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Case Studies

Entrepreneurship Case Studies

Fieldfresh foods.

Mukesh Pandey, K Sudhir, Raman Ahuja, and Deepali Tewari Customer/Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Operations

By 2010, the FieldFresh team had been able to create an efficient supply chain for baby corn across Punjab and Maharashtra at all levels. But success brought with it the expectation of growth. Should FieldFresh grow opportunistically into different foreign markets as retailers and wholesalers demanded different products for their respective markets? Should FieldFresh continue to focus on baby corn, whose supply chain-market linkages it had perfected, or should the company expand the range of products it would supply? Should FieldFresh continue to maintain its primary export focus, or shift relative emphasis to the growing domestic market?

DonorsChoose.org

Anna Blanding, Jennifer Stredler, Kim Su, Ivy Washington, Sharon Oster, Jaan Elias and Andrea R. Nagy

Customer/Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Operations, Social Enterprise

After an auspicious start, Charles Best (Yale College ’98) and DonorsChoose.org set their sights on growing beyond New York City. Supported by a $14 million grant from Silicon Valley executives in 2005, DonorsChoose.org scaled up its organization and began a step-by-step expansion into various locales. By 2009, the organization had made great strides toward completing its expansion. However, observers wondered whether DonorsChoose.org could reach its goal of providing $100 million per year in gifts to classrooms and whether it would have an impact on the fundamental inequities within the educational system.

James Baron and Jaan Elias

Employee/HR, Entrepreneurship, Ethics & Religion

AgBiome co-founders, Scott Uknes and Eric Ward, were admirers of self-managed organizations and commitment culture, approaches to organizational structure and process that encouraged openness and collaboration. Accordingly, they built AgBiome to operate without supervisory relationships, job titles, formal performance evaluations, and individual performance bonuses. Instead, AgBiome relied on a committee structure that encouraged people with the greatest expertise to make decisions on matters within their ambit. By 2017, AgBiome employed 80 people and was projecting further expansion. But observers wondered, could a company, which worked on the basis of commitment and without a hierarchy, scale?

The Alibaba Group

Yi guo,yao jing, charles liu, michelle wang, jaan elias, and zhiwu chen.

Competitor/Strategy, Entrepreneurship, Investor/Finance, Law & Contracts

By July of 2011, Yun “Jack” Ma had achieved his goal of creating one of the world’s leading e-commerce companies. Ma founded the Alibaba Group and took advantage of growing internet usage in China to launch the leading B2B, C2C and B2C sites in the country and capture a huge market. Despite his success, Ma had a troubled relationship with Yahoo!, the largest investor in the Alibaba Group. Ma’s decision in January of 2011 to transfer Alipay (the Alibaba Group’s online payment unit) from the Alibaba Group to a company under his personal control was just making matters worse.

What is Next? Search Fund Entrepreneurs Reflect on Life After Exit

A.j. wasserstein.

Entrepreneurship, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork

During his time at the Yale School of Management, Matt Dittrich (Yale SOM ‘18) became interested in how recent MBA students gathered search funds, structured small acquisitions, propelled themselves into being a CEO, and then participated in a liquidity event only a few years after acquisition and graduation. He appreciated the case studies about entrepreneurs facing acquisition, strategy, and financing issues. But what did entrepreneurs do after their exits? At the urging of his teacher, A.J. Wasserstein, he interviewed former search fund entrepreneurs who had experienced an exit to learn what exactly they chose to do, and why. Overcome by curiosity, Dittrich was excited to begin his informational interviews (summaries included here).

Advanced Leadership 2016

Jaan elias, james quinn and james baron.

Employee/HR, Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Design, Leadership & Teamwork, Social Enterprise

Biographies of the following seven leaders are provided:

Rodney O’Neal, Delphi,
Neal Keny-Guyer, Mercy Corps,
David Cote, Honeywell,
Linda Mason, Bright Horizons,
General Stanley McChrystal, United States Military,
Donna Dubinsky, Numenta, and (7) Laszlo Bock, Google.

Mike Erwin: An Accidental Social Entrepreneur

A. j. wasserstein.

Mike Erwin, a decorated army veteran from West Point, never envisioned himself as a social entrepreneur or activist. Yet in 2012, he found himself the CEO of an organization with 15,000 members and 34 chapters reaching from Syracuse, NY to Houston, TX. Though Erwin was proud of his organization’s growth and had excelled in leadership positions, he questioned whether he was the right person to scale Team Red, White and Blue. Would someone else with more experience be more appropriate? If he indeed moved on, how could he ensure the organization would continue to thrive amid a change in leadership and potential restructuring?

Searching for a Search Fund Structure: A Student Takes a Tour of Various Options

Employee/HR, Entrepreneurship

Before entering the Yale School of Management, James Guba (SOM’18) had thought about becoming an entrepreneur. He did not have a specific idea to build a business around, but he did aspire to take charge of an organization and grow it. At Yale, Guba discovered an entrepreneurial niche called “search funds” that would allow him to acquire and lead a company that he had not built from scratch. Inspired, Guba met with search fund entrepreneurs to learn about their different paths to building their funds.

Kalil Diaz: A DR-based search firm considers its first acquisition

Customer/Marketing, Entrepreneurship

After nearly two years of searching, Kalil Diaz (SOM '14) wondered if he had finally found the company for which he had been looking. The decision he was facing would have a big impact on his investors as well as his own life. He was somewhat confident he could access funds from his current investors to purchase the company despite several investors being slow in their response to commit. However, Diaz still wondered if making the investment was the right move. How would he transition from the search to being CEO and running a company? Would the acquisition provide suitable financial returns for his investors and himself?

Clorox, Inc

Elise rindfleisch and allison mitkowski.

Customer/Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Sustainability

In October 2007, Clorox announced that it would buy Burt’s Bees for $925 million – more than five times Burt’s Bees’ annual sales. Clorox’s move caught many in the industry by surprise - Burt’s Bees had a folksy image and natural appeal for customers. Could such a brand find a home within a company best known for a toxic cleanser? Would Clorox’s push into “green” cleaners satisfy Burt’s Bees’ faithful customers? Had Clorox paid too much for its acquisition? Or, were there potential synergies that justified the purchase? What was the future of this market?

Project Masiluleke: Texting and Testing to Fight HIV/AIDS in South Africa

Rodrigo canales, jean rosenthal, jaan elias, and william drenttel.

Entrepreneurship, Healthcare, Innovation & Design, Social Enterprise

The traditional Zulu greeting, "Sawubona," literally translates as "I see you." The major challenge faced by Project Masiluleke could be captured in this local greeting – could Project M see the lives of the individuals they hoped to help? Could they find ways to understand each other and the individuals threatened by HIV/AIDS well enough to design effective solutions to a major health crisis? PopTech, frog design, and the Praekelt Foundation joined with iTeach, an HIV/AIDS and TB prevention and treatment program, to look for new approaches to address South Africa's health issues. Access to this case has been made freely available to the public.

Project Samaan

Rodrigo canales, jean rosenthal, jaan elias, ashley pandya and samuel sturm.

Entrepreneurship, Healthcare, Innovation & Design, Social Enterprise, State & Society, Sustainability

In a unique partnership, governments, designers, architects, academics, and NGOs had come together to create new sanitation solutions for India's urban slums. Specifically, the group set about tackling one of the developing world's leading problems – open defecation in crowded urban settings. But by fall 2013, not a single community toilet had been approved. What had gone wrong? And what could this experience teach others about an overall solution to the problem?

San Miguel: Expanding the Amaranth Market

Jaan elias, mario alan gonzález hernández, carlos gil garcía, rodrigo canales, and kaveh khoshnood.

Competitor/Strategy, Customer/Marketing, Employee/HR, Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Design, Leadership & Teamwork, Operations, Social Enterprise

San Miguel, a small Amaranth processing company in Huixcazdhá, Mexico, was started as a development project to sustainably employ local residents. Despite the plant’s rural location and unschooled workforce, the company pioneered the processing of amaranth into a number of unique products. Though the company yielded a small but steady profit, the plant was operating at only 20 percent of capacity and the organization lacked a coherent marketing strategy. What new markets could the company target and what communications strategy should it employ?

Haiti Mangoes

Andrea nagy smith and douglas rae.

Entrepreneurship, Operations, Social Enterprise, State & Society

JMB S.A. had been in the mango processing business since 1998, and CEO Jean-Maurice Buteau had built up a profitable business that exported around 2,000 tons of mangoes per year. The January 2010 earthquake devastated Haiti, but JMB appeared to survive intact, and the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF) was eager to move forward. In spring 2010 SEDF proceeded with a $1.3 million loan and a $1 million equity investment in JMB. But by spring 2012, after pouring $2.55 million into JMB, SEDF realized that it had to make a decision: invest another $2 million and reorganize the company under new management; sell the company, or shut down JMB S.A. altogether.

