Cold Call

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 decade. Mobileye is one of them, with a $10 billion valuation and a huge head start in a potentially enormous market. Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie discusses why a company many have never heard of will be a lynchpin in the future of self-driving automobiles. Yoffie is the author of the case study, “Mobileye, The Future of Driverless Cars.”

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 balance between her professional image and her personal passions. Harvard Business School professor Lakshmi Ramarajan discusses her case, “Carla Ann Harris at Morgan Stanley,” about Harris’ inspiring success and the importance of managing perceptions to achieve greatness.

Since brewing is a marketing-driven business, finding ways to differentiate a beverage from its competition is crucial. Heineken’s chief marketing officer took a novel approach: take the complicated processes of production and distribution and make them interesting and important to the consumer. Harvard Business School professor Forest Reinhardt explains his case study, “Heineken: Brewing a Better World” — how a big, sophisticated company used small details, from trucking routes to the color of refrigerators, to put its commitment to the environment to work on its behalf.

Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are tapping into their vast personal wealth to make commercial space travel a reality. In the process, they’re revitalizing a listless national space program. Harvard Business School professor Matthew Weinzierl discusses his new case entitled “Blue Origin, NASA, and New Space,” and how public-private partnerships are becoming the building blocks for the hottest new startup sector.

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 health-related absences each year. Harvard Business School professor John Quelch discusses his case — entitled “Mental Health in the American Workplace” — on the state of mental health in the U.S. workplace, and why even though companies are better than ever about providing services to their workers, the stigma attached to mental health leaves a lot of work yet to be done.

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 around the globe. Yet despite its many successes and innovations, particularly in terms of sustainability, the company often faces criticism for its business practices. Harvard Business School professor Rebecca Henderson discusses what she calls the paradigmatic case: how Walmart takes huge risks, makes great strides, and demonstrates how companies are one of the few instruments humanity has for changing the world at scale, for better or for worse. Henderson is the author of the case study, “Greening Wal-Mart: Progress and Controversy.”

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 studies how to help people change bad habits (and reinforce good ones) by looking at what makes them tick. Here, she discusses stickK, an application that motivates people by forcing them to put skin in the game of self-improvement. John is the author of the case entitled, “Making stickK Stick: The Business of Behavioral Economics.”

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 the face of job creation in the future. Harvard Business School professor Karen Mills, the former administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration under President Obama, explains her new case, “The Maine Food Cluster Project,” including the role catalytic philanthropy and cluster initiatives can play in reenergizing struggling business sectors.

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 with his company Movile. Harvard Business School professor Lynda Applegate discusses how, with the right blend of talent, ambition, and teamwork, a company can become an international powerhouse and still remain nimble and true to its roots. Applegate is the author of the case study, “Movile: Building a Global Technology Company.”

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 hotel industry and helps explain why TripAdvisor, a massive repository of user-generated reviews, was the most-visited travel website in the world in 2013. Harvard Business School professor Thales Teixeira discusses his case study, “Managing Online Reviews at TripAdvisor,” regarding TripAdvisor’s staggering success, how the company has forced an entire industry to change the way it considers (and purposefully influences) the online review process, and how consumers navigate that sea of reviews.