PODCAST · business
Cold Call
by HBR Presents / Brian Kenny
Cold Call distills Harvard Business School's legendary case studies into podcast form. Hosted by Brian Kenny, the podcast airs every two weeks and features Harvard Business School faculty discussing cases they've written and the lessons they impart.
Episodes
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Restructuring Mobile Game Giant Supercell for a Turnaround
Founded in 2010, Supercell was a Finland-based mobile gaming company that had developed and launched five global hit mobile games. The company’s early philosophy was that it could produce hits by designing the company to appeal to top talent: Developers worked in small, autonomous groups called...
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Getting Your Boss to Buy into Your Strategy (from “Coaching Real Leaders”)
You have a strategy you believe in. But what happens when your boss doesn’t? “Cold Call” presents this bonus episode from the podcast “Coaching Real Leaders,” where host and executive coach Muriel Wilkins works with an ambitious leader whose plan to drive growth is at risk because she hasn’t been...
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Considering the Future of the BBC and Its Funding Model
With viewership of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) in decline, the country’s Culture Minister must recommend a new funding model for the venerated public institution which will allow the broadcaster to succeed in an increasingly competitive media environment. Harvard Business School senior...
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Dare to Be Bad at Something (from Fixable)
Sometimes the only way to win is by finding the courage to lose. Cold Call presents a special episode from TED’s Fixable podcast. In it, the show’s hosts, Leadership Coach Anne Morriss and Harvard Business School Professor Frances Frei, challenge leaders to “dare to be bad” in order to free up...
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How GEO Is Changing the Role of Brand Manager
AthenaHQ, a startup that helps brands monitor, protect, and optimize their visibility across conversational AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini was founded in 2025. Co-founded by Andrew Yan, the company built a platform that enables major consumer brands, B2B software companies, and...
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Best of Cold Call: The Bumpy Road to Expanding a Fleet of Electric School Buses
How do you scale innovation in a fragmented system you don’t fully control? That is the challenge Highland Electric Fleets faced as it worked to replace diesel school buses with electric vehicles across the United States. In this episode from 2025, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss...
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Can an AI-Powered Scribe Curb Physician Burnout?
In 2024, Mass General Brigham, the largest health system in Massachusetts, piloted an AI-powered, ambient note-taking and transcription program among a subset of clinicians to address increasing rates of staff burnout and turnover -- largely driven by the administrative burden of clinical...
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Why Metaphysic AI Looked to Hollywood for a Digital Rights Model
Founded in 2021, AI generative video company Metaphysic first rose to fame through viral deepfake videos. It achieved a significant milestone with "Here," the first major film to use AI for de-aging actors, including Tom Hanks. The company had two revenue streams: high-end content creation for...
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How a Museum Marketing Team Used AI to Bring People Closer to Art
In 2025, Harvard Art Museums considered using generative AI in a marketing campaign to increase visitor engagement and membership. Looking to boost attendance and appeal to a younger audience base, and facing intensified competition for leisure time, the Museums’ marketing team explored animating…
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Are We Entering a New Age of Creativity with the Help of AI?
In March 2024, The Atlantic announced a strategic content and product partnership with artificial intelligence giant OpenAI. OpenAI would license The Atlantic’s content to train its models and respond to user queries, while The Atlantic would receive a fee, privileged access to OpenAI’s…
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How School of Rock Created Structure in Order to Scale with Agility and Creativity
In the summer of 2021, School of Rock was a youth-oriented music education company with 291 franchise- and company-owned schools globally. Before Rob Price became CEO in 2017, School of Rock’s nonconformist culture led to variability in teaching styles, educational outcomes, and risks for…
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The Founder Mindset: Tim Ferriss on Experiments, Risk, and Freedom
What does it take to be a founder? In this episode of The Founder Mindset, produced by Harvard Business School Foundry and hosted by Senior Lecturer Reza Satchu, Satchu sits down with writer, podcaster, and investor Tim Ferriss to discuss his blueprint for nimble decision-making and actionable...
