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.
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AB InBev, the world’s largest beer company, faced serious challenges in 2017. First, large food and beverage companies were under-pressure due to shifting consumer preferences towards healthier products and increasing price pressure from retailers. The…
In 2017, significant changes were sweeping the global automotive industry: the rapid growth of electric vehicles, the race to develop commercially reliable autonomous cars and the ride-sharing phenomenon. Those trends were magnified by technological…
By almost any measure, Charles Schwab Corp. appeared to be killing it in 2017. The wealth management, banking, custody and brokerage firm’s stock was trading near its all-time high. It was posting unprecedented levels of new client accounts, net new…
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…
The offices of Pandora Media were thick with excitement and anxiety in March 2017. The company had just launched its new streaming music subscription service, Pandora Premium. The product was a major departure for Pandora, which since 2005 had built its…
From 2010 to 2017, General Electric pivoted from an industrial behemoth to a data-driven tech company by incorporating big data analytics across all of their subsidiaries. As the world’s first “digital industrial” company, it named and the Industrial…
This case discusses how the leaders of the Royal Bank of Canada infused the 80,000-employee company with a new emphasis on People Analytics. This supported the bank’s business strategies for its wide range of business units. The bank’s new People…
Paradise Bakery and Café: The Challenges of Success traces the journey of entrepreneur Daniel Patterson from the founding of his bakery in Southern California, through the challenges of growth, to an eventual sale, and a post-acquisition crisis. The case…
This paper compares different types of shared mobility solutions, in particular carsharing and ride hailing, the two most prevalent forms today. It describes the major trends prompting OEMs to engage in the mobility industry, such as urbanization…
“TTTech in 2017: When Market and Technology Trends Align with Company Capabilities” examines the Austrian technology company TTTech. A global leader in robust networked safety controls, TTTech developed hardware and software solutions that improved the…
Between 2013 and 2017 PayPal had grown from $8 billion to almost $11 billion in revenues and had a market cap of over $70 billion. In addition, the product and cultural transformations of the organization made the firm feel like an entirely new company…
The Medium Corporation seeks to change how people author, consume and engage with content on the Internet. Founded by Ev Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter, the company developed a digital publishing platform and set of social network tools that…
In June 2009, Greenpeace accused the cattle industry of contributing to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Big brands that bought beef and leather were named as silent partners to the practice. Pressure from Greenpeace and the Brazilian government led…
In the spring of 2016, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA, opened its doors for a series of celebrations following a three-year closure. The museum had much to rejoice: a $305 million renovation that included a spectacular new ten-story…
The Thumbtack case explores the major challenges associated with raising money at a technology start-up in Silicon Valley. In 2008, Marco Zappacosta, Jonathan Swanson, and Sander Daniels founded Thumbtack, an online marketplace that connects customers…
The case describes the journey of Zola, an online wedding registry designed to greatly improve the clunky and impersonal wedding registry process. With innovative features such as group gifting, scheduled delivery, and honeymoon donations, Zola was…
In November 2015, U.S.-based biopharmaceuticals company Pfizer [NYSE: PFE] and Ireland-based pharmaceutical company Allergan [NYSE: AGN] announced a $160 billion merger to move Pfizer’s domicile out of the United States to Ireland in the largest inversion…
In 2007, Jody Greenstone Miller founded Business Talent Group (BTG), a company that connected top independent professionals, including consultants and executives, with global companies for project-based work at a lower cost and with more precision than…
In May 2014, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) issued a converged standard on revenue recognition (ASC Topic 606 and IFRS 15, respectively) aimed at ameliorating difficulties associated…
In 2017, AmorePacific (AP) was the world’s seventh-largest cosmetics company, competing head-to-head with leading companies like L’Oréal and Estée Lauder. This case describes AP’s unique approach to beauty products, which reflected the corporate credo of…
In early 2017, camera manufacturer GoPro stunned investors by reporting its first recorded annual profit loss and a revenue forecast that sharply missed analyst estimates. What had once been widely heralded as one of the biggest initial public offerings…
By 2017, pervasive mobile connectivity and the rise of the on-demand economy resulted in an explosion of businesses attempting to fulfill immediate consumer demand in the food delivery market. A broad, secular shift was occurring: Online or mobile orders…
Innovium seeks to disrupt an entrenched space where little VC funding has flowed. The experienced founding team came from the VC world and thus leverages a unique approach to customer innovation. By achieving product/market fit in a non-conventional way…
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…
