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Cold Call

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.

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  • 25 episodes
  • fortnightly
  • Avg 29 min
  • English

Episodes 25

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  • #273
    January 6 · 34 min

    How Equitable Confronted Its Inertia After 160 Years in Business

    Equitable, a 163-year-old financial services firm, serves more than five million clients across three main lines of business: retirement planning, wealth management, and asset management. Spun out of French insurance giant AXA in a 2018 IPO, Equitable’s leadership team was excited to be out on its own but quickly realized that to overcome inertia and remain relevant, the company’s ways of working would need to change. In 2019, CEO Mark Pearson launched an effort known internally as New Ways of Working, or NWOW, aimed at helping the firm become faster, more accountable, and more adaptive in a highly competitive and regulated industry. Several years in, the effort sheds light on core leadership questions: What does true cultural change look like? What makes it last? And how do leaders bring skeptics along? Harvard Business School Professor Das Narayandas joins Pearson and COO Jeff Hurd to discuss the case “New WOW at Equitable: A New Way of Working.”

  • #272
    Dec 23, 2025 · 36 min

    Climate Rising: Extending Apparel Lifespan with ThredUp

    With the holiday season upon us, and thrifting a major trend, we’re sharing an episode of Harvard Business School’s Climate Rising podcast that’s focused on extending product life, reducing waste, and the growing role of resale in the circular economy. Climate Rising is all about what businesses are doing, can do, and should do to confront climate change. In this episode, “Extending Apparel Lifespan,” HBS Professor Mike Toffel talks to ThredUp CEO James Reinhart about why ThredUp chose to build a national logistics and technology platform for resale. They also talk about how the company partners with big brands to run their own resale channels and how AI and automation are reshaping the industry. It’s an insightful conversation for anyone interested in sustainability or circular business models.

  • #271
    Dec 9, 2025 · 27 min

    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 designed to attract talent aligned with that mission. In this episode, Chief People Officer L.J. Brock joins case author and HBS professor Charles Wang and host Brian Kenny to discuss how Coinbase’s strategy, explored in the case “Mission First at Coinbase,” raises critical questions about focus, inclusion, and attracting top talent in a volatile industry.

  • #270
    Nov 25, 2025 · 26 min

    BrandBastion Mixes AI and Human Judgment to Build Trust at Scale

    Jenny Wolfram founded BrandBastion in 2013 after noticing that many companies’ social media pages were teeming with spam, hostile messages, and unanswered comments—all of which chipped away at customer trust. She built an AI-powered platform, supported by human moderation, to help brands manage comment sections at scale, respond quickly to customers, and protect their reputation. Wolfram joins the company’s Head of Operations and Finance, Vesa Rikkinen, Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Julian De Freitas, and host Brian Kenny to discuss the HBS case “BrandBastion: Managing Online Brand Communities.” They explore key decisions brands face, including when to step in and respond to customers online, and how to make the case for investing in moderation.

  • #269
    Nov 11, 2025 · 29 min

    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 long-term insurance liabilities, can drive repeatable, superior returns and propel Apollo’s assets under management to $1.5 trillion. However, public markets award Apollo a multitude on its earnings that is far lower than asset-light peers like Blackstone, which highlights important trade-offs. Harvard Business School professor George Serafeim joins host Brian Kenny to discuss the questions raised by the case, Apollo Global Management, and explore what Apollo’s transformation reveals about business-model innovation and risk management in today’s rapidly evolving private markets ecosystem, and what it means to be a modern investment firm.

Showing 21–25 of 25 episodes