In 2015, when Dan Schulman became CEO of PayPal, a digital payments company, many people thought of it as the button they clicked when paying for online purchases. In 2015, PayPal embarked on a new mission: using technology to democratize financial services. In Schulman’s words, it would “turn the ...

Set in April 2020, the case chronicles the evolution of Netflix from renting DVDs by mail to the world's leading streaming video on demand (SVOD) provider. It explores Netflix’s distinctive strategy and culture, which promoted independent decision-making, agility, and innovation, and were central to...

On October 7, 2019, businessmen Jonathan Soros and Jon Patricof pitched a concept for a new professional sports startup to four professional softball players who had traveled to Soros’s office in New York City. During the meeting, the two men laid out their vision for an innovative professional soft...

On July 18, 2014, the majority of Market Basket’s 200 non-unionized front office workers, another 300 warehouse associates and 65 truck drivers walked out on their jobs and spent the next six weeks protesting in front of the family-owned New England supermarket chain’s headquarters. Customers joined...

On October 29, 2018, Indonesia’s Lion Air flight 610, a nearly new Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet, plunged into the Java Sea at 400 miles per hour, killing all 189 people on board. Eight days later Boeing issued a bulletin to all 737 MAX 8 and 737 MAX 9 operators stating that “erroneous angle-of-attack data” ...

Active Surfaces, an MIT start-up that developed low-cost, ultra-lightweight, flexible solar panels designed to be applied to practically any surface, serves as the setting for a simple bookkeeping exercise that has students utilize the balance sheet equation to record a series of business transactio...

The Pre-Admission Testing Area (PATA) is an outpatient clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital responsible for conducting preoperative assessments of surgical patients prior to their procedures. Set in June 2009, this case study describes the conditions of this busy outpatient clinic prior to a pro...

This case describes how leaders at Mud Bay, a chain of pet products based in Pacific Northwest, changed the way they operated their business from 2014 to 2017. They adopted a framework that included heavy investment in people with operational choices that leverage that investment by increasing produ...

The performance of the luxury performance car segment closely mirrored trends in the broader luxury goods sector, and both were buoyed by rising global wealth and demand for high-end products in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. During the global recession of 2008-2009, however, demand ...

In early 2024, privately owned Checkr, a background check tech startup, was a leading voice in the fair chance hiring movement. Fair chance hiring, also known as second chance hiring, referred to the practice of offering fair and equal job opportunities to individuals with criminal records. In addit...