Allison Mitkowski, Alexandra Barton-Sweeney, Tony Sheldon, Arthur Janik, and Jaan Elias

Customer/Marketing, Innovation & Design, Social Enterprise, State & Society, Sustainability

In 2009, SELCO was considering its plans for how the company might expand. The company decided to institutionalize its design process by building an innovation center. SELCO also added products that provided energy solutions beyond solar. Some within the company were hoping the company would go “deeper” and look at designing solutions for even poorer members of the Indian population. Others were hoping that the company would go “wider” and expand beyond its current geographical areas in Karnataka and Gujarat. Whatever its direction, the strategic choices the company made at this point in its evolution would be crucial to determining its continued success.

360 State Street: Real Options

Andrea nagy smith and mathew spiegel.

Asset Management, Investor/Finance, Metrics & Data, Sourcing/Managing Funds

In 2010 developer Bruce Becker completed 360 State Street, a major new construction project in downtown New Haven. The building was a 32-story high-rise with 500 apartments, a parking garage, and a grocery store on the street level. In the summer of 2013, Becker had a number of alternatives to consider in regards to the open lot adjacent to his recent construction. He also had no obligation to build. He could bide his time. But Becker also worried about losing out on rents should he wait too long. Under what set of circumstances and at what time would it be most advantageous to proceed?

Achievement First

Fawzia ahmed, jaan elias, and sharon oster.

Social Enterprise, State & Society

On the edges of a warehouse district in New Haven, Connecticut, an intrepid group of educational pioneers were turning conventional theory on its head. Amistad Academy, a charter school founded by two Yale Law School graduates, was not only getting students on par with their grade levels in reading and math, but was pushing them to perform as well as the best suburban school districts too. Five years after opening Amistad, McCurry and Toll opened an additional school in New Haven and four schools in Brooklyn, New York – all of which showed the same promise as Amistad. They dubbed their network of schools Achievement First (AF), and garnered national attention and funding from “venture philanthropists” interested in educational reform. However, in the summer of 2006, AF was facing critical questions about its future direction.

Ravi Dhar and Andrea Nagy Smith

Competitor/Strategy, Customer/Marketing, Investor/Finance, Operations

At the time of its IPO filing, Groupon held the lead among group buying sites, a 52-percent market share of revenue generated, according to the group-buying site aggregator Yipit. But many questions remained about its future. Would Groupon’s labor-intensive business model prove profitable? Would customers and merchants be loyal to Groupon? Would other companies take its business? In summer 2011 it was far from sure that the young company could maintain its lead.

Carry Trade ETF

K. geert rouwenhorst, jean w. rosenthal, and jaan elias.

Innovation & Design, Investor/Finance, Macroeconomics, Sourcing/Managing Funds

In 2006 Deutsche Bank (DB) brought a new product to market – an exchange traded fund (ETF) based on the carry trade, a strategy of buying and selling currency futures. The offering received the William F. Sharpe Indexing Achievement Award for “Most Innovative Index Fund or ETF” at the 2006 Sharpe Awards. These awards are presented annually by IndexUniverse.com and Information Management Network for innovative advances in the indexing industry. The carry trade ETF shared the award with another DB/PowerShares offering, a Commodity Index Tracking Fund. Jim Wiandt, publisher of IndexUniverse.com, said, "These innovators are shaping the course of the index industry, creating new tools and providing new insights for the benefit of all investors." What was it that made this financial innovation successful?

Governors Island

Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Design, Social Enterprise, State & Society

The political players had changed since President Clinton and Senator Moynihan’s helicopter ride. Clinton was no longer President, his wife had taken Moynihan’s seat in the Senate and Michael Bloomberg had replaced Rudolph Giuliani as New York’s Mayor. What remained the same was that the city, state, and federal government had yet to reach a deal. The question of what to do with Governors Island and who should do it remained very much open. Indeed, there were those within the new Bush administration and the Congress who believed in scrapping Clinton and Moynihan’s deal and selling the island to the highest bidder be that the local government or a private developer.

Ant Financial: Flourishing Farmer Loans at MYbank

Jingyue xu, jean rosenthal, k. sudhir, hua song, xia zhang, yuanfang song, xiaoxi liu, and jaan elias.

Competitor/Strategy, Customer/Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Design, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork, Operations, State & Society

In 2015, Ant Financial’s MYbank (an offshoot of Jack Ma’s Alibaba company) was looking to extend services to rural areas in China through its Flourishing Farmer Loan program. MYbank relied on the internet to communicate with loan applicants and judge their credit worthiness. Initial tests of the program had proved promising, but could MYbank operate the program at scale? Would its big data and technical analysis provide an accurate measure of credit risk for loans to small customers? Could MYbank rely on its new credit-scoring system to reduce operating costs to make the program sustainable?

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4 Entrepreneur Success Stories to Learn From

successful entrepreneur talking on phone

20 Jan 2022

Entrepreneurship is a risky but potentially rewarding endeavor. According to the online course Entrepreneurship Essentials , 50 percent of startups last five years, and just 25 percent survive 15.

“For every Amazon.com or Uber, there are scores of companies few can remember,” says Harvard Business School Professor William Sahlman in Entrepreneurship Essentials.

So, what separates successful ventures from those that fail?

“When a company succeeds, it’s because it has discovered and made the right moves along the way,” Sahlman says. “It has found out how to create and capture customer value.”

If you’re exploring entrepreneurship or in the early stages of launching a venture, it’s important to learn from others to avoid common pitfalls and discover which decisions impacted a company’s survival. Here are four stories of successful entrepreneurs to inspire your entrepreneurial journey.

Access your free e-book today.

4 Successful Entrepreneur Stories

1. adi dassler of adidas.

Some of today’s biggest brands started with humble beginnings, and no one embodies this better than Adidas founder Adolf “Adi” Dassler.

Dassler’s shoemaking career began in his mother’s washroom in a small town in Bavaria, Germany. It was there that Dassler began designing and cobbling shoes and decided he wanted to make the best possible sports shoe for athletes.

While there were plenty of shoemakers at the time, Dassler was committed to standing out in the market by gathering feedback from athletes about what they looked for in a shoe, what pain points could be improved on, and how they felt about his early models.

This feedback allowed Dassler to craft an athletic shoe that was highly valued by his customers and gave him legitimacy when he registered “Adi Dassler Adidas Sportschuhfabrik” in 1949 at 49 years old. It was that same year the first shoe with the soon-to-become-signature Adidas three stripes was registered.

Dassler’s vision to create the best shoe for athletes proved itself in 1954 when the German national football team won the World Cup final against the Hungarians—while wearing the new model of Adidas cleats.

“Their unbelievable victory would be heard around the world for decades to come,” Adidas states on its website , “and it made Adidas and its founder a household name on football pitches everywhere.”

Since then, Adidas has grown into an international brand known for high-quality athleticwear. Dassler’s story sheds light on the importance of listening to target customers about their dreams, needs, and pain points.

“Adi Dassler’s secret to success had an additional personal ingredient: He met with athletes, listened carefully to what they said, and constantly observed what can be improved or even invented to support their needs,” reads Adidas’s website . “The best of the best trusted Adidas and its founder from the beginning.”

Related: 5 Steps to Validate Your Business Idea

2. Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble

After leaving dating app company Tinder and an abusive relationship in 2014, Whitney Wolfe Herd was inspired to create an empowering dating experience for women.

“For all the advances women had been making in workplaces and corridors of power, the gender dynamics of dating and romance still seemed so outdated,” Wolfe Herd writes on Bumble’s website . “I thought, ‘What if I could flip that on its head? What if women made the first move and sent the first message?’”

Wolfe Herd, along with dating app Badoo co-founder Andrey Andreev and former Tinder employees Chris Gulzcynski and Sarah Mick, designed a dating app that requires women to make the first move in heterosexual matches.

The brand took off—largely on college campuses—and the app reached 100,000 downloads in its first month.

As its user base grows, Wolfe Herd remains a strong advocate for gender equality and sexual harassment prevention, building in-app features that block hate speech and blur inappropriate images. Wolfe Herd and her team also lobbied the state of Texas—where the company is headquartered—to pass a law prohibiting the sending of unsolicited lewd photos, which passed in 2019 .

“I’m more dedicated than ever to helping advance gender equality—and putting an end to the misogyny that still plagues society,” Wolfe Herd writes in a letter to Bumble users . She later adds, “I want nothing more than for your connections to be both meaningful and healthy.”

Wolfe Herd’s story serves as a reminder to use your own life for business inspiration and use a cause you care about to differentiate your product and brand in a saturated market.

Related: How to Identify an Underserved Need in the Market

3. Melanie Perkins of Canva

In 2007, Melanie Perkins was working a part-time job while studying in Perth, Australia, teaching students how to use desktop design software. The software was expensive, complex, and required a semester’s worth of instruction to learn how to use, prompting Perkins to ask, “Is there a way this could be simpler and less expensive?”

