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• Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2018

  David Hysong and SHEPHERD Therapeutics

  Ananth Raman, John Masko and Aldo Sesia

  In 2016, David Hysong, at age 27, found out he had a rare, incurable cancer. Rather than wait around to die, Hysong, a recent graduate of Harvard Divinity School, decided to launch a biotechnology company called Shepherd Therapeutics to development treatments for his and other rare cancers. Two years later, the company had several drugs in promising stages of development but were at least 3 to 5 years away from commercialization, if they made it through clinical trials successfully. Only about 4% of drugs that enter clinical trials receive U.S. FDA approval. It is October 2018, and Shepherd is running out of money. Hysong needs to raise $5 million to fund operations for 2019 and at least $20 million for the following few years. But the company is too early to attract the type of venture capital he needs. Even if he got financing, Hysong worried that the company’s mission could be compromised by investors more interested in a return on their investment than saving lives, and he worried about the scaling challenges ahead.

  Keywords: cancer; therapeutics; drugs; Health Care and Treatment; Business Startups; Product Development; Financing and Loans; Growth and Development Strategy; Problems and Challenges;

  Citation:

  Raman, Ananth, John Masko, and Aldo Sesia. "David Hysong and SHEPHERD Therapeutics." Harvard Business School Case 619-012, November 2018.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | October 2016 (Revised February 2017)

  Essent: From a State Owned Utility to a Commercial Company

  Ananth Raman and Elena Corsi

  A formerly state-owned Dutch energy utility transforms itself to compete in a deregulated environment.

  Keywords: lean management; operation management; Organizational Change and Adaptation; service management; service operations; Commercialization; Energy Industry; Europe;

  Citation:

  Raman, Ananth, and Elena Corsi. "Essent: From a State Owned Utility to a Commercial Company." Harvard Business School Case 617-026, October 2016. (Revised February 2017.)  View Details

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• Article | Manufacturing & Service Operations Management | Winter 2016

  Improving Store Liquidation

  Nathan Craig and Ananth Raman

  This paper introduces methods for increasing the efficiency of retail store liquidation, which we define as the time-constrained divestment of retail outlets through an in-store sale of inventory. The retail industry depends extensively on liquidation, not only as a means for investors to recover capital from failed ventures, but also to allow managers of going concerns to divest stores in efforts to enhance performance and to change strategy. The operations literature has examined product liquidation, but retail store liquidation differs significantly. This paper augments the literature by introducing techniques for improving operating decisions during retail store liquidations and by demonstrating the performance of these methods in the field.

  Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Operations; Investment; Retail Industry;

  Citation:

  Craig, Nathan, and Ananth Raman. "Improving Store Liquidation." Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 18, no. 1 (Winter 2016): 89–103.  View Details

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