Faculty & Research
Faculty & Research
15
Results
- November 2021 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
QuantumScape's Mission to Revolutionize Energy Storage for a Sustainable Future
By: William A. Sahlman, Allison M. Ciechanover and Jeff Huizinga
QuantumScape CEO Jagdeep Singh juggles the many activities required to lead the next-generation battery pioneer. Founded in 2010, QuantumScape’s mission was to develop new “solid-state” car batteries that would improve upon traditional lithium-ion batteries in key...
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- October 2021 (Revised January 2022)
- Case
Chia Network: Reimagining Programmable Money
By: William A. Sahlman and George Gonzalez
Chia Network developed a novel blockchain platform that was more eco-friendly, decentralized, and scalable than Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other blockchains. Now, company leadership must decide how to scale the startup and prioritize various partnerships, use cases, and...
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- August 2021 (Revised September 2022)
- Case
Patch Technology: Making It Easy to Do the Right Thing
By: Tomomichi Amano, Robert J. Dolan and Carol Zhang
In 2021, the growing threat of climate change pushed companies around the world to understand that significant behavioral change was necessary. While many recognized that decreasing emissions was critical, more sophisticated players such as Microsoft began to recognize...
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- October 2020
- Case
1366 Technologies: Surviving in a fast changing world
By: Jurgen Weiss, William A. Sahlman and Joseph B. Lassiter III
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- 27 Sep 2018
- Working Paper Summaries
Ratcheting, Competition, and the Diffusion of Technological Change: The Case of Televisions Under an Energy Efficiency Program
by Tomomichi Amano and Hiroshi Ohashi
The diffusion of innovation in many markets is greatly influenced by the presence of policy intervention. Importantly, diffusion is further affected by the fact that firms often also have a say in affecting the implementation of policy. This analysis of the Japanese TV...
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- 2018
- Working Paper
Ratcheting, Competition, and the Diffusion of Technological Change: The Case of Televisions Under an Energy Efficiency Program
By: Tomomichi Amano and Hiroshi Ohashi
In differentiated goods markets with societal implications, quality standards are commonly implemented to avoid the under-provision of innovation. Firms have clear incentives to engage in strategic behavior because policymakers use market outcomes as a benchmark in...
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- November 2016 (Revised May 2017)
- Case
Hyperloop One
This case explores the attempt of Shervin Pishevar, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, to shepherd hyperloop, a futuristic pod-in-tube transportation technology, from concept to transformative reality via Hyperloop One and Sherpa Capital, both companies he...
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- November 2015
- Case
Rubicon Global
By: William A. Sahlman and Hunter Ashmore
The case describes Rubicon Global, a startup that aimed to disrupt the waste management industry. The company started with a bold idea: create a cloud-based, full-service waste management company providing low-cost, highly efficient, and environmentally friendly...
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- October 2015 (Revised January 2017)
- Case
UPower Technologies Inc.
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and Liz Kind
The UPower founders, Jake DeWitte and Caroline Cochran, were recent graduates from MIT's Nuclear Science and Engineering Department. They chose to attend Palo Alto–based Y Combinator's accelerator program to focus on building a "mini" nuclear reactor that would produce...
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- November 2014
- Case
Oasys Water: Balancing Strategic Partnerships & Financing Decisions
By: Ramana Nanda, William A. Sahlman and Sid Misra
Oasys Water had developed a proprietary water treatment technology based on an innovative forward osmosis process that could remove dissolved solids from water more effectively and efficiently than existing technologies. As Oasys looked to scale, it was exploring...
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- 2014
- Other
Do High Feed-in Tariffs for Solar PV Panels Hinder Competition (Japanese)
By: Koji Nomura and Tomomichi Amano
In Japan, feed-in-tariffs (FIT) are a key policy tool that has been deployed to produce the mass diffusion of photovoltaices (PV). In this study, we argue that this policy is unlikely to induce sustainable economic growth, which some use as a justification for FIT. We...
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- November 2012 (Revised December 2017)
- Cases with Notes
TerraPower
John Gilleland, CEO of TerraPower, returned to his office after a lengthy meeting with potential investors. It was October 2012, and TerraPower was in the process of raising a $200M Series C round to finance the ongoing development of its next-generation nuclear...
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