Cold Call

By HBR Presents / Brian Kenny

Business

What's Cold Call about?

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.

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The Entrepreneurial Journey...

05.23.2023

The city of Wenzhou in southeastern China is home to the country’s largest privately owned mental health hospital group, the Wenzhou Kangning Hospital Co, Ltd. It’s an example of the extraordinary entrepreneurship happening in China’s healthcare space. But after its ...

Cold Call episodes:

05.23.2023 The Entrepreneurial Journey of China’s First Private Mental Health Hospital The city of Wenzhou in southeastern China is home to the country’s largest privately owned mental health hospital group, the Wenzhou Kangning Hospital Co, Ltd. It’s an example of the extraordinary entrepreneurship happening in China’s healthcare space. But after its ...
05.09.2023 Can Robin Williams’ Son Help Other Families Heal Addiction and Depression? Zak Pym Williams, son of comedian and actor Robin Williams, had seen how mental health challenges, such as addiction and depression, had affected past generations of his family. He began considering proactive strategies that could help his family’s mental health, ...
04.28.2023 Sweden’s Northvolt Electric Battery Maker: A Startup with a Mission In Stockholm, Sweden an upstart battery maker, Northvolt, is trying to recreate the value chain for European car manufacturers making the switch to EVs. With two founders from Tesla and two experienced financiers at the helm, the company seems bound ...
04.27.2023 Equity Bank CEO James Mwangi: Transforming Lives with Access to Credit James Mwangi, CEO of Equity Bank, has transformed lives and livelihoods throughout East and Central Africa by giving impoverished people access to banking accounts and micro loans. He’s been so successful that in 2020 Forbes coined the term “the Mwangi ...
04.26.2023 How Martine Rothblatt Started a Company to Save Her Daughter When serial entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt (founder of Sirius XM) received her seven-year-old daughter’s diagnosis of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH), she created United Therapeutics and developed a drug to save her life. When her daughter later needed a lung transplant, Rothblatt ...
04.25.2023 Using Design Thinking to Invent a Low-Cost Prosthesis for Land Mine Victims Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (BMVSS) is an Indian nonprofit famous for creating low-cost prosthetics, like the Jaipur Foot and the Stanford-Jaipur Knee. Known for its patient-centric culture and its focus on innovation, BMVSS has assisted more than one million ...
04.24.2023 Our All-Time Favorite Episodes of Cold Call Cold Call is celebrating 200 episodes with a special five-part series during the week of April 24, 2023. Each day that week, Cold Call will release a new episode. To kick off the week-long celebration, the show’s producers have each ...
04.11.2023 A Rose by Any Other Name: Supply Chains and Carbon Emissions in the Flower Industry Headquartered in Kitengela, Kenya, Sian Flowers exports roses to Europe. Because cut flowers have a limited shelf life and consumers want them to retain their appearance for as long as possible, Sian and its distributors used international air cargo to ...
03.28.2023 BMW’s Decarbonization Strategy: Sustainable for the Environment and the Bottom Line In mid-2022, many automakers were announcing deadlines by which they would stop selling ICE vehicles altogether, buoyed by investment analysts and favorable press. While this would reduce tail-pipe emissions, it ignored the fact that the production of EVs—and especially their ...
03.14.2023 Can AI and Machine Learning Help Park Rangers Prevent Poaching? The Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) was created by a coalition of conservation organizations to take historical data and create geospatial mapping tools that enable more efficient deployment of park rangers to prevent poaching. SMART had demonstrated significant improvements ...
02.28.2023 Muhammad Ali: A Case Study in Purpose-Driven Decision Making Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr, rose from a poor family in segregated Louisville, Kentucky to international fame, winning three heavyweight boxing titles and becoming a civil rights leader and role model for millions of people around the world. ...
02.14.2023 Does It Pay to Be a Whistleblower? In 2013, soon after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had started a massive whistleblowing program with the potential for large monetary rewards, two employees of a U.S. bank’s asset management business debated whether to blow the whistle on ...
01.31.2023 Addressing Racial Discrimination on Airbnb 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 ...
01.17.2023 Nestlé’s KitKat Diplomacy: Neutrality vs. Shared Value 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 ...
01.03.2023 Wordle: Can a Pandemic Phenomenon Sustain in the Long Term? 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 ...
12.13.2022 Metaverse Seoul: How One City Used Citizen Input to Pilot a Government-Run Metaverse 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 ...
11.29.2022 How Will Gamers and Investors Respond to Microsoft’s Acquisition of Activision Blizzard? 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 ...
11.15.2022 Planning the Future for Harlem’s Beloved Sylvia’s Restaurant 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 ...
11.01.2022 Marie Curie: A Case Study in Breaking Barriers 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 ...
