Porsche has reigned as a leading sports and luxury car company for nearly 80 years. Central to the German automaker’s growth strategy is creating great products, such as the legendary 911 Carrera sports car. But the automotive industry is facing disruption and new competition. Company leadership is adapting Porsche’s product portfolio, recently adding the electric model Taycan. They’re also innovating new customer experiences like the “Track Your Dream” program. In this episode, Harvard Business...
Mar 04, 2025•28 min•Ep 251•Transcript available on Metacast Google formally announced the innovative video game service Stadia at the 2019 Game Developer Conference. The company invested substantial resources 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 by refocusing Stadia on the casual gamer segment? Or should they pull the plug? In this episode, Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Derek van Bever and coauthor Aksh...
Feb 18, 2025•35 min•Ep 250•Transcript available on Metacast Cold Call is celebrating its tenth year of distilling Harvard Business School case studies. To kick off the 2025 anniversary, the podcast’s production team has curated three favorite episodes from 2024. Host Brian Kenny recommends one on leadership with HBS Senior Lecturer Tony Mayo. Show producer Robin Passias selects an innovation episode with HBS Professor Frances Frei and entrepreneur Paul English. And audio engineer Craig McDonald highlights one on business model generation with HBS faculty...
Feb 04, 2025•13 min•Ep 249•Transcript available on Metacast Artificial intelligence is changing how we live and work in ways large and small. And it's why today we’re sharing an episode of Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work podcast. In the episode “Microsoft’s AI perspective: From chatbots to reengineering the organization” from February 21, 2024, HBS Professor Bill Kerr talks to Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President of Modern Work and Business Applications at Microsoft. They discuss how the tech giant is experimenting its way from A...
Jan 21, 2025•43 min•Ep 248•Transcript available on Metacast In 2022, Deion Sanders, known as “Coach Prime,” was hired as head coach of the University of Colorado football team, which had only one winning season in the previous 15 years. Many observers were excited to have the 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 competitive athletic conference. Others wondered whether his “old school” leadership style would be effective with today’s student-ath...
Jan 07, 2025•30 min•Ep 247•Transcript available on Metacast One of the oldest Black-owned security firms in the U.S., Johnson Security Bureau credits much of its success to its status as a woman-owned, minority-owned family firm. To grow the business, however, CEO Jessica Johnson-Cope considers partnering with security firms in other states, something that threatens to weaken some of her company’s founding values. She also considers expanding the business into cybersecurity. In this conversation, Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Henry McGee and CE...
Dec 24, 2024•31 min•Ep 246•Transcript available on Metacast Entrepreneur Duke Rohlen creates California-based Ajax Health under a new model. Partnering with private equity firms, Rohlen considers a $1 billion bid to buy medical device maker Cordis. If Ajax’s bid is successful, they will invest an additional $300 million to fund an accelerator to develop innovative new products to drive growth. Is Cordis the right opportunity for Rohlen and his team? Ajax Health founder Duke Rohlen (HBS MBA 2001) and HBS Professor Regina Herzlinger join host Brian Kenny t...
Dec 10, 2024•39 min•Ep 245•Transcript available on Metacast In 1985, pop music superstar Michael Jackson instructed his attorney, John Branca, to bid for the Northern Songs music catalog, which contained the songs of the Beatles. In a challenging negotiation, Branca secured the rights to the collection. Over the next three decades, first as Jackson’s attorney and later as the executor of his estate, Branca undertook numerous complex negotiations to secure and expand Jackson’s music publishing empire until it became the largest music publishing company in...
Nov 26, 2024•31 min•Ep 244•Transcript available on Metacast With operations in 70 countries and 20,000 employees, Pernod Ricard is a leader in premium international spirits. The company had achieved its leadership position in the market largely through strategic acquisition and an ability to build and grow its brand over time. But pressure to continually expand its extensive brand portfolio in order to meet customer demand meant that its traditional analog processes were not allowing the company to effectively manage its huge portfolio of products. In re...
Nov 12, 2024•30 min•Ep 243•Transcript available on Metacast Katie Holyfield and Taylor Matkins founded Lucky Ones Coffee in 2017, a coffee shop with a mission to create jobs in Park City, Utah, for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The company quickly earned strong support from the local community, and by early 2023, Holyfield and Matkins employed 17 people across two coffee shops. The two entrepreneurs must now decide how to grow their business to create more jobs and how to structure the business to ensure that it remains a susta...
