Cold Call

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 success.

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 Capstone course and how the TypeCoach personality classications taught them how to recognize and work across cognitive differences, ultimately improving team dynamics and their final project outcome.

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 transformation. But, two years after initiating their AI transformation journey, the organization’s daily active usage of AI tools had reached over 60% and monthly active usage over 98%, significantly altering how sales professionals approached their work. The path to adoption had required Microsoft to evolve its approach based on early deployment insights. Harvard Business School Associate Professors Iav Bojinov and Shunyuan Zhang join Brian Kenny to discuss the case, “Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions: The Deployment of Copilot and Agents.” They explore the company’s journey to successfully mobilizing AI adoption within the sales process, the challenges it faces integrating autonomous sales agents, what it takes to get thousands of employees to fundamentally change how they work.

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 TITAN prepared for its next phase of growth, Papalexopoulos faced the consequential decision of whether to continue leading the company, promote a trusted insider, or become the first in the company’s history to recommend to the board appoint a non-family CEO.

Harvard Business School Professor George Serafeim and TITAN former CEO Dimitri Papalexopoulos join Brian Kenny to discuss the case, “Transforming a Titan,” exploring digitalization, globalization, and succession planning of an established family business as well as how to accelerate low-carbon efforts in a carbon intensive industry.

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 reducing environmental impact. Turning this technical success into a viable product, however, meant confronting intertwined challenges around behavior change, infrastructure compatibility, financing models, and stakeholder incentives. Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Maria Roche and SURT engineer Dr. Shannon Yee join Brian Kenny to discuss the case “Toilets for the Underserved: The SURT Commercialization Challenge” and the central question of how to launch and then scale a technology particularly important for underserved markets, but not a lucrative short term investment opportunity.