Cold Call

There is a joke in the cybersecurity community that there are two kinds of companies: those that know they’ve been hacked, and those that haven’t found out yet. The Target Corporation learned this the hard way during the busy holiday season of 2013, when 110 million customers’ information was compromised. Harvard Business School professor Suraj Srinivasan discusses his case entitled “Cyber Breach at Target,” which explores one of the largest cyber breaches in history, analyzing why failures happen, who should be held accountable, and how preventing them is both a technical problem and a matter of organizational design.

Harvard Business School professor Thales Teixeira explores Wayfair's journey from 240 websites to a furniture giant. Topics include evolving search habits, brand consolidation, marketing strategies, and building a brand with a nondescript name.

On the internet, content may be king, but connecting users is the key to building an empire. The Norwegian media giant Schibsted learned this lesson the hard way, and then used it to thrive in an online news market where many others have failed. Through the lens of his new book, The Content Trap, Harvard Business School professor Bharat Anand discusses his case entitled, “Schibsted,” regarding Schibsted’s resounding success, how bringing users together drives revenue, and the importance of media companies adopting a “digital-first” approach.

By some accounts, only 5-6% of people around the world get the cardiac treatment they need to survive. The rest perish. This statistic highlights the stark need for affordable, quality health care that can be delivered at scale, and a solution to that staggering problem has sprung up in, of all places, the Cayman Islands. Harvard Business School professor Tarun Khanna discusses his case “Health City Cayman Islands” — how a new hospital with a revolutionary cost structure and service model is making a name for itself on an island better known for bright sunshine and sandy beaches.

An unfortunate but necessary part of a manager’s job is having to let underperforming employees go. Knowing when and how to take that step with the company’s, the employee’s, and your own best interests in mind is a difficult task. Harvard Business School professor Joe Badaracco discusses the best ways to make hard decisions and deliver bad news, pulling from his case “Two Tough Calls” and his new book, Managing in the Gray.

The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare for short, had three goals: make health insurance available, required, and affordable for everyone. There was just one problem — the launch of the HealthCare.gov website was a complete and utter failure. Harvard Business School professor Len Schlesinger delves into the enormous challenges involved with building, launching, and fixing HealthCare.gov, and how those administrative trials and triumphs are instructive for any managerial setting. Schlesinger is the author of the case entitled “HealthCare.gov: The Crash and the Fix.”

Oktoberfest began as a raucous wedding celebration in Germany more than 200 years ago and has since grown into a worldwide phenomenon. Munich, alone, hosts some 6.4 million guests (who consume almost 8 million liters of beer) during the festival each year. Harvard Business School professor Juan Alcacer discusses his case entitled “The Munich Oktoberfest: From Local Tradition to Global Capitalism” — how the Oktoberfest brand has been transplanted around the globe, whether copycat festivals help or hurt its reputation, and to what extent its original hosts could or should be profit-motivated.

Lego has been helping children piece together dreams and build their imaginations for decades, and has become one of the world’s most popular toys and most powerful brands in the process. But the company known for great directions lost its own in the 1990s and has stood on the brink of bankruptcy a few times since. Harvard Business School professor Jan Rivkin takes listeners behind the brick and into the minds of Lego’s leadership as they tackle digital disruption, how to innovate while remaining true to their core product and mission, and engineer an impressive 2004 turnaround that positions the company for huge future success. Rivkin is the author of the case study entitled “Lego: The Crisis.”

Before “House of Cards” was an internationally-renowned and critically acclaimed hit series, it was a total shot in the dark. Luckily for the small film studio behind it, Netflix saw it as a shot worth taking. Harvard Business School professor Anita Elberse discusses her case entitled “MRC’s House of Cards” — how the Emmy award-winning show flipped the script on standard television series production, brought binge-watching into the mainstream, and ushered in a whole new era of must-see programming.

Most people know Apple as one of the richest and most successful companies in the world, but it wasn’t always that way. In 1997, the company suffered a near-death experience that caused it to completely reimagine itself. The result was a new line of products and a totally unique financial model that has since led to unprecedented success. Harvard Business School professor Mihir Desai explains his case, “Financial Policy at Apple, 2013” — the genius of the financial wiring behind the inventors of the Genius Bar.