Cold Call – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Angel City Football Club (ACFC) was founded in 2020 by venture capitalist Kara Nortman, entrepreneur Julie Uhrman, and actor and activist Natalie Portman. 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. The club’s early success was reflected in its market valuation of $250 million as of its sale in July 2024 — the highest in the National Women’s Soccer League. Equally important, ACFC had started to bend the curve toward greater pay equity in women’s sports — the club’s ultimate goal. But the founders knew there was much more to do to capitalize on the club’s momentum. As they developed ACFC’s first three-year strategic plan in 2024, they weighed the most effective ways to build value for the franchise. Was it better to allocate the incremental budget to investments in digital brand building or to investments in the on-field product?

In early 2023, Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, started developing the EdTech firm’s strategy for incorporating GenAI into their offerings. By early 2024, the firm had made significant progress in bringing four key capabilities to market, but GenAI was evolving quickly and Coursera needed to continuously improve its offerings. While the firm had been an early mover, competitors were adapting fast. Was Coursera taking full advantage of the opportunities presented by the technology? What more could it do to remain competitive?

Özyeğin Social Investments was founded by Hüsnü Özyeğin, one of Turkey's most successful entrepreneurs, with a focus on education, health, gender equality, rural development, and disaster relief in Turkey. Harvard Business School senior lecturer Christina Wing and Murat Özyeğin (MBA 2003) discuss how the company is a model for making a significant impact across multiple sectors of society through giving and how that legacy can be sustained in the future.

As a Black female CEO, Shellye Archambeau is no stranger to adversity. Now she faces her most critical leadership decision. The software company she leads, MetricStream, is losing customers, hemorrhaging cash, and struggling to make payroll. Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley discusses Archambeau’s leadership style and the importance of developing resilience, particularly when managing through a crisis.

Bill Riddick, an African-American community leader and counselor, must find a way to bridge the divide between Black and white community leaders, who are on opposing sides of school integration in Durham, North Carolina, in 1971. Harvard Business School professors Francesca Gino and Jeffrey Huizinga discuss how empathy and curiosity can foster understanding in divisive situations.

Melvin Carter, the mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota, swept into office in 2018, promising to improve equity. In his campaign, he had spoken from experience about what it felt like to be pulled over by police as a Black man. He wanted to create a new public safety framework that would be rooted in community. But then the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out much of the city’s budget and the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by a police officer in neighboring Minneapolis sparked calls to defund the police. How would Mayor Carter make these changes happen?

For family social workers, coping with the hardships of children and parents is part of the job. But that can cause a lot of stress. Is it possible to use non-cash rewards and recognition to improve social workers’ well-being? Ashley Whillans describes the experience of Chief Executive Michael Sanders’ experience at the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care.

Unilever’s Dove soap became a brand with purpose when it launched the “Campaign for Real Beauty” to combat media-driven stereotypes of female beauty. But now Dove is facing criticism about its other brands that contradict the Dove campaign, and struggling to determine the best allocation of funds between advertising and the educational programs that deliver social impact. Can Dove maintain both its market position and social impact in the future?

As the transportation landscape evolves, can Uber adapt its business model to be successful in unique regional markets around the world? Alexander MacKay describes Uber’s global market strategy and responses by regulators and local competitors.

From Weight Watchers to bariatric surgery, innovations for combatting obesity abound. But which will do the most good for society and yield the best business results? Harvard Business School professor Regina Herzlinger discusses how to evaluate health care innovations aimed at providing solutions for obesity in her case, “Fighting the Battle of the Bulge – Evaluating Innovations in Morbid Obesity Treatment.”