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Case Studies

This listing contains abstracts and ordering information for case studies written and published by faculty at Stanford GSB.

Compensation: Strategies for a Bonus Plan

|E679
David Dodson
2019

Bonuses are an important part of any CEO’s toolkit. This white paper outlines specific steps to follow in establishing or revamping a company’s bonus structure, and how this part of the compensation system can reward...

Mines (A): Searching for the Right Nail

|E661
Peter Reiss, Jeffrey Conn
2019

This case examines the founding story of machine learning-enabled lending platform Mines and CEO Ekechi Nwokah. The case focuses on Nwokah’s exploration and initial analysis of the different potential verticals and geographies his team could...

The Opioid Epidemic (A)

|ETH18A
Ken Shotts, Sheila Melvin
2019

This case provides an overview of the history and causes of the U.S. opioid epidemic. It begins with a history of opium and pain management, leading into a description of the current epidemic, its stages,...

Guide to Investor Reports for Early CEOs

|E678
David Dodson
2019

How much information is enough, when it comes to investor reports? For early CEOs, this white paper offers practical advice and best practices on the preparation of these reports. The best reports, the white paper...

Acquisition Documents and Strategies

|E677
David Dodson
2019

Buying a company is a high-stakes and complex process, and involves an in-depth review of hundreds of pages of legal documents. This white paper gives a full listing of these important documents and what each...

BoKlok’s Growth Strategy in 2018 and Beyond: Navigating External and Internal Contexts

|SM298B
Robert Burgelman, Martin Fischer, Margot Sutherland
2019

Jonas Spangenberg, CEO of BoKlok, an entrepreneurial industrialized construction venture focused on providing low-cost housing to a sharply defined, relatively low-price market segment, must identify and manage forces within three contexts as he develops and...

BoKlok’s Housing for the Many People: On-the-Money Homes for Pinpointed Buyers

|SM298A
Robert Burgelman, Martin Fischer, Margot Sutherland
2019

Jonas Spangenberg, CEO of BoKlok, an entrepreneurial industrialized construction venture focused on providing low-cost housing to a sharply defined, relatively low-price market segment, must identify and manage forces within three contexts as he develops and...

Katerra

|E655
Mark Leslie, Matt Saucedo
2019

The Katerra case takes a deep dive into the opportunities to leverage disruptive technology in the global construction industry. The case analyzes the history of Katerra,a technology-driven offsite construction company and walks through each of...

MedAvante: Navigating Resistance to Innovation

|E676
George Foster, Joseph Golden
2019

MedAvante, a provider of clinical trial services and technology solutions to the pharmaceutical industry, struggled to find product/market fit for many years, because its innovative service offering met fierce resistance from other stakeholders in the...

Floodgate: An Entrepreneurial VC

|E644
Peter Ziebelman, Amadeus Orleans
2019

Mike Maples Jr. founded the micro-VC firm Floodgate in 2006, after a successful career as an entrepreneur with two startup IPOs under his belt. At the time, he had identified a group of overlooked founders...

Senreve

|E674
Graham Weaver, Susan Pohlmeyer
2019

This case explores the various challenges that Senreve faced in hiring and retaining talent as a rapidly growing organization. The case first describes how the two co-founders developed a vision for their company, created a...

SurveyMonkey in 2018: Under New Management

|E654
Robert E. Siegel, Amadeus Orleans
2019

The unexpected passing of Dave Goldberg in May 2015 triggered the most difficult period in the history of SurveyMonkey, a global online survey software company headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. In a state...

Can Firing/Separation/Termination Be Anything But...Awful?

|ETH17
William Meehan III, Sheila Melvin
2019

This roleplay case is designed for two students. It begins, with part one, on a Friday morning in the San Francisco office of McKinsey & Company. Ryan Lane, an associate, and Gary Pinkus, chairman of...

King Philanthropies: Intentional Choices for Maximum Impact

|SI151
William Meehan III, Sheila Melvin
2019

King Philanthropies (KP) was a grant-making organization that employed a highly intentional and carefully targeted approach to philanthropy. It was guided by relentless pursuit of its mission: to alleviate extreme poverty by magnifying the impact...

FINDMINE: Looking for a Break

|E672
Robert Chess, Amadeus Orleans
2019

From quitting a stable post-MBA job and starting FINDMINE, a start-up in the retail technology space, to finally negotiating venture capital investment offers, Michelle Bacharach—and FINDMINE—had come a long way. Two years of uncertainty with...

Cerebras: A Tale of Dreams and Risks

|E671
Mark Leslie, Amadeus Orleans
2019

After selling SeaMicro, Inc. to AMD, in 2012, Andrew Feldman started a process he called “lightly sifting”, trying to stay updated on the ideas and businesses being built in Silicon Valley. Eventually, he started spending...

Glassdoor: The Fundraising Journey (A)

|E673A
Robert E. Siegel, Amadeus Orleans
2019

From his time as a young engineer at Microsoft in 1993, to the challenge of building Glassdoor from the ground up until it reached a valuation of over $1 billion, in 2018, Robert Hohman had...

Glassdoor: The Fundraising Journey (B)

|E673B
Robert E. Siegel, Amadeus Orleans
2019

From his time as a young engineer at Microsoft in 1993, to the challenge of building Glassdoor from the ground up until it reached a valuation of over $1 billion, in 2018, Robert Hohman had...

The League

|E650
Peter Kelly, Cameron Lehman
2019

Amanda Bradford, founder and CEO of The League dating app, works through growth challenges including fundraising, Millennial hires, and executive team building.

PMC-Sierra: Riding the Waves of Disruption (A)

|SM272A
Yossi Feinberg, Debra Schifrin, Derek Dicker
2019

This case details how semiconductor company PMC-Sierra implemented different corporate entrepreneurship strategies to take advantage of two major industry disruptions: 1) the transition from hard disk drives to solid state drives; and 2) the rise...

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Publicly available cases in this collection are distributed by Harvard Business Publishing and The Case Centre.

Leadership in Focus

Leadership in Focus is a large collection of short videos that bring to life real-world business challenges and spark lively discussions aimed at improving executive skills. Each short video is accompanied by teaching notes for added context, suggested discussion questions and role-playing ideas to help engage groups of managers in learning experiences of their own. Leaders may also experience the cases online with opportunities to calibrate their thinking for actionable insights.