Perkins’s goal to create an affordable, simple, online design tool was originally turned down by over 100 investors—it wasn’t until three years into her pitching process that Canva received its first investment.

Perkins credits this investment to a shift in her pitching strategy: She began leading with the relatable problem Canva aims to solve.

“A lot of people can relate to going into something like Photoshop and being completely overwhelmed," Perkins said in an interview for Inc . "It's important to tell the story, because if your audience doesn't understand the problem, they won't understand the solution."

Today, 60 million customers use Canva to create designs across 190 countries.

Perkins’s story reflects the importance of effectively communicating the value of a business idea , as well as the tenacity and resilience required for entrepreneurial success.

Related: How to Effectively Pitch a Business Idea

4. Neil Blumenthal, Dave Gilboa, Andy Hunt, and Jeff Raider of Warby Parker

One example mentioned in Entrepreneurship Essentials is that of innovative online eyewear company Warby Parker. In 2008, Wharton MBA student Blumenthal lost his prescription eyeglasses. He was reluctant to purchase a new pair because they were so expensive. He also didn’t want to visit an eyeglass store.

The idea came to him in the middle of the night, and he emailed three friends—Gilboa, Hunt, and Raider—immediately: Why not start an online company to sell prescription glasses at an affordable price?

They set to work, and Warby Parker was poised to launch just after the four founders graduated with their MBA degrees in the spring of 2010—that is, until GQ reached out to Blumenthal about writing an article to be published on February 15 of that year. The founders sped up their process and launched Warby Parker’s website the same day the article was printed .

The article called Warby Parker “the Netflix of eyewear,” driving interested customers to the new site in droves. The founders’ one mistake was forgetting to add a “sold out” functionality to the website. The waitlist for Warby Parker eyewear grew to 20,000 people, and the company hit its first-year sales target in three weeks.

"It was this moment of panic but also a great opportunity for us to provide awesome customer service and write personalized emails to apologize and explain," Blumenthal says in an interview for Inc . "That really set the tone for how we would run customer service."

A few things set Warby Parker apart from the eyewear market at the time:

Its online model : A new way of delivering the product helped it break into a stagnant industry
Its affordable prices : A pair of Warby Parker frames with prescription lenses cost $95—much less expensive than other brands at the time
Its home try-on program : This enabled customers to try on five pairs of glasses and send back the pairs they didn’t want to purchase.
Its commitment to giving back : For every pair of glasses purchased, Warby Parker donated a pair to someone in need

Warby Parker donated its millionth pair of glasses in 2019 and continues to be an example of innovation in an existing market.

Which HBS Online Entrepreneurship and Innovation Course is Right for You? | Download Your Free Flowchart

Why Learn from Case Studies?

Reading about the trials, tribulations, decisions, and successes of other entrepreneurs is an effective way to gain insight into what your experience could be like. What common threads do you notice in the aforementioned examples? What characteristics do these successful entrepreneurs share ? Use their experiences as blueprints to inform your strategic approach and in-the-moment decision-making.

When building your entrepreneurial skills, seek out courses that incorporate case studies into their teaching method , such as Entrepreneurship Essentials. Not only can you imagine yourself in their situations, but you can take their wisdom with you on your entrepreneurial journey.

Are you interested in honing your entrepreneurial skills and innovation toolkit? Explore our four-week Entrepreneurship Essentials course and other online entrepreneurship and innovation courses to learn to speak the language of the startup world.

About the Author

Columbia University Libraries

Entrepreneurship: case studies.

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What are Case Studies?

Entrepreneurship cases, journals of case studies.

Patents & Trademarks

Case studies are usually short articles describing real-world business examples that illustrate a particular problem or principle in detail. There are many cases available online for free or for a fee, and you can also search the library catalogue and selected databases below.

Looking for something specific?

Search C LIO for entrepreneurship case studies, enter Entrepreneurship--Case studies in the search field and select "Subject" from the dropdown menu.

Search Business Source Complete for a company or topic and select "Case study" under "Document type."

Columbia Caseworks : A selection of Columbia Entrepreneurship Cases
Case Centre : A distributor of over 50,000 cases on a variety of business topics including entrepreneurship produced by various institutions. Some electronic and some paper cases are free and others are sold for a fee, with free teaching materials.
Harvard Business School Cases : Educators can register for free access to cases and teaching materials; others are charged a fee. Narrow topic to "Entrepreneurship" to see relevant cases. Note: Some older Harvard Cases are available via Business Source Complete
MIT Sloan School of Management : Entrepreneurship cases are available for free, including teaching notes. Educators are asked to register.
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Berkeley Haas Case Series

The Berkeley Haas Case Series is a collection of business case studies created by UC Berkeley faculty

Entrepreneurship

Connect-in-Place: Startup Disrupts Socializing and Learning During COVID-19

Two UC Berkeley students forced into online classes during COVID-19 realized - due to their volunteer experiences championing educational equality - that younger students (K-12) could suffer social isolation and reduced learning opportunities. So, the undergrads brainstormed how to tackle new educational and emotional challenges pre-college students faced due to pandemic restrictions.

Medinas Health: Building a Medical Equipment Marketplace

This case centers on the startup Medinas Health, a technology company based in Berkeley, California that aimed to increase the efficiency of the medical equipment market in the U.S. Chloe Alpert, Medinas Health’s CEO, envisioned a more sustainable healthcare industry and aimed to reduce waste and improve the financial bottom-line of hospitals.

Niantic Labs and the Professional Entrepreneur in the Silicon Valley: Google, Pokémon Go, and Beyond

This case series focuses on the entrepreneurial career of John Hanke, a 1996 MBA graduate of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and a professional entrepreneur.

International Data Spaces: A Collaborative Organizational Moonshot

Led by ThyssenKrupp CTO Reinhold Achatz, IDSA is an organization that seeks to set, diffuse, and implement a dominant global B2B data standard.

Maire Tecnimont: The Creation of NextChem

Maire Tecnimont is an international leader in the engineering and construction of industrial plants.

Goodbaby: How a Chinese Underdog Became a World Leader Through Open Innovation

Goodbaby is an industry-leading manufacturer of juvenile products. Under a variety of brand names, nearly a third of the strollers in the world are designed and manufactured by Goodbaby.

Barça Innovation Hub: Getting the Ball Rolling on Innovation

This case study follows the Spanish football club, FC Barcelona, as it starts to innovate and create an organizational structure for open innovation.

Enel X: Driving Digital Transformation in the Energy Sector

Enel is one of the world’s largest electric utilities, based in Italy but operating in dozens of countries around the world. This case discusses the process of establishing a new subsidiary company inside Enel to lead the company towards digital transformation in eMobility.

Bosch: Scaling Large Company Innovation for Strategic Advantage

This case focuses on the Innovation Performance Management (IPM) methodology as a new approach whereby established and global companies, like Bosch, can use innovation to support strategic goals.

Amyris, Inc: Make good. No compromise.

Amyris has grown from a Silicon Valley startup to a global publicly-traded company who genetically programs yeast into chemicals used by more than 250 million consumers in over 2,000 brands. The company's path has included entering markets with new production solutions, learning how to lower risk through business partnerships, and expanding from B2B to B2C.

Innovation, Co-Creation, and Design Thinking: How Salesforce's Ignite Team Accelerates Enterprise Digital Transformation

From its inception, Salesforce, the cloud computing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) company, took a radically different approach to selling enterprise software than competitors such as Oracle and SAP.

Sproutel: How Design Roadmapping Helped Improve Children's Health & Guide a Growing Company

This case aims to introduce students to the 'design roadmapping' process that connects customer and user experience design with product and technology roadmapping to create an integrated plan for future growth and development.

Innovating Innovation @tk

This case shows how ThyssenKrupp (tk) has altered its innovation process in recent years. CEO Heinrich Hiesinger has brought in a former colleague from Siemens, Reinhold Achatz, to lead a transformation of the R&D function at the company.

Disruption in Detroit: Ford, Silicon Valley, and Beyond

This case focuses on the Ford Motor Company in Spring 2016 and how its then-CEO, Mark Fields, and his senior management team should best respond to several emerging disruptive technologies that will ultimately force the automaker to modify its current business model.

The Berkeley-Haas Case Series is a collection of business case studies written by Haas faculty. Our culture and vision at the Haas School of Business naturally offer distinctive qualities to the Series, filling a gap in existing case offerings by drawing upon lessons from UC Berkeley's rich history and prime location in the San Francisco Bay Area. We seek to publish cases that challenge conventional assumptions about business, science, culture, and politics.

Siemens Healthineers: A Digital Journey

Maersk: Driving Culture Change at a Century-Old Company to Achieve Measurable Results

Flourish Fi: Empowering Positive Money Habits

Just Climate: A New Investment Model?