10.18.2022 Chewy.com’s Make-or-Break Logistics Dilemma 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 ...
10.04.2022 Corporate Governance and Growth Strategy at Capital SAFI 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. ...
09.20.2022 Larry Fink at BlackRock: Linking Purpose to Profit 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 ...
09.06.2022 Reinventing an Iconic Independent Bookstore 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 ...
08.23.2022 Management Lessons from the Sinking of the SS El Faro 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 ...
08.09.2022 A Lesson from Google: Can AI Bias be Monitored Internally? 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 ...
07.26.2022 Can Bombas Reach New Customers while Maintaining Its Social Mission? 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 ...
07.12.2022 Can the Foodservice Distribution Industry Recover from the Pandemic? 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 ...
06.28.2022 Scaling a Fintech Startup for the Greater Good 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 ...
06.14.2022 What Does It Take to Close the Opportunity Gap in America’s Labor Market? 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. ...
05.31.2022 Corruption: New Insights for Fighting an Age-Old Business Problem 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 ...
05.17.2022 Delivering a Personalized Shopping Experience with AI 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 ...
05.03.2022 Can a Social Entrepreneur End Homelessness in the U.S.? 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 ...
04.19.2022 What Role Do Individual Leaders Play in Corporate Governance? 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 ...
04.05.2022 Transforming Deloitte’s Approach to Consulting 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. ...
03.22.2022 How Etsy Found Its Purpose and Crafted a Turnaround 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, ...
03.08.2022 France Telecom: Corporate Restructuring and Employee Wellbeing 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, ...
02.22.2022 How to Scale a Startup Marketplace for Used Furniture 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 ...
02.15.2022 How to Make Venture Capital Accessible for Black Founders: An Entrepreneur’s Dilemma 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 ...
02.08.2022 What’s Next for Nigerian Production Studio EbonyLife Media? 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 ...
02.01.2022 Making Diverse Leadership a Priority at Whittier College 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 ...
01.25.2022 How Footwear Startup Allbirds Is Decarbonizing Fashion 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 ...
01.11.2022 Can Entrepreneurs and Governments Team Up to Solve Big Problems? 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 ...
12.14.2021 How Japan’s Recruit Holdings Regained Trust after a Scandal Recruit Holdings, an advertising media, staffing, and business support conglomerate was founded in Japan in 1960 by Hiromasa Ezoe. The company was built on the principle that the company should add value to society. But in 1988, Recruit hit rough ...
11.30.2021 TikTok: Super App or Supernova? TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was launched in 2012 around the simple idea of helping users entertain themselves on their smartphones while on the Beijing Subway. By May 2020, TikTok operated in 155 countries and had roughly one billion monthly active ...
11.16.2021 Can Mass General Brigham Diversify Its Community of Innovators? In November 2019, Mass General Brigham (MGB) was the largest recipient of National Institutes of Health funding in the world. The Innovation Office, led by Chief Innovation Officer Chris Coburn, sought to capitalize on that funding – with the goal ...
11.02.2021 Innovating in the Feminine Care Market Founded in 2014, Thinx, Inc. makes absorbent underwear that can be worn during menstruation. But the feminine care market had seen virtually no innovation in half a century because of the taboo against discussing the topic of menstruation. As a ...
10.19.2021 Should Global Beer Company Molson Coors Enter the Cannabis Beverages Business? In early 2019, global beer company Molson Coors was exploring how to enter the cannabis beverages business. At the time, cannabis had not yet been legalized in Canada. Initially the company had planned to test a few products in a ...
10.05.2021 How the Clean Network Changed the Future of Global Technology Competition The Chinese telecom giant Huawei and other Chinese telecom firms, like ZTE, had been poised to lead the globe in 5G technology—until the U.S. State Department embarked on a global campaign to challenge the market dominance of Chinese firms with ...
09.21.2021 Why JPMorgan Chase Is Committed to Improving Racial Equity in Banking In 2020, JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced a $30 billion “Commitment to Advance Racial Equity.” This included investments in housing, small businesses, and financial literacy across the U.S., as well as in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within the bank. ...
09.07.2021 How to Lead through a Merger: US Airways and American Airlines In February 2013, US Airways announced that it would merge with American Airlines to create the world’s largest airline. During the acquisition integration process, CEO Doug Parker had to determine how best to combine the two airlines’ core systems, operating ...

