Cold Call

It’s a good bet that winning a game show isn’t often on the list of top priorities at large companies. So how was it that building a robot to do just that became a prime focus at IBM? Harvard Business School professor Willy Shih discusses how building Watson, a deep question answering machine, reinvigorated a stalled research and development team, taught IBM a ton about communication and product development, and led to a hotly contested “Jeopardy!” match on the Harvard Business School campus. Shih is the author of the case study, “Building Watson: Not So Elementary, My Dear.”

College represents one of the biggest decisions and investments many consumers will ever make. But can they really trust the rankings available to help them choose? Harvard Business School professor Bill Kirby unpacks the complex world of university rankings, including what “world-class” actually means, what rankings don’t take into account, and how schools are learning to game an imperfect system. Kirby is the author of the case study, “World-class Universities: Rankings and Reputation in Higher Education.”

A novel idea: give loyal customers a chance to buy shares in a company they love. That’s the premise behind LOYAL3, which uses the democratizing power of technology to give average investors better access to IPOs. Harvard Business School professor Luis Viceira discusses his case entitled “LOYAL3: Own What You Love” — this novel mission, the huge new market it creates, and the delicate balance of being disruptive but only when necessary.

Increasingly, almost every team is a global team in some capacity. This presents a difficult challenge for managers everywhere, and especially for high-potential leaders who want to take their careers to the next level: how do you bring together a team whose members are geographically and culturally dispersed? Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley discusses her case — entitled “Building a Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek” — of a real-life executive charged with corralling a hugely diverse, underperforming group and leading it back to success on a global scale.

Though Google has become the U.S. face of the driverless car movement, other global companies have been developing similar technology for more than a decade. Mobileye is one of them, with a $10 billion valuation and a huge head start in a potentially enormous market. Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie discusses why a company many have never heard of will be a lynchpin in the future of self-driving automobiles. Yoffie is the author of the case study, “Mobileye, The Future of Driverless Cars.”

Carla Ann Harris has blazed trails and excelled at institutions like Harvard and Morgan Stanley. But doing so has required her to strike a careful balance between her professional image and her personal passions. Harvard Business School professor Lakshmi Ramarajan discusses her case, “Carla Ann Harris at Morgan Stanley,” about Harris’ inspiring success and the importance of managing perceptions to achieve greatness.

Since brewing is a marketing-driven business, finding ways to differentiate a beverage from its competition is crucial. Heineken’s chief marketing officer took a novel approach: take the complicated processes of production and distribution and make them interesting and important to the consumer. Harvard Business School professor Forest Reinhardt explains his case study, “Heineken: Brewing a Better World” — how a big, sophisticated company used small details, from trucking routes to the color of refrigerators, to put its commitment to the environment to work on its behalf.

Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are tapping into their vast personal wealth to make commercial space travel a reality. In the process, they’re revitalizing a listless national space program. Harvard Business School professor Matthew Weinzierl discusses his new case entitled “Blue Origin, NASA, and New Space,” and how public-private partnerships are becoming the building blocks for the hottest new startup sector.

The statistics are startling: about one-third of American workers suffer from chronic work stress; $27 billion worth of work days are lost to mental health-related absences each year. Harvard Business School professor John Quelch discusses his case — entitled “Mental Health in the American Workplace” — on the state of mental health in the U.S. workplace, and why even though companies are better than ever about providing services to their workers, the stigma attached to mental health leaves a lot of work yet to be done.

Can big companies fix big problems? Are they responsible for doing so? As the third-largest employer in the world, any move Walmart makes reverberates around the globe. Yet despite its many successes and innovations, particularly in terms of sustainability, the company often faces criticism for its business practices. Harvard Business School professor Rebecca Henderson discusses what she calls the paradigmatic case: how Walmart takes huge risks, makes great strides, and demonstrates how companies are one of the few instruments humanity has for changing the world at scale, for better or for worse. Henderson is the author of the case study, “Greening Wal-Mart: Progress and Controversy.”