Beyond the Case
A podcast where global leaders from the Harvard Business School Owner/President Management (OPM) community join in a personal capacity and share the real decisions, failures, and mental models behind building enduring companies.
This podcast is independent and not affiliated with Harvard Business School.
Episodes
62 episodes
A Father’s Playbook: 15 Life Lessons I Want My Daughters to Know - Rusty Russell
This episode centers less on business success and more on legacy, urgency, and documenting life lessons for the next generation.Rusty Russell shares his journey from growing up on a farm in rural Australia, leaving school early, b...
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Season 1
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Episode 62
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38:55
Breaking the ‘Son Heir’ Myth in Business - Nafeesa Moloobhoy
Being a woman raised in a traditional family, married young, without completing college or having any work experience and then stepping in to lead a 96-year-old legacy business in the male-dominated shipping industry is an extraordinary challen...
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Season 1
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Episode 61
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38:31
The 20-Year Rule for Entrepreneurs: Happiness and Long-Term Selfishness - Vivek Bhargava
Vivek Bhargava's philosophy is that the best entrepreneurial life is built on integrity, optimism, learning, and continuous stretching with happiness as the foundation, not the reward.Vivek is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and author ...
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Season 1
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Episode 60
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32:59
How KPIs, KRAs, and Leadership Systems Scaled Aquilaw to 150 People - Sucharita Basu
Sucharita Basu, Managing Partner of Aquilaw, speaks about how leadership systems, KPIs, and lessons from the Harvard Business Scho...
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Season 1
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Episode 59
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31:51
Family Constitutions: A Key to Multi-Generational Business Continuity — Fernando Fey
One of the strongest realizations from this conversation is the importance of a family constitution in sustaining a multi-generational business. Many family companies assume alignment will naturally exist because of shared blood and hist...
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Season 1
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Episode 58
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28:10
What’s the Worst That Can Happen? Running Marathons in Iran and North Korea - Daf Dubbelman
Daf Dubbelman is a real estate entrepreneur, endurance athlete, and Harvard Business School OPM participant who is completing the program for the second time. Daf shares the mindset that drives both his athletic and business pursuits:
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Season 1
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Episode 57
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28:41
From 150 Tasks to 6 Priorities: Using the Pareto Principle with a Business Coach – Ankit Gupta
Ankit Gupta, second-generation entrepreneur and leader of the Holistic Group, shares how business coaching played a critical role in sharpening his leadership, focus, and decision-making. While formal lear...
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Season 1
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Episode 56
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14:40
Growing 620× Over 25 Years by Letting Go of Daily Operations - Devendra Surana
Devendra Surana describes his shift from founder-operator to builder of an enduring organization. Early failures (first 2–3 years) forced humility, sharper strategy, and resilience. Over time he leaned into what he’s best at - new product devel...
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Season 1
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Episode 55
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34:11
From HBS Student to Case Protagonist: Risking It All for Impact - Guillermo "Billy" Jaime
It’s rare to attend Harvard Business School as a student and even rarer to later become the subject of two HBS case studies. Billy Jaime did both. While enrolled in the Owner/Preside...
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Season 1
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Episode 54
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31:21
The Founder’s Blind Spot: Holding On Too Long - Daniel Silva
With nearly three decades of entrepreneurial leadership, deep OPM roots, and the humility of a lifelong learner, Daniel Silva brings a rare blend of technical rigor, family-business insight, and reflective wisdom to this conversation. As the co...
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Season 1
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Episode 53
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25:55
The Power of Psychological Safety Among Peers - with Felix Kues
Felix Kues is a serial entrepreneur, deep-tech investor, and Harvard Business School OPM participant. Felix shares his journey from building AI software companies across multiple continents to founding a highly automated venture fund and later ...
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Season 1
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Episode 52
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27:54
The Inner Operating System of an Entrepreneur: Advisors, Yoga, and Time - Sudhakar Kadavasal
Sudhakar Kadavasal, a second-generation entrepreneur from Chennai has built and led businesses across IT services, logistics, chemicals, construction, and energy, with operations in India and Dubai. Sudhakar shares how his father’s early entrep...
