Browse abstracts and ordering information for case studies written and published by faculty at Stanford GSB.
For publicly available cases in this collection, Harvard Business Impact and Ivey Publishing distribute in North America, and The Case Centre and IESE Publishing in Europe.
Search the database of case studies or narrow your results by keyword, academic area, center, or initiative. Many of our cases are available to download at no charge.
In early 2018, Jessica Herrin faces four leadership dilemmas with no obviously correct answers.
Herrin built Stella & Dot from a living room trunk show in 2003 into a nearly $300 million direct-sales jewelry company with tens of thousands of independent…
How do you bring humor to one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious management firms? Is humor professional? Can humor become a company’s strength? As McKinsey & Company found out, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’.
This case explores how a comedy…
In December 2015, Kaushik Shirhatti, vice president of global sales at Cumulus Networks, faced a pivotal choice. Although bookings were strong, top-line revenue lagged because hardware partners such as Dell, Mellanox, and Edgecore captured most of each…
KumuMedia Technologies, Inc., founded in 2017 by Filipino American entrepreneurs Roland Ros and Rexy Dorado, is a social media and live-streaming platform designed to connect Filipinos worldwide while empowering local creators to earn income.
Kumu…
KumuMedia Technologies, Inc., founded in 2017 by Filipino American entrepreneurs Roland Ros and Rexy Dorado, is a social media and live-streaming platform designed to connect Filipinos worldwide while empowering local creators to earn income.
Kumu…
KumuMedia Technologies, Inc., founded in 2017 by Filipino American entrepreneurs Roland Ros and Rexy Dorado, is a social media and live-streaming platform designed to connect Filipinos worldwide while empowering local creators to earn income.
Kumu…
This case follows Stanford GSB alumnus Tayo Oviosu, who founded Paga in 2009, and set out to digitize payments in Nigeria, where more than 90 percent of transactions were conducted in cash and over half the population was unbanked. By building a…
Artificial intelligence is diffusing across developing economies along a path distinct from that of the United States and China. Rather than being driven primarily by hyperscale infrastructure investments or geopolitical competition, AI adoption in the…
This case explores how John Janick, CEO of Interscope Records, used strategic communication to align a rapidly growing creative organization and clarify its value to multiple audiences in a highly disrupted industry. As artists gained unprecedented…
Chris Anderson, best known for scaling TED and mobilizing billions for philanthropy, and Stan Miranda, a career investor who helped build Partners Capital into a $65B outsourced CIO, believe they can unlock one of climate investing’s most persistent…
As the CEO and Managing Partner of investment firm Impact Engine, Jessica Droste Yagan had grown accustomed to pushing the boundaries of impact. For over a decade, she had overseen multiple efforts to redefine what it meant to be an impact investor, where…
This case presents Ingram Micro’s effort to reimagine the IT distribution model through Xvantage, an AI-enabled digital platform launched as the company prepared to return to public markets. In the case, CEO Paul Bay, Chief Digital Officer Sanjib Sahoo…
Alex Tiller, Captain of Lunar Labs, faces a defining moment for his organization’s experimental model of innovation. During a Quarterly Learning Review, the team behind CarbonCatcher—a direct air capture project designed to remove carbon from the…
In 2022, two first-time entrepreneurs, Hannah Greenberg and Alex Lopez, acquired Eleven Software, a Portland-based provider of cloud platforms that managed guest Wi-Fi for major hospitality brands such as Hilton and Marriott. The pair had met during their…
For nearly a year, Ted Maa and Chris Steinbaugh, members of the Private Equity Impact Investing team at Nuveen, had been following a potential investment opportunity for a company raising $30 million that had only recently fallen out of exclusivity. The…
For ten weeks, the Spring 2024 cohort of students in ALP-303: Analysis and Measurement of Impact at the Stanford Graduate School of Business tackled an initial attempt at improving the Builders Fund (“Builders”) Impact Prioritization Rating (IPR). As part…
In 2025, serial entrepreneur and angel investor Simon de Montfort stepped into an unassuming warehouse in Alameda, California, to meet Ricky Jennings, the inventor behind SeaGlider—an ambitious effort to build autonomous, wind- and solar-powered ocean…
Deutsche Telekom (DT) reached an unprecedented peak of success in 2025, becoming the world’s most valuable telco brand and the leading European telco by market capitalization. This standing was symbolized by the “Dancing Elephant” sculpture at its Bonn…
In 2025, Virta Health CEO and cofounder Sami Inkinen faces a series of strategic and leadership choices as the company nears profitability and contemplates an initial public offering (IPO). Founded in 2014 to reverse Type 2 diabetes and obesity through…
