Case Studies

Steve Reardon, CEO of Bill4Time, loved a good practical joke. But humor was more than just a side passion—it helped shape how Reardon operated as a CEO, and helped define the office culture he hoped to build. While most people might assume that…

This set of Humor: Serious Business “Caselet Studies” follows three visionaries (SPANX CEO Sara Blakely, Deloitte Partner Brian Fugere, and Friend of a Friend Productions CEO/Founder Eric Gurian) as they examine their strategic use of humor in the…

This set of Humor: Serious Business “Caselet Studies” follows three visionaries (SPANX CEO Sara Blakely, Deloitte Partner Brian Fugere, and Friend of a Friend Productions CEO/Founder Eric Gurian) as they examine their strategic use of humor in the…

This set of Humor: Serious Business “Caselet Studies” follows three visionaries (SPANX CEO Sara Blakely, Deloitte Partner Brian Fugere, and Friend of a Friend Productions CEO/Founder Eric Gurian) as they examine their strategic use of humor in the…

How can a huge global company simplify its operations? AstraZeneca, a 60,000-employee pharmaceutical giant, faced a “patent cliff” starting around 2012, and saw revenue and income fall sharply for several years running.  CEO Pascal Soriot outlined several…

Before becoming an entrepreneur and investor, Peter Thiel pursued a more conventional, white-collar path.  He moved between jobs as a judicial clerk, a lawyer, and a Wall Street trader.  In 1998, Peter Thiel cofounded PayPal with Max Levchin.  In 2002…

Lending Club follows the path of founder and CEO Renaud Laplanche as he scales his successful P2P lending company both pre- and post-IPO. From debating with bankers on the proper valuation metrics for the company, to managing customer acquisition costs as…

Tableau: The Creation of Tableau Public highlights a product manager’s role in the creation of a new technology product. In particular, the case discusses the creation of a free public data visualization tool to help publicize a paid enterprise product…

When Judith Rodin became president of The Rockefeller Foundation in 2005, she identified a pressing need to re-organize the foundation to meet the challenges in an increasingly complex world. Rodin also recognized that for philanthropy to make meaningful…

Rosanne Haggerty remembered looking over the table at Becky Margiotta, both with their mouths hanging open. The two had just learned about the 100,000 Lives Campaign, an initiative by Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) that resulted in an…

The Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF) was established in 2008 to improve the lives of individuals by strengthening our social, governmental, and economic systems.  Cofounders Laura and John Arnold sought to deploy the majority of their wealth, time…

Established in 1999, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation aims to transform the lives of children living in urban poverty through better health, education, and family economic stability.  Initially focusing on Central Texas, the foundation rapidly expanded…

This 2016 case describes how Bare Escentuals used innovative product design and marketing to transform itself from a local San Francisco retailer into one of the leading cosmetic companies in the United States. In 1995, the company launched bareMinerals…

In 2015, Federica Marchionni left her position as the president of the high fashion company Dolce & Gabbana USA to become the CEO of Lands’ End.  She came with a mandate to drive the $1.4 billion iconic American clothing company into the next era. This…

This case describes how eBay Inc. CEO John Donahoe, leading a multibillion-dollar global technology company in a highly competitive and changing environment, embraced design thinking as a key ingredient of culture change and a catalyst for growth and…

Since 1996, the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies (CES) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) has conducted a series of studies on the performance of search funds.  These studies endeavor to gather data and gain insight into all known search…

Faced with declining fisheries and ineffective government solutions, environmental organizations turned to market solutions in the mid-1990s to promote sustainable seafood. Broad-reaching, innovative leaders used a combination of consumer education…

In 1994, Arthur “Buzz” Schmidt, GuideStar’s founder, launched an organization with a staff of five. The organization, then known as Philanthropic Research, was formed with the simple goal of making basic information on nonprofits easily available to…

By 2014, Palantir Technologies, a fast growing Silicon Valley company with global impact at the heart of its mission, had spent several years donating the same software to nonprofits that it sold to commercial customers to help solve some of the world’s…

What is Bitcoin?  How does it work?  Why is the technology so innovative, and what are Bitcoin’s potential use cases, specifically within Africa?  This case describes the potential for Bitcoin to transform and leapfrog traditional banking infrastructure…

Part B explores the launch of M&A Connect, a one-man initiative led by Sanat Rao, to serve as a matchmaker between viable, high-potential Indian startups and U.S.-based acquirers such as Google, AutoDesk, and Intel. Students learn how Rao approached the…

Part A of the case describes the founding of the Indian Software Product Industry Roundtable (iSPIRT, pronounced “ispirit”), a nonprofit organization formed in 2012 by a small group of Indian entrepreneurs and technology professionals who believed that…

In 2010, Cari Tuna quit her job at the Wall Street Journal to work full-time on developing a giving strategy for herself and her husband—Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. In May 2011, the couple created the philanthropic foundation Good Ventures. Tuna…

Since 1996, the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies (CES) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business has conducted a series of studies on the performance of search funds.  This study, as well as its predecessors, has endeavored to gather data and gain…