This case illustrates how a strong culture, founder-led SME designed and used a unique performance metric-the job security index-to manage through periods of economic uncertainty. The case centers specifically on how the job security index was used in an interactive control process to focus the organization on identifying strategic uncertainties and developing related action plans to survive the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. The case explores how the design and use of this metric both influenced, and was influenced by, the firm's broad-based employee ownership incentives.

The case describes the founding, development, and scaling of Antler, an early-stage investment platform that invests in entrepreneurs pre-team and, in many cases, even pre-idea. The case explores the economics of venture capital investing at such an early stage and the various challenges and opportunities to build a platform that not only systematically selects the right founders, but also allows them to build teams and access resources needed to succeed. The case allows for a detailed look at these issues through the lens of two founding teams that were selected for Antler's early-stage investment programs but have very different assessed quantitative and qualitative factors that may impact their future success. Through analyzing these two opportunities for Antler, important issues are surfaced in how to combine analytics with human judgment as Antler's senior leadership looks to scale their investment platform both in terms of number of founding teams and across multiple countries.

The Jobs to Be Done methodology is both a theory and a practical approach for understanding customer behavior and why people make the choices they make. Many practitioners, whether they work for startups or incumbent businesses, find Jobs to Be Done useful because it provides an uncommon solution to a common problem - understanding your customers as you start a new enterprise or losing touch with customers as your business grows. The theory of Jobs to Be Done is taught at Harvard Business School in the course "Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise ("BSSE," in HBS shorthand), which was created by the late Professor Clayton Christensen. It is practiced by many alumni of the course, as well as by numerous industry practitioners. Beyond them, there is a wider circle of professionals who are familiar with the theory or curious about it, and who are interested in converting that curiosity into practice. This multimedia toolbox walks through all of the stages of understanding and implementing Jobs to Be Done, including the foundational theory and its benefits to businesses; how to recruit customers, interview them, and analyze results; and feed that analysis into product development and marketing. The toolbox is a collection of original content as well as existing resources aggregated from across the web. To illustrate the theory the authors conducted a Jobs to Be Done research project to understand why our students "hire" Harvard Business School.

As he seeks to place the division he leads on a firm footing for the future, Tom Staggs, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, is considering a range of investments designed to either upgrade the guest experience in the company's existing parks or to expand access to "the Disney magic" beyond the company's current efforts. The case invites students to reflect on the "job to be done" that the parks perform for their guests, as well as on how far Disney can go to accommodate those for whom the parks are out of reach while still maintaining a premium experience.