Entrepreneurship
February 2021
Finance for Entrepreneurial Companies: Financing Instruments – Technical Note
By John Mullins, Robert M Johnson, Steve Pesenti
Despite today’s growing attention to bootstrapping and the use of customer funding in the financing of new ventures, many new ventures, be they a startup or a plan to grow an existing business, will…
July 2020
Haier’s (2019) ecosystem revolution: From Rendanheyi 2.0 to Rendanheyi 3.0
By Michael Jacobides, Lisa Duke
2019 was an important year for Haier. Its new version of its radically decentralised structure, dubbed Rendanheyi 2.0, based on many independent ‘Ecosystem Micro-enterprise Communities’ (EMCs) had been devised to help it respond to the…
July 2020
Haier’s Rendanheyi 2.0: An ecosystem revolution
By Michael Jacobides, Lisa Duke
Haier in 1984 was a small, local firm on the verge of collapse, with poor-quality products and low morale. Within 30 years, it was transformed by Zhang Ruimin, who took over as CEO, into one…
June 2020
CI&T Building an Entrepreneurial Management Model
By Julian Birkinshaw, Carolina Rossi Wosiack
The case study describes the growth of CI&T, from a start-up in Brazil to a 3,000+ person consulting firm with global reach in 2019. The case describes the stages of growth the company has been…
August 2016
ONk: Dining at the Funding Buffet
By Gary Dushnitsky
The idea for ONk originated in 2012 when six-year-old Mike asked his father, Sam Ke, one night, “Can we make a computer that is simple and fun?” Soon afterwards, a team of three – Alex…
November 2018
Patch: Financing the Entrepreneurial Business
By Gary Dushnitsky
Heading into Old Street Tube station in London on a chilly January day, Freddie’s mind was racing with ideas. He had just come out from another meeting with Forward Partners, a well-known, London-based venture capital…
January 2008
Silverglide Surgical Technologies (B)
By John Mullins
This is a two-case series. From a rocky perch above the city of Boulder, Colorado, Jon Thorne gazed across the city and onto the great plains that stretched eastward before him. ‘There’s nothing like a…
January 2008
Silverglide Surgical Technologies (A)
By John Mullins
This is a two-case series. From a rocky perch above the city of Boulder, Colorado, Jon Thorne gazed across the city and onto the great plains that stretched eastward before him. ‘There’s nothing like a…
August 2018
Pret A Manger (A)
By Rupert Merson
This case series takes us through the story of Pret A Manger, one of the first up-market sandwich bar chains in London. The series explores the founding of a business as an entrepreneurial venture and…
December 2014
Budgetplaces.com (C)
By John Mullins, Shira Conradi
This is part of a case series. John Erceg was in a quandary. It was a sunny spring day in Barcelona in April 2010, and he’d been negotiating for several weeks with a possible buyer…