Khan Academy: A Case Study in Scaling a Start-Up

Khan Academy, the online global education nonprofit, launched in 2006 when founder Sal Khan created a few videos to help his cousin with her math homework. After a decade of growth brought Khan Academy’s user base to more than 15 million monthly visitors, Khan knew he needed expert help to formulate and lead a strategy for the organization’s future growth.

He hired Ginny Lee from Intuit to serve as Khan Academy’s COO and president. Her mandate was to redefine the organization’s priorities, create a focused strategy for growth, and continue scaling the company.

Harvard Business School professor Bill Sahlman studied the company’s growth strategy, and wrote a business case study about it. He explains why it’s so important to build a well-balanced leadership team as part of your growth strategy. He also breaks down how to create processes for everything from budgeting to giving feedback. .

Key episode topics include: strategy, leadership and managing people, operations and supply chain management, digital learning, growth strategy.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

· Listen to the original HBR Cold Call episode: Can Khan Academy Scale to Educate Anyone, Anywhere? (2019)

· Find more episodes of Cold Call

· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org