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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The Abraaj Group: Making of a Global Private Equity Firm
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
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…
SM Entertainment
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…
Amir Dan Rubin: Success from the Beginning
Minted
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…
A Note on Financing in Developing Economies
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…
Search Funds - 2013: Selected Observations
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…
Evolving Kiva's Impact: Introduction of Kiva Labs and Kiva Zip
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…
Lynn Garcia
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…
Broadway Angels: Preparing for the Future
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…
DonorsChoose.org: How Technology Facilitated a New Funding Model
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…
Qualcomm and Intel: Evolving Strategies in the Mobile Chipset Industry in 2014
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…
Saks: Shocking the Fashion Industry Supply Chain
On November 25, 2008, the high-end department store Saks slashed its prices by 70 percent, creating a tsunami in the fashion industry. Years later, the ripples of this action still lingered.
This action and its effects provide an opportunity to analyze…
Knights Apparel and the Alta Gracia Factory: Paying a Living Wage
In 2014 The Alta Gracia clothing factory in the Dominican Republic was doing something quite unusual in the industry; it was paying its employees a living wage, which was 350 percent higher than the country’s minimum wage. Knights Apparel, which owned…
ALLVP: Pioneering Seed Capital in Mexico
B Lab and the Impact Assessment Evolution
Magnolia Community Initiative: A Network Approach to Population-Level Change
Proximity Designs
Blue Skies: Connecting African Farmers to Global Markets
Evernote: Growth Options in January 2011
VisionSpring
VisionSpring follows social entrepreneur Jordan Kassalow from his early career in public health through the founding of VisionSpring, an organization that sells eyeglasses to the rural poor in developing countries. The case describes how Kassalow becomes…
Bonobos, Inc. Building A Technical Team
Wildfire Interactive Inc. (B)
Wildfire Interactive Inc. (A)
Podcases: Case Studies, Reimagined