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A new collection of business case studies from Berkeley Haas

The aim of the Berkeley Haas Case Series is to incite business innovation by clarifying disruptive trends and questioning the status quo.

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Entrepreneurship

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VC Larry Cheng on What Makes a Great Entrepreneur

Anthony K. Tjan
December 07, 2009

What Skeptics Get Wrong About Crypto's Volatility

Omid Malekan
July 05, 2022

The Strategic Power of Saying No

Susan Bishop
From the November–December 1999 Issue

What the Lean Startup Method Gets Right and Wrong

Ethan Mollick
October 21, 2019

Crowdfunding Can Deliver More Than Just Money

Philipp Cornelius
Sidika Tunc Candogan
Bilal Gokpinar
Ersin Korpeoglu
March 23, 2021

Why Tech Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries Struggle to Raise Funds

Ndubuisi Ekekwe
February 29, 2012

In Praise of Middle Managers (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)

Quy Nguyen Huy
September 01, 2001

Should Startups Focus on Growth or Profits?

Scott Anthony
Scott D. Anthony
December 01, 2008

Why Start-Ups Replace Early Employees (and How to Keep Your Job)

N. Taylor Thompson
September 18, 2014

Enabling the Natural Act of Entrepreneurship

Daniel Isenberg
April 10, 2013

Are You Suited for a Start-Up?

Jeffrey Bussgang
From the November–December 2017 Issue

Why I Still Believe in India

October 17, 2012

Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Rita Gunther McGrath
April 14, 2008

Find Out if You’re a Scale-Up Entrepreneur with This Two-Minute Test

May 24, 2013

The Founder of Chewy.com on Finding the Financing to Achieve Scale

From the January–February 2020 Issue

The Innovative Mindset Your Company Can’t Afford to Lose

Simone Bhan Ahuja
October 13, 2015

To Make Lean Startups Work, You Need a Balanced Team

Riitta Katila
Michael Leatherbee
April 23, 2021

Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45

Pierre Azoulay
Benjamin F Jones
Benjamin Jones
J Daniel Kim
Javier Miranda
July 11, 2018

Give Impact Investing Time and Space to Develop

Sasha Dichter
March 17, 2014

Traveling the World Made Me a Better Entrepreneur

Gillian Morris
May 26, 2015

Cooks First or Rules First? Josephine.com's Regulatory Struggles in the Shared Economy (A)

Molly Turner
August 01, 2019

Emotiv Systems, Inc.: It's the Thoughts that Count

Paul Hamilton
October 15, 2009

Amyris, Inc: Make Good. No compromise.

J. Miguel Villas-Boas
Juan Guillermo Norero
April 01, 2019

ObEN PAI: Building a World of Personal AI Avatars

Peter Zemsky
Pavel Kireyev
March 19, 2020

Cooks First or Rules First? Josephine.com's Regulatory Struggles in the Shared Economy (B)

Allen S. Grossman
Arthur McCaffrey
May 07, 2001
Mikolaj Jan Piskorski
Thomas R. Eisenmann
Brian Feinstein
Aaron Smith
March 19, 2008

Sustainable Development at Shell (A)

Jane Wei-Skillern
March 03, 2003

Growth Investing at Totem Point

Suraj Srinivasan
Charles C.Y. Wang
Jonah S. Goldberg
March 13, 2019

Private Equity Valuation in Emerging Markets

Paul A. Gompers
Victoria Ivashina
Timothy Dore
September 12, 2012

Lending Loop: FinTech Disruption in Canadian Banking

Jean-Philippe Vergne
Parker Cumming
June 14, 2016

Collective Academy

Shikhar Ghosh
Christopher Payton
August 10, 2016
William A. Sahlman
Michael J. Roberts
February 18, 2015

Cynthia Fisher and the Rearing of ViaCell

Robert F. Higgins
Richard G. Hamermesh
Ingrid Vargas
December 21, 2005

Note on Valuation of Venture Capital Deals

Thomas Hellmann
March 13, 2001

Heidi Roizen

Nicole Tempest
Kathleen L. McGinn
January 18, 2000

Building a Business in the Context of a Life (BBCL): Life Plan Project 2012

Bhaskar Chakravorti
Shirley M. Spence
January 21, 2010

Mark Lund: One Surfer's Ride

Sam Perkins
February 01, 2020

Design a Better Cable Trainer

Andrew Zacharakis
Patricio Castillo
July 26, 2023

World Wildlife Fund and The Coca-Cola Company: A Global Partnership for Freshwater Conservation

E. Richard Brownlee II
October 09, 2014

Myth: Women's Skills and Experience Matter More Than Communication Style and Appearance

Saundra Stroope
April 04, 2019

Cooks First or Rules First? Josephine.com's Regulatory Struggles in the Shared Economy, Video

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Entrepreneurship Librarian

Looking for something specific?

To use UTL Library Search to find books of entrepreneurship case studies, enter "Entrepreneurship case studies" in the search field and select "Subject" from the "Any field" dropdown menu.

Or search these databases to find individual cases in digital format (articles):

Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window Search for a company or topic and select "Case study" under "Document type."
CBCA Reference & Current Events This link opens in a new window Enter "entrepreneurship" or another topic of choice in the text field and check "Business case" under "Document type."

Entrepreneurship Cases

Arthur Andersen Case Studies in Business Ethics Ninety case studies from1987-94 produced by the Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business in cooperation with 525 institutions including University of Toronto. Free.
The Asian Business Case Centre - Nanyang Technical University A collection of cases in Chinese and English focusing on Asian management and business experience. Searchable by topic or company. Free.
BCIC Business Case Library (archived link) Cases focused on IT, energy, and tech companies in British Columbia. Produced by BC Innovation Council. Free.
Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute Cases on 13 Canadian companies including Ferrero, Lassonde, Maple Leaf Foods and PepsiCo Canada, produced by the CAPI and sponsored by Export Development Canada. Free.
Case Centre - Free Cases A distributor of over 50,000 cases on a variety of business topics including entrepreneurship produced by various institutions. Some electronic and paper cases are free and others are sold for a fee, with free teaching materials.
CasePlace - Aspen Institute (archived link) Over 800 entrepreneurship cases focusing on "social, environmental and ethical issues in business." Archived link.
Harvard Business School Cases - Entrepreneurship Cases on e.g. Google Glass and Andreessen Horowitz from Harvard Business Publishing. Educators can register for free access to cases and teaching materials; others are charged a fee. Note: Some older Harvard cases are available via Business Source Premier.
Ivey Publishing - Entrepreneurship Cases Over 2,800 entrepreneurship cases out of the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario. Teaching notes also available. Paywall.
MIT Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship Via the Case Center. Legatum Center case studies illuminate the thought processes of entrepreneurs, the challenges they face, and the solutions they devise as they develop their businesses. These cases are available without charge to help teachers, students, and aspiring entrepreneurs.
MIT Sloan School of Management Entrepreneurship cases available for free, includes teaching notes. Educators are asked to register.
National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science Science cases written by science faculty primarily from the U.S. and Canada, produced by the University at Buffalo. Free.
Rotman Gender and the Economy Case studies The Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE) at the Rotman School of Management promotes an understanding of gender inequalities and how they can be remedied – by people of all genders – in the world of business and, more broadly, in the economy. Case studies can be filtered using tags including for entrepreneurship, and include high-profile Canadian founder cases.
Stanford Graduate School of Business - Case Studies Select "Entrepreneurship" under "Narrow your results>Additional topics."
The Times 100 Case Studies UK cases produced by the Times, searchable by topic, company, industry, or edition. Free.

Journals of Case Studies

Business Case Journal
IBIMA Business Review
International Journal of Case Studies in Management
Journal of Case Research in Business and Economics
Journal of Case Studies
<< Previous: Articles, Websites and Books
Next: Free and Open Resources >>
Last Updated: Mar 1, 2024 2:18 PM
URL: https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/entrepreneurship

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ProQuest Business Collection This link opens in a new window Use Advanced Search Form: Select "business case" from document type You may also want to search "case study" AND [your topic] in the title or all subject indexing. more... less... Current; a comprehensive business offering, comprising all content from ABI/INFORM Complete, Accounting & Tax, Asian Business & Reference, Banking Information Source, Entrepreneurship, and the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences. Featuring thousands of full text journals, dissertations, conference proceedings, and working papers as well as trade publications, industry reports, and key periodicals such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Economist. Strong U.S. and international coverage in business and the social sciences.

Due to licensing restrictions, the library may not purchase individual cases from Harvard Business Publishing, or obtain them through interlibrary loan.

A small number of case studies can be found in Harvard Business Review via Business Source Complete.

Faculty : Please note that HBR articles from our Business Source Complete subscription may not be linked to course management systems due to licensing restrictions, however, articles can be purchased directly from Harvard Business School Publishing using the course pack system.

