For years, Airbnb gave hosts discretion to accept or reject a guest after seeing little more than a name and a picture, believing that eliminating anonymity was the best way for the company to build trust. But after research provided evidence that Black hosts received less in rent than hosts of other races and showed signs of discrimination against guests with African American sounding names, the company had to decide what changes to make. Should they change the design of the platform to reduce ...
Jan 31, 2023•21 min•Ep 193•Transcript available on Metacast In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, and multinational companies began pulling out of Russia, in response. At Switzerland-based Nestlé, chief executive Mark Schneider had a difficult decision to make. Nestlé had a long tradition of neutrality that enabled it to operate in countries regardless of their political systems and human rights policies. But more recently the company had embraced Michael Porter’s “shared value” paradigm, which argues that companies have a responsibility to improve t...
Jan 17, 2023•24 min•Ep 192•Transcript available on Metacast Wordle went from a personal game, created by a developer for his girlfriend, to a global phenomenon with two million users in just a few months. Then The New York Times made an unexpected bid to acquire it. But will Wordle outlast other pandemic pastimes?
Jan 03, 2023•23 min•Ep 191•Transcript available on Metacast In May 2022, the Seoul Metropolitan Government in Seoul, South Korea, launched the pilot of Metaverse Seoul, a virtual version of Seoul’s mayor’s office. As they worked towards building a broad, immersive, online government platform, they hoped to gain insights from citizens about everything from popular local tourist sites that could be experienced virtually to government services that could be delivered in the metaverse. But to do that, the team had to figure out how to solicit ideas from citi...
Dec 13, 2022•24 min•Ep 190•Transcript available on Metacast In January 2022, Microsoft announced its acquisition of the video game company Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. The deal would make Microsoft the world’s third largest video game company, but it also exposes the company to several risks. First, the all-cash deal would require Microsoft to use a large portion of its cash reserves. Second, the acquisition was announced as Activision Blizzard faced gender pay disparity and sexual harassment allegations. That opened Microsoft up to potential r...
Nov 29, 2022•19 min•Ep 189•Transcript available on Metacast Sylvia’s Restaurant, which celebrated its 60th anniversary in August 2022, is a testament to the values instilled by the founder and matriarch, Sylvia Woods. She cultivated a strong community around her soul food restaurant in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood that has continued to thrive, even after her passing a decade ago. Amid business expansions and succession planning, the legacy of Sylvia Woods continues to live on. But as Sylvia’s grandson takes over the business, a new challenge faces...
Nov 15, 2022•27 min•Ep 188•Transcript available on Metacast Marie Curie, born Maria Sklodowska from a poor family in Poland, rose to the pinnacle of scientific fame in the early years of the twentieth century, winning the Nobel Prize twice in the fields of physics and chemistry. At the time, women were simply not accepted in scientific fields. So Curie had to overcome enormous obstacles in order to earn a doctorate at the Sorbonne and perform her pathbreaking research on radioactive materials. How did she plan her time and navigate her life choices to le...
Nov 01, 2022•24 min•Ep 187•Transcript available on Metacast In late 2013, Ryan Cohen, cofounder and then-CEO of online pet products retailer Chewy.com, was facing a decision that could determine his company’s future. Cohen was convinced that achieving scale would be essential to making the business work and he worried that the company’s third-party logistics provider (3PL) may not be able to scale with Chewy.com’s projected growth or maintain the company’s performance standards for service quality and fulfillment. But neither he nor his cofounders had an...
Oct 18, 2022•29 min•Ep 186•Transcript available on Metacast Asset management firm Capital SAFI wanted to attract new strategic investors and expand to other countries beyond Bolivia. Founder, chairman and CEO Jorge Quintanilla Nielsen knew that having the right corporate governance in place was critical to achieve this goal. The firm’s board had evolved over time, but would new investors be impressed by those measures or were additional improvements needed?
Oct 04, 2022•28 min•Ep 185•Transcript available on Metacast In 2014, Larry Fink started writing letters to the leaders of some of the largest publicly listed companies, urging them to consider the importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. Fink is the chairman and CEO of BlackRock, one of the largest asset management houses in the world. The firm’s success was rooted in its cost-effective, passive investment products that rely on tracking indices and funds. But Fink wanted his firm to engage with the companies in which they invest ...