Oct 29, 2024•28 min•Ep 242•Transcript available on Metacast Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm founded in 1972, grew to become one of the most storied venture capital firms in the world. The firm’s investment track record includes the names of some of the largest global companies. But the venture capital industry began facing new challenges in 2022, and investors were increasingly cautious. At that time Sequoia also began restructuring the firm and made other changes to their core identity. What would all of this mean for the future of Sequoia, and ...
Oct 15, 2024•29 min•Ep 241•Transcript available on Metacast Early in her career Brooke Boyarsky Pratt (MBA 2013) enjoyed considerable success in roles at McKinsey and Berkadia, a Berkshire Hathaway portfolio company. But a routine visit to the doctor in 2020, where she experienced weight stigma yet again, led her to address the problem of obesity care. Boyarsky Pratt had struggled with her weight since she was young. So when she started knownwell, an integrated weight and primary care provider that was designed to support people with obesity, it was a hu...
Oct 01, 2024•33 min•Ep 240•Transcript available on Metacast In 2017 Fawn Weaver launched a premium American whiskey brand, Uncle Nearest. It became the fastest growing and most awarded whiskey brand in America, despite the challenges Weaver faced as a Black woman and outsider to the spirits industry, which is capital-intensive, highly regulated, competitive, and male-dominated. In October 2023, Weaver announced plans to expand into cognac with the goal of building the next major alcoholic beverages conglomerate. But the company was still heavily reliant ...
Sep 17, 2024•25 min•Ep 239•Transcript available on Metacast In February 2023, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was deciding whether or not to sign off on a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for $39 billion in direct semiconductor manufacturing incentives. But this NOFO had several unconventional provisions: a pre-application (pre-app) to the actual application, upside sharing provisions to align incentives, and funding milestones so that only awardees making progress would receive additional funds. The funding had been made available through the ...
Sep 03, 2024•29 min•Ep 238•Transcript available on Metacast Angel City Football Club (ACFC) was founded in 2020 by venture capitalist Kara Nortman, entrepreneur Julie Uhrman, and actor and activist Natalie Portman. As outsiders to professional sports, the all-female founding team had rewritten the playbook for how to build a sports franchise by applying lessons from the tech and entertainment industries. The club’s early success was reflected in its market valuation of $250 million as of its sale in July 2024 — the highest in the National Women’s Soccer ...
Aug 20, 2024•31 min•Ep 237•Transcript available on Metacast In early 2023, Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, started developing the EdTech firm’s strategy for incorporating GenAI into their offerings. By early 2024, the firm had made significant progress in bringing four key capabilities to market, but GenAI was evolving quickly and Coursera needed to continuously improve its offerings. While the firm had been an early mover, competitors were adapting fast. Was Coursera taking full advantage of the opportunities presented by the technology? What more c...
Aug 06, 2024•29 min•Ep 236•Transcript available on Metacast Nadine Vogel, Founder and CEO of Springboard Consulting, joins Harvard Business School professor Lakshmi Ramarajan and Harvard Kennedy School professor Hannah Riley Bowles to discuss her experience of starting and scaling a firm that works with Fortune 500 companies on issues related to disability and their workforce, as well as being a caregiver to two children with disabilities.
Jul 23, 2024•28 min•Ep 235•Transcript available on Metacast Today we’re sharing a special episode from Think Big, Buy Small, the new podcast from Harvard Business School. Think Big, Buy Small explores an innovative approach to entrepreneurship: acquisition entrepreneurship with conversations exploring how to buy your own business, be your own boss, and get the financial benefits of your efforts through the approach of entrepreneurship through acquisition In this episode, HBS Professors Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff chat with Robin Kovitz, who purchase...
Jul 16, 2024•36 min•Ep 234•Transcript available on Metacast Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which allow individuals to own their digital assets and move them from place to place, are changing the interaction between consumers and digital goods, brands, and platforms. Harvard Business School professor Scott Duke Kominers and tech entrepreneur Steve Kaczynski discuss the case, “Bored Ape Yacht Club: Navigating the NFT World,” and the related book they co-authored, The Everything Token: How NFTs and Web3 Will Transform The Way We Buy, Sell, And Create. They foc...
Jul 09, 2024•29 min•Ep 234•Transcript available on Metacast In 2018, artisanal Italian vineyard Frank Cornelissen was one of the world’s leading producers of natural wine. But when weather-related conditions damaged that year’s grapes, founder Frank Cornelissen had to decide between staying true to the tenets of natural wine making, or breaking with his public beliefs to save that year’s grapes by adding sulfites. Harvard Business School assistant professor Tiona Zuzul discusses the importance of staying true to your company’s principles while remaining ...
