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- March 2022
- Teaching Note
SoundCloud: Subscription Streaming?
By: Andy Wu and Ashish Nanda
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 719-430
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- March 2022 (Revised April 2022)
- Teaching Note
Spotify's Audio-First Strategy: Leading the Podcasting Market
By: Hong Luo and Carol Lin
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 721-439. Within 15 years, CEO Daniel Ek had led Spotify from an ambitious startup to a multi-billion dollar company that had transformed the music industry. As part of Spotify’s next phase of growth, the platform would invest heavily in...
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- December 2021 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Collaboration Wars: Slack vs. Microsoft Teams
By: David B. Yoffie, Kriti Gupta, Mehek Punatar, Poonam Sacheti and Poorvi Vijay
In 2021, Slack was acquired by Salesforce. While widely viewed as the best corporate collaboration and messaging software, Slack was being challenged by Microsoft, which was giving away its competitive product, Microsoft Teams, for free with a subscription to...
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- September 2021 (Revised March 2022)
- Case
Katie Couric Media: Landing the First Client
By: N. Louis Shipley and William R. Kerr
In May 2018, celebrated journalist Katie Couric and her husband, John Molner, had recently launched a full-service media firm called Katie Couric Media (KCM). Couric treasured the opportunity to address important social issues like gender equality, environmental...
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- September 2021 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
STARZPLAY: Shooting for the Stars
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini and Alpana Thapar
In mid-2021, Maaz Sheikh, cofounder and CEO of STARZPLAY, a Dubai-based subscription video on demand (SVOD) provider that catered to the Middle East and North Africa region, was wrestling with how to find the right balance between continued subscriber growth and...
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Keywords:
Pricing;
Growth;
Profitability;
Subscription Business;
Business Model Innovation;
Fintech;
Subscription;
Performance Measurement;
Promotions;
International Marketing;
Streaming;
Competition;
Marketing;
Price;
Strategy;
Entrepreneurship;
Performance;
Measurement and Metrics;
Business Model;
Media and Broadcasting Industry;
Middle East;
North Africa
- September 2021
- Case
Worldreader: Helping Readers Build a Better World
By: Marco Bertini, Elie Ofek and Julia Kelley
Founded in 2010, Worldreader was an international nonprofit organization that promoted reading to children around the world. For many years, Worldreader distributed e-readers to under-resourced communities and funded its operations primarily through philanthropic...
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Keywords:
Subscription Model;
Price;
Financial Strategy;
Education;
Early Childhood Education;
Learning;
Geography;
Geographic Scope;
Global Range;
Goals and Objectives;
Marketing;
Marketing Strategy;
Markets;
Organizations;
Mission and Purpose;
Social Enterprise;
Non-Governmental Organizations;
Nonprofit Organizations;
Society;
Social Issues;
Strategy;
Commercialization;
Expansion;
Segmentation;
Education Industry;
Africa;
Asia;
Latin America;
Europe;
North and Central America;
South America
- May 2021 (Revised August 2021)
- Case
Melissa Wood Health: How to Win in the Creator Economy
By: Eva Ascarza
In October 2020, Melissa Wood-Tepperberg, founder of the digital subscription wellness platform Melissa Wood Health (MWH) and creator of ‘The MWH Method,’ was evaluating the strategic directions of her company. What had started as a way to share workouts and wellness...
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- May 2021 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
Headspace vs. Calm: A Mindful Competition
By: Ayelet Israeli and Anne Wilson
By 2021, the mindfulness app wars reached their apex. Over 2,000 meditation apps were available to consumers, but two apps, Headspace and Calm, dominated the space, jointly holding about 70% of the total market. Headspace had established itself as the approachable...
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Keywords:
Marketing Communication;
Integrated Strategy;
Brand;
Brand ＆ Product Management;
Brand Communication;
Brand Differentiation;
Brand Building;
Brand Management;
E-Commerce Strategy;
Ecommerce;
App;
App Development;
Applications;
COVID;
COVID-19;
Pandemic;
Pricing;
Pricing Strategy;
Subscription Model;
Subscription;
Partnerships;
Strategic Partnerships;
B2B Vs. B2C;
B2B;
Health ＆ Wellness;
Wellbeing;
Digitization;
Commoditization;
Mobile App;
Mobile App Industry;
Mobile Healthcare;
Mobile Marketing;
Digital Brand;
Digital Health;
Consumer Health;
Apps;
Online Business;
Online Competition;
Online Community;
Online Entertainment;
Entertainment And Leisure;
Meditation;
Marketing;
Marketing Communications;
Brands and Branding;
Price;
Strategy;
Competition;
Competitive Strategy;
Competitive Advantage;
Partners and Partnerships;
Health;
Well-being;
Mobile and Wireless Technology;
Communication;
Communication Strategy;
Disruption;
Consumer Behavior;
Digital Marketing;
E-commerce;
Applications and Software;
Health Industry;
Technology Industry;
Communications Industry;
United States;
North America;
United Kingdom
- April 2021
- Article
Homing and Platform Responses to Entry: Historical Evidence from the U.S. Newspaper Industry
By: K. Francis Park, Robert Seamans and Feng Zhu
We examine how heterogeneity in customers’ tendencies to single-home or multi-home affects a platform’s competitive responses to new entrants in the market. We first develop a formal model to generate predictions about how a platform will respond. We then empirically...