<< Previous: Industry Trends
Next: Customers & Market Research >>
Last Updated: Jan 24, 2024 10:20 AM
URL: https://libguides.brown.edu/entrepreneurship

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Entrepreneurship in the Digital Era

Case Studies, Approaches, and Tools for Ecosystems, Business Models, and Technologies

© 2023
Daniel Schallmo ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4221-001X 0 ,
Jens Pätzmann 1 ,
Thomas Clauß ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7799-6369 2

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences, Neu-Ulm, Germany

You can also search for this editor in PubMed Google Scholar

Witten/Herdecke University, Witten, Germany

Provides latest insights from researchers and practitioners on digital entrepreneurship
Considers environmental factors on entrepreneurship comprehensively
Includes perspectives from several industries

Part of the book series: Management for Professionals (MANAGPROF)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

Front matter, clarifying the field of digital entrepreneurship: systematic literature review with bibliometric methods.

Antonia Schulz, Daniel Schallmo

Strategic Entrepreneurship in the Digital Era

Ralf T. Kreutzer

Digital Entrepreneurial Opportunities in a 4.0 World: A Roadmap for Data-Driven Entrepreneurs

Tal Berman, Daniel Schallmo, Christopher A. Williams

Entrepreneurial Dynamic Capabilities Along the Value Chain: Evaluation of Case Studies

Christoph Haag, Theresa Marie Wobbe

Self-Employed Entrepreneurs’ Digital Mindset

Claus Andreas Gram Foss Rosenstand, Thomas Duus Henriksen

Use of Corporate Venturing Tools in Manufacturing Industry: A Systematic Literature Review

Stephan Nebauer, Peter Schrader, Erwin Gross, Thomas Bauernhansl

Logo Creation with Archetypes: Using Archetypical Shapes to Design Brand-Compliant Logos for Start-Ups

Sophie Steinecke, Jens U. Pätzmann

Archetypes and Colours: Findings of a Quantitative Study and Their Relevance for Start-Up Brands

Jens U. Pätzmann, Claudius Kübler

Classification of Born-Global Firms: The Case of Japanese High-Tech Startups

Saki Otomo, Shuichi Ishida, Mariko Yang-Yoshihara

Supporting Lean Startup Methodology in Three Finnish Micro-Sized Enterprises

Sami Jantunen, Helena Merikoski, Timo Partala, Niina Rantakari, Teija Rautiainen
Digital Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
Digital Transformation
Case Studies
Strategic Planning

About this book

Changes in the environment such as trends, drivers, and influencing factors affect entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in several ways. The changes of the environmental factors in several dimensions such as political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological, and legal. On the one hand, the environmental changes include risk for existing business models. On the other hand, they include opportunities for new business models, entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, and new insights in marketing.

This book provides empirical and conceptual papers and studies that tackle the challenges and opportunities for entrepreneurship in the digital era. It offers professionals, managers, researchers, lecturers, and students from the fields of entrepreneurship, innovation management, and business development valuable insight into the topic of entrepreneurship in times of digitalization.

Editors and Affiliations

Daniel Schallmo, Jens Pätzmann

Thomas Clauß

About the editors

Daniel Schallmo is Full Professor and Director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship at Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences in Germany. In the context of digitization, his work and research focuses on business model innovation, entrepreneurship, measuring digital maturity, developing digital strategies, the digital transformation of business models, and implementing digital initiatives.

Jens Pätzmann is Full Professor and Director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship at Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences in Germany. He teaches marketing, branding, and strategy for startups and conducts research in the field of social psychology and cultural anthropology in connection to archetypes and branding.

Thomas Clauß is Full Professor and Chair in Corporate Entrepreneurship and Digitalization in Family Business at the Witten/Herdecke University in Germany. He researches business model innovation, interorganizational governance, and digitization in family firms

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Entrepreneurship in the Digital Era

Book Subtitle : Case Studies, Approaches, and Tools for Ecosystems, Business Models, and Technologies

Editors : Daniel Schallmo, Jens Pätzmann, Thomas Clauß

Series Title : Management for Professionals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43188-3

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Business and Management , Business and Management (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-031-43187-6 Published: 17 November 2023

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-031-43190-6 Due: 18 December 2023

eBook ISBN : 978-3-031-43188-3 Published: 16 November 2023

Series ISSN : 2192-8096

Series E-ISSN : 2192-810X

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XI, 208

Number of Illustrations : 63 b/w illustrations

Topics : Entrepreneurship , IT in Business , Industrial Organization

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This listing contains abstracts and ordering information for case studies written and published by faculty at Stanford GSB.

Publicly available cases in this collection are distributed by Harvard Business Publishing and The Case Centre .

Stanford case studies with diverse protagonists, along with case studies that build “equity fluency” by focusing on DEI-related issues and opportunities are listed in the Case Compendium developed by the Center for Equity, Gender and Leadership at the Berkeley Haas School of Business.

CEO Crisis in Napa: Laila Tarraf

Intersections in paradise: economics and sustainability in palau, 2024, udemy: the founding story, adobe in 2023: transforming marketing through digital experience.

Adobe, founded in 1982, set out to develop software that would enable high-fidelity digital printing and publishing. A decade later, Adobe PDF quickly became the industry standard for preserving and sharing digital document formatting, fonts, images, and…

GoodLeap, spearheaded by Hayes Barnard, emerges as a pioneering financing platform offering comprehensive solutions for sustainable living, including solar loans, home purchasing, refinancing, and improvement loans. Barnard, with a robust background at…

Seconds to Save Lives with Viz.ai

Ajaib: building a high-growth southeast asian fintech venture, eyes on the prize: eyewa’s mena journey, hijra: building an islamic challenger bank.

Dima Djani founded Hijra in late 2018 to provide digitally-enabled financial services to businesses and consumers who followed Islamic finance principles. Islamic finance prohibited the use of usury (interest), mandated that all transactions been linked…

Polpharma Group: Transformation Through Innovation

When Markus Sieger was appointed CEO of Polpharma Group in 2016, he found himself at the helm of a company that would be deemed successful by virtually any metric. Polpharma Group included Poland’s leading pharmaceutical company and leading drug…

Stanford Health Care

Dean Jonathan Levin

This Managing Growing Enterprises (MGE) case presents a multifaceted examination of leadership challenges in the academic sector, encompassing issues of faculty negotiation, student-faculty relations, crisis management, and institutional response to…

ClearMetal, a supply chain software-as-a-service startup, exemplifies the challenges of innovating in the global container shipping industry. Under CEO Adam Compain, the company developed a solution to reduce the costly repositioning of empty shipping…

Board Dynamics at Defy, Inc.: When is the Right Time to Raise the Next Round?

Defy, Inc. developed individual safety software solutions for highly automated aircraft operation through its FlySafe modular platform. Defy’s cofounders saw great potential in flying drones to solve the last-mile problem in deliveries. In addition to…

Founders Fund: Every Moment Happens Once

Nuveen and ecozen solutions: valuing a private equity impact investment.

In December 2021, Rekha Unnithan, CFA, received a cold outreach from Devendra Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Ecozen Solutions (“Ecozen”), an agriculture-focused cleantech business based in Pune, a major technology and manufacturing hub in India. Founded in…

APA Technologies

APA Technologies, a startup in the trucking industry, faced a significant challenge with its innovative product, the Tyro - an automatic tire inflation device. Founders Brad Miller and Jeffrey Howell, Stanford mechanical engineering students, developed…

APA Technologies (A): Just When We Were Hitting Our Stride

Apa technologies (b): no good deed goes unpunished, apa technologies (c): a potential partnership, apa technologies (d): reveal, senaca east africa (a): a family security business grapples with expansion.

Senaca East Africa, aka Sentry & Patrols, is a Kenya-based security guard firm founded in 2002 by John Kipkorir, a longtime member of the Kenyan police. At the time, there were only a few well-known Kenyan-owned security companies, and crime was rising…

Jason Scott: Creating a Dream Job to Find and Fund Entrepreneurs Across the Globe

Jason Scott’s superpower had always been his ability to connect people and ideas across industries, sectors, and geographies. After graduating from Stanford GSB, he pursued his professional North Star of finding the best entrepreneurs in the world and…

Impact Engine: Measuring Impact Across Investment Stages

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Case Questions

The National Association of Broadcasters launched its PILOT Innovation Challenge in 2016. The challenge is centered around a specific challenge question aimed at helping the association’s primary customers, broadcasters. The most recent challenge question was, “What is an unconventional way broadcasters and other local media could serve communities?” The PILOT organizers have contracted you to help them design their next challenge. Using your knowledge of innovation and customer-centric entrepreneurship processes, what would you advise? How would you go about determining the challenge question? What questions about innovation would you have regarding the Innovation Challenge?

