Cold Call

In early 2023, Tufan Erginbilgiç took over as CEO of the U.K.’s legendary jet engine and power systems giant Rolls-Royce. Despite its legacy and a culture steeped in engineering brilliance, Rolls-Royce had underperformed for more than a decade. Erginbilgiç endeavors to develop a transformation playbook, combining its engineering-focused heritage with a high performing mindset and sets Rolls-Royce...

Founded in 2010, Supercell was a Finland-based mobile gaming company that had developed and launched five global hit mobile games. The company’s early philosophy was that it could produce hits by designing the company to appeal to top talent: Developers worked in small, autonomous groups called cells with little oversight. The formula was an initial success but the streak of hit games eventually e...

You have a strategy you believe in. But what happens when your boss doesn’t? “Cold Call” presents this bonus episode from the podcast “Coaching Real Leaders,” where host and executive coach Muriel Wilkins works with an ambitious leader whose plan to drive growth is at risk because she hasn’t been able to get the alignment she needs from her boss. They explore what’s behind the resistance and how s...

With viewership of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) in decline, the country’s Culture Minister must recommend a new funding model for the venerated public institution which will allow the broadcaster to succeed in an increasingly competitive media environment. Harvard Business School senior lecturer Henry McGee and host Brian Kenny discuss the case, “The Future of the BBC: Public Ownership v...

Sometimes the only way to win is by finding the courage to lose. Cold Call presents a special episode from TED’s Fixable podcast. In it, the show’s hosts, Leadership Coach Anne Morriss and Harvard Business School Professor Frances Frei, challenge leaders to “dare to be bad” in order to free up capacity to excel at more important things. They share insight on the power of a strategic “no,” the valu...

AthenaHQ, a startup that helps brands monitor, protect, and optimize their visibility across conversational AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini was founded in 2025. Co-founded by Andrew Yan, the company built a platform that enables major consumer brands, B2B software companies, and marketing agencies to track their share of voice, correct factual errors in AI responses, and manage their r...

How do you scale innovation in a fragmented system you don’t fully control? That is the challenge Highland Electric Fleets faced as it worked to replace diesel school buses with electric vehicles across the United States. In this episode from 2025, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Highland Electric founder and CEO Duncan McIntyre join host Brian Kenny to discuss the Harva...

In 2024, Mass General Brigham, the largest health system in Massachusetts, piloted an AI-powered, ambient note-taking and transcription program among a subset of clinicians to address increasing rates of staff burnout and turnover --  largely driven by the administrative burden of clinical documentation in the electronic health records (EHR). Early results showed promising reductions in clinician...

Founded in 2021, AI generative video company Metaphysic first rose to fame through viral deepfake videos. It achieved a significant milestone with "Here," the first major film to use AI for de-aging actors, including Tom Hanks. The company had two revenue streams: high-end content creation for Hollywood studios and a platform allowing individuals to own and control their digital likeness thanks to...

In 2025, Harvard Art Museums considered using generative AI in a marketing campaign to increase visitor engagement and membership. Looking to boost attendance and appeal to a younger audience base, and facing intensified competition for leisure time, the Museums’ marketing team explored animating a canonical artwork using AI-generated avatars as part of a digital campaign. While the approach promi...

In March 2024, The Atlantic announced a strategic content and product partnership with artificial intelligence giant OpenAI. OpenAI would license The Atlantic’s content to train its models and respond to user queries, while The Atlantic would receive a fee, privileged access to OpenAI’s technology, and “premium” positioning within the tech giant. The Atlantic’s journalists, however, were incensed,...

In the summer of 2021, School of Rock was a youth-oriented music education company with 291 franchise- and company-owned schools globally. Before Rob Price became CEO in 2017, School of Rock’s nonconformist culture led to variability in teaching styles, educational outcomes, and risks for copyright violations. One of Price’s major initiatives to aid better standardization was the Method App which...

