Big Spaceship: The Evolving Agency

Boris  Groysberg; Matthew G. Preble

Case | HBS Case Collection | June 2016

Big Spaceship: The Evolving Agency

by Boris Groysberg and Matthew G. Preble

Abstract

This case discusses the evolution of Big Spaceship, an advertising and marketing agency, from a product-focused business to a relationship-oriented one as clients seek deeper and more meaningful long-term partnerships. The 15-year-old company had already evolved multiple times over its history as new technological platforms and services emerged to change the way people communicated and received information, and as the broader advertising industry changed. New and more aggressive competitors were emerging, and the industry was quickly consolidating. Big Spaceship had adjusted its strategy, organizational structure, and human capital accordingly. The company’s founder and CEO, Michael Lebowitz, now wondered what he needed to do to keep his company competitive in the years to come. Had he found the right way to organize his people and structure the organization following the transition from project-based to relationship-based work, or were further changes necessary? How could he keep people engaged as the nature of the work evolved in some instances to become more predictable? What new systems and processes were needed to ensure a steady output of high quality work? Lebowitz was proud that the organization had retained a distinctly different feel from, and approach to work than, traditional advertising agencies, and Lebowitz and his colleagues wanted to maintain these intangible elements as the company evolved. But was this incompatible with his business goals?

Keywords: advertising; digital marketing; social media; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Marketing; Organizational Structure; Organizational Design; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Advertising Industry; United States; New York (city, NY);

Language: English

Format: Print

26 pages

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Citation:

Groysberg, Boris, and Matthew G. Preble. "Big Spaceship: The Evolving Agency." Harvard Business School Case 416-003, June 2016.

Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2019

Wayfair

Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie Ma and Matthew Preble

In 2016 Niraj Shah and Steve Conine, founders of online home goods retailer Wayfair, are faced with a decision about how to improve user experience on their e-commerce sites. A key driver of consumer interest and conversion to purchase in the home category is visual imagery, which has traditionally been generated not by the retail channel rather than by manufacturers. Catalog retailers, in particular, are famous for visually romancing the category. As a comprehensive offering, Wayfair hosts over seven million SKUs on its site, so it must solve for the lack of visual assets from manufacturers by generating visual assets of its own. Initially, the company embarks on a plan to produce these images using traditional photography studios and professional staffs, but costs mount and throughput is too slow. Seeking a solution, Shah and Conine assess the likelihood of using technology – specifically, high-resolution 3D modeling from low-resolution 2D images – to address the challenge. Resolving this issue is especially pressing, given that Wayfair has just launched private label lines and a host of what it calls lifestyle brands, which require support from high-end visual merchandising. As a consequence, the question of how to provision visual assets becomes a question of how fast Wayfair can grow. This case presents the factors involved in deciding what direction to take – a reliable path using traditional methods or a risky path using bleeding-edge technologies.

Keywords: visual assets; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Business or Company Management; Growth Management; Innovation and Invention; Operations; Strategy; Technology; Retail Industry; Service Industry; United States; Massachusetts;

Citation:

Rayport, Jeffrey F., Susie Ma, and Matthew Preble. "Wayfair." Harvard Business School Case 819-045, April 2019. View Details

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CareerWise Colorado (CWC) is an organization that equips high school students with the skills to build successful careers through apprenticeships. Founded in 2016, the young organization has attracted interest from different groups and civic leaders from across the U.S., some of whom want to replicate CWC’s model, and others who want CWC to bring and then operate its program in their localities. Noel Ginsburg, CWC’s founder and CEO, and Ashley Carter, COO, now have to decide how, when, and where to grow CWC. They both believe in CWC’s apprenticeship model’s widespread applicability, but so far it is still a relatively small—with just over 200 active apprentices spread across two cohorts; all of whom live in Colorado—and unproven entity. As of late 2018, no apprentices had yet completed the three year program. They did not want to scale the program too soon, but Ginsburg and Carter also did not want to miss out on the attractive opportunities being presented to them. How should they scale this organization?

This case reveals to readers what has transpired at Kids & Company in the year following the decision point presented in Kids & Company: Entering the U.S.”

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