Jun 18, 2024•21 min•Ep 233•Transcript available on Metacast The Insurtech firm Hippo was facing two big challenges related to climate change: major loss ratios and rate hikes. The company used technologically empowered services to create its competitive edge, along with providing smart home packages, targeting risk-friendly customers, and using data-driven pricing. But now CEO and president Rick McCathron needed to determine how the firm’s underwriting model could account for the effects of high-intensity weather events.
Jun 04, 2024•32 min•Ep 232•Transcript available on Metacast In March 2020, Twiddy & Company, a family-owned vacation rental company known for hospitality rooted in personal interactions, needed to adjust to contactless, remote customer service. With the upcoming vacation season thrown into chaos by the COVID-19 pandemic, president Clark Twiddy had a responsibility to the company’s network of homeowners who rented their homes through the company, to guests who had booked vacations, and to employees who had been recruited by Twiddy’s reputation for treatin...
May 21, 2024•27 min•Ep 231•Transcript available on Metacast Ferran Adrià, chef at legendary Barcelona-based restaurant elBulli, was facing two related decisions. First, he and his team must continue to develop new and different dishes for elBulli to guarantee a continuous stream of innovation, the cornerstone of the restaurant's success. But they also need to focus on growing the restaurant’s business. Can the team balance both objectives?
May 07, 2024•26 min•Ep 230•Transcript available on Metacast In 2020, Amazon built a shelter for women and families experiencing houselessness on its campus in Seattle, Washington. The shelter was operated in partnership with a nonprofit organization known as Mary’s Place and was designed to address what had become an urgent problem for Seattle and many other wealthy American cities, where communities were being displaced by a lack of affordable housing. Amazon’s partnership with Mary’s Place was an experiment in addressing this problem at its core, using...
Apr 23, 2024•24 min•Ep 229•Transcript available on Metacast Özyeğin Social Investments was founded by Hüsnü Özyeğin, one of Turkey's most successful entrepreneurs, with a focus on education, health, gender equality, rural development, and disaster relief in Turkey. Harvard Business School senior lecturer Christina Wing and Murat Özyeğin (MBA 2003) discuss how the company is a model for making a significant impact across multiple sectors of society through giving and how that legacy can be sustained in the future.
Apr 09, 2024•29 min•Ep 228•Transcript available on Metacast In the spring of 2021, Raymond Jefferson (MBA 2000) applied for a job in President Joseph Biden’s administration. Ten years earlier, false allegations had been used to force him to resign from his prior U.S. government position as assistant secretary of labor for veterans’ employment and training in the U.S. Department of Labor. Jefferson filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. government to clear his name and used his entire life savings to pursue the case for eight years. Why, after such a tr...
Mar 26, 2024•26 min•Ep 227•Transcript available on Metacast Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei and Paul English, one of the most imaginative and successful innovators of his generation, discuss how to tell the difference between a good idea and a bad one, the importance of iteration, and taking a systematic (but fast) approach to developing new ideas.
Mar 12, 2024•28 min•Ep 226•Transcript available on Metacast Harvard University aims to be fossil-fuel neutral by 2026 and totally free of fossil fuels by 2050. As part of this goal, the university is trying to decarbonize its supply chain and considers replacing cement with a low-carbon substitute called Pozzotive®, made with post-consumer recycled glass. Harvard Business School professor emeritus Robert Kaplan and assistant professor Shirley Lu discuss the flow of emissions along the supply chain of Harvard University’s construction projects, the differ...
Feb 27, 2024•26 min•Ep 225•Transcript available on Metacast In 2015, Apple debuted the iPhone 6S, which employed a default encryption system preventing both Apple and government authorities from accessing data stored on the device. But since then, global governments have questioned whether Apple’s desire to protect customer privacy interferes with public health and safety. Harvard Business School senior lecturer Henry McGee and professor Nien-hê Hsieh discuss how Apple CEO Tim Cook manages this tension.
Feb 13, 2024•28 min•Ep 224•Transcript available on Metacast Ethanol had already transformed Brazil, where flex-fuel vehicles dominated the streets. Raízen, a bioenergy company headquartered in São Paulo, sought to prove that second-generation ethanol (E2G) could do the same for the world – especially in hard to decarbonize sectors, such as aviation and shipping. E2G is made from a byproduct of sugarcane that doesn’t compete with food production, Paula Kovarsky, Raízen’s chief strategy and sustainability officer, was confident the company could become a g...
Jan 30, 2024•27 min•Ep 223•Transcript available on Metacast 
