Established in 1997, the California Research Center (CRC) enriches the intellectual activities of HBS faculty and fortifies the connection between the Boston campus and the West Coast. The center’s primary mission is to facilitate faculty research and case study writing on West Coast companies, with an emphasis on California, specifically the San Francisco Bay Area. Since its opening, the CRC has helped develop more than 250 cases, which are used in all academic units within the School's MBA and Executive Education programs.
Research has focused on topics such as scaling startups, angel and venture investing, acquisition-related manufacturing integration processes, the commercialization of technology, capacity issues at biotech companies, and growth challenges for clean-tech companies. Popular cases over the years include:
The CRC Office is a 6-7 minute walk from Burlingame Caltrain station. The closest BART stop is Millbrae station which is a 10 minute taxi ride to the CRC.
San Francisco startup Braintrust developed a talent network governed and incentivized by a blockchain token as a way to align incentives between clients and freelancers. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a rise of remote work and accelerated the growth of the platform; however, the founders must decide how to sustainably scale the network. They must also make key decisions around global expansion, feature adoption, and recruiting users on both sides of the platform--all while managing the logistics of a decentralized blockchain token.
Set in January 2021, the CEO of SafeGraph, a four-year-old startup that sold Data as a Service, looked to the future. His aim was to become the most trusted source for data about a physical place. The company provided points of interest (POI) and foot traffic data on nearly 7 million businesses in the U.S. and Canada from a variety of providers, then labelled attributes of the data such as the brand affiliation and how long consumers remained at the site. The company sold this data to nearly one hundred customers in advertising tech, retail, and financial services. Clients such as Verizon, Sysco, and Goldman Sachs used it to better understand rapidly changing patterns of consumer behavior. At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company offered free access to its data through the COVID-19 Data Consortium to government agencies to help them understand pandemic behavior and make policy decisions. Nearly a year into the health crisis and with a vaccine rolling out, SafeGraph needed to decide how to evolve the COVID-19 Data Consortium. Perhaps the data offered for free should soon be converted to a paid model, albeit on a subsidized basis? More broadly, how should the team prioritize the government sector into its enterprise customer segment mix and how would this impact the business model and pricing?
An examination of the strategic marketing challenges facing Thinx as it tries to grow in the face of menstruation taboos and competition from large incumbents.
Zipline established the world's largest logistics network in Rwanda and Ghana by delivering medical supplies to hospitals via automated drones. The company is now looking to expand in the U.S. and partnered with Walmart to expand into home delivery. Zipline must navigate the U.S. regulatory space while prioritizing its growth opportunities domestically and abroad.
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Allison Ciechanover oversees the team that develops teaching cases and supports faculty research on West Coast companies, and has written over two dozen cases on tech companies. She also serves as the School’s liaison with the West Coast entrepreneurial community, assisting with MBA admissions, alumni relations, and MBA job search activities. She received her B.A. (magna cum laude) from the University of Pennsylvania, her MBA from Harvard Business School, and a Masters of International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies.
After graduating from Harvard Business School, Allison worked in the Goldman Sachs Investment Management Division. She later led Process Improvement efforts in the Finance Group at Invitrogen (now Life Technologies). Most recently, Allison was a VP for Investments at Pacific Corporate Group, a La Jolla-based private equity fund of funds. Prior to her years at HBS, Allison was an Analyst in Goldman Sachs’s Executive Office, and a Researcher for the U.S. Department of Treasury Office of the Assistant Secretary for International Affairs.
George has worked in Silicon Valley in roles ranging from product management to speechwriting. He worked for companies including VMware, Cisco, EMC, Hitachi, as well as startups in healthcare and education. George has an interest in machine learning and cognitive science. He enjoys playing piano and unicycling.
George received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from San Jose State University and MBA from Harvard Business School.
Jeff worked at Facebook on the Public Content Operations team, and later as a Marketing Writer at a Mountain View-based education technology startup. He spent his early career as an associate at the conservation organization WildAid (in San Francisco and Cambodia) and at Outside PR & Sportsmarketing, a boutique outdoor-industry firm. He has also taught several writing courses at Boston University and Northern Arizona University, where he was Editor-in-Chief of Thin Air Magazine.
Jeff received his B.A. in History from Columbia University, where he started for the NCAA Division I Baseball team. He received an MA in English from the Northern Arizona University and a MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Boston University. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife, Yvonne, who earned her MBA from HBS in 2014 and has since served as Marketing Director for several technology startups. In his spare time, he writes short stories and along with his dog, Dipsea, is an avid trail runner.
Nicole started her career as a management consultant at McKinsey & Co, working in San Francisco and New York with a focus in the consumer, retail, and media sectors. After McKinsey, Nicole served as a Director of Strategic Planning at PepsiCo in Purchase, NY and worked with Indra Nooyi -- who at the time was leading PepsiCo’s strategic planning group. Nicole’s specific engagement at PepsiCo centered on the company’s restaurant group, later spun out as Yum! Brands. Nicole helped launch the CRC when it first opened in 1997 and wrote many of the early cases at the CRC. In addition to her professional experiences, Nicole has served on the board of directors of CuriOdyssey, a children’s science center, and on the board of the Hillsborough Schools Foundation. Nicole received her MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School and her B.A. in Economics from Stanford University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.