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[This is the fifth installment in a monthly series on management issues in the time of COVID-19.] We have asked approximately 600 CEOs to share with...
- January 2021
- Case
eToro: Building the World's Largest Social Trading Network
By: Elie Ofek and Danielle Golan
Social trading platform eToro was preparing for the launch of its expanded offering in the U.S. The company faced critical decisions regarding product-market fit, go-to-market strategy, positioning and monetization. Moreover, it faced the challenge of how best to make...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Determinants of Early-Stage Startup Performance: Survey Results
To explore determinants of new venture performance, the CEOs of 470 early-stage startups were surveyed regarding a broad range of factors related to their venture’s customer value proposition, product management, marketing, technology and operations, financial...
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- October 2020 (Revised December 2020)
- Case
Investing at Pivotal Ventures
By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Emily R. McComb and Eren Kuzucu
Launched in 2015 by Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Pivotal Ventures is an investment and incubation company. The company aims to support and promote transformational ideas, people and organizations, and advance social progress for women...
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- October 2020
- Case
COVID-19 Testing at Everlywell
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Olivia Hull
In March 2020, as COVID-19 spreads rapidly across the U.S., Everlywell founder Julia Cheek considers how to respond as a small start-up specializing in at-home lab testing. After making dramatic budget cuts, she decides to pivot the organization to address the...
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Keywords:
Entrepreneurship;
Business Strategy;
Venture Capital;
Health Care And Treatment;
Health Disorders;
Leading Change;
Technology Adoption;
Technology Platform;
Competitive Strategy;
Science;
Adaptation;
Corporate Social Responsibility And Impact;
Crisis Management;
Social Entrepreneurship;
Ethics;
Government Legislation;
Health;
Health Testing And Trials;
Health Pandemics;
Consumer Products Industry;
Health Industry;
Technology Industry;
Texas;
United States
- September 2020
- Case
Disrupting Justice at RightNow: Persevere, Pivot or Perish
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Amir Reza Rezvani
The case examines the focus of an early stage company, and how an unexpected external incidence can threaten or void the business model. It encompasses issues such as defining and pivoting a business model, organizational requirements for a pivot, investor relations,...
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- September 2020
- Case
&pizza: Leading an ‘Employee-First’ Company During a Period of Societal Challenges
By: Francesca Gino and Jeffrey Huizinga
&Pizza is a pizza chain that in the spring of 2020 finds its business completely up-ended by the COVID-19 crisis and shut-down. Many companies in the restaurant and hospitality sector responded to the crisis by shutting down their operations and laying off employees. ...
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- September–October 2020
- Article
When It's Time to Pivot, What's Your Story?: How to Sell Stakeholders on a New Strategy
By: Rory McDonald and Robert Bremner
To succeed, a new company must rally investors, staff, customers, and the media around a good story. But often that narrative turns out to be wrong, and entrepreneurs realize they need to change direction. How that shift is communicated can have a huge impact on a...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
How History Shaped the Innovator's Dilemma
By: Tom Nicholas
In 1993, four years prior to the publication of Clayton Christensen’s highly influential book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, the Business History Review (BHR) published an article by Christensen titled “The Rigid Disk Drive Industry: A History of...
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- July 2020
- Case
Pivotal Ventures: Bending the Curve on Women’s Power and Influence
By: Lynda Applegate and Ankita Panda
- June 2020
- Case
Career Karma: Growth in a Time of Global Uncertainty (A)
By: Laura Huang, Elizabeth Jiang and Brandon Yu
Career Karma is a startup focused on helping individuals looking to transition careers into computer engineering roles or similar fields by preparing them for formal technical training programs, or “coding bootcamps,” that would lead to a successful career pivot upon...
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Keywords:
Business Ventures;
Business Growth And Maturation;
Business Plan;
Business Startups;
Education;
Training;
Entrepreneurship;
Corporate Entrepreneurship;
Social Entrepreneurship;
Management;
Goals And Objectives;
Growth And Development Strategy;
Growth Management;
Marketing Strategy;
Organizations;
Mission And Purpose;
Personal Development And Career;
Health Pandemics;
Technology Industry;
Education Industry;
Employment Industry
- June 24, 2020
- Article
Wolfgang Puck on Leading His Restaurants Through the Pandemic
By: Boris Groysberg
Chef Wolfgang Puck shares his experience leading his restaurants and other businesses through the pandemic crisis. He explains how his company has pivoted to find new sources of revenue and how he has become a vocal advocate for the restaurant industry. He also...
