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- May 2025
- Teaching Note
Bridj and the Business of Urban Mobility (B): A New Model in Kansas City
By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Jonathan Cohen
This Teaching Note helps instructors teach students the HBS Case, Bridj and the Business of Urban Mobility (B): A New Model in Kansas City. In late 2016, Bridj was expanding its digital platform to help address urban mobility problems faced by cities across the country... View Details
Keywords: App Development; Innovation; Stakeholder Engagement; Collaboration; Ride-sharing; Entrenchment; Digital; Transportation; Urban Development; Disruption; Business Startups; Digital Platforms; Growth and Development Strategy; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Partners and Partnerships; Expansion
- January 2025 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
Duolingo: On a 'Streak'
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Nicole Tempest Keller and Nicole Luo
In December 2024, Severin Hacker, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Duolingo, reflected on the remarkable evolution of the language-learning app he helped launch in 2011. As the #1 most downloaded education app in the world, Duolingo had over 100 million... View Details
- November 2024
- Supplement
Epic Games: Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite (B)
By: Andy Wu and Ronald Wang
In a significant ruling on April 24, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld portions of the district court’s decision against Epic Games back in September 2021. However, Apple’s anti-steering provisions, which restricted app developers from... View Details
- September 2024
- Case
Eat App: Building and Monetizing an End-to-End Dining Experience Solution
By: Elie Ofek and Ahmed Dahawy
Founded in 2015 in Bahrain, Eat App was an up-and-coming player in the global restaurant management software business. In early 2024, having shifted to a product-led growth strategy, the company’s co-founders faced a host of decisions that could greatly impact their... View Details
- May 2024
- Article
The Health Risks of Generative AI-Based Wellness Apps
By: Julian De Freitas and G. Cohen
Artifcial intelligence (AI)-enabled chatbots are increasingly being used to
help people manage their mental health. Chatbots for mental health and
particularly ‘wellness’ applications currently exist in a regulatory ‘gray area’.
Indeed, most generative AI-powered... View Details
- March 2024 (Revised July 2024)
- Case
WeightWatchers: Promoting Weight Health
In December 2023, the 60-year-old weight management industry stalwart WeightWatchers announced the launch of WeightWatchers Clinic, which incorporated GLP-1s , a new class of prescription weight-loss medications, into the company’s portfolio of products and mobile app... View Details
- January 2024 (Revised June 2024)
- Case
School of Rock: Tuning into Structured Empowerment (A)
By: Tatiana Sandino, Jeffrey Rayport, Samuel Grad and Stacy Straaberg
In summer 2021, School of Rock was a youth-oriented music education company with 291 franchise- and company-owned schools globally. Before CEO Rob Price’s hire in 2017, School of Rock’s nonconformist rock ‘n’ roll culture led to variability in teaching styles,... View Details
Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Plan; Change Management; Transformation; Communication Strategy; Decisions; Curriculum and Courses; Teaching; Employee Relationship Management; Knowledge Sharing; Leadership Style; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Style; Marketing Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Franchise Ownership; Performance Expectations; Performance Improvement; Strategic Planning; Attitudes; Conflict Management; Corporate Strategy; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Education Industry; Music Industry; Massachusetts; United States
- January 2024
- Case
Flashfood: The Magic of Commitment
By: Reza Satchu and Patrick Sanguineti
Josh Domingues had accomplished what countless young entrepreneurs long to achieve: founding a promising company that aspires to make the world a tangibly better place. Shocked to learn that international food waste cumulatively amounted to the world’s third largest... View Details
- September 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
AI21 Labs in 2023: Strategy for Generative AI
By: David Yoffie, Orna Dan and Elena Corsi
Israeli generative artificial intelligence company AI21 Labs was founded in 2017 to realize the vision of true machine intelligence. It sought to reinvent writing and reading and in 2020 it launched Wordtune, an app using GenAI software to offer alternate text... View Details
- April 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
AI Wars
By: Andy Wu, Matt Higgins, Miaomiao Zhang and Hang Jiang
In February 2024, the world was looking to Google to see what the search giant and long-time putative technical leader in artificial intelligence (AI) would do to compete in the massively hyped technology of generative AI. Over a year ago, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a... View Details
