Cold Call

Best of Cold Call: The Bumpy Road to Expanding a Fleet of Electric School Buses

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 bus

Can an AI-Powered Scribe Curb Physician Burnout?

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 clinicia

Why Metaphysic AI Looked to Hollywood for a Digital Rights Model

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

How a Museum Marketing Team Used AI to Bring People Closer to Art

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

Are We Entering a New Age of Creativity with the Help of AI?

In March 2024, The Atlantic announced a strategic content and product partnership with artificial intelligence giant OpenAI. OpenAI would license The Atlantic’s content t

How School of Rock Created Structure in Order to Scale with Agility and Creativity

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

The Founder Mindset: Tim Ferriss on Experiments, Risk, and Freedom

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 s

How Strong Teams Leverage Different Personality Types

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 Und

Microsoft’s Path to Adopting and Scaling AI Across its Sales Organization

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—

How a Family-Owned Greek Cement Company Evolved Its Leadership While Pivoting Its Product Portfolio

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 diversifie

The Challenges of Scaling a Technology for Social Good

In 2021, a breakthrough in sanitation technology – developed under the Gates Foundation’s “Reinvent the Toilet” challenge – stood ready for commercialization. The Single

Should Wasabi Technologies Make the Move from Direct Sales to a Channel Strategy?

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 prim

How Software Startup InsightSquared Wrestled with Creating an Optimal Sales and Marketing Strategy

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 ahe

Why the Commonwealth Bank of Australia Opened Up to Customers about Credit Card Risks

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

Innovations in Olympic Speed Skating: When to Reveal a Novel Approach

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

If and How to Scale the Acquired Podcast

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

How Italian Luxury Brand Golden Goose Determined Its Next Phase of Growth

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

How Equitable Confronted Its Inertia After 160 Years in Business

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

Climate Rising: Extending Apparel Lifespan with ThredUp

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 com

Inside Coinbase’s Mission-First, Remote-First Bet

In 2020, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase made two bold organizational moves: going fully remote and banning political discussion at work. These decisions, aimed at reinf