The Italy-based Moleskine Foundation worked with young adults in Africa and Europe to inspire social change through art and creative projects. Adama Sanneh, the newly appointed CEO of the Moleskine Foundation, faced several challenges: First, he had to make his own mark on an organization that had been shaped by several well-respected Foundation founders and advisors who still remained active on the board. Second, he had to manage the relationship between the Foundation and the Moleskine Company, the Foundation's largest funder. Third, Sanneh had made news as Italy's only Black CEO, but he did not want race to become his defining attribute. Finally, he needed to determine how ambitious he could be with the Foundation's strategy. He and his team held the belief that creativity - a longstanding element of the Moleskine Company identity - could also be a source of social change around the world. Developing a realistic strategy to achieve this goal would be no easy task, and would require support from multiple internal and external stakeholders. The case highlights how individuals manage their identity and set a new strategy when stepping into new leadership roles. In addition, it sheds light on the unique governance challenges that can arise for a corporate foundation associated with a separate for-profit enterprise.
It is fall 2022, and open-source AI model company Hugging Face is considering its three areas of priorities: platform development, supporting the open-source community, and pursuing cutting-edge scientific research. As it expands services for enterprise clients, which services should it prioritize? Will these projects be in line with Hugging Face's volunteer community? Further, Hugging Face decided to remove a model uploaded by a contributor, due to the potential harm the leadership felt it could propagate. Was it the right decision?
After Daniela Riccardi took over as CEO of Moleskine, she determined that the company needed to refocus on its core brand and central organization. With her first formal meeting with D'Ieteren, the company that owned Moleskine, approaching, she needed to decide what her action plan for Moleskine should be.
In July 2020, Ruben Flores-Martinez had launched a startup, CashDrop, which provided easy and cheap sales options for small businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic helped CashDrop quickly grow. Flores-Martinez, who had previously sought and been denied venture capital funding, suddenly found CashDrop being pursued by venture capital. The case discusses Flores-Martinez's background as an undocumented immigrant in the United States, his previous business ventures, and his concerns about the influence of venture capital on business. The case also discusses the American and global payment platform landscape.
After the events in CashDrop A, Flores-Martinez received two concrete offers from VC funds for his startup business, CashDrop. This case describes the tensions between the two funds: a traditional VC fund who would offer Flores-Martinez a prestigious platform, and a newer VC that focused on funding more diverse companies. The case asks which Flores-Martinez should choose.
After the events in CashDrop A, Jarrid Tingle and Henri Pierre-Jacques, the founders of Harlem Capital partners, worried that Ruben Flores-Martinez, CashDrop's founder, would take another offer while he waited for them to officially make an offer. HCP traditionally took more time to vet their potential investments, but Tingle and Pierre-Jacques did not want Flores-Martinez to pick another VC while he waited. The case asks if they should adjust their terms to be more competitive.
In October 2020, Revlon faced a crossroads. While it had been struggling with high levels of debt before COVID-19, the pandemic had caused it to go further into debt. Unlike other financial crises, many consumers had stopped buying skincare or cosmetics, and sales of Revlon products had fallen. Now, a series of bonds maturing in February 2021 loomed, and Revlon faced a series of options on how to renegotiate its debts with its creditors.
In 2017, Jan Juchelka, the new CEO of KomerÄnà Banka, identified the need for the bank to start an enterprise wide agile transformation. He started by working to create a sense of urgency to kick-start a process to enable the level of service delivery to customers he believed is necessary to prepare for a future of increased levels of competition from both traditional players and possible new digital challengers. This journey is embarked upon despite entering a relatively successful operation with a leadership position among peer financial services organizations in several areas. To do so, Juchelka and team begin working to shift mindsets and start adapting the organizational structure towards an agile operating model. The case describes the bank's transformation, including the timeline for each department's move to agile (from HR to Risk), the creation of an Agile COE (Center of Expertise), the training and selection of managers to launch the first "Agile Tribes", and the thought process on how and where to begin. The case also discusses goal setting processes and use of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), linking an enterprise wide agile operating rhythm, to an outcomes based mindset that meets the requirements of Juchelka and team to empower a more responsive, adaptable and agile organization. The case reflects on the lessons and challenges of launching, leading and scaling an enterprise wide agile change program.