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How Strong Teams Leverage Different Personality Types
Harvard Business School Professor Len Schlesinger and TypeCoach President Rob Toomey join Brian Kenny to discuss the two mini cases, Night Two in Hanoi: Team Dynamics Under Pressure and Day 6 in Buenos Aires: Fatto Bene. They explore MBA students’ journeys through the first-year FIELD Global...
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Microsoft’s Path to Adopting and Scaling AI Across its Sales Organization
In early 2024, six months after the highly anticipated launch of Microsoft Copilot across the 62,000-person Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) organization—one of the world’s largest sales organizations—the initial excitement had not yet materialized into widespread adoption and...
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How a Family-Owned Greek Cement Company Evolved Its Leadership While Pivoting Its Product Portfolio
Over 26 years at the helm, Dimitri Papalexopoulos, fourth-generation CEO of TITAN Cement, has turned the company from a domestic player into an internationally diversified group and championed an AI-driven productivity leap, even while steering the company through multiple economic crises. As…
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The Challenges of Scaling a Technology for Social Good
In 2021, a breakthrough in sanitation technology – developed under the Gates Foundation’s “Reinvent the Toilet” challenge – stood ready for commercialization. The Single User Reinvented Toilet (SURT) offered an off-grid, self-contained system capable of processing waste, generating water, and...
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Should Wasabi Technologies Make the Move from Direct Sales to a Channel Strategy?
After launching Wasabi Technologies, a successful cloud storage company, founder and CEO David Friend was ready to scale the venture rapidly. The company had focused primarily on direct sales, but an opportunity to pivot toward channel sales was on the horizon. However, making this pivot would…
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How Software Startup InsightSquared Wrestled with Creating an Optimal Sales and Marketing Strategy
Software startup InsightSquared had recently hit $2 million in revenue and secured an $8 million round of venture capital. However, the founders disagreed on the path ahead, specifically on the sales and marketing plan. Should they focus on a sales-centric approach to growth or a…
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Why the Commonwealth Bank of Australia Opened Up to Customers about Credit Card Risks
A bank’s decision to experiment with being more transparent with about credit card drawbacks might help customers make better choices, but would those choices come at the expense of bank performance? Harvard Business School Professor Leslie John joins Brian Kenny to discuss the case…
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Innovations in Olympic Speed Skating: When to Reveal a Novel Approach
The U.S. Men’s Olympic speed skating team devised a new approach to the team pursuit event following their disappointing performance in the 2018 Winter Olympics. The team saw promising initial results from their innovations, but they faced a decision about whether to reveal their new techniques....
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If and How to Scale the Acquired Podcast
By 2025, the business podcast Acquired was getting one million listeners per episode, having doubled the audience year over since Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal started it in 2015. And they’d grown without a strict release schedule or relentless optimization. Still, they felt pressure to...
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How Italian Luxury Brand Golden Goose Determined Its Next Phase of Growth
In 2025, Golden Goose, the Italian brand known for its handcrafted, distressed sneakers, was at a crossroads. CEO Silvio Campara had grown the label from a cult favorite into a $650 million global force, but sustaining that growth raised tough questions: Should the company double down on…
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How Equitable Confronted Its Inertia After 160 Years in Business
In 2019, Equitable’s CEO, Mark Pearson, set out to change how the 163-year-old financial services firm gets work done. He wanted the firm to speed up decision-making and empower employees through a flatter hierarchy, agile teams, and more opportunities to lead. Most divisions thrived under the…
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Climate Rising: Extending Apparel Lifespan with ThredUp
In this special holiday crossover episode from Harvard Business School’s Climate Rising podcast, Professor Mike Toffel talks with ThredUp CEO James Reinhart about the company’s mission to extend the life of apparel and reduce waste through resale. As thrifting becomes more popular and circular...
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Inside Coinbase’s Mission-First, Remote-First Bet
In 2020, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase made two bold organizational moves: going fully remote and banning political discussion at work. These decisions, aimed at reinforcing a mission-first culture, were supported by a written, codified approach to company values and a hiring philosophy…
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BrandBastion Mixes AI and Human Judgment to Build Trust at Scale
Jenny Wolfram founded BrandBastion to help companies manage the risks of social media by combining AI with human moderation. She joins HBS professor Julian De Freitas and BrandBastion’s Head of Operations and Finance, Vesa Rikkinen, to discuss how this hybrid model builds trust without ballooning...