What does it take to be a founder? In this episode of The Founder Mindset, produced by Harvard Business School Foundry and hosted by Senior Lecturer Reza Satchu, Satchu sits down with writer, podcaster, and investor Tim Ferriss to discuss his blueprint for nimble decision-making and actionable success.

Harvard Business School Professor Len Schlesinger and TypeCoach President Rob Toomey join Brian Kenny to discuss the two mini cases, Night Two in Hanoi: Team Dynamics Under Pressure and Day 6 in Buenos Aires: Fatto Bene. They explore MBA students’ journeys through the first-year FIELD Global Capstone course and how the TypeCoach personality classications taught them how to recognize and work acros...

In early 2024, six months after the highly anticipated launch of Microsoft Copilot across the 62,000-person Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) organization—one of the world’s largest sales organizations—the initial excitement had not yet materialized into widespread adoption and transformation. But, two years after initiating their AI transformation journey, the organization’s daily...

Over 26 years at the helm, Dimitri Papalexopoulos, fourth-generation CEO of TITAN Cement, has turned the company from a domestic player into an internationally diversified group and championed an AI-driven productivity leap, even while steering the company through multiple economic crises. As TITAN prepared for its next phase of growth, Papalexopoulos faced the consequential decision of whether to...

In 2021, a breakthrough in sanitation technology – developed under the Gates Foundation’s “Reinvent the Toilet” challenge – stood ready for commercialization. The Single User Reinvented Toilet (SURT) offered an off-grid, self-contained system capable of processing waste, generating water, and reducing environmental impact. Turning this technical success into a viable product, however, meant confro...

After launching Wasabi Technologies, a successful cloud storage company, founder and CEO David Friend was ready to scale the venture rapidly. The company had focused primarily on direct sales, but an opportunity to pivot toward channel sales was on the horizon. However, making this pivot would mean changing its sales, marketing, and staffing strategies dramatically, and effectively veering the com...

Software startup InsightSquared had recently hit $2 million in revenue and secured an $8 million round of venture capital. However, the founders disagreed on the path ahead, specifically on the sales and marketing plan. Should they focus on a sales-centric approach to growth or a marketing-centric one? Which strategy was optimal for their venture’s next phase of growth? Harvard Business School Sen...

A bank’s decision to experiment with being more transparent with about credit card drawbacks might help customers make better choices, but would those choices come at the expense of bank performance? Harvard Business School Professor Leslie John joins Brian Kenny to discuss the case, “Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Unbanklike Experimentation” and ideas related to her new book, Revealing: The Unde...

The U.S. Men’s Olympic speed skating team devised a new approach to the team pursuit event following their disappointing performance in the 2018 Winter Olympics. The team saw promising initial results from their innovations, but they faced a decision about whether to reveal their new techniques. The U.S. Team’s strategy was easily imitated if competitors witnessed it in a race, but it was a risk n...

By 2025, the business podcast Acquired was getting one million listeners per episode, having doubled the audience year over since Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal started it in 2015. And they’d grown without a strict release schedule or relentless optimization. Still, they felt pressure to scale—without throwing off their work-life balance. How did they determine a way forward? They join Harvard Bu...

In 2025, Golden Goose, the Italian brand known for its handcrafted, distressed sneakers, was at a crossroads. CEO Silvio Campara had grown the label from a cult favorite into a $650 million global force, but sustaining that growth raised tough questions: Should the company double down on sneakers, expand into ready-to-wear and accessories, or push into emerging international markets? Harvard Busin...

In 2019, Equitable’s CEO, Mark Pearson, set out to change how the 163-year-old financial services firm gets work done. He wanted the firm to speed up decision-making and empower employees through a flatter hierarchy, agile teams, and more opportunities to lead. Most divisions thrived under the new model. Others clung to old habits. Several years in, the effort sheds light on core questions: What d...

In this special holiday crossover episode from Harvard Business School’s Climate Rising podcast, Professor Mike Toffel talks with ThredUp CEO James Reinhart about the company’s mission to extend the life of apparel and reduce waste through resale. As thrifting becomes more popular and circular business models gain traction, Reinhart explains why ThredUp built a national logistics and tech platform...