Jeffrey Deitch is an influential gallery owner and art entrepreneur. An HBS alumnus generally credited with developing the field of bank art advisory and financing services, Deitch has had a storied career in both the commercial and non-profit art world. Wrestling with industry consolidation and rapidly changing consumer tastes, Deitch must decide on his next entrepreneurial venture in the arts.
This case provides a post-mortem of the advertising technology (adtech) company Sizmek. Sizmek grew via multiple acquisitions, with the vision of becoming an integrated adtech company that could leverage AI to buy digital media, while creating and serving display and video content. At its peak, one of its acquisitions had an IPO valuation of almost 1 billion dollars. However, Sizmek struggled with an integration that was taking longer than expected, but also with misalignment of agency incentives, stricter data privacy regulations, and the rise of the walled gardens - Google, Facebook, and Amazon - that made the adtech ecosystem very competitive, with dynamics of winners-take-all markets. By 2019 Sizmek had to file Chapter 11, and was sold in pieces. Is there anything Sizmek could have done differently in their go-to-market strategy, product road-map, or overall partnerships to avoid such rapid collapse?
The President of Harvard University is facing growing pressure from students, alumni, and other climate change activists that are urging the university to divest its multi-billion dollar endowment from fossil fuel companies. The case summarizes the arguments for and against Harvard divesting, examining past examples of Harvard's investment decisions and the financial implications of divestment.
After the British government searched for a venture capital organization to create a new dementia fund, it selected SV Health, a UK- and US-based healthcare VC fund. The case follows Kate Bingham, a partner at SV Health, as she starts the fund, raises money, makes investments, and hires a fund CEO.
In November 2018, Shaival Shah, the founder and CEO of Ribbon Home had to decide on the next steps for the company. Ribbon had introduced a program that backs consumers with cash offers without creating a loan structure in order to help them compete with iBuyers, such as Zillow Offers and Opendoor. Ribbon had experienced a successful launch in Charlotte, North Carolina which prompted urgent strategic questions. Among them was the appropriate funding model - whether Ribbon be mainly a platform for others to fund transactions, or should it buy and hold homes on its balance sheet, which it could securitize and sell using a line of credit.
In the spring of 2018, Israel was set to celebrate its 70th anniversary. While there was much to rejoice in reaching this milestone, the country's brand image internationally was far from ideal. Past efforts to impact perceptions of Israel, spearheaded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as various Jewish organizations, were mainly aimed at "explaining" Israel's political position and convincing the world that the country was acting in a just manner. However, a series of seminal market research studies revealed that many people in the U.S. and Europe primarily associated Israel with military imagery, held views of the country as steeped in conflict, and believed its people were devoutly religious and unwelcoming. Making matters worse, many expressed an indifferent attitude towards the country and felt that Israelis were dissimilar to them. In an attempt to change the situation, several individuals and entities embarked on various initiatives aimed at branding Israel differently and "broadening the conversation" about the country. These efforts included: generating a brand book for Israel that suggested a guiding brand position of "creative energy"; inviting social media influencers to partake in trips focused on lifestyle interests; generating appealing, non-conflict related content linked to Israel and attracting online viewers to the content; appointing a goodwill ambassador to communicate the culture and day-to-day life in Israel; and multiple measures to draw in more tourists (Jewish and non-Jewish) to the country. Taking stock of these efforts revealed a mixed picture at best, and it was unclear whether Israel's brand image among international audiences was indeed shifting in the intended direction. Several observers were further worried that the younger generation was finding Israel even less relevant and urged for devising a new approach.