Cold Call

In 2018, Linda Oubré was selected as the president of Whittier College in Los Angeles County – the first Black woman to serve in that role. The student body had been slowly evolving to represent the growing diversity of the surrounding area, but the college’s leadership remained largely white and male. Oubré set her sights on diversifying the college’s staff, administration, and board of trustees. Harvard Business School professor Debora Spar and Oubré discuss how she galvanized support among the college’s constituents, while making hard changes in the case, “Linda Oubré at Whittier College.”

In 2021, the footwear startup Allbirds was extending its product range into apparel and expanding beyond its online store to open more retail stores around the world. It was also freely sharing its know-how and material innovations with its competitors to try to scale its efforts to decarbonize fashion, by substituting natural materials for conventional petroleum-based materials and leather. But the company also had to find ways to remain differentiated, based on design and comfort. Harvard Business School professor Mike Toffel and Allbirds co-founder and co-CEO Joey Zwillinger discuss the growing environmental impact of the fashion industry and how the company managed the tension between advancing its environmental mission and staying ahead of competitors in the case, Allbirds: Decarbonizing Fashion.

In 2017, Shield AI’s quadcopter, with no pilot and no flight plan, could clear a building and outpace human warfighters by almost five minutes. It was evidence that autonomous robots could help protect civilian and service member lives. But was it also evidence that Shield AI—a startup barely two years past founding—could ask their newest potential customer, the US government, for a large contract for a system of coordinated, exploring robots? Or would it scare them away? Harvard Business School professor Mitch Weiss and Brandon Tseng, Shield AI’s CGO and co-founder, discuss these and other challenges entrepreneurs face when working with the public sector, and how investing in new ideas can enable entrepreneurs and governments to join forces to solve big problems in the case, “Shield AI.”

Recruit Holdings, an advertising media, staffing, and business support conglomerate was founded in Japan in 1960 by Hiromasa Ezoe. The company was built on the principle that the company should add value to society. But in 1988, Recruit hit rough waters when Ezoe sold 2.8 million shares in a subsidiary before it went public to 76 Japanese leaders in politics, business, and media. The “Recruit Scandal,” as it was called, resulted in the resignation of Japan’s prime minister and his entire cabinet. Thirty years later, Recruit has become a global conglomerate, with $16 billion in sales in 2017. How did the company not only survive, but thrive after its insider trading scandal? Harvard Business School professor Sandra Sucher examines how Recruit’s unique corporate culture helped to restore lost trust in her case, “Globalizing Japan’s Dream Machine: Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd.,” and her book, The Power of Trust.

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, together with Douyin (its China app), it had roughly one billion monthly active users, placing it in the top ranks of digital platforms globally. Some industry experts argued that it was the first consumer app operating at scale where artificial intelligence (or AI) was the product. But TikTok had drawn the attention of competitors, regulators, and politicians — especially in the U.S., where commercial success was critical to its long-term enterprise value. With less than two percent of its global revenue generated in the U.S., should the company continue to drive growth there or focus on monetizing that audience by introducing revenue generating activities like advertising? Would TikTok become the first “Super App” with a global footprint or, if it moved too fast, did it run the risk of becoming a supernova that shone brightly only for a passing moment? Harvard Business School senior lecturer Jeffrey Rayport discusses these strategic challenges in his case, “TikTok in 2020: Super App or Supernova?”

In November 2019, Mass General Brigham (MGB) was the largest recipient of National Institutes of Health funding in the world. The Innovation Office, led by Chief Innovation Officer Chris Coburn, sought to capitalize on that funding – with the goal of commercializing research done at the hospital to generate revenue and improve patient care. But CEO Anne Klibanski and other key stakeholders had a serious concern: although women comprised approximately 40 percent of the medical researchers and physicians at MGB, the percentage of women participating in innovation activities lagged behind. Harvard Business School associate professor Katie Coffman, Coburn, and MGB’s managing director of administration and strategy Diana Schwartzstein discuss how they worked to identify the main sources of the disparities and find the right strategy to expand and diversify MGB’s community of innovators in the case, “Inclusive Innovation at Mass General Brigham.”

Founded in 2014, Thinx, Inc. makes absorbent underwear that can be worn during menstruation. But the feminine care market had seen virtually no innovation in half a century because of the taboo against discussing the topic of menstruation. As a result, the startup was competing against large incumbents like Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson. Assistant Professor Rembrand Koning examines these strategic marketing challenges and discusses the importance of removing taboos and biases in order to bring innovation to the feminine are market in his case, “Thinx, Inc.—Breaking Barriers in Feminine Care.”

In early 2019, global beer company Molson Coors was exploring how to enter the cannabis beverages business. At the time, cannabis had not yet been legalized in Canada. Initially the company had planned to test a few products in a small geography in Canada to see if there might be a viable market opportunity. But the team charged with developing an entry strategy recommended a more aggressive move: pulling forward $65 million to build a facility in Canada to produce cannabis beverages and seize first-mover advantage. That sudden change in direction gave then-CEO Mark Hunter pause. Should he approve the request, or push the team back to the original, more conservative plan? Harvard Business School senior lecturer Derek van Bever and Stephen P. Kaufman (MBA 1965) discuss balancing exploitation and exploration within one of the world’s top brewing companies in the case, “Beyond Beer: Brewing Innovation at Molson Coors.”

The Chinese telecom giant Huawei and other Chinese telecom firms, like ZTE, had been poised to lead the globe in 5G technology—until the U.S. State Department embarked on a global campaign to challenge the market dominance of Chinese firms with the Clean Network program. The initiative, launched in 2020 and led by Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Energy, and the Environment Keith Krach, united countries and companies around a commitment to abide by a set of shared principles in technology adoption, data privacy, and security practices. Is this a new era of multilateral, democratic governance of the internet, or a “splinternet” forcing participants to choose between the U.S. and China? Krach (MBA 1981) and Harvard Business School Professor Meg Rithmire discuss how the Clean Network Program changed the competitive landscape for 5G in the case, “The Clean Network and the Future of Global Technology Competition.”

In 2020, JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced a $30 billion “Commitment to Advance Racial Equity.” This included investments in housing, small businesses, and financial literacy across the U.S., as well as in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within the bank. Harvard Business School professor emeritus Joe Bower and case protagonist Alice Rodriguez, head of community impact, managing director at JPMorgan Chase, discuss the implementation of that commitment and how it aligns with the bank’s longer-term growth strategy in the case, JPMorgan Chase’s Path Forward.