Sep 20, 2022•30 min•Ep 184•Transcript available on Metacast In 2020, Kwame Spearman made the career-shifting decision to leave a New York City-based consulting job to return to his hometown of Denver, Colorado, and take over an iconic independent bookstore, The Tattered Cover. Spearman saw an opportunity to reinvent the local business to build a sense of community after the pandemic. But he also had to find a way to meet the big challenges facing independent booksellers amid technological change and shifting business models.
Sep 06, 2022•28 min•Ep 183•Transcript available on Metacast Captain Michael Davidson, of the container ship SS El Faro, was determined to make his planned shipping trip on time—but a hurricane was approaching his intended path. To succeed, Davidson and his fellow officers had to plot a course to avoid the storm in the face of conflicting weather reports from multiple sources and differing opinions among the officers about what to do. Over the 36-hour voyage, tensions rose as the ship got closer and closer to the storm. When the ship ultimately sunk on Oc...
Aug 23, 2022•36 min•Ep 182•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Timnit Gebru was the co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI research team –until she raised concerns about bias in the company’s large language models and was forced out in 2020. Her departure sent shockwaves through the AI and tech community ad raised fundamental questions about how companies safeguard against bias in their own AI. Should in-house ethics research continue to be led by researchers who best understand the technology, or must ethics and bias be monitored by more objective researchers ...
Aug 09, 2022•25 min•Ep 181•Transcript available on Metacast Bombas was started in 2013 with a dual mission: to deliver quality socks and donate much-needed footwear to people living in shelters. By 2021, it had become one of America's most visible buy-one-give-one companies, with over $250 million in annual revenue and 50 million pairs of socks donated. As Bombas continued expanding, the company struggled to determine what pace of growth would best allow it to reach new customers while maintaining its social mission.
Jul 26, 2022•24 min•Ep 180•Transcript available on Metacast At the height of the pandemic in 2020, US Foods struggled, as restaurant and school closures reduced demand for foodservice distribution. The situation improved after the return of indoor dining and in-person learning, but an industry-wide shortage of truck drivers and warehouse staff hampered the foodservice distributor’s post-pandemic recovery. That left CEO Pietro Satriano to determine the best strategy to attract and retain essential workers, even as he was tasked with expanding the wholesal...
Jul 12, 2022•18 min•Ep 179•Transcript available on Metacast Esusu launched in 2018 with a rotational savings product and continued growing their fintech startup in late 2019 with Esusu Rent, a rent reporting tool that enables renters to improve their credit scores. In March 2020, co-founders Abbey Wemimo and Samir Goel were working to determine how best to scale Esusu to advance their mission of promoting financial inclusion in the U.S. Harvard Business School assistant professor Emily Williams discusses how the two co-founders decided how to allocate re...
Jun 28, 2022•20 min•Ep 178•Transcript available on Metacast In the wake of George Floyd’s killing and widespread protests for social justice in the United States, OneTen was formed by a coalition of 40 large companies to address the disparity in job opportunities for African-Americans without four-year college degrees. Their goal was to provide one million jobs in 10 years. But in order to do that, OneTen had to analyze the underlying problems and formulate recommendations for both system-level problems and those that manifest themselves at an organizati...
Jun 14, 2022•33 min•Ep 177•Transcript available on Metacast Corruption is as old as humanity, with cases documented as far back as the Egyptian dynasties. While the World Bank estimates that international bribery exceeds $1.5 trillion annually, the larger and more subtle effects of corruption on economies and populations is incalculable. Harvard Business School professors Geoff Jones and Tarun Khanna explore how corruption uniquely affects business in emerging markets, and why it should be addressed by the public and private sectors.
May 31, 2022•23 min•Ep 176•Transcript available on Metacast THE YES, a shopping app for fashion brands, uses a sophisticated algorithm to create and deliver a personalized store for every shopper, based on her style preferences, size, and budget. After launching the app in 2020, the founders must decide whether to continue developing the algorithm to deliver on the company’s customer value proposition or to focus their resources on new customer acquisition, with the idea that more users on the app would improve the algorithm's performance.
May 17, 2022•34 min•Ep 175•Transcript available on Metacast Community Solutions is a nonprofit founded in 2011 by Rosanne Haggerty, with the ambitious goal of ending chronic homelessness in America. After they were awarded a $100 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation, Haggerty and her team had to decide how to prioritize projects and spending to maximize the grant’s impact.
