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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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…
The case tells the story of Kate Doerksen in her journey as founder and CEO of Ditto, an eyewear e-commerce company that introduced virtual fitting technology. The case covers the period from the founding of the company in 2010 to its situation in…
The Headwaters MB case describes the story of Phil Seefried, a GSB alum who co-founded a boutique investment bank, Headwaters MB, in 2001 to serve the middle market business sector. Seefried’s journey growing and managing the bank takes him on a roller…
Qihoo 360 Technology Company was a leading Internet platform company in China, the number one provider of Internet and mobile security products as measured by user base. The company entered China’s fiercely competitive Internet market relatively late and…
In late September 2014, Facebook, the world’s largest social network, announced the launch of Atlas, an ad serving and measurement platform that would allow advertisers to target ads to real people using Facebook’s unique user IDs rather than information…
In April 2007, Google, one of the world’s largest online publishers, announced that it was acquiring DoubleClick, a technological platform for online advertisers and publishers, for $3.1 billion. At the time, the deal marked the largest acquisition ever…
Most business activities can be understood as progressions from insight to outcome – getting from the original spark of an idea to the actual realization of financial and strategic results. And yet, leaders and companies fail to master this progression…
The case looks at how The Abraaj Group has emerged as a global private equity firm and came to define its focus and strategy in this process. While the local knowledge and relationships is considered to be critical for value creation in the private equity…
The San Francisco Symphony is a major U.S. orchestra that took on ancillary activities as part of its mission to bring the best in music to the Bay Area. Despite increasing costs, SFS posted surpluses for 15 consecutive years. However, by the end of 1993…
On the evening of June 10, 2011, the first European tour of Korean idol groups was held in Paris. With European fans demanding tickets and organizing a flash mob rally in front of the Louvre Museum, SM Entertainment, the producers, immediately set up an…
The Minted case tells the story of Mariam Naficy, an accomplished entrepreneur who started her entrepreneurial endeavors early in her career with the launch of Eve.com, one of the first online cosmetics websites. Less than two years after Eve’s founding…
As of the date of this note, financing environments varied significantly across developing economies. Differences in legal structures, operating conditions, and available capital sources created a myriad of conditions for entrepreneurs to navigate when…
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…
Kiva.org was a website through which individuals could connect with opportunities to alleviate poverty via small-scale lending. Founded in 2005, the platform had grown impressively and had facilitated over $500m in loans by 2014. The scale Kiva had…
The fictitious Lynn Garcia case examines several managerial challenges faced by first-time CEO Lynn Garcia. After graduating from Stanford’s GSB, Garcia founded eChange, a self-service coin-counting company that enabled users to convert coins into other…
The Broadway Angels investment group represents one of the few women-run angel groups in Silicon Valley. The group was founded by some of the most illustrious investors and operators with the mission to generate strong returns to members and inspire…
In 2000, Charles Best, a social studies teacher working in a school in the Bronx, New York, scraped together $2,000 to pay an overseas web designer to build a rudimentary website he had designed using pencil and paper. On the website, teachers could post…
This case discusses the evolving strategies in the mobile chipset industry in 2014, focusing on Qualcomm, the dominant technology company in the mobile industry and the leading chipset manufacturer. The case begins with the evolution of Qualcomm’s…
