Cold Call
Episodes
The Transformation of Microsoft
10 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In early 2015, Amy Hood, CFO of Microsoft, and the rest of the senior leadership team faced a set of fundamental choices. The firm had opportunities t...
LA Philharmonic Shows the American Symphony Orchestra Isn’t Dead Yet
27 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra faced real challenges, as all U.S. orchestras did: an aging subscriber base, disinterest from younger audiences...
How Chase Sapphire Made Credit Cool for Millennials
13 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card was one of the hottest product launches in 2016 enthusiastically received by millennial consumers, a group that...
Careem: Riding the First Unicorn in the Middle East
29 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ride-hailing service Careem, the “Uber of the Middle East,” experienced expansion so dramatic that it monitored its growth target every 15 minutes...
Candy Crush was a Blockbuster; Can King Digital Capitalize?
09 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Riccardo Zacconi was the co-founder and CEO of King Digital Entertainment, the video game company that had quickly established itself as the world’s...
Why JPMorgan Chase is Investing Millions in Detroit
25 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
JPMorgan Chase is working with local economic- and workforce-development organizations, small businesses, philanthropies, and the mayor. The goal? To ...
How a Coal Polluter Became a Renewable Energy Leader
03 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Enel, Italy’s state-owned power company, was one of Europe’s largest coal users and polluters. Now it is recognized as a leader in renewable energ...
Trump’s Populism: What Business Leaders Need to Understand
21 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the 2016 United States presidential election, candidates from both major political parties used anti-establishment messaging to appeal to Americans...
Could a New Business Model Make Clinical Drug Trials More Accessible to Patients?
05 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Brian Alexander at the Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston was in the process of launching a new type of clinical trial: an adaptive platform tria...
Black Business Leaders Series: John Rogers and the Importance of Hiring Minority-Owned Services Firms
13 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The African American CEO of a money management firm publicly criticizes the Fortune 500 for paying lip service to diversity. His board urges him to st...
Black Business Leaders Series: Oprah’s Path to Authentic Leadership
31 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Oprah Winfrey believes in sharing the experiences that led her to become the wealthiest woman in the entertainment industry and the first African Amer...
One Love: Managing a Movement Against Relationship Violence
23 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The One Love Foundation is a group dedicated to the prevention of relationship violence through education. Harvard Business School professor Tom DeLon...
Leadership Lessons from the Young Martin Luther King, Jr.
11 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As the Montgomery Bus Boycott starts, the young Martin Luther King, Jr. faces challenges to his leadership goals, strategic vision, and personal and f...
How to Monetize Happiness
03 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Inspired by research linking happiness and productivity, the Japanese multinational conglomerate Hitachi Ltd, invested in developing “people analyti...
Does Time Pressure Hinder or Facilitate Creativity at Work?
04 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile discusses how managers can create the ideal conditions for employee creativity and success based on h...
Language and Globalization: The Mandate to Speak English at Rakuten
15 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Japan’s largest online retailer Rakuten is rapidly expanding into global markets. In order to ensure the success of the organization, but also to br...
Could a Hackathon Help Solve the Heroin Crisis?
31 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What’s the value of crowdsourcing technological solutions to societal problems? Could a hackathon help solve the heroin crisis in Cincinnati, Ohio? ...
Telemundo: The Fastest Growing TV Network in the United States
11 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
With about 54 million Hispanics in the U.S. who have an estimated buying power of 2.3 trillion dollars, it’s no wonder Telemundo is the fastest grow...
How to Promote Home Delivery of Prescription Drugs? Give Employees a “Nudge”
03 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Bob Nease, chief scientist at Express Scripts, wants to promote home delivery of prescription drugs by mail -- a process proven to lower error rates, ...
State Street’s SHE: Investing in Women Leaders
19 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Financial returns are important, but for many companies, using capital to influence positive outcomes is just as important. Enter impact investing and...
Faber-Castell Doubles Down on the Pencil
05 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Faber-Castell is a 255-year-old company that makes pencils. How does an established company like this think about innovation, particularly if and when...
Does Le Pliage Help or Hurt the Longchamp Luxury Brand?
22 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Longchamp’s Le Pliage is one of the fashion world’s most successful products, a cultural icon across the globe. But managing the low priced, nylon...
Pal’s Sudden Service: Taking Fast Food to the Next Level
08 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Pal's Sudden Service has developed a unique operating model and organizational culture in the fast food restaurant business. With an emphasis on proce...
From Don Draper to Big Data: The Revolution in Advertising
21 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Advertising in the digital age bears little resemblance to the "Mad Men" depiction -- the Don Drapers of advertising have been replaced by big data an...
