtech case is to give students a greater appreciation for the scale, sophistication, and competitiveness of the innovation landscape outside of Silicon Valley, with particular focus on China. Through a dramatized account…
Robert Chess, Joseph Golden
2020
This case considers the state of telehealth, or the remote delivery of healthcare services via telecommunications technology, in 2019. Doctor On Demand, a promising start-up in the space, sought to solve the four main challenges that the telehealth…
Russell Siegelman, Laura Hattendorf, Mitchel Scott
2020
The case follows Erica Mackey, CEO of early childhood education impact venture MyVillage, as she determines the growth path of the company after a recent fundraise. Particular issues explored include tensions between growth and mission, defining and…
Robert Chess, Milana Shapira
2020
Moshe Pinto, CEO, and Darin Buxbaum, COO, sat in their small conference room in Redwood City in what used to be the training facility for the San Francisco 49’ers. It had been four years since they had embarked on solving one of the biggest unaddressed…
Gloria Chie Lee, Debra Schifrin
2019
Talking Points is a U.S. not-for-profit 501c3 organization that provides a multilingual platform to help teachers communicate with families. The idea was first created in 2014 at a Startup Weekend as a translation-embedded SMS tool, inspired by the…
Yossi Feinberg, Jeffrey Conn
2019
This case describes the transformation of the UK’s oldest financial services franchise from a product-aligned and brick-and-mortar traditional banking institution to a customer-aligned and digital-first technology organization. The case parallels Lloyds’…
Amy Wilkinson, Blake Kavanaugh
2019
In 2019, Eve Burton, Chairwoman of HearstLab and Chief Legal Officer at Hearst Corporation, knew that HearstLab was at a key inflection point for growth—with opportunities to take on additional capital and expand internationally.
HearstLab is an…
Robert Burgelman, Sheila Melvin
2019
When Anders Eriksson was appointed CEO of Bonnier News in June 2016, he took the helm of a storied Swedish media business in the midst of a momentous transformation. Bonnier News included three of Sweden’s most important newspapers—Dagens Nyheter (DN)…
Douglas Abbey, Chris Mahowald, Sara Gaviser, Whitney Birdwell
2019
This case describes a development decision faced by Stanford University’s Office of Land, Building, and Real Estate. In 2004, Stanford had the opportunity to develop a a 21.4 acre swath of land on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California, one of the…
Stephen Ciesinski, Howard Rosen, Blake Kavanaugh
2019
Nico Shea founded Cumplo in 2011 to enable peer-to-peer lending for consumers before changing the company’s focus to small-to-medium businesses (SMBs). Cumplo was a financial technology (“fintech”) company that provided a platform for SMBs applying for a…
Robert Burgelman, Mimi Liu, Ziv Shafir
2019
This case continues the story of Dr. Robert Pearl, who had guided the Permanente Group of Northern California through challenging years in the health care industry. While Kaiser Permanente had a long history and well-established reputation on the West…
John Glynn, Erika Feldhausen
2019
This case introduces students to the history of women in the venture capital industry. It explores the impact of gender diversity on both company performance and fund returns, describes the lack of funding for female founders, and highlights examples of…
Stephen Ciesinski, Jeffrey Conn
2019
This case provides an overview of the founding and scaling of Chinese artificial intelligence-enabled adaptive learning company Squirrel AI. The case details founder Derek Haoyang Li’s struggles to build and scale a comprehensive cutting-edge product and…
Howard Rosen, Reema Shah
2019
The purpose of this case is to look at Zipline’s product market fit. The case examines how the Zipline team evaluated which market segments to consider next as they looked to expand beyond Ghana and Rwanda. Students will also be introduced to various go…
Jennifer Aaker, Naomi Bagdonas, Jeffrey Conn
2019
The case describes the company-wide impact of former Coursera CEO Richard Levin’s decisions to infuse levity into typically dry business processes and identify and empower humor-fueled culture bearers.
Jennifer Aaker, Naomi Bagdonas, Jeffrey Conn, Jean Oelwang, Greg Rose
2019
The case describes Virgin Group CEO and Virgin Unite Foundation leader Richard Branson’s attempts to insert humor and levity into typically stressful and momentous business situations.
Jennifer Aaker, Naomi Bagdonas, Jeffrey Conn, Matthew Saucedo
2019
The case describes former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s general philosophy on the use of humor as a strategic communications tool and essential component of Google’s culture. It also provides the reader with a few tips for the effective use of humor in a work…