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Apollo Global Management’s Business Model Transformation
Apollo Global Management has transformed itself from a traditional private equity giant into an insurance-fueled credit powerhouse—thanks to its acquisition of life annuity issuer Athene. CEO Marc Rowan makes a bold bet that an asset-heavy model, which is backed by hundreds of billions in…
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Inside India’s Energy Transition: Tata Power’s Net Zero Strategy
Tata Power stood at the forefront of India’s energy transition. The firm’s long history was deeply intertwined with the country's development. As Mumbai’s power needs increased, Tata Power built out thermal assets across India, and while thermal power generation remained Tata Power’s mainstay…
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Tim Ferriss at a Career Crossroads: How Should He Shape His Next Chapter?
In April 2024, writer, podcaster, and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss—known for his hugely popular podcast “The Tim Ferriss Show” and NYT-bestselling books like The 4-Hour Workweek—found himself at a crossroads. Although his podcast was generating millions annually, he questioned the sustainability of...
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How Dollar Tree Plans to Thrive Despite Breaking the Buck
For 35 years, Dollar Tree, a discount retail chain selling general merchandise, had held its fixed price point steady, charging $1.00 for its ever-changing assortment of household items, food, stationery, books, seasonal items, gifts, toys, and clothing. That changed in late 2021, when the…
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How Lyft’s CEO Got the Company Moving Again
In the winter of 2023, Lyft was facing declining market share and financial pressures. Enter new CEO David Risher, who took the helm amid low morale and limited resources. His challenge: reignite innovation, refocus the culture, and find new ways to stand out in an industry dominated by Uber....
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Partnerships Power Highland Electric’s Expanding Fleet of School Buses
How do you scale innovation in a system where critical pieces are out of your control? That is the challenge Highland Electric Fleets faced as it worked to replace diesel school buses with electric vehicles across the United States. While Highland provided financing, infrastructure, and fleet...
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Atlassian Anchors Remote Flexibility in Structured Daily Practices
Atlassian promised employees they could work from anywhere, permanently. By 2024, its data-driven routines and workplace experiments were shaping both its culture and its products, turning the company into an innovation lab. Now it faces a new challenge: helping customers adopt these practices,...
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Disrupting the Freezer Aisle: Dr. Bombay Ice Cream
When Happi Co. CEO Sam Rockwell partnered with Snoop Dogg and his son, Cordell Broadus, to launch Dr. Bombay Ice Cream, the team set out to disrupt a stagnant market with bold flavors and culturally resonant branding. With national retail placement and projected first-year sales of $20 million…
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Shake Shack’s Digital Playbook: More Tech, Same Hospitality?
Shake Shack began in 2001 as a single hot dog cart in New York City and grew into a global fast-casual chain known for quality ingredients and a strong hospitality ethos. In 2024, following a rapid digital transformation that introduced kiosks, mobile ordering, and app-based personalization…
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At Booking.com, Innovation Means Constant Failure (Summer Repeat)
During a busy travel season, digital travel platform Booking.com tried a risky experiment that meant changing the site’s landing page. Then CEO Gillian Tans made the decision to lean into the company’s “test everything” culture—even if it meant failure. In this episode from 2019, HBS Professor...
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Ensuring Boston Ballet Stays Relevant
Ming Min Hui, executive director of Boston Ballet, is unique in her field. As a young, Asian American woman with a HBS MBA and a background in finance, she focuses on ensuring the ballet company stays true to its art form and still relevant to its times. Hui had worked for eight years at Boston...
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How Bill Wilson Cofounded Alcoholics Anonymous and Created a Lasting Social Movement
Bill Wilson was an incredibly entrepreneurial young man with tremendous potential. He was also a drunk, until an epiphany made him sober. With his personal drive and fellowship with former drinking buddies, Wilson built a social movement and worldwide organization. Founded in 1935, Alcoholics...
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How Keurig Brewed a Return to Growth
Keurig Green Mountain (KGM) invented a category and became a household name in at-home coffee brewing in North America. But by the early 2010s, the public company suffered a series of product missteps, negative media scrutiny, and challenging partner relationships. In late 2015, the company was...