The Guidewell Innovation Center at Lake Nona Medical Center on the outskirts of Orlando, Florida, is a 92,000-square-foot facility aimed at accelerating innovation within the healthcare industries. Guidewell, the parent company of Florida Blue, brings in outside companies to help with that innovation process. One of the features of the Innovation Center is its Collaborative Resource Ecosystem. Some of the center’s strategic areas of focus are next-generation consumer engagement, computational health, well-being and human performance, digital health, and remote management, among other areas. How could Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation and jobs-to-be-done theory help guide Guidewell’s mission? What are the prevalent business models in the strategic areas for incumbent businesses? What are opportunities for innovation for new companies?

As youth programs face severe budget cuts, many youth sports organizations respond by raising their fees, which shifts the costs to families. Good Sports was founded in 2003, to tackle this problem by providing new equipment, footwear, and apparel to those most in need. The organization’s addressable markets include children ages five to eighteen living in low-income households, as defined by poverty data, and participating in youth sports in top fifty metropolitan service areas. This Boston-based organization has plans to expand from its three existing markets in Dallas, Chicago, and Boston to seven total markets by 2023 with a goal to serve 600,000 kids by that target date.

What would a customer empathy map look like for Good Sports’ target user? What about its target customer segment? Would it or should it differ in differing markets? Is the Boston area user any different from say, an Atlanta, user?
Given its social mission, what are some impact measures Good Sports could use to gauge success and impact?

DoSomething.Org is a “global movement for good” among 6 million young people, transforming their communities across the United States and in 131 countries worldwide. This nonprofit organization constantly holds cause-based campaigns, ranging from receiving over 1 million pairs of donated jeans from teens to clothe homeless youth to cleaning up 3.7 million cigarette butts through its Get the Filter Out initiative. A past campaign, “Don’t Be a Sucker,” addressed the problem of Americans losing $5.8 billion annually and producing 8.7 billion pounds of carbon pollution by leaving unused devices plugged in. The campaign sought to slay those “energy vampires” not in use by having users unplug equipment and post a sticky note next to the outlet to remind others not to let them suck the energy dry. Further research the problem, solution and this campaign and answer the following:

Identify what social impact(s) the campaign addressed.
What impact measures could the campaign assess?
Could a viable business be created around this problem?

In recent years, the entrepreneurial educator and author Steve Blank began applying lean startup principles to various US governmental agencies. Through a Hacking for Diplomacy course, students at Stanford University began tackling problems for the Department of State. A former US ambassador to the United Nations, a State Department representative to Silicon Valley and senior advisor for technology and innovation, a retired US Army colonel, and other entrepreneurial educators joined Blank in applying lean startup methods to State Department issues. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry even visited the Stanford students and said he was looking forward to the solutions students develop during the ten weeks. One project that emerged was from a group calling themselves Team Space Evaders. The team was tasked with working on the problem of satellite collision. Members charted satellite positioning data and explored how information about potential collision was shared by commercial operators and governmental entities ranging from the Federal Aviation Administration to the Department of Defense.

Apply the lean startup methodology to identify potential customer segments and problems and solutions that students such as yourself could identify for the State Department on the issue of satellite collision.
What would a unique value proposition for a State Department solution to this issue be? How could a high-level concept pitch work when selling the concept within the State Department?

Incorporated in 2003, Tesla declared in its mission statement that its goal is “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transport,” 56 and it has proven itself a leader in green technology in the automotive sector. In its initial business plan, by co-founder Martin Eberhard , the electric sports car company promised to provide the value of a high-end sports car at a lower cost to the customer and a lower environmental cost to the planet. Electric vehicles were seen as inferior to standard vehicles prior to Tesla’s innovations in creating powerful cars that piqued consumer desire. The generic automotive manufacturing business model relies on collaborative manufacturing with industry partners and a distribution model dependent on third parties. Standard cars are aimed at people and businesses with individual transportation needs. This model is commercially viable because of custom-equipped add-on features to the per-vehicle prices.

Tesla’s business model is different. Identify at least three ways in which the Tesla model differs from the traditional automotive business model.

In the mid-1990s, at least one newspaper company, the now-defunct Knight-Ridder chain, created the prototype for a tablet newspaper that very much resembles the present-day iPad. A 1994 video titled “The Tablet Newspaper: A Vision for the Future” shows off the design of a futuristic newspaper designed at the Knight Ridder Information Design Lab in Boulder, Colorado. The video went viral in 2011 after it was posted on YouTube and numerous websites and blogs. The person behind the tablet vision, Roger Fidler , had even published an essay describing a tablet future as far back as 1981. The Knight-Ridder lab shared a wall with its neighbor Apple, with executives swapping ideas and visitors. The newspaper company, focused on content creation and not the hardware side, decided to not patent its tablet design and scrapped the project because screens took too much energy, and it was too expensive.

Using the components of a feasibility study, consider how the newspaper company would stack up on go-or-no-go decisions for each component of the feasibility study.
How did the newspaper company in the 1990s fare in terms of management prowess, resource capabilities, financial viability, and market analysis?
Do you think the newspaper made a wise decision to abandon the project when it did? Why or why not?

Founded in 2013 primarily as a coding boot camp, Tech Talent South offers both part-time and full-time courses on topics like Ruby on Rails and Big Data Analytics. Most of the camp’s programs are run out of cooperative working spaces and temporary locations throughout the cities it has a presence in. The primary focus of the Atlanta-founded and now North Carolina-based company as branded in the name was on coding in the South, but the company to date has expanded to eleven markets with plans to expand even more. The founder, Betsy Idilbi , jokes that she wouldn’t have named the company Tech Talent South if she had known its full potential and growth, including being plugged into the entrepreneurial ecosystem in places such as Columbus, Ohio. The company even has offices in the northeastern city of Hartford, Connecticut.

Could a feasibility analysis have helped Betsy from the start?
The company has expanded its business to offer corporate trainings at existing companies, rather than teaching classes directly to student enrollees. How would you identify a new potential market for Tech Talent South to enter?
What could be done with its existing business?
How would you advise the company on making go-or-no-go decisions for entering new markets?

You were introduced to The Cut Buddy , a plastic hair and beard grooming tool that began selling on Amazon in 2016, in The Business Plan . Following funding from the Shark Tank investor Daymond John , the company plans to expand into retail and extend its product line.

How would a business plan for the company’s ecommerce business differ from a retail distribution outlet?
Discuss how changes to aspects of the original business plan affected the outcome of the success of The Cut Buddy.
What do you think should be the key markets and strategies moving forward for the company?

Pretty Young Professional , discussed in The Business Plan , failed because of disagreements among its four founders that emerged shortly after launch.

If you were to launch the venture today, outline what steps you would need to take in formulating a business plan.
What do you think the total addressable market would be, which industry classification would it fall under, and who would be the primary competition?
56 In 2016, it was changed from “sustainable transport” to “sustainable energy.” https://www.tesla.com/about

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Entrepreneurship Case Studies

How Intrapreneurship Accelerates Organizations: 4 Case Studies

Fostering an intrapreneurial culture can reap long-lasting rewards for your business, what is intrapreneurship.

Intrapreneurship is a people-centric approach to developing an entrepreneurial culture . Unlike entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs are actual employees who work with an existing company’s resources to achieve corporate innovation.

While the term “intrapreneurship” has a debatable history, it was first coined by Gifford Pinchot III and Elizabeth Pinchot in their published paper “Intra-Corporate Entrepreneurship” in 1978 and used again in their 1985 book “Intrapreneuring”. The term is a portmanteau of the words “inside” and “entrepreneur”.

Intrapreneurs are not building ventures from scratch, nor are they investing their own money into businesses. Instead, these people use an entrepreneurial mindset to develop innovative products and ideas that benefit the companies they’re working for.

Intrapreneurship can be achieved in 2 ways:

Experimenting with new lines of business through investment in new internal ideas
Instilling an entrepreneurial approach to strategy and execution into existing business lines

Why intrapreneurship accelerates growth

Companies that embrace innovation while optimizing existing products see lasting growth and profitability. A powerful yet simple approach to achieving innovation is capitalizing on the most important resource within your company: your people.

Research shows that intrapreneurship elevates both productivity scores and employee engagement . This is especially true for those employees who are more motivated by rewards as opposed to punishment. (As you might expect, employees that have a cautious and risk-averse mindset generally do not make good intrapreneurs.)

Why it’s hard to achieve

Intrapreneurship runs the risk of pinning all hope on a “genius who can save the day” which results in unpredictability of results and returns. This in turn can make it hard to champion intrapreneurship again in the future in front of boards and execs.

Furthermore, intrapreneurship isn’t as perfect a fit for all industries, especially where capital requirements and regulatory burdens are high. Some industries like aerospace and energy may face headwinds simply because the investment into internal startups must be more significant to generate data and measurable returns—and usually without the typical funding channels available to the rest of the business.