ShotSpotter: A Gunfire Detection Business Looks for a New Market
19 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
ShotSpotter provides gunfire detection sensors to cities across the United States. CEO Ralph Clark is interested in taking the company beyond the busi...
Building India’s First $100 Billion Company
30 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a common challenge for almost every startup: how much and how fast to grow. But Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of the Indian mobile payments and...
Reversing the Losing Streak on Sesame Street
16 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When CEO Jeffrey Dunn took over Sesame Street in 2014 and made a licensing arrangement with HBO, many people were skeptical this would take the progra...
Leading Your Team to the Top of Mt. Everest
02 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What does it take to successfully lead a team to the top of the highest peak in the world? First-year students find out as they participate together i...
Making Health Insurance Consumers Actually Like
18 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Health insurance that consumers like? Doesn’t sound possible, but South African company Vitality is doing just that. By focusing on consumer-driven ...
Why German Businesses Support, Train, and Hire Syrian Refugees
04 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Germany took in a million Syrian refugees in 2015, buoyed by the knowledge that these people could contribute strongly to the country’s economy. But...
Cost-cutting Leads to Turbulence in the Airline Industry
21 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Is it possible to retain brand value after cutting costs and services dramatically just to stay alive? The airline industry has struggled with this qu...
IDEO Is Changing the Way Managers Think About Thinking
03 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
IDEO’s human-centered design thinking is a systematic process used to help create new products and services. And, the best part? They are open about...
Black Business Leaders Series: Franklin Leonard, “Black List” Mastermind
22 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Using crowdsourcing to develop an annual list of Hollywood’s hottest unproduced screenplays, Harvard graduate Franklin Leonard took the negative ter...
Black Business Leaders Series: A Remarkable Legacy of Firsts, Maggie Lena Walker
15 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Growing up in the heart of the Confederacy, Maggie Lena Walker started work as a laundress at age nine. At the urging of her mother and mentors, she t...
Black Business Leaders Series: Putting Diversity to Work
26 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In theory, most companies would love to diversify their workforce. In practice, hiring specifically to increase diversity can cause a variety of cultu...
Black Business Leaders Series: The Entrepreneurship Behind Ebony Magazine
26 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For more than seven decades, Ebony Magazine has chronicled the most important African-American issues, personalities, and interests of its time, inclu...
Can Wynton Marsalis and Lincoln Center Save Jazz Music?
18 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Research says that people imprint on music in their dating years, and carry those tastes with them through the rest of their lives. Lately, this has s...
The American Food Paradox: Growing Obese and Going Hungry
03 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
One third of the U.S. population is obese, even as 50 million Americans often struggle to find enough to eat. And all that in a country where 40% of t...
Target’s Expensive Cybersecurity Mistake
20 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
There is a joke in the cybersecurity community that there are two kinds of companies: those that know they’ve been hacked, and those that haven’t ...
How Wayfair Built a Furniture Brand from Scratch
07 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Wayfair has been around since the early days of ecommerce. But where it now exists as a single, popular brand, it was once an unaffiliated collection ...
Digital Change: Lessons from the Newspaper Industry
18 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
On the internet, content may be king, but connecting users is the key to building an empire. The Norwegian media giant Schibsted learned this lesson t...
Building Affordable Health Care in Paradise
14 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
By some accounts, only 5-6% of people around the world get the cardiac treatment they need to survive. The rest perish. This statistic highlights the ...
Managing in the Real World: How to Make Gray-Area Decisions
03 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
An unfortunate but necessary part of a manager’s job is having to let underperforming employees go. Knowing when and how to take that step with the ...
The Crash and the Fix of HealthCare.gov
01 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare for short, had three goals: make health insurance available, required, and affordable for everyone. There was ju...
Oktoberfest: Making Money Off of Tradition
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Oktoberfest began as a raucous wedding celebration in Germany more than 200 years ago and has since grown into a worldwide phenomenon. Munich, alone, ...
Innovation Under Constraint: Constructing a Turnaround at Lego
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Lego has been helping children piece together dreams and build their imaginations for decades, and has become one of the world’s most popular toys a...
Netflix Wins Big by Betting on “House of Cards”
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Before “House of Cards” was an internationally-renowned and critically acclaimed hit series, it was a total shot in the dark. Luckily for the smal...
Behind Apple’s Tax Situation, an Unprecedented Financial Policy
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Most people know Apple as one of the richest and most successful companies in the world, but it wasn’t always that way. In 1997, the company suffere...
What Building a “Jeopardy!” Robot Taught IBM About Innovation
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a good bet that winning a game show isn’t often on the list of top priorities at large companies. So how was it that building a robot to do j...
