#hbscoldcall

Will Startup Fishbowl Become the Social Media App for Your Industry?

Fishbowl's founders have built a social media platform allowing professionals to connect anonymously and with candor within their companies and industries. But the app is still largely limited to the consulting industry. Can they extend the app into other sectors? What’s the winning business model? Will adding employers to the mix pay off or kill the value? Professor Leslie John discusses her case study exploring the boundaries of social media and personal privacy.

Pursuing Precision Medicine at Intermountain Healthcare

What happens when Intermountain Healthcare invests resources in an innovative precision medicine unit to provide life-extending, genetically targeted therapies to late-stage cancer patients? Professors Richard Hamermesh and Kathy Giusti discuss the case and its connections to their work with the Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator.

How Wegmans Became a Leader in Improving Food Safety

How the CEO of the Wegmans grocery chain faced a food safety issue and then helped the industry determine how it could become more proactive in the future.

Two Million Fake Accounts: Sales Misconduct at Wells Fargo

Coming out of the financial crisis, Wells Fargo was one of the world’s largest and most successful banks, viewed as a role model in how to manage in times of crisis. The news of its sales misconduct—opening more than 2 million fake accounts—in 2016 rocked consumer confidence and inundated the news. Professor Suraj Srinivasan discusses how sales culture, leadership, board oversight, and risk management all played a role.

Listen to the full episode. 

Can Miguel McKelvey Build the ‘Culture Operating System’ at WeWork?

How deeply does the culture of a startup matter? Can it be shaped? The newest episode of Cold Call explores how WeWork cofounder Miguel McKelvey built a company culture that supported rapid growth. 

The Transformation of Microsoft

In early 2015, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood and the rest of the senior leadership team faced a fundamental choice. Was the company ready to invest in long-term growth at the expense of some short-term profit margins? Professor Fritz Foley discusses how leadership faced these difficult decisions and worked to get investors and employees on board.

Listen to the full episode. 

Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane brought a data-driven and unconventional approach to winning baseball games. By setting strategy and articulating the metric to evaluate and acquire the players who would ultimately implement his strategy on the field, Beane’s sabermetrics approach brought about a cultural shift in baseball from the players and managers to coaches and scouts. Professor Srikant Datar discusses how strategy and metrics work hand-in-hand, and how Beane’s story provides companies with important lessons in data science. 

Cold Call distills Harvard Business School’s legendary case studies into podcast form. Hosted by Brian Kenny, the podcast airs every two weeks and features Harvard Business School faculty discussing cases they’ve written and the lessons they impart. 

Subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Should US Companies Still Care About the Paris Climate Change Agreement?

President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change just over a year ago. What does that mean for the role of United States companies and business leaders in confronting climate change challenges? Assistant Professor Vincent Pons looks at the historical debate and what the road ahead looks like for the role of business in improving the environment.