Cold Call

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 response, the company launched four key digital programs (KDPs) aimed at using data and artificial intelligence to automate processes and enable data-driven decision-making. Pernod Ricard’s future direction with the KDPs depended on addressing internal resistance, providing effective training and support, aligning with strategic goals, and overcoming logistical and data-related hurdles. The company needed to find a way to expand these programs into new markets while reinforcing adoption where they had already been launched.

Harvard Business School assistant professors Iavor Bojinov and Edward McFowland III explore the opportunities and challenges of the company’s digital transformation journey in the case, “Pernod Ricard: Uncorking Digital Transformation.”

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 sustainable and financially sound enterprise as it scales.

Harvard Business School professor Rick Ruback and one of the case’s co-developers Joe Higgins discuss the business case for hiring employees with disabilities, “Lucky Ones Coffee: Employing People with Disabilities.”

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 would the firm still be able to maintain their historical dominance? Harvard Business School senior lecturers Jo Tango and Christina Wallace discuss their case, “Sequoia Capital.”

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 huge step for her both personally and professionally. In the spring of 2023, knownwell opened its first weight-inclusive clinic in the Boston area. But Boyarsky Pratt had to make a fundamental decision on how she wanted to grow the company. Should she grow slowly and build a small footprint of clinics in the Boston area over the next few years? Or should she scale fast to potentially help millions of people across the U.S.?

Boyarsky Pratt joins Harvard Business School assistant professor Jon Jachimowicz to discuss what it means to pursue your passion in the case, “Choosing the Course of Passion: Brooke Boyarsky Pratt at knownwell.”

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 on capital. How could Weaver convince new investors that her plans for cognac would yield success?

Harvard Business School senior lecturer Hise Gibson discusses Weaver’s leadership style, growth strategies, and her use of storytelling to connect customers with her brand in the case, Uncle Nearest: Creating a Legacy.

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 U.S. Department of Commerce by the CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors) and Science Act passed a few months earlier. Raimondo’s team had proposed additional measures that would help the U.S. regain technological leadership while protecting taxpayer funds. Should Raimondo move forward with the “innovative” NOFO, despite the risks?

Harvard Business School professor Mitch Weiss explores the issue of risk-taking and innovation in government in his case, “The CHIPs Program Office.”

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. Unlike typical sports franchises that built their teams and track records over many years before extending their brand beyond a local base, ACFC had inverted the model, generating both global and local interest in the club during its first three years.

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 League. Equally important, ACFC had started to bend the curve toward greater pay equity in women’s sports — the club’s ultimate goal.

But the founders knew there was much more to do to capitalize on the club’s momentum. As they developed ACFC’s first three-year strategic plan in 2024, they weighed the most effective ways to build value for the franchise. Was it better to allocate the incremental budget to investments in digital brand building or to investments in the on-field product?

Senior Lecturer Jeffrey Rayport is joined by case co-author Nicole Keller and club co-founder Kara Nortman to discuss the case, “Angel City Football Club: Scoring a New Model.”

In early 2023, Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, started developing the EdTech firm’s strategy for incorporating generative AI into their offerings. He asked his teams to focus on value to the firm and cost of implementation, and they identified four key projects: powering translations and modifying content format and delivery, personalized coaching, an automatic course-building tool, and building out new GenAI-related academic content.

By early 2024, the firm had made significant progress in bringing these 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 could it do to remain competitive? Harvard Business School professor Suraj Srinivasan discusses those questions in the case, “Coursera’s Foray Into Gen AI.”

In 2019, Nadine Vogel, founder and CEO of Springboard Consulting, needed to decide the best path forward to grow her small consulting firm. Springboard works with Fortune 500 companies on issues related to disability and workforce.

Should Vogel expand the topics she works on with her current clients, or should she explore the possibility of moving into a new market of smaller businesses?

Vogel joins Harvard Business School professor Lakshmi Ramarajan and Harvard Kennedy School professor Hannah Riley Bowles to discuss her experience starting and scaling her firm in the case, “Nadine Vogel: Transforming the Marketplace, Workplace, and Workforce for People with Disabilities.”

Ten years ago, Robin Kovitz became President & CEO of Baskits—now one of Canada’s leading gift services companies—by purchasing the company from its two retiring founders. Baskits was an acquisition that had many of the qualities that lead to success for first-time CEOs, including recurring customers and a record showing years of profitable operations. But it was also a seasonal business, which is a potential red flag.

This episode is an exclusive introduction to a new podcast from Harvard Business School: Think Big, Buy Small, hosted by HBS professors Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff.

The show is an extension of Ruback and Yudkoff’s courses on small firms, including Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition, which has been taken by thousands of MBA students, and their highly-regarded book, HBR Guide To Buying A Small Business. The episodes guide listeners through the different milestones of the journey to acquiring an enduringly profitable small business.

In this episode, they chat with Kovitz about her search process, investment criteria, and how she managed risk before and after purchasing Baskits.

Listen to more episodes of Think Big, Buy Small and follow the podcast: https://link.chtbl.com/s_29KAs0?sid=coldcall.