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Mattel’s Barbie Playbook: Replicating Success Across the Company’s Portfolio
The 2023 movie Barbie and its accompanying marketing blitz reinstated a celebrated icon at the forefront of cultural conversation. This sudden goodwill stood in contrast to decades of criticism of the Barbie brand. Although proponents had celebrated Barbie for her promise to “inspire the…
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How Duolingo Aims to Diversify Beyond Language Learning
Launched in 2011, Duolingo grew into the most downloaded education app in the world. Its gamified approach to language learning and use of adaptive AI technology helped it reach 100 million monthly active users and a market capitalization approaching $15 billion by late 2024. The company also saw...
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The Nuqul Group Works to Preserve Its Founder’s Legacy
In 1952, Palenstinian refugee Elia Nuqul started a trading business in Jordan. Nuqul Group subsequently grew into one of the country’s largest family businesses. Its flagship company, Fine Hygienic Holding (FHH), was a leader in hygienic paper products across the Middle East and North Africa.…
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Calyx Global: Improving the Quality of Carbon Credits
In 2021, Donna Lee and Duncan van Bergen founded Calyx Global to improve the quality of carbon credits sold in the voluntary carbon market. Organizations buy those credits for their decarbonization efforts to meet net-zero commitments. The startup had carefully avoided perceptions of conflicts of...
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How Lanco Medical Group Fosters Workforce Happiness to Motivate Employees and Grow Fast
How important is it to maintain a happy workforce? With this question in mind, Lanco Medical Group, a small but fast-growing pharmaceutical distributor serving Latin America, designed their employee benefits and incentives program. But there were gaps between what leadership believed motivated...
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The Evolution of Luxury Brand Porsche
Porsche has reigned as a leading sports and luxury car company for nearly 80 years. Central to the German automaker’s growth strategy is creating great products, such as the legendary 911 Carrera sports car. But the automotive industry is facing disruption and new competition. Company leadership…
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Should Google Stay in the Cloud Gaming Business?
Google formally announced the innovative video game service Stadia at the 2019 Game Developer Conference. The company invested substantial resources to support the demanding requirements of cloud gaming. But the early uptake by premium video gamers was disappointing. The leadership team faced a...
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Celebrating 10 Years of Cold Call
Cold Call is celebrating its tenth year of distilling Harvard Business School case studies. To kick off the 2025 anniversary, the podcast’s production team has curated three favorite episodes from 2024. Host Brian Kenny recommends one on leadership with HBS Senior Lecturer Tony Mayo. Show…
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Managing the Future of Work: Microsoft’s AI Perspective
Artificial intelligence is changing how we live and work in ways large and small. And it's why today we’re sharing an episode of Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work podcast. In the episode “Microsoft’s AI perspective: From chatbots to reengineering the organization” from…
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The Leadership Style of Football Legend Deion Sanders
In 2022, Deion Sanders, known as “Coach Prime,” was hired as head coach of the University of Colorado football team, which had only one winning season in the previous 15 years. Many observers were excited to have the two-time Super Bowl champion as CU’s new head coach. But some questioned whether...
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Scaling a Family Business While Maintaining Founding Values
One of the oldest Black-owned security firms in the U.S., Johnson Security Bureau credits much of its success to its status as a woman-owned, minority-owned family firm. To grow the business, however, CEO Jessica Johnson-Cope considers partnering with security firms in other states, something…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Cold Call distills Harvard Business School's legendary case studies into podcast form. Hosted by Brian Kenny, the podcast airs every two weeks and features Harvard Business School faculty discussing cases they've written and the lessons they impart.
HOSTED BY
HBR Presents / Brian Kenny
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Cold Call have?
Cold Call currently has 298 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Cold Call about?
Cold Call distills Harvard Business School's legendary case studies into podcast form. Hosted by Brian Kenny, the podcast airs every two weeks and features Harvard Business School faculty discussing cases they've written and the lessons they impart.
How often does Cold Call release new episodes?
Cold Call publishes regularly with 298 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Cold Call?
You can listen to Cold Call on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Cold Call?
Cold Call is created and hosted by HBR Presents / Brian Kenny.
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