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- 2020
- Article
A Practical Approach to Sales Compensation: What Do We Know Now? What Should We Know in the Future?
By: Doug J. Chung, Byungyeon Kim and Niladri B. Syam
Personal selling represents one of the most important elements in the marketing mix, and appropriate management of the sales force is vital to achieving the organization’s objectives. Among the various instruments of sales management, compensation plays a pivotal role...
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- May 2020
- Case
Trust Merchant Bank
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pippa Tubman Armerding, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Salim Dewji
Trust Merchant Bank (TMB), a leading bank in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), needs to decide whether to enter the soon-to-be-liberalized insurance industry. Since its founding in 2004, TMB has played a pivotal role in reshaping the DRC banking landscape by...
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Keywords:
Retail Banking;
Financial Services;
Financial Inclusion;
Turnaround;
Fintech;
Banks And Banking;
Financial Condition;
Insurance;
Corporate Strategy;
Expansion;
Business Model;
Family Business;
Entrepreneurship;
Technology;
Monopoly;
Banking Industry;
Insurance Industry;
Africa;
Congo, Democratic Republic Of The
- May 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Justice-as-a-Service at RightNow
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Amir Reza Rezvani
The case examines the focus of an early stage company, and how an unexpected external incidence can threaten or void the business model. It encompasses issues such as minimal viable product, defining and pivoting a business model, organizational requirements for a...
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- May 2020 (Revised September 2020)
- Case
Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Amy Klopfenstein and Amram Migdal
In November 2019, Sandra Richter, co-founder and CEO of Soofa, a network of advertising-supported digital bulletin boards, must decide between two different fundraising and expansion plans for her company. One plan entails raising $15 million in a Series A round and...
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Keywords:
Business Ventures;
Business Model;
Business Plan;
Business Startups;
Entrepreneurship;
Decision Making;
Decisions;
Ethics;
Geography;
Geopolitical Units;
Finance;
Investment;
Markets;
Market Entry And Exit;
Demand And Consumers;
Network Effects;
Media;
Society;
Urban Development;
Sustainable Cities;
Technology;
Hardware;
Technology Platform;
Strategy;
Business Strategy;
Expansion;
Relationships;
Partners And Partnerships;
Capital;
Venture Capital;
Advertising Industry;
Technology Industry;
Media And Broadcasting Industry;
North And Central America;
United States;
Massachusetts;
Cambridge
- May 5, 2020
- Article
Why the Crisis Is Putting Companies at Risk of Losing Female Talent
By: Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg
There has been a massive shift in how work gets done inside many companies and the global pivot to working remotely will likely change how many think about face time and rigid work schedules. Might these changes benefit women? The authors argue that will depend on how...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
On the Representativeness of Voter Turnout
By: Louis Kaplow and Scott Duke Kominers
Prominent theory research on voting uses models in which expected pivotality drives voters' turnout decisions and hence determines voting outcomes. It is recognized, however, that such work is at odds with Downs's paradox: in practice, many individuals turn out for...
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- February 2020
- Case
Wellthy: The Economics of Caring
By: Brian Trelstad and Joseph B. Fuller
In 2014, Lindsay Jurist-Rosner (MBA ’09) founded Wellthy, a B2C business that coordinates care for working professionals seeking help to support loved ones with chronic diseases or aging parents. With personal experience as a young professional providing care for her...
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- December 2019
- Case
WeWork Files for an IPO
By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz
For the board of The We Company—better known as WeWork—August 14, 2019, promised to be a pivotal day. It was then that WeWork’s IPO prospectus, known as an S-1 filing, would be made public, giving potential investors, the media, and the general public a window into the...
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- November–December 2019
- Article
Pivoting Isn't Enough? Managing Strategic Reorientation in New Ventures
By: Rory McDonald and Cheng Gao
New ventures often experience deviations from their plans that oblige them to reorient in pursuit of better fit between their evolving products and their target customers. Yet research is largely silent on how managers explain such changes and justify their ventures in...
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Keywords:
Strategic Reorientation;
Technology Entrepreneurship;
Innovation;
Product Development Processes;
Organizational Adaptation;
Qualitative Methods (general);
Entrepreneurship;
Technology;
Organizational Change And Adaptation;
Strategy;
Innovation And Invention;
Product Development;
Communication Strategy