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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Minted in 2017: Designing a Profitable Brand
Mariam Naficy (Minted CEO) and Melissa Kim (Minted COO) have grown the company to become a leader in the online printed cards, independent design and art market segments. As the business has continued to scale they wrestle with simultaneously growing…
Repsol and YPF (C): Recovering Value
Back in 1999, the Spanish oil company Repsol purchased 98 percent of the Argentine oil company YPF’s shares for more than $15 billion and changed its name to Repsol-YPF. At the time, the New York Times said the deal “appears to be a perfect marriage” and…
Repsol and YPF (B): Considering Options
Back in 1999, the Spanish oil company Repsol purchased 98 percent of the Argentine oil company YPF’s shares for more than $15 billion and changed its name to Repsol-YPF. At the time, the New York Times said the deal “appears to be a perfect marriage” and…
Repsol and YPF (A): A Perfect Marriage?
Back in 1999, the Spanish oil company Repsol purchased 98 percent of the Argentine oil company YPF’s shares for more than $15 billion and changed its name to Repsol-YPF. At the time, the New York Times said the deal “appears to be a perfect marriage” and…
Pear VC
In 2014, Mar Hershenson and Pejman Nozad teamed up to form Pear VC, a venture capital firm that invested in start-ups spanning three stages of company development: 1) pre-seed, which Pear termed “soil”; 2) seed; and 3) Series A. The duo had known each…
Change.org (B)
Change.org (A)
Tableau: The Creation of Tableau Public
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…
Checkr (A)
Checkr, founded in 2014 by Daniel Yanisse and Jonathon Perichon, offered an innovative approach to background checks intended to disrupt the $1.8 billion industry, which was dominated by three incumbent firms—First Advantage, Sterling BackCheck, and…
Checkr (B)
Part B of the case reveals the option Checkr chose to pursue, and engages the students in a discussion about the factors (operational, financial, cultural, etc.) they must consider in making such a decision as the CEO of a rapidly growing company.
Also…
Atlassian: Sales
Atlassian: Sales examines the company’s unique, no-touch sales model for enterprise products that help teams track projects, collaborate, and build products. The case explores how the company developed and sold its first product, JIRA, and how early…
The Rockefeller Foundation: Innovation in Social Finance
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…
Guide to Managing Your First 100 Days as CEO
Transitioning from your search into being a CEO can be an overwhelming experience. You have just spent months in due diligence, learning everything you can about the business you just acquired, and imagining all the ways you can improve and grow the…
An Interview with Shantanu Narayen, President and CEO of Adobe Systems
Founded by John Warnock and Charles (Chuck) Geschke in 1982, Adobe saw its first success with PostScript, a computer language that translated digital text and images from the computer screen onto a printed page. In the following decades, Adobe reinvented…
A Note on Getting the Most Out of Your Board Meetings
In your first year as chief executive officer (CEO), you will encounter a host of management challenges and opportunities—all of which can be navigated more skillfully if you can tap into the insights and perspectives of a handful of seasoned operators…
Invoice2Go in 2018: Scaling a Bootstrapped Business into a Global Enterprise
The Invoice2Go case follows CEO Greg Waldorf as he scales the company from small, Australian-based startup into a Venture-backed, global company. Particular issues explored include hiring new talent & building out the business organization, managing a…
LiveRamp (B)
The LiveRamp case follows the story of Anneka Gupta, Chief Product Officer of LiveRamp, from her early days with the company as a spinoff from Rapleaf, to the present day, where she manages a large product management team responsible for developing…
LiveRamp (A)
The LiveRamp case follows the story of Anneka Gupta, Chief Product Officer of LiveRamp, from her early days with the company as a spinoff from Rapleaf, to the present day, where she manages a large product management team responsible for developing…
23andMe
The Human Genome project, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health, was launched in 1990 to identify all the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA. The project subsequently opened the door for the personal…
Netflix and the State of Streaming Video in 2011
In 2010, only 16 percent of Americans were streaming movies and television shows online. By the end of 2011 that number would almost double, and the entertainment industry began barreling towards a digital future. This case follows Netflix, Hulu, Amazon…
The Competitive Advantage of Netflix
In 1997 Reed Hastings founded Netflix on the heels of a $750 million exit of his first venture—a software company. The premise was simple: Hastings believed that he could leverage the high-performance culture and data-drivenness embodied by tech companies…
Cheese.io
Maria Almaden was considering the launch of a new business that would use traditional cheesemaking techniques to produce high-quality vegan cheese. Eager though she was to embark on her new endeavor, she first had to solidify her market entry strategy and…
Tipping Point Community
Daniel Lurie headed down Highway 101 in June 2009 to investigate a potential grantee in East Palo Alto, California. As he drove, he reflected on the progress that the nonprofit organization he founded, Tipping Point Community (Tipping Point), had made in…
Evergreen Solutions
The Evergreen Solutions case profiles the journey of Drew Lincoln, the CEO of Evergreen Solutions, an environmental remediation company which Lincoln acquired with his partner, Craig Bristol, in November 2011. Over the course of three detailed vignettes…
Podcases: Case Studies, Reimagined