Intrapreneurial projects are also different from a traditional startup that is usually based on a blank canvas. As Bill Aulet, director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship puts it, startups are generally worry-free compared to larger companies. When you’re operating an enterprise, there’s already “a lot of paint on the canvas”.

An established business like this has several products, revenues, staff, processes, and an organizational structure—all those things that a startup is still trying to obtain—which can be both an enabler and a decelerant.

As startups mature, staying flexible and avoiding rigidity becomes harder. An entrepreneur has nothing to lose, but when you’re part of a bigger business you just don’t have that much freedom anymore due to potential threats and risks. Maintaining a balance in cases like these is crucial.

The right way to do intrapreneurship

Companies leveraging intrapreneurship the most fully tend to have 4 traits :

They embrace uncertainty
They assemble the right team and resources around intrapreneurs
They reward agility and incremental proof
They widely explore new customer needs and segments

Let's explore 4 companies that have had stellar results from intrapreneurship.

Case study 1: Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a global cloud computing service provider. The story of how AWS became the workhorse of the cloud computing industry, now standing next to such giants as IBM, Microsoft, and Google, is fascinating, to say the least.

According to Andy Jassy, AWS leader and SVP , no “ah-ha” moment lead Amazon, then an online bookseller, to become a game-changing force in the technology market. Instead, the idea to expand gradually emerged out of the company’s frustration with its ability to support existing customers, and launch projects.

Amazon stumbled upon the concept of AWS while trying to solve a recurring need for faster technology deployments. The reason for this was the company’s focus on delivering better experiences both internally and for its partners.

The AWS team soon started as an intrapreneurial venture within Amazon. After some time, the company began to look seriously at what this branch of business would look like in the long term. Amazon’s early-stage startup questions included:

Is there a market need for a better solution?
Do we have the competency to provide a successful product?
Is the space large enough to become part of the business?
Do we have a differentiated approach?

The answer to all of these was a solid yes. AWS was launched in 2006 and soon manifested itself as a disruptive approach to cloud computing development.

Case study 2: PlayStation

PlayStation is a captivating story of a successful product creation launched by Sony’s intrapreneur Ken Kutaragi.

Ken joined Sony in Japan in 1975. He was working as an electrical engineer at Sony sound labs when he bought his daughter a Nintendo game console. As his daughter played games, he noticed that the quality of the sound was sub-par. Ken figured that a digital chip dedicated to sound would drastically improve the quality of the gaming system.

Long story short, he started working as an outside consultant for Nintendo while keeping his day job at Sony. Ken managed to develop the SPC7000 for Nintendo games, and as he continued working as a part-time consultant, he eventually developed a CD-ROM-based system for Nintendo.

Nintendo decided not to move forward with the CD-ROM system. That’s when Ken saw the market opportunity of gaming systems for Sony. Being a natural intrapreneur, he pressed hard to convince Sony to enter the electronic gaming industry. Sony’s then-CEO Chairman Ohga recognized Ken’s creativity and innovation-focused mindset. He backed Kutaragi’s plan despite most of the senior management opposing the idea.

Ken went on to lead the effort to help Sony develop a gaming system that later became widely known as PlayStation. The product became a global success, taking a significant market share of the same consoles and selling more than 70 million units in the late 1990s . By 1998, the PlayStation made up 40 percent of Sony’s operating revenues.

Case study 3: Post-It Notes

Post-It Notes is the classic business school example of an intrapreneurial mindset. It all started in 1974 when a 3M engineer Arthur Fry saw that a special adhesive developed by the company was failing. He noticed the glue had a slight tacky quality so he tried some of it to stick a note in his hymnal. Not only did it work, but it was also easily removable.

However, after the initial discovery, 3M management failed to see value in the non-sticky adhesive. There was no internal senior support for the concept until a change in management in 1973. That’s when the new products laboratory manager Geoff Nicholson was convinced to give this a go.

It wasn’t until 1977 that the product has been finally tested for real-world sales, and the rest is history.

Case study 4: Gmail

As Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt puts it , Google’s business is all about innovation. A notable aspect of Google’s innovative culture is its legendary 20 percent time policy that allows employees to invest about a day per week to pursue projects outside of their area of duty. Through this practice, Google encourages its employees to act as intrapreneurs and think outside the box. Most of the time, Googlers that work on 20 percent projects join forces with others to create an internal start-up.

One of the most notorious and successful examples that resulted from this practice is Gmail. It all started with Google’s employee Paul Buchheit and his idea to expand Google’s services by developing a web-based email that could provide a search engine.

Most within the company thought this was a bad idea from both the strategic and product point of view. But all worries were set aside when founders of Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to go ahead and support Paul’s project.

As a result, Google’s Gmail launched in 2004 and became the company’s first landmark service since its search engine service started in 1998.

Today, Gmail has more than 1.5 billion active users from around the world. It has gone from a small intrapreneurial experiment to becoming one of the key services of Google’s product offering.

Final words

It’s important to understand that intrapreneurship is by no means the catch-all solution for companies looking to innovate. As mentioned earlier, intrapreneurship is not made for every business, and it certainly can’t solve all problems. Think of it more like one of the many elements that can be applied to foster company innovation.

The case studies provided in this article all point out one simple truth: intrapreneurship isn’t just about doing things in a certain way but is more of a mindset that enables your employees to think and act in a way that supports entrepreneurial culture within the company.

It’s also not about hero employees saving the day. Developing an intrapreneurial culture takes time and has to be supported at an organization-wide level to bring lasting results.

Photo by Riccardo Annandale .

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These are the reasons why businesses are getting started in 2023, 29% of entrepreneurs say they wanted to be their own boss, 17% were dissatisfied with corporate life, 16% wanted to pursue their passion, and 12% say the opportunity presented itself. Entrepreneurship in India has witnessed a remarkable surge over the past few decades. With a burgeoning economy and a dynamic ecosystem, the country has produced a plethora of successful entrepreneurs and startups. In this article, we delve into the top 10 case studies on entrepreneurship in India, each offering unique insights, lessons, and inspiration for aspiring business leaders.

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Table of Content Top 10 Case Studies on Entrepreneurship in India

Top 10 Case Studies on Entrepreneurship in India

Flipkart: revolutionizing e-commerce.

Founders : Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal

Year Founded : 2007

Source: Safalta

Key Takeaway : Customer focus and innovation can disrupt traditional industries and lead to exceptional growth.

Upgrade your skills with this digital marketing course: Click here for Details

OYO: Disrupting the Hotel Industry

Founder : Ritesh Agarwal

Year Founded : 2013

Ritesh Agarwal's story is a prime example of young entrepreneurship in India. OYO, which began as a budget hotel aggregator, has expanded globally, becoming one of the world's largest hospitality chains. Ritesh's vision is backed by a robust technology platform, and streamlined and standardized hotel operations, offering affordable, quality stays.

Key Takeaway : Identifying a market gap and using technology to address it can lead to rapid business expansion.

Read more: Top 12 Examples of AI Case Studies in Content Marketing

Byju's: Changing the Face of Education

Founder : Byju Raveendran

Year Founded : 2011

Byju, the edtech unicorn, was born from Byju Raveendran's vision to make learning engaging and accessible. He built a unique platform offering interactive online classes for students across India. Byju's became one of the world's most valuable edtech companies, catering to millions of students.

Key Takeaway : Leveraging technology for education can create substantial opportunities and impact a wide audience.

Paytm: A Digital Payment Pioneer

Founder : Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Year Founded : 2010

Paytm, initially a mobile recharge and bill payment platform, became a pioneer in digital payments in India. Vijay Shekhar Sharma's journey from a small town in Uttar Pradesh to building a fintech empire is an inspiration. The company's success can be attributed to its innovative approach and the ability to adapt to evolving market needs.

Key Takeaway : Flexibility and adaptability are crucial in the ever-evolving fintech industry.

Zomato: From a Restaurant Guide to a Food Delivery Giant

Founders : Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah

Year Founded : 2008

Zomato began as a restaurant discovery platform but swiftly evolved to include food delivery services. The founders, Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, navigated challenges like fierce competition and the logistical complexity of food delivery. Their ability to pivot and cater to diverse customer needs allowed them to expand globally.

Key Takeaway : Adapting to changing market demands and diversifying offerings can lead to substantial growth.

Related article: Top 10 Ways to Achieve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategies

MakeMyTrip: Trailblazing in Online Travel

Founders : Deep Kalra

Year Founded : 2000

Deep Kalra founded MakeMyTrip at a time when e-commerce was in its nascent stage in India. Over the years, the company transformed the way Indians booked travel. With continuous innovation and expansion, MakeMyTrip is now a leading online travel company in the country.

Key Takeaway : Identifying an untapped niche and being a pioneer can result in long-term success.

