This case series focuses on Theranos Inc. (Theranos), a health care technology start-up founded by Elizabeth Holmes in 2003. Theranos focused on developing a revolutionary blood-testing technology that was supposed to be able to detect diseases using only a few drops of blood. Once valued at US$10 billion, the company never demonstrated its alleged technological breakthrough, and Holmes was eventually charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud and deceit. In 2018, Theranos was forced to shut down its operations, and in January 2022, Holmes was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The case series explores Theranos’s history, as well as the role of overconfidence bias in Theranos’s downfall.
This case series focuses on Theranos Inc. (Theranos), a health care technology start-up founded by Elizabeth Holmes in 2003. Theranos focused on developing a revolutionary blood-testing technology that was supposed to be able to detect diseases using only a few drops of blood. Once valued at US$10 billion, the company never demonstrated its alleged technological breakthrough, and Holmes was eventually charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud and deceit. In 2018, Theranos was forced to shut down its operations, and in January 2022, Holmes was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The case series explores Theranos’s history, as well as the role of overconfidence bias in Theranos’s downfall.
This case series focuses on Theranos Inc. (Theranos), a health care technology start-up founded by Elizabeth Holmes in 2003. Theranos focused on developing a revolutionary blood-testing technology that was supposed to be able to detect diseases using only a few drops of blood. Once valued at US$10 billion, the company never demonstrated its alleged technological breakthrough, and Holmes was eventually charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud and deceit. In 2018, Theranos was forced to shut down its operations, and in January 2022, Holmes was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The case series explores Theranos’s history, as well as the role of overconfidence bias in Theranos’s downfall.
In March 2021, a group of junior investment banking analysts at the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., an American multinational investment bank, told senior management that they were suffering burnout from having to work 100-hour weeks. Nearly a year since the start of the pandemic, this workplace culture crisis heightened the importance of senior leadership prioritizing employees’ mental and physical health. In addition, it drew attention to the importance of person-organization fit and to the changing labour market. A top-ranked undergraduate business student recently received a full-time job offer from Goldman Sachs. After learning of critical incidents of employee burnout at the firm, she was considering whether the company culture aligned with her values and whether she would be a good fit there.