Why College Rankings Keep Deans Awake at Night
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
College represents one of the biggest decisions and investments many consumers will ever make. But can they really trust the rankings available to hel...
How Modest Investors Can Still Bet Big
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A novel idea: give loyal customers a chance to buy shares in a company they love. That’s the premise behind LOYAL3, which uses the democratizing pow...
How to Fix a Broken Global Team
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Increasingly, almost every team is a global team in some capacity. This presents a difficult challenge for managers everywhere, and especially for hig...
Who Makes the Eyes for Driverless Cars?
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Though Google has become the U.S. face of the driverless car movement, other global companies have been developing similar technology for more than a ...
Hold Onto Your Complexity: Bringing Multiple Identities to Work
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Carla Ann Harris has blazed trails and excelled at institutions like Harvard and Morgan Stanley. But doing so has required her to strike a careful bal...
A Better World Through Brewing
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Since brewing is a marketing-driven business, finding ways to differentiate a beverage from its competition is crucial. Heineken’s chief marketing o...
Who Owns Space?
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are tapping into their vast personal wealth to make commercial space travel a reality. In the process, the...
The Real Cost of Ignoring Mental Health in the Workplace
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The statistics are startling: about one-third of American workers suffer from chronic work stress; $27 billion worth of work days are lost to mental h...
Walmart: Changing the World for Better or Worse?
04 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Can big companies fix big problems? Are they responsible for doing so? As the third-largest employer in the world, any move Walmart makes reverberates...
The Key to Keeping Resolutions? Betting Against Yourself
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been a few months since many of us made New Year’s resolutions. Have you stuck with yours? Harvard Business School professor Leslie John stud...
A Map of Economic Renewal Begins in Maine
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Maine has had one of the worst state economies in the country the last few years. But something special is happening there of late that could change t...
The Team Sport of Scaling a Business
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
For entrepreneurs, size and scale don’t have to come at the cost of agility. Fabricio Bloisi, a 21-year-old Brazilian college graduate, proved that ...
For the Hotel Business, it’s TripAdvisor or Bust
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Research says that 85% of people will make a purchase after reading online reviews about a product or service. This has had huge implications for the ...
The Amazing Life of One of America’s Earliest Black Female Entrepreneurs
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Though not everyone may know her name, Madam C.J. Walker helped invent what have become staples of our modern country and economy: national sales forc...
The Space Shuttle Columbia’s Final Mission
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
No organization wants to fail. But even for the best and the brightest, failure is inevitable, and occasionally that failure can be catastrophic. Harv...
The Power of Presence at the Podium
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Running for office requires a lot of public speaking. But often, it’s what candidates aren’t saying that can make or break their campaigns. Take t...
A Microchip in Your Medicine
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Digitally-enabled prescription medication may sound futuristic. Thanks to Proteus, the future is now. The company has developed the technology to plac...
Designing a Great Community
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How do you manage a community, grow it, and sustain it? Threadless has done it since 2007 by crowdsourcing its T-shirt designs and selling the best on...
Planning Change: Lessons from the World of Retail
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Ron Johnson's career path has featured stops at some of the world’s largest and most innovative retailers, including Target, Apple, and J.C. Penney....
Leadership from Below
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Harvard Business School professor Rohit Deshpande discusses lessons for leaders from the heroic and selfless acts of the Taj Palace staff during the 2...
A Hard Sell: Bringing Cultured Beef to Market
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In the hundred-plus years since journalist Upton Sinclair shined a light on the deplorable conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry in his groundb...
The Long Run: The Impact of Brain Injuries on the NFL
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s NFL is fast-paced and hard-hitting. Though players are well-compensated, many wonder about the long-term cost of those violent collisions on...
Bringing “Moneyball” to the NBA
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Are people better off as a result of your presence? Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei discusses leadership lessons from basketball, the u...
Making the Case for a New Kind of Classroom
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
There are no grade levels, no official start times, and teachers get stock options. Is AltSchool the school of the future? Harvard Business School pro...
Dangerous Mines: Saving Lives Through Leadership
16 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Cynthia Carroll's breathtaking story about taking decisive action in the face of a complex and dangerous situation. Harvard Business School professor ...
Cold Calling Stella McCartney
16 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
With her unique leadership style and innovative approach to green fashion, Stella McCartney shows that a luxury brand can be sustainable. Harvard Busi...
Cold Call Introduction
16 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Host Brian Kenny introduces Cold Call, the official podcast of the Harvard Business School. Cold Call distills the Business School’s legendary case ...