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- March 2021
- Case
Seeding and Selling Asana
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie Ma and Amram Migdal
In December 2019, Oliver Jay, Asana’s Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), was reconsidering his go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Asana was cloud-based work management software that enabled users to break up projects into discrete tasks that could be assigned, scheduled, and...
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Keywords:
SaaS;
Customer Journey;
Business Model;
Business Organization;
Change Management;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Growth Management;
Marketing Channels;
Marketing Strategy;
Product Marketing;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Organizational Design;
Organizational Structure;
Digital Platforms;
Internet and the Web;
Technology Industry;
United States
- November 2020
- Case
Holaluz: Taking on the Spanish Energy Market
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg, Elena Corsi and Emer Moloney
In 2020, the three cofounders of Holaluz, a newcomer to Spain’s electricity retail market, are preparing to launch a new offering: installing and managing solar panels on households' roofs at no extra cost for the consumer, who would still benefit from the energy...
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- July 2020 (Revised September 2020)
- Case
Property Finder's Strategy for Online Classifieds in the MENA Region
By: Krishna G. Palepu, Gamze Yucaoglu and Fares Khrais
The case opens in 2020 as Michael Lahyani, founder and CEO of Property Finder, Dubai’s leading online real estate classifieds portal, contemplates the company’s five-year growth strategy.
Since its founding in 2005 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Property...
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- June 2020
- Supplement
Comcast Corporation (B)
The (B) case, set in the summer of 2020, highlights the concern of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, as the streaming war intensifies. In a short period of time several new streaming services, such as Disney+, Apple TV+, Quibi, and HBO Max were launched and cable subscription...
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- April 2020
- Teaching Note
Tailor Brands: Artificial Intelligence-Driven Branding
By: Jill Avery
Using proprietary artificial intelligence technology, startup Tailor Brands set out to democratize branding by allowing small businesses to create their brand identities by automatically generating logos in just minutes at minimal cost with no branding or design skills...
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- March 2020
- Case
Hotstar
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Kairavi Dey
Hotstar was an online video streaming platform owned by Star India Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation. Since its launch in 2015, the platform had grown to offer over 100,000 hours of TV content, movies in nine Indian languages...
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- March 2020
- Case
Minneapolis Star Tribune
By: Joseph L. Bower, Elizabeth Hansen and Michael Norris
In the summer of 2019, Mike Klingensmith, CEO of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Twin Cities metro region’s largest newspaper, reviewed subscription trends and plans for future experimentation. The newspaper industry across the U.S. had suffered a steep decline for...
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- January 2020 (Revised July 2020)
- Supplement
MoviePass: The 'Get Big Fast' Strategy
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
In August 2017, MoviePass dramatically lowered its subscription price from $50 per month to just $10 for up to one movie per day. The idea was to rapidly scale the business to the point where they could generate incremental revenue streams form related businesses...
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Keywords:
Market Entry;
Growth Strategy;
Profit Vs. Growth;
Subscription Business;
Cash Burn;
Data Analytics;
Get-big-fast;
Buyer Power;
Strategy Implementation;
Movie Industry;
Racing;
Business Strategy;
Value Creation;
Consolidation;
Cash Flow;
Growth Management;
Business Startups;
Entrepreneurship;
Disruptive Innovation;
Mobile Technology;
Motion Pictures and Video Industry;
Entertainment and Recreation Industry;
Advertising Industry;
Information Industry;
United States
- January 2020 (Revised March 2020)
- Case
LOLA: Do You Know What's in Your Tampon?
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Aldo Sesia
LOLA is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) business launched in 2015. What started as a company to provide women with organic and transparent material-labeled tampons via a subscription model, had, by 2019 evolved to include additional menstrual and sexual wellness products....
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- November 2019 (Revised November 2019)
- Supplement
eSig: Growth Analysis
By: Mark N. Roberge and Thomas R. Eisenmann
eSig, an early-stage startup, offers an electronic signature application as a "freemium" product, i.e., users can upgrade from a free basic version to a premium version by paying a subscription fee. Using 9 months of data from 50,000 user activations, available as a...
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- August 2019
- Case
Subscription Lines Dilemma
By: Victoria Ivashina and Terrence Shu
This case follows a fictional managing partner of a private equity firm, as she contemplates whether to utilize subscription lines of credit in her firm’s funds. Subscription lines are revolving lines of credit secured by commitments from a fund’s investors. Private...
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