In 2025, Golden Goose, the Italian luxury brand known for its handcrafted, distressed sneakers, was at a turning point. Under CEO Silvio Campara, the company had grown from cult favorite to global player, with $650 million in revenue and a loyal following. What should drive its next phase of growth? Should Golden Goose double down on its signature sneaker business, grow into a full lifestyle label with ready-to-wear and accessories, or expand into new international markets? Harvard Business Scho...
Jan 20, 2026•26 min•Ep. 274
Equitable, a 163-year-old financial services firm, serves more than five million clients across three main lines of business: retirement planning, wealth management, and asset management. Spun out of French insurance giant AXA in a 2018 IPO, Equitable’s leadership team was excited to be out on its own but quickly realized that to overcome inertia and remain relevant, the company’s ways of working would need to change. In 2019, CEO Mark Pearson launched an effort known internally as New Ways of W...
Jan 06, 2026•35 min•Ep. 273
With the holiday season upon us, and thrifting a major trend, we’re sharing an episode of Harvard Business School’s Climate Rising podcast that’s focused on extending product life, reducing waste, and the growing role of resale in the circular economy. Climate Rising is all about what businesses are doing, can do, and should do to confront climate change. In this episode, “Extending Apparel Lifespan,” HBS Professor Mike Toffel talks to ThredUp CEO James Reinhart about why ThredUp chose to build ...
Dec 23, 2025•37 min•Ep. 272
In 2020, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase made two bold organizational moves: going fully remote and banning political discussion at work. These decisions, aimed at reinforcing a mission-first culture, were supported by a written, codified approach to company values and a hiring philosophy designed to attract talent aligned with that mission. In this episode, Chief People Officer L.J. Brock joins case author and HBS professor Charles Wang and host Brian Kenny to discuss how Coinbase’s strategy, ...
Dec 09, 2025•28 min•Ep. 271
Jenny Wolfram founded BrandBastion in 2013 after noticing that many companies’ social media pages were teeming with spam, hostile messages, and unanswered comments—all of which chipped away at customer trust. She built an AI-powered platform, supported by human moderation, to help brands manage comment sections at scale, respond quickly to customers, and protect their reputation. Wolfram joins the company’s Head of Operations and Finance, Vesa Rikkinen, Harvard Business School Assistant Professo...
Nov 25, 2025•27 min•Ep. 270
Apollo Global Management has transformed itself from a traditional private equity giant into an insurance-fueled credit powerhouse—thanks to its acquisition of life annuity issuer Athene. CEO Marc Rowan makes a bold bet that an asset-heavy model, which is backed by hundreds of billions in long-term insurance liabilities, can drive repeatable, superior returns and propel Apollo’s assets under management to $1.5 trillion. However, public markets award Apollo a multitude on its earnings that is far...
Nov 11, 2025•29 min•Ep. 269
Tata Power stood at the forefront of India’s energy transition. The firm’s long history was deeply intertwined with the country’s development. As Mumbai’s power needs increased, Tata Power built out thermal assets across India, and while thermal power generation remained Tata Power’s mainstay, the firm slowly started diversifying. By 2024, Tata Power was India’s largest private power producer by installed capacity with annual revenues of $7.4 billion. In 2020, Tata Power boldly announced a commi...
Oct 28, 2025•36 min•Ep. 268
In April 2024, writer, podcaster, and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss—known for his hugely popular podcast “The Tim Ferriss Show” and NYT-bestselling books like The 4-Hour Workweek—found himself at a crossroads. Although his podcast was generating millions annually, he questioned the sustainability of podcasting and his own competitive advantage given the increasingly saturated market and the advent of AI tools and video-centric formats. Plus, he had built his career on anticipating cultural shifts in ...
Oct 14, 2025•50 min•Ep. 267
For 35 years, Dollar Tree, a discount retail chain selling general merchandise, had held its fixed price point steady, pricing all of its household items, food, stationery, books, seasonal items, gifts, toys, and clothing that made up its diverse and ever-changing assortment at $1.00. While all other dollar store chains had raised prices over the years to keep up with inflation, Dollar Tree had never budged on its price. However, in late 2021, the company announced that Dollar Tree was “breaking...
Sep 30, 2025•21 min•Ep. 266
In the winter of 2023, Lyft was facing declining market share and financial pressures. Enter new CEO David Risher, who took the helm amid low morale and limited resources. His challenge: reignite innovation, refocus the culture, and find new ways to stand out in an industry dominated by Uber. Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati joins host Brian Kenny to discuss the case “ Lyft 2023: Roads to Growth and Differentiation .” They explore how Risher led during a strategic crossroads, maki...
