The Engine, a venture capital firm founded by MIT to fill a gap in the technology funding landscape by commercializing breakthrough science and technology. Led by managing partner and CEO Katie Rae, the Engine's unique approach involved an unusually longer fund life, as well as founder training, lab space sharing, and "tough tech" ecosystem building activities centered at their brand-new headquarters in Cambridge. The firm raised $507 million over its first two funds which had yielded promising results, with many portfolio companies maturing faster than anticipated. As The Engine considered its next steps, it faced several strategic questions that tested its core beliefs in startup ecosystems and commercializing frontier science. Should the Engine's third fund expand geographically or into later-stage companies? And how much should they raise? The Engine team attempted to balance its desire to scale their impact with the need to maintain focus on supporting the most ambitious technical founders.

Fusion energy is evolving from a scientific idea to a commercial possibility, drawing large investments and regulatory discussions; how should the FIA navigate this evolution? The Fusion Industry Association (FIA) is at the forefront of transforming fusion energy from a scientific concept to a booming industry. This shift, marked by significant investments and legislative interest, faces challenges in technology, funding, and regulation. Key topics include fusion's technical background, and the association's role in industry growth. Ongoing debates include questions surrounding continued investment, supply chain issues, technological diversity, and the geopolitics that are a practical part of the global energy landscape.

In 2022, the leaders of In-Q-Tel (IQT) considered what was next for the unique mission-driven organization. Since 1999, IQT had one mission: to be the most sophisticated source of strategic technical knowledge and capabilities to the U.S. government and its allies. IQT played a dual role for the national security community: to both inform the Intelligence Community (IC) with technology insights and to deliver cutting-edge capabilities. Its technical team identified sectors of interest, followed by investment professionals engaging with companies that had promising applications for the U.S. government. Recent years had seen an expansion of IQT's activities through a growing team of in-house technologists, international expansion, "situational awareness" reports, new a new program help federally funded researchers commercialize promising solutions. In the context of rapidly changing (and increasingly intertwined) technology and geopolitical landscapes, the IQT team had several big questions to consider: What was the right scope and complexity for the organization? IQT had expanded office geographies and activities, but IQT faced increased requests from government partners - such as countering offers to U.S. technology companies from foreign acquirers. What was the appropriate portfolio risk? Success for IQT went beyond just financial returns - but IQT needed to find a tolerable balance of potential failure. Lastly, how could the organization recruit the right talent to accommodate this growth? Recruiting and retaining talent was increasingly difficult in a competitive labor market.

In March 2021, the weather company Tomorrow.io announced a new project to develop satellites equipped with radar for weather monitoring and launch them into Earth's orbit. Company leadership considers execution strategies.

In 2021, AppHarvest completed construction of a 60-acre indoor farming facility, one of the world's largest, recorded its first sales, and went public in a multi-billion dollar IPO. Described as "a force of nature," Jonathan Webb founded the company to bring jobs back to Appalachia. Now, as he plans for more indoor farms, he has to face the challenges of growing a company quickly.

In 2017, Newsha Ghaeli and Mariana Matus were deciding whether to leave their labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, put other job opportunities aside, and dive full-time into founding a wastewater analysis start-up, Biobot. Ghaeli, an architect, and Matus, a computational biologist, had been turning sewage into information about "population health" and now had dreams of turning the data encoded in urine and stool into a viable and impactful business. In plainer terms, they planned to "tap into what you flush down the toilet every day." They'd been told not to. They'd been told their idea was too broad and their skills too narrow. They'd been told they had no defensible intellectual property and limited scalability. They'd been advised to choose other startups instead, and knew, as immigrants on temporary visas, if they failed at this venture, they might even have to leave the country. Despite the many hurdles and objections, Ghaeli and Matus felt mostly at ease about moving ahead. Were they missing something? Or was everyone else?

In 2019, BT Slingsby founds Catalys Pacific, the first biotech "venture creation" fund in Tokyo. After convincing some of the biggest Japanese pharmaceutical firms to invest, BT hopes the fund can make a big splash and transform biotechnology innovation in Japan. After examining hundreds of potential investment opportunities, his team must decide which deals to pursue first. How can Catalys Pacific establish a positive investment track record while galvanizing an entire innovation ecosystem? To achieve its vision, the Catalys Pacific team must use its experience in the Japanese pharmaceutical industry to identify promising deals, while navigating corporate politics and potential cultural roadblocks.

A weather technology startup, ClimaCell considers the R＆D trade-offs and financing implications of pursuing a proposed contract with a major automobile maker, rather than continuing its focus on building a scalable, all-purpose weather prediction engine.

In the early 1960s, a popular drug taken by patients worldwide for a range of maladies was found to cause severe birth defects and other health problems in babies born to mothers who had taken it during a certain stage of fetal development. As many as 10,000 children may have been affected. Just a handful of these children were born in the U.S., where safety concerns were raised by Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, the medical officer handling the thalidomide application at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. However, the company hoping to distribute the product in the U.S. had already given away thousands of pills for doctors to run clinical trials. Once the full extent of the global thalidomide crisis became generally known, the U.S. Congress significantly reformed the country's drug approval process, to ensure that all new products were both safe and effective. It subsequently became much more arduous for pharmaceutical firms to bring new drugs to market. Some critics therefore argued that the new regulations were actually detrimental, as they prevented or delayed good drugs from coming to market. What was the right balance between consumer protection and access to potentially life-saving drugs?