Older episodes

Cold Call

What's Cold Call about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Cold Call episodes:

The Entrepreneurial Journey of China’s First Private Mental Health Hospital

Can Robin Williams’ Son Help Other Families Heal Addiction and Depression?

Sweden’s Northvolt Electric Battery Maker: A Startup with a Mission

Equity Bank CEO James Mwangi: Transforming Lives with Access to Credit

How Martine Rothblatt Started a Company to Save Her Daughter

Using Design Thinking to Invent a Low-Cost Prosthesis for Land Mine Victims

Our All-Time Favorite Episodes of Cold Call

A Rose by Any Other Name: Supply Chains and Carbon Emissions in the Flower Industry

BMW’s Decarbonization Strategy: Sustainable for the Environment and the Bottom Line

Can AI and Machine Learning Help Park Rangers Prevent Poaching?

Muhammad Ali: A Case Study in Purpose-Driven Decision Making

Does It Pay to Be a Whistleblower?

Addressing Racial Discrimination on Airbnb

Nestlé’s KitKat Diplomacy: Neutrality vs. Shared Value

Wordle: Can a Pandemic Phenomenon Sustain in the Long Term?

Metaverse Seoul: How One City Used Citizen Input to Pilot a Government-Run Metaverse

How Will Gamers and Investors Respond to Microsoft’s Acquisition of Activision Blizzard?

Planning the Future for Harlem’s Beloved Sylvia’s Restaurant

Marie Curie: A Case Study in Breaking Barriers

Chewy.com’s Make-or-Break Logistics Dilemma

Corporate Governance and Growth Strategy at Capital SAFI

Larry Fink at BlackRock: Linking Purpose to Profit

Reinventing an Iconic Independent Bookstore

Management Lessons from the Sinking of the SS El Faro

A Lesson from Google: Can AI Bias be Monitored Internally?

Can Bombas Reach New Customers while Maintaining Its Social Mission?

Can the Foodservice Distribution Industry Recover from the Pandemic?

Scaling a Fintech Startup for the Greater Good

What Does It Take to Close the Opportunity Gap in America’s Labor Market?

Corruption: New Insights for Fighting an Age-Old Business Problem

Delivering a Personalized Shopping Experience with AI

Can a Social Entrepreneur End Homelessness in the U.S.?

What Role Do Individual Leaders Play in Corporate Governance?

Transforming Deloitte’s Approach to Consulting

How Etsy Found Its Purpose and Crafted a Turnaround

France Telecom: Corporate Restructuring and Employee Wellbeing

How to Scale a Startup Marketplace for Used Furniture

How to Make Venture Capital Accessible for Black Founders: An Entrepreneur’s Dilemma

What’s Next for Nigerian Production Studio EbonyLife Media?

Making Diverse Leadership a Priority at Whittier College

How Footwear Startup Allbirds Is Decarbonizing Fashion

Can Entrepreneurs and Governments Team Up to Solve Big Problems?

How Japan’s Recruit Holdings Regained Trust after a Scandal

TikTok: Super App or Supernova?

Can Mass General Brigham Diversify Its Community of Innovators?

Innovating in the Feminine Care Market

Should Global Beer Company Molson Coors Enter the Cannabis Beverages Business?

How the Clean Network Changed the Future of Global Technology Competition

Why JPMorgan Chase Is Committed to Improving Racial Equity in Banking

How to Lead through a Merger: US Airways and American Airlines