Established in 1997, the California Research Center (CRC) enriches the intellectual activities of HBS faculty and fortifies the connection between the Boston campus and the West Coast. The center’s primary mission is to facilitate faculty research and case study writing on West Coast companies, with an emphasis on California, specifically the San Francisco Bay Area. Since its opening, the CRC has helped develop more than 250 cases, which are used in all academic units within the School's MBA and Executive Education programs.
Research has focused on topics such as scaling startups, angel and venture investing, acquisition-related manufacturing integration processes, the commercialization of technology, capacity issues at biotech companies, and growth challenges for clean-tech companies. Popular cases over the years include:
The CRC Office is a 6-7 minute walk from Burlingame Caltrain station. The closest BART stop is Millbrae station which is a 10 minute taxi ride to the CRC.
Celebrities have shifted from endorsing established brands to being influencers for established brands to drawing on their influence to create brands themselves. The authors examine what it takes to make celebrity brands work.
In January 2024, Kara Nortman, Julie Uhrman, and Natalie Portman, the founders of Angel City Football Club (ACFC) were developing the club’s first three-year strategic plan. Founded in 2020, ACFC had a star-studded investor group, including Portman and celebrities such as Eva Longoria, Jennifer Garner, Billie Jean King, and 13 former players from the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT). As outsiders to professional sports, the all-female founding team had rewritten the playbook for how to build a sports franchise by applying lessons from the tech and entertainment industries. They had harnessed digital platforms to establish and cultivate a global brand. Unlike typical sports franchises that built their teams and track records over many years before extending their brand beyond a local base, Angel City had inverted the model, generating as much global as local interest in the club within the first three years. ACFC’s success was reflected in its estimated private market valuation of $180 million, the highest in the league. But perhaps equally important to ACFC, the club had made a positive impact on its local community and had started to bend the curve toward greater pay equity in women’s sports—the club’s ultimate goal. The founders knew there was much more to do to capitalize on the club’s momentum. There were opportunities to build the brand further globally and to build out fan engagement and membership in the mobile app, but these would require investments in digital content and production, CRM systems, and e-commerce. There were also opportunities to build the “on-field product” (team and facilities) that would demand budget allocation to training facilities, the field, coaching staff, and medical rehabilitation facilities and staff. The founders weighed the most effective ways to build value for the franchise. Was it better to allocate the incremental budget dollar to investments in digital brand building or to investments in the on-field product?
In October 2023, FIGS had revolutionized the medical scrubs industry with its fashionable and functional designs, but the venture was at a critical juncture. The digitally native vertical brand (DNVB) had gone public in a successful IPO in 2021 and reached $500 million in revenue in 2022. Investors had dubbed FIGS the “Lululemon of healthcare apparel.” However, by 2023, FIGS was facing slowing growth, significant margin pressure, and a radical share price decline, exacerbated by macroeconomic headwinds and increasing competition. In response, CEO Catherine “Trina” Spear, who was also a co-founder, was contemplating three strategic growth initiatives to bolster FIGS’ competitive position: expanding international presence, targeting healthcare institutions (a move into B2B), and establishing retail stores. Each avenue of growth held potential. International was a large market opportunity, B2B could unlock a stable new revenue stream, and retail stores offered brand visibility and synergy with the online experience. Spear had to decide whether FIGS’s small team should pursue one or more of these opportunities, and, if so, whether to pursue them concurrently or with a phased approach.
Generative AI seemed poised to reshape the world of work, including the higher-wage, white-collar jobs typically pursued by MBA graduates. Informed by the latest research, this case explores generative AI's potential impacts on work, productivity, value creation, and the labor market.
Already a leader in the edtech space since its 2008 launch, Khan Academy was now one of the first edtech organizations to embrace generative artificial intelligence ("genAI"). In March 2023, Khan Academy began beta testing Khanmigo, a genAI “guide” and tutor built with ChatGPT, a technology developed by the San Francisco-based AI research lab OpenAI. In addition to simulating historical and fictional characters, Khanmigo assisted students with learning math, debugging code, writing, and completing other learning exercises. Khanmigo was also designed to help teachers develop lesson plans and quizzes, brainstorm creative teaching approaches, and evaluate students’ progress, among other tasks. As the Founder and CEO of Khan Academy, Sal Khan felt that Khanmigo might just be “that holy grail we’ve all been reading about in science fiction for years, about an artificial intelligence that could emulate a human tutor.” However, he pondered what the societal—and, for Khan Academy, organizational—risks might be of using OpenAI's ChatGPT. Was it possible that Khanmigo would introduce new problems or exacerbate existing problems in classrooms around the world? If so, what more could Khan Academy do to prevent such outcomes? How might Khan Academy itself need to evolve to support and shepherd this new tool? At the most extreme, might genAI increase Khan Academy’s impact manifold, or might the new technology diminish its impact?
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Allison Ciechanover oversees the team that develops teaching cases and supports faculty research on West Coast companies, and has written over two dozen cases on tech companies. She also serves as the School’s liaison with the West Coast entrepreneurial community, assisting with MBA admissions, alumni relations, and MBA job search activities. She received her B.A. (magna cum laude) from the University of Pennsylvania, her MBA from Harvard Business School, and a Masters of International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies.
After graduating from Harvard Business School, Allison worked in the Goldman Sachs Investment Management Division. She later led Process Improvement efforts in the Finance Group at Invitrogen (now Life Technologies). Most recently, Allison was a VP for Investments at Pacific Corporate Group, a La Jolla-based private equity fund of funds. Prior to her years at HBS, Allison was an Analyst in Goldman Sachs’s Executive Office, and a Researcher for the U.S. Department of Treasury Office of the Assistant Secretary for International Affairs.