Sep 16, 2025•27 min•Ep. 265
How do you scale innovation in a system where critical pieces are out of your control? That is the challenge Highland Electric Fleets faced as it worked to replace diesel school buses with electric vehicles across the United States. While Highland provided financing, infrastructure, and fleet operations, success depended on external partners, including manufacturers, utilities, and districts. Delays and disruptions forced the company to stay nimble and deliver under pressure. Harvard Business Sc...
Sep 02, 2025•31 min•Ep. 264
In 2020, Atlassian committed to a fully distributed model, allowing employees to work from anywhere, permanently. While many tech peers later reversed course on remote work, Atlassian optimized its approach, developing data-driven routines, rethinking office spaces, and reshaping team rituals for its 12,000 employees in 13 countries. By 2024, these practices had moved beyond HR policy to become central to the company’s strategy. Lessons from Atlassian’s internal experiments began to shape its co...
Aug 19, 2025•34 min•Ep. 263
When Happi Co. CEO Sam Rockwell partnered with Snoop Dogg and his son, Cordell Broadus, to launch Dr. Bombay Ice Cream, the team set out to disrupt a stagnant market with innovative flavors and culturally resonant branding. By combining Happi Co.’s operational expertise with Snoop Dogg’s global influence, the brand quickly secured placement in 80% of U.S. national grocery retailers and projected $20 million in first-year sales. Now, as Rockwell considers strategic next steps for marketing, fundr...
Aug 05, 2025•34 min•Ep. 262
Shake Shack started in 2001 as a hot dog cart in New York City’s Madison Square Park. It’s now a global fast-casual restaurant chain renowned for both quality and hospitality. In 2024, following a rapid rollout of digital tools like kiosks and mobile ordering, Chief Growth Officer Stephanie So found herself asking, had Shake Shack built a model that could truly scale, or one that still needed work? That question came during a leadership transition and amid ambitious plans for growth. Digital ord...
Jul 22, 2025•29 min•Ep. 261
During a busy travel season, digital travel platform Booking.com wanted to try an experiment that would mean changing the site’s landing page. The CEO at the time, Gillian Tans, made the decision to lean into the company’s “test everything” culture—even if it meant failure. In this episode from 2019, Harvard Business School Professor Stefan Thomke and host Brian Kenny discuss how past experience and intuition can be misleading when attempting to launch an innovative new product, service, busines...
Jul 08, 2025•27 min•Ep. 260
Ming Min Hui, executive director of Boston Ballet, is unique in her field. As a young, Asian American woman with a Harvard Business School MBA and a background in finance, she has focused her tenure on ensuring the ballet company stays true to its art form and simultaneously relevant to its times. Hui had worked for eight years at Boston Ballet as chief of staff and chief financial officer before taking the helm. Now leading one of the foremost ballet companies in the United States, she confront...
Jun 24, 2025•31 min•Ep. 259
Bill Wilson was an incredibly entrepreneurial young man with tremendous potential. He was also a drunk who had hit rock bottom. Then an epiphany led him to enduring sobriety. With his personal drive and fellowship with former drinking buddies, Wilson built a social movement and worldwide organization. Founded in 1935, Alcoholics Anonymous has helped millions of “friends of Bill” recover from alcohol addiction. In this episode of Cold Call , Harvard Business School Professor Robert Simons joins h...
Jun 10, 2025•24 min•Ep. 258
Keurig Green Mountain (KGM) created a new category of consumer products, becoming a household name in at-home coffee brewing in North America. But by the early 2010s, the public company had lost momentum and suffered a series of product missteps, negative media scrutiny, and ongoing challenges to its partner relationships. In late 2015, the company was acquired by JAB Holding Company. The new CEO Bob Gamgort led efforts to turn the newly private company around by strengthening partnerships, uppi...
May 27, 2025•23 min•Ep. 257
The 2023 movie Barbie and its accompanying marketing blitz incited a worldwide craze. Suddenly Barbie was everywhere, a celebrated icon reinstated at the forefront of cultural conversation. This flourishing of goodwill stood in contrast to decades of criticism of the Barbie brand. Although proponents had celebrated Barbie for her promise to “inspire the limitless potential in every girl,” detractors felt that the doll promoted a narrow beauty standard and perpetuated gender stereotypes. In this ...
May 13, 2025•31 min•Ep. 256
Launched in 2011, Duolingo grew into the most downloaded education app in the world. By late 2024, it boasted 100 million monthly active users, 8 million paid subscribers, and a market capitalization approaching $15 billion. The success stemmed from a gamified approach to learning, use of adaptive AI technology, and alignment of incentives: maintaining a streak on the app not only helped users master a language but also drove subscription growth and reduced costs. Duolingo had focused almost exc...
