By 2020, Sangu Delle (MBA 2016) has already made significant progress towards his life-long goal of solving Africa's myriad and diverse challenges. At 33 years old, he is the founder and chairman of the for-profit Golden Palm Investments Corporation, CEO of Africa Health Holdings Limited, author of a book on entrepreneurship in Africa, founder of a nonprofit (Cleanacwa) that brings improved fresh water infrastructure to African towns and villages, and serves in numerous other volunteer and trustee roles. He believes that he needs to work at scale and across national borders in order to solve the problems that he has identified, but he cannot help but wonder: are his efforts simply too big and too broad? Would it make more sense for him to focus on just one (or a few) industries, causes, or geographies, and perhaps grow from there? Could he reasonably expect to have meaningful impact by going for scale right away?
This is an abridged version of "MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe?" HBS Case No. 416-004. Scott and Ally Svenson, the founders of MOD Pizza, had to make a number of decisions in planning how to scale their small company. They wanted to grow MOD from 45 stores as of May 2015 to 200 stores by the end of 2016, and while the two believed that MOD could manage this growth from an operational standpoint, they wanted to make sure that MOD's culture was sufficiently strong to survive this rollout. The company had developed a strong culture, and the Svensons did not want MOD's core values and philosophies to be compromised as it rapidly expanded. To that end, they considered what the company needed to do in order to protect its core culture. Should it put rigid safeguards in place or trust that MOD could successfully scale its culture by hiring the right people and helping them develop as employees? The Svensons also discussed the possibility of an IPO at some point in the near future; what would this mean for its ability to stay true to its core values?
During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and his administration instituted several far-reaching economic policies that had both near- and long-term impacts on such aspects of the U.S. economy as monetary policy, inflation, the tax structure, and the role of government. While observers were divided on whether specific policies yielded positive or negative outcomes, one particular area where Reagan's legacy was debated was the extent to which his administration's actions contributed to growing levels of inequality in the country.
In 2016 Niraj Shah and Steve Conine, founders of online home goods retailer Wayfair, are faced with a decision about how to improve user experience on their e-commerce sites. A key driver of consumer interest and conversion to purchase in the home category is visual imagery, which has traditionally been generated not by the retail channel rather than by manufacturers. Catalog retailers, in particular, are famous for visually romancing the category. As a comprehensive offering, Wayfair hosts over seven million SKUs on its site, so it must solve for the lack of visual assets from manufacturers by generating visual assets of its own. Initially, the company embarks on a plan to produce these images using traditional photography studios and professional staffs, but costs mount and throughput is too slow. Seeking a solution, Shah and Conine assess the likelihood of using technology - specifically, high-resolution 3D modeling from low-resolution 2D images - to address the challenge. Resolving this issue is especially pressing, given that Wayfair has just launched private label lines and a host of what it calls lifestyle brands, which require support from high-end visual merchandising. As a consequence, the question of how to provision visual assets becomes a question of how fast Wayfair can grow. This case presents the factors involved in deciding what direction to take - a reliable path using traditional methods or a risky path using bleeding-edge technologies.
CareerWise Colorado (CWC) is an organization that equips high school students with the skills to build successful careers through apprenticeships. Founded in 2016, the young organization has attracted interest from different groups and civic leaders from across the U.S., some of whom want to replicate CWC's model, and others who want CWC to bring and then operate its program in their localities. Noel Ginsburg, CWC's founder and CEO, and Ashley Carter, COO, now have to decide how, when, and where to grow CWC. They both believe in CWC's apprenticeship model's widespread applicability, but so far it is still a relatively small-with just over 200 active apprentices spread across two cohorts; all of whom live in Colorado-and unproven entity. As of late 2018, no apprentices had yet completed the three year program. They did not want to scale the program too soon, but Ginsburg and Carter also did not want to miss out on the attractive opportunities being presented to them. How should they scale this organization?
This case reveals to readers what has transpired at Kids & Company in the year following the decision point presented in Kids & Company: Entering the U.S. (case 418-011).
Railroad magnate Jay Gould, a controversial figure in the history of U.S. capitalism, was a disruptive influence on an industry that had previously relied on formal and informal agreements to move traffic long distances across lines operated by different companies. Gould and his competitors replaced these agreements with consolidation and system-building, a process which led to the rise of government regulation of railroads in the 1880s and to widespread railroad bankruptcies in the 1890s. This case explores the growth of early American railroads, places Gould's career in context (including his famous attempt to corner the U.S. gold market), and demonstrates the implications of his activities on competitive dynamics in the railroad industry.
New Balance Athletics, Inc., a major U.S.-based athletic footwear and apparel brand, sources most of its footwear products from independent suppliers whose factories are located in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Monica Gorman, vice president of responsible leadership and global compliance, is seeking to combine data sets collected by different parts of the organization to see whether she and her colleagues in the company's order management function can make a clear connection between the corporate social responsibility (CSR) results that her function tracks at the supplier level, with New Balance's order placement practices.