Nykaa: Redefining Beauty Retail

Founder : Falguni Nayar

Year Founded : 2012

Falguni Nayar, a former investment banker, ventured into the beauty and cosmetics industry with Nykaa. The e-commerce platform revolutionized the beauty retail sector by offering a vast range of products, including both luxury and affordable brands. The company's success underscores the importance of understanding consumer preferences and delivering a seamless online shopping experience.

Key Takeaway : Customer-centricity and a diverse product range can lead to rapid growth in e-commerce.

Suggested: Nykaa Case Study on Digital Marketing Strategies 2023

Freshworks: SaaS Unicorn from India

Founders : Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy

Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy co-founded Freshworks with the aim of creating a customer engagement software company. The company's suite of SaaS products has gained global recognition. Their approach to building a robust software platform with a focus on customer satisfaction exemplifies their journey from a Chennai-based startup to a SaaS unicorn.

Key Takeaway : A strong product and customer-centric approach can drive international success in the SaaS industry.

Lenskart: Redefining Eyewear Retail

Founder : Peyush Bansal

Peyush Bansal recognized the need for a reliable and convenient way to purchase eyewear in India. Lenskart introduced an online platform for buying eyeglasses and contact lenses. By integrating technology, Lenskart streamlined the purchase process, offering a wide range of eyewear and personalized services.

Key Takeaway : Identifying gaps in the market and providing innovative solutions can create new business opportunities.

Rivigo: Revolutionizing Logistics

Founders : Deepak Garg

Year Founded : 2014

Deepak Garg's Rivigo introduced an innovative approach to logistics and transportation in India. Their relay model and tech-enabled trucking system optimized supply chain operations, reduced transit times, and enhanced efficiency. Rivigo's success in a traditional industry showcases the power of technology-driven solutions.

Key Takeaway : Applying technology to traditional sectors can lead to significant improvements and growth.

These 10 case studies on entrepreneurship in India provide a diverse range of success stories, demonstrating the versatility, resilience, and innovative spirit of Indian entrepreneurs. Each of these entrepreneurs identified market gaps, harnessed technology, and adapted to changing dynamics to build successful businesses. Their journeys serve as inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs and underscore the limitless possibilities that await those willing to take risks and pursue their visions in the Indian business landscape.

What is entrepreneurship?

Who is an entrepreneur, what qualities make a successful entrepreneur, what is a business plan, and why is it important for entrepreneurship, what is "bootstrapping" in entrepreneurship, what is a business model.

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COMMENTS

Entrepreneurship Case Studies
Entrepreneurship Case Studies FieldFresh Foods Mukesh Pandey, K Sudhir, Raman Ahuja, and Deepali Tewari Customer/Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Operations. By 2010, the FieldFresh team had been able to create an efficient supply chain for baby corn across Punjab and Maharashtra at all levels. But success brought with it the expectation of growth.
4 Entrepreneur Success Stories to Learn From
Entrepreneurship is a risky but potentially rewarding endeavor. According to the online course Entrepreneurship Essentials, 50 percent of startups last five years, and just 25 percent survive 15. ... Why Learn from Case Studies? Reading about the trials, tribulations, decisions, and successes of other entrepreneurs is an effective way to gain ...
Entrepreneurship Articles, Research, & Case Studies
by Rachel Layne. Many companies build their businesses on open source software, code that would cost firms $8.8 trillion to create from scratch if it weren't freely available. Research by Frank Nagle and colleagues puts a value on an economic necessity that will require investment to meet demand. 12 Mar 2024.
From Startup to Success: An Entrepreneurial Case Study
The case study documents the path taken by HorseFeathers Gifts' owners, showing exactly how the entrepreneurship reached the successful position that it currently holds. Based on the case studies available and a review of the literature, it is apparent that no other case studies like this one exist. Information for this case
Case Studies
Columbia Caseworks : A selection of Columbia Entrepreneurship Cases. Case Centre : A distributor of over 50,000 cases on a variety of business topics including entrepreneurship produced by various institutions. Some electronic and some paper cases are free and others are sold for a fee, with free teaching materials.
Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship Browse entrepreneurship learning materials including case studies, simulations, and online courses. Introduce core concepts and real-world challenges to create memorable learning experiences for your students.
Business Startups: Articles, Research, & Case Studies
Business Startups. New research on business startups from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including how to predict whether a new business idea is any good, and how patent approvals help startups create jobs, grow their sales, innovate, and reward their investors. Page 1 of 31 Results →. 12 Mar 2024. Cold Call Podcast.
Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Entrepreneurship & Innovation Group faculty take a multi-disciplinary lens to study these phenomena, which are vitally important for the global economy and deeply integrated into the fabric of Berkeley Haas and the Bay Area. Learn more. The Berkeley-Haas Case Series is a collection of business case studies written by Haas faculty.
Entrepreneurship
Innovation & Entrepreneurship Case Study. Xiaoming Zheng; Ziqian Zhao; 11.95. View Details. Teld was one of China's largest EV charging pile network operators. It was a young company founded by a ...
Case Studies
Entrepreneurship Cases. Ninety case studies from1987-94 produced by the Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business in cooperation with 525 institutions including University of Toronto. Free. A collection of cases in Chinese and English focusing on Asian management and business experience. Searchable by topic or company.
LibGuides: Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship: Case Studies
This database provides abstracts for Harvard Business Cases, and full text access to cases from other publishers. To locate full text cases: Click Advanced Search. Select the full text check box. Select "Case Study" from Publication Type. To locate case studies that may appear in other publications, but that are not indexed as such:
Corporate Entrepreneurship: Articles, Research, & Case Studies
Corporate Social Entrepreneurship. by James E. Austin & Ezequiel Reficco. Accelerated organizational transformation faces a host of obstacles well-documented in the change management literature. Because corporate social entrepreneurship (CSE) expands the core purpose of corporations and their organizational values, it constitutes fundamental ...
Sustainable Entrepreneurship in India: A Comparative Case Study of
This case study, though limited by its sample size, has revealed the scope of sustainable entrepreneurship in emerging economies in general, and in the Indian context in particular. Entrepreneurs in developing and emerging economies may be more inclined to move ahead with sustainability as a result of the social and economic realities existing ...
Entrepreneurship in the Digital Era: Case Studies, Approaches, and
This book provides empirical and conceptual papers and studies that tackle the challenges and opportunities for entrepreneurship in the digital era. It offers professionals, managers, researchers, lecturers, and students from the fields of entrepreneurship, innovation management, and business development valuable insight into the topic of ...
Case Studies
This listing contains abstracts and ordering information for case studies written and published by faculty at Stanford GSB. Publicly available cases in this collection are distributed by Harvard Business Publishing and The Case Centre.. Stanford case studies with diverse protagonists, along with case studies that build "equity fluency" by focusing on DEI-related issues and opportunities ...
Ch. 11 Case Questions
Identify at least three ways in which the Tesla model differs from the traditional automotive business model. 7. In the mid-1990s, at least one newspaper company, the now-defunct Knight-Ridder chain, created the prototype for a tablet newspaper that very much resembles the present-day iPad.
Entrepreneurship Case Studies
Entrepreneurship Case Studies. Teaching Resources Library Biocon India Group Teaching Resources Library E-commerce at Yunnan Lucky Air Teaching Resources Library Managed by Q Teaching Resources Library Resolute Marine Energy: Power in Waves
Entrepreneurship in times of crisis
One of the objectives of this special issue was to address the void that exists in terms of teaching case studies that focus on entrepreneurship and crisis. In concluding their systematic literature on entrepreneurship and crisis Xu et al. (2021 :316) state: "We must be prepared to deal with various crises.".
How Intrapreneurship Accelerates Organizations: 4 Case Studies
Intrapreneurship is a people-centric approach to developing an entrepreneurial culture. Unlike entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs are actual employees who work with an existing company's resources to achieve corporate innovation. While the term "intrapreneurship" has a debatable history, it was first coined by Gifford Pinchot III and Elizabeth ...
Social Entrepreneurship: Articles, Research, & Case Studies on Social
Harvard Business School professor Mitch Weiss and Brandon Tseng, Shield AI's CGO and co-founder, discuss these and other challenges entrepreneurs face when working with the public sector, and how investing in new ideas can enable entrepreneurs and governments to join forces and solve big problems in the case, "Shield AI."
Top 10 Case Studies on Entrepreneurship In India
These 10 case studies on entrepreneurship in India provide a diverse range of success stories, demonstrating the versatility, resilience, and innovative spirit of Indian entrepreneurs. Each of these entrepreneurs identified market gaps, harnessed technology, and adapted to changing dynamics to build successful businesses.
Entrepreneurship Case Studies
Entrepreneurship Case Studies. No Case Studies yet, coming soon! Back to Entrepreneurship Unit View All Curriculum View All Case Studies. Web survey powered by SurveyMonkey.com. Create your own online survey now with SurveyMonkey's expert certified FREE templates.