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Season 1
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Episode 51
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17:41
From $2,000 to 800,000 Subscribers: Building a Values-Driven Media Giant - Lucas Ferrugem
What began as a $2,000 experiment at age 13 has grown into one of Brazil’s most influential independent platforms, bootstrapped to over $40M in cumulative revenue, 800,000+ paying subscribers, and 30M annual viewers. This conversation goes beyo...
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Season 1
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Episode 50
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24:03
From Control to Trust: The Real Shift Every Entrepreneur Must Make - Ankita Gupta
This conversation is a powerful reminder that entrepreneurs must consciously evolve from being hands-on operators to becoming true leaders. In the early stages, control feels necessary. Every decision, review, and execution flows through the fo...
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Season 1
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Episode 49
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19:02
Thinking in Decades, Not Quarters: Lessons from a Multi-Generational Owner - Antonio Liberal
Third-generation entrepreneurship isn’t about inheriting a business. It’s about inheriting a promise and upgrading it for the next era. In this episode, Portuguese pharmacist and
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Season 1
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Episode 48
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29:19
Scaling Through Adjacencies, Not Distractions - Abhijit Vaish
Build adjacencies before you chase scale.Enduring companies don’t grow by random diversification. They expand by moving one thoughtful step outward from their core DNA, solving the next customer pain that naturally sits beside wha...
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Season 1
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Episode 47
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18:49
Sold to OpenAI: The Patience, People, and Principles Behind the Exit - Tomasz Kulakowski
He sold his company to OpenAI last month and the story behind it is a masterclass in patient entrepreneurship, long-term bets, and knowing when to start.Tomasz Kulakowski didn’t start his entrepreneurial journey fresh out of college. He ...
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Season 1
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Episode 46
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26:29
The Emperor Has No Clothes: Harvard OPM and Indian VCs with Vinay Pasricha
Vinay Pasricha shares his unfiltered and potentially controversial observations from 25 years as a serial entrepreneur in India. He ran an education training company that scaled to 200,000 students across 40 cities before winding it down. Five ...
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Season 1
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Episode 45
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35:01
Nothing Is Impossible When Discipline Is a Lifestyle: Ironman Lessons - Mohamed Mahlab
Elite endurance fitness demands structure, early mornings, repetition, and the ability to keep going when your brain wants to stop. Mohamed Mahlab uses that same “choose the hard thing” mindset to challenge himself as a leader: he sets public c...
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Season 1
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Episode 44
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39:07
The Cost of Ambition No One Measures - Somdutta Singh
This talk is really about rewiring what “success” means. From chasing validation, money, and outcomes to building with reflection, detachment, discipline, and community, while protecting your inner life (mental health, spirituality, re...
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Season 1
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Episode 43
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39:53
Scaling Trust in a Volatile, Unorganized Market - Akshay Verma
How do you go about scaling in an unorganized industry that’s mid-disruption—while commodity prices swing wildly and brand “differences” can feel paper-thin? You stop trying to sell a product and start engineering trust, systems, and culture th...
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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31:18
How My Principles Replaced My Instincts - with Radu Dumitrescu
Restaurants don’t win on food alone, they win on feel. Radu Dumitrescu, founder & CEO of Stadio Hospitality Concepts, lays out a leadership philosophy built on culture, principl...
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Season 1
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Episode 41
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26:44
From a Billion-Dollar Market Cap to Insolvency: Decisions, Reflection, and a Robust Second Innings - Pujit Aggarwal
From a $1B market-cap market darling to a wipeout, this conversation traces how Pujit Aggarwal - former MD & CEO of Orbit Corporation, a Mumbai-based luxury real estate developer that went public via an IPO - thinks abo...
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Season 1
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Episode 40
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28:15
The Quiet Math of a Meaningful Life and Its North Star - Rajan Shah
If you had to write your obituary today, what would you want it to say - how many lives you lifted, or how perfectly you avoided failure? Rajan Shah’s story argues that the legacy worth leaving demands risk, learning, and the courage to ...
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Season 1
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Episode 39
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25:36
Lessons You Only Learn When Things Fall Apart - Geetanjali AlamShah
47 litigations. That’s how deep the hole got after Geetanjali “Gee” AlamShah’s airline bet went sideways and it’s also the most hopeful part of this conversation: she climbed out. Not by pretending it didn’t hurt, but by getting discipli...
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Season 1
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Episode 38
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29:34