Apr 29, 2025•35 min•Ep. 255
In 1948, Elia Nuqul fled his hometown in Palestine with his family to Jordan. The refugee overcame many hardships and started a trading business in 1952. Nuqul Group subsequently grew into one of Jordan’s largest family businesses. Its flagship company, Fine Hygienic Holding (FHH), was a leader in hygienic paper products across the Middle East and North Africa. Nuqul died in 2022. In March 2023, his son Ghassan Nuqul, the chairman of FHH, was at a crossroads. He and his three siblings had decide...
Apr 15, 2025•30 min•Ep. 254
In 2021, Donna Lee and Duncan van Bergen founded Calyx Global, a carbon credit rating company. The startup worked to improve the quality of carbon credits sold in the voluntary carbon market. Organizations buy those credits to use in their decarbonization efforts to meet net-zero commitments. The firm had carefully avoided perceptions of conflicts of interest. But Lee and van Bergen faced a series of dilemmas. It was a challenging time for the industry. They had to decide whether changing the bu...
Apr 01, 2025•39 min•Ep. 253
How important is it to maintain a happy workforce? With this question in mind, Lanco Medical Group, a small but fast-growing pharmaceutical distributor serving Latin America, approached the design of their employee benefits and incentives program. But there were gaps between what leadership believed motivated employees and what employees truly valued. With ambitions for regional and market expansion in the next few years, motivating and retaining employees was a top priority for the leadership t...
Mar 18, 2025•27 min•Ep. 252
Porsche has reigned as one of the world’s leading sports and luxury car companies for nearly 80 years. Central to the German automaker’s growth strategy is creating stellar customer experiences and great products, such as the legendary 911 Carrera sports car. But the automotive industry is undergoing disruptive changes and bringing new competitive challenges from around the world. Company leadership is adapting Porsche’s product portfolio, recently adding the electric model Taycan. They’re also ...
Mar 04, 2025•28 min•Ep. 251
Google formally announced the innovative video game service Stadia at the 2019 Game Developer Conference. The company invested substantial resources and time into building a network able to support the demanding requirements of cloud gaming. But the early uptake by premium video gamers was disappointing. The leadership team faced a decision. Should they double down on the streaming strategy, refocusing Stadia on the casual gamer segment? Or should they pull the plug altogether? In this episode, ...
Feb 18, 2025•35 min•Ep. 250
Cold Call is celebrating its tenth year of distilling Harvard Business School case studies into podcast episodes. To kick off the 2025 anniversary, the show’s production team has curated three of their favorite episodes from 2024. Host Brian Kenny recommends How One Leader Overcame Career-Ending Adversity with HBS Senior Lecturer Tony Mayo . Show producer Robin Passias offers How to Bring Good Ideas to Life: The Paul English Story with HBS Professor Frances Frei and entrepreneur Paul English . A...
Feb 04, 2025•13 min•Ep. 249
Artificial intelligence is changing how we live and work in ways large and small. It’s why Cold Call has tackled the topic several times. And it’s why today we’re sharing an episode of Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work podcast, hosted by Professors Bill Kerr and Joe Fuller. The show is all about the forces, like AI, that are reshaping the nature of work. In the episode “ Microsoft’s AI perspective: From chatbots to reengineering the organization ” from February 21, 2024, HBS ...
Jan 21, 2025•43 min•Ep. 248
In 2022, Deion Sanders, known as “Coach Prime,” became head football coach of the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). Sanders was hired to bring CU’s struggling football program, which had only one winning season in the previous 15 years, back to glory. Many observers were excited by the idea of having the Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee and two-time Super Bowl champion as CU’s new head coach. But some questioned whether Sanders had the experience needed to turn around a team in a highly com...
Jan 07, 2025•30 min•Ep. 247
One of the oldest Black-owned security firms in the United States, Johnson Security Bureau, provided mainly unarmed guards to New York banks, public works, and hospitals. The company’s status as a woman-owned, minority-owned firm had been crucial to its competitive strategy since CEO Jessica Johnson-Cope took over the firm from her father. In order to grow the family business, however, Johnson-Cope considered partnering with security firms in other states, something that threatened to put some o...
Dec 24, 2024•31 min•Ep. 246
Entrepreneur Duke Rohlen creates California-based Ajax Health under a new model for innovation and business growth. Calling it the “Chassis and Growth Drivers” model, he structures it to create innovative new products to capture a higher portion of the financial returns. Partnering with major private equity firms, Rohlen considers a $1 billion bid to buy Cordis. If Ajax’s bid is successful, they will invest an additional $300 million to fund an off-balance sheet accelerator, which will develop i...
Dec 10, 2024•39 min•Ep. 245