- March 2023 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
Metaverse Wars
By: Andy Wu, David B. Yoffie and Matt Higgins
In 2023, the term metaverse — a combination of “meta” and “universe” — had become a catch-all for a diverse set of expectations about online virtual worlds and the future of the internet. To some, the metaverse conjured images of a massive participatory videogame... View Details
- January 2023 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
OhmConnect: Energizing the Future
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Jennifer Fonstad and Nicole Tempest Keller
Founded in 2013, OhmConnect was a free consumer web app that alerted customers about peak hours of electricity demand, and paid them to lower their energy use at home during these periods. The company sold the aggregated reductions generated by thousands of households... View Details
Keywords: App Development; Renewable Energy; Electricity Usage; Regulations; VC; Technology; Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC); Scalability; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business Model; Venture Capital; Energy Industry; United States; California; Texas; Europe
- January 2023
- Supplement
Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (B)
By: Henry McGee, Nien-hê Hsieh and Christian Godwin
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, Apple and Google partnered to develop a contact tracing application that would collect information about users infected with the disease and notify those who they had been in contact with. While Apple/Google’s... View Details
Keywords: Iphone; Encryption; Data Privacy; Customers; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decision Making; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Globalized Firms and Management; Government and Politics; Health; Health Pandemics; Leadership; Markets; Safety; Social Issues; Information Technology; Telecommunications Industry; Technology Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry; Health Industry; United States; Europe
- November 2022 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Replika AI: Monetizing a Chatbot
By: Julian De Freitas and Nicole Tempest Keller
In early 2018, Eugenia Kuyda, co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based chatbot Replika AI, was deciding how to monetize the app she had built. Launched in 2017, Replika was a consumer AI “companion app” developed by a team of AI software engineers originally based in... View Details
- April 2022
- Teaching Note
Banorte Móvil: Data-Driven Mobile Growth
By: Ayelet Israeli and Carla Larangeira
In mid-2019, Carlos Hank was deliberating over the results for Banorte Móvil—the mobile application for Banorte, Mexico’s most profitable and second-largest financial institution. Hank, who had been appointed as Banorte´s Chairman of the Board in January 2015, had... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
TikTok in 2020: Super App or Supernova? (Abridged)
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dan Maher and Dan O'Brien
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around a simple idea—helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. In less than a decade, it had become one of the world’s most valuable private companies, with investors... View Details
- 30 Nov 2021
- Interview
TikTok: Super App or Supernova?
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Brian Kenny
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around the simple idea of helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. By May 2020, TikTok operated in 155 countries and had roughly 1 billion monthly active users, placing... View Details
- August 2021
- Case
Wymsee
By: Julia Austin, Sarah Mehta and Tom Quinn
Wymsee was a company that aimed to develop a mobile application (app) that would allow television audience members to identify and purchase clothing or accessories worn by characters in the program they were watching, with the Wymsee founders taking a percentage of... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Business Plan; Business Startups; Film Entertainment; Television Entertainment; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Acquisition; Product Positioning; Opportunities; Adaptation; Mobile Technology; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Technology Industry; United States; New York (city, NY)
- August 2021
- Case
Yummy: Delivering Value to Venezuela
By: Ayelet Israeli, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Carla Larangeira
By June 2021, Yummy had become Venezuela’s first and largest food delivery app and last-mile logistics company. In Caracas, the nation’s capital, Yummy held a 55% market share, while operations in other cities had already started to take place, including in three of... View Details
- July 2021
- Case
A Close Shave at Squire
In 2020, just after closing a $34 million Series B financing round, Dave Salvant and Songe LaRon consider how to adjust their business, Squire Technologies, to the new realities posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their barbershop technology, including tools to run a shop... View Details