May 03, 2022•27 min•Ep 174•Transcript available on Metacast From 1997 to 2012, Scott Tucker built a nationwide network of payday lending businesses, becoming a pioneer in online lending along the way. But in 2012 federal prosecutors indicted Tucker on several criminal charges that he violated disclosure requirements. Harvard Business School associate professor Aiyesha Dey discusses the role of individual leaders in the corporate governance system, as well as their responsibility for creating a positive corporate culture that embodies ethics, self-restrai...
Apr 19, 2022•21 min•Ep 173•Transcript available on Metacast Pixel helps facilitate open talent and crowdsourcing for Deloitte Consulting client engagements. But while some of Deloitte’s principals are avid users of Pixel’s services, uptake across the organization has been slow, and in some pockets has met with deep resistance. Balaji Bondili, head of Pixel, must decide how best to grow Deloitte Consulting’s use of on-demand talent, as consulting companies and their clients face transformative change.
Apr 05, 2022•22 min•Ep 172•Transcript available on Metacast Etsy, the online seller of handmade goods, grew substantially but remained unprofitable in its first decade. But after it was almost bought out by private equity firms, a new CEO arrived with a mission to save the company financially and, in the process, save its soul. Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati discusses CEO Josh Silverman’s purpose-driven turnaround at Etsy.
Mar 22, 2022•27 min•Ep 171•Transcript available on Metacast The France Telecom case series follows the evolution of the organization from a national telephone monopoly to a private company facing severe challenges. As increasing pressure mounted internally to make changes and 22,000 jobs were lost between 2006 and 2009, the culture at France Telecom shifted from one where employees were proud to work to one where the physical and mental wellbeing of some employees became increasingly fragile. Did corporate leaders push employees too far, creating unaccep...
Mar 08, 2022•32 min•Ep 170•Transcript available on Metacast AptDeco, a peer-to-peer marketplace for used furniture in the New York City area, was growing rapidly in the massive $120 billion furniture market, despite its complexity and high costs. Co-founders Reham Fagiri and Kalam Dennis were considering different options to scale the business, including converting sellers into buyers and vice versa, finding superusers to fuel the supply for their platform, expanding to new markets, and rebranding with a sustainability focus. What’s the best way for them...
Feb 22, 2022•25 min•Ep 169•Transcript available on Metacast In May of 2021, Kevin D. Johnson had just graduated from a rigorous Executive MBA program, and he needed to decide on his next career move. Johnson was the founder and CEO of a successful media company, but his career goals had shifted during business school. He wanted to use his talents to help other Black entrepreneurs access capital and provide opportunities to create intergenerational wealth. Johnson evaluated his four options: work full-time at an online platform dedicated to connecting Bla...
Feb 15, 2022•26 min•Ep 168•Transcript available on Metacast After more than 20 years in the media industry in the UK and Nigeria, EbonyLife Media CEO Mo Abudu is considering several strategic changes for her media company’s future. Will her mission to tell authentic African stories to the world be advanced by distributing films and TV shows direct to customers? Or should EbonyLife instead distribute its content through third-party streaming services, like Netflix?
Feb 08, 2022•26 min•Ep 167•Transcript available on Metacast In 2018, Linda Oubré was selected as the president of Whittier College in Los Angeles County – the first Black woman to serve in that role. The student body had been slowly evolving to represent the growing diversity of the surrounding area, but the college’s leadership remained largely white and male. Harvard Business School professor Debora Spar and Oubré discuss how she galvanized support among the college’s constituents, while working to diversify the college’s staff, administration, and boa...
Feb 01, 2022•31 min•Ep 166•Transcript available on Metacast In 2021, the footwear startup Allbirds was extending its product range into apparel and expanding beyond its online store to open more retail stores around the world. Harvard Business School professor Mike Toffel and Allbirds co-founder and co-CEO Joey Zwillinger discuss the growing environmental impact of the fashion industry and how the company managed the tension between advancing its mission to decarbonize fashion and staying ahead of competitors.
Jan 25, 2022•32 min•Ep 165•Transcript available on Metacast Harvard Business School professor Mitch Weiss and Brandon Tseng, Shield AI’s CGO and co-founder, discuss the challenges entrepreneurs face when working with the public sector, and how investing in new ideas can enable entrepreneurs and governments to join forces to solve big problems.
Jan 11, 2022•22 min•Ep 164•Transcript available on Metacast 
