Osmo quickly rose to become one of the top Edtech startups after it was launched by Pramod Sharma and Jerome Scholler in 2013. Their innovative toys employed artificial intelligence to combine physical and virtual playing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, their sales skyrocket as parents desperately search for solutions to engage their children in at-home learning. However, the founders struggle to keep their toys both educational and fun, and discover .....more

An analysis of 1,172 public companies over 19 years reveals that the more uncommon a leader''s given name is, the more his or her strategy deviates from the industry norm.

One of the hardest disciplines in business and in life is tearing down what you''ve built to build something better," writes the founder and former CEO of Qualtrics--among the hottest tech companies of the past decade. He explains how the company grew from a family start-up in Provo, Utah, to be acquired by SAP in January 2019 for $8 billion: "the largest private enterprise-software acquisition in history." At its IPO two years .....more

As they deal with a business landscape that is evolving constantly, rapidly, and unpredictably, executives all over the world are full of questions about change: "How much?" "How fast?" "How sustainable?" And sometimes just "How?" They can''t hope to answer those questions unless they understand their companies'' capacity for change--but they''ve lacked good tools for measuring that. .....more

More and more manufacturing companies are talking about what''s often called the circular economy--in which businesses can create supply chains that recover or recycle the resources used to create their products. Shrinking their environmental footprint, trimming operational waste, and using expensive resources more efficiently are certainly appealing to CEOs. But creating a circular business model is challenging--and taking the wrong approach .....more

Today it''s not unusual for corporations that have dominated their markets for decades to be blindsided by upstarts with radical new business models. A lot of young ventures, on the other hand, raise vast sums of money and attract tens of millions of customers, only to collapse when they can''t figure out how to fend off imitators. In these situations and many others, the underlying cause is often a failure to take a holistic approach .....more

Chicanery is common in the start-up world: With so much at stake, founders are apt to exaggerate, obfuscate, and otherwise stretch the truth when courting investors and other important stakeholders. Such deception locks up resources by prolonging the life of doomed ventures and makes it hard for VCs and employees to know where best to invest their money or labor. It also exacts a personal toll on founders themselves. The authors take a multidisciplinary .....more

In August 2018, after nearly six months of searching, Charles Wells was convinced that he should found HelloSelf to help people improve their sense of mental wellbeing. Those feeling mentally unwell would receive support from fully qualified clinical psychotherapists, while those feeling good would receive coaching and support to feel even better. Having researched a wide range of opportunities in the "BrainTech" space, including measuring .....more

In April 2021, Charles Wells, founder and CEO of HelloSelf was reflecting on the company''s progress since it launched two years earlier. HelloSelf''s goal was to help the mentally ill recover and those who were mentally fit to stay well and feel even better. To do this, the company intended to provide members most in need with convenient access to PhDs in Clinical Psychology. For members with moderate needs and those seeking personal .....more

In 2020, over half of all initial public offerings (IPOs) in the United States were special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), blank-check companies that typically had two years to find a business to take public, usually through a reverse merger. Together, 248 SPACs raised over $83 billion, 46% of the total US IPO proceeds in 2020. The SPAC boom accelerated in 2021. By the end of March 2021, there were 298 SPAC IPOs year-to-date, raising $96.6 .....more