Cold Call

Harvard Business School professor Geoff Jones discusses his case entitled “Helena Rubinstein, Making Up the Modern Woman,” which examines the career of Helena Rubinstein, one of the trailblazing female entrepreneurs of the 20th century. Using guile, brilliant branding, and more than a few falsehoods, Rubinstein lifted cosmetics from an accessory item for prostitutes to a great luxury item during the Great Depression.

What happens when Intermountain Healthcare invests resources in an innovative precision medicine unit to provide life-extending, genetically targeted therapies to late-stage cancer patients? Harvard Business School professors Richard Hamermesh and Kathy Giusti discuss their case — entitled “Intermountain Healthcare: Pursuing Precision Medicine” — and its connections to their work with the Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator.

Have you ever wondered how Hershey chocolate came to be so popular? Harvard Business School professor Nancy Koehn discusses her case entitled “Candy Land, the Utopian Vision of Milton Hershey,” which explores the life and vision of Milton Hershey, the entrepreneur and philanthropist behind the Hershey chocolate bar, the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, and the Milton Hershey School.

Harvard Business School professor Ray Goldberg discusses his case study, “Wegmans and Listeria: Developing a Proactive Food Safety System for Produce” — how Wegmans CEO faced a food safety issue and then helped the industry determine how it could become more proactive in the future.

How deeply does the culture of a startup matter? Can it be shaped? Harvard Business School professor Jeffrey Rayport discusses his case “WeWork” regarding cofounder Miguel McKelvey’s innovative role in building a company culture to support rapid growth.

Was Eastern Labs a huge success or an expensive mistake? Eastern Bank CEO Bob Rivers innovates from within by partnering with fintech entrepreneur Dan O’Malley to launch a completely automated small business lending product. Harvard Business School professor Karen Mills discusses key questions from her case, “Eastern Bank; Innovating Through Eastern Labs”: Did Rivers have the right intrapreneurship model? Did he change the culture at Eastern? Did he make a mistake spinning off Numerated into a separate company?

After thirty years of research and development, the HondaJet is now the top selling jet in the very light jet segment of the market. Harvard Business School professor Gary Pisano discusses his case study entitled, “Flying into the Future: HondaJet” — how Honda Aircraft Corporation CEO Michimasa Fujino brings the jet to life, and must now decide on ways to grow the business.

Feeding America is the third largest nonprofit in America, managing a network of more than 200 food banks nationwide. Harvard Business School professor Scott Duke Kominers and University of Chicago professor Canice Prendergast discuss Kominers’ case, “Feeding America (A)” — how the organization designed a marketplace that was efficient and fair for all participants.

Is it time to throw out the creative director and rely on big data to predict what consumers want to wear next? Harvard Business School professor Ayelet Israeli discusses her case study, “Predicting Consumer Tastes With Big Data at Gap” — how Gap CEO Art Peck considers this bold idea to boost sales.

Harvard Business School professor Bill Kerr discusses how Vodafone, one of the largest companies in the telecommunications space, incorporated technological advancements like big data, automation, and artificial intelligence to improve productivity while ensuring new opportunities were created for the next generation of workers. Kerr is the author of the case study, “Vodafone: Managing Advanced Technologies and Artificial Intelligence.”