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
31 episodes
Hari Kiran Chereddi on Mental Models That Let Winning Emerge After Losing
What if you could hear, firsthand, from an international sportsperson about the emotional journey that follows a loss?Not loss as failure, but loss as a teacher: the kind that strips away ego, demands honesty, and forces you to co...
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Season 1
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Episode 31
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25:45
Jeff Cronkshaw on Scuba Diving and Leading When Panic Isn’t an Option
Jeff Cronkshaw doesn’t talk about leadership in theory — he talks about it 40 meters underwater, in zero visibility, when failure isn’t abstract and panic kills.Across this conversation, Jeff draws a powerful parallel between s...
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Season 1
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Episode 30
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34:39
Gustavo Reichmann on Optimism, Reinvention, and Thinking in 20-Year Chapters
Optimism isn’t just a personality trait in this episode - it’s a discipline. Gustavo Reichmann frames life as forward motion: the future should feel bigger than the past, even as you age. He credits that mindset to watching his 95-year-old gran...
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Season 1
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Episode 29
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29:03
Eric Hoffman: The Owner Who Bought Back His Company from Private Equity
Hoffman Media, a founder-led niche media company, raised private equity capital in the mid-2000s to fund acquisitions and organic growth. The firm entered the 2008 financial crisis with a PE partner h...
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Season 1
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Episode 28
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26:46
Vishwajeet Vishnu: The Price of Success Was Persistence
Vishwajeet Vishnu’s journey isn’t built on privilege, pedigree, or perfect timing. It’s built on persistence.Forced to drop out of college after 12th grade due to financial hardship, Vishwajeet entered the workforce early and educated hi...
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Season 1
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Episode 27
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30:53
Sameer Jain: Early Internet Entrepreneur Who Bootstrapped Success by Accident
He wasn’t supposed to be an entrepreneur—at least not by design.Sameer Jain never set out with a business plan or the intention to build a company. After experimenting with the early internet in India he quietly bootstrapped
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Season 1
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Episode 26
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29:26
Orit Pollak on the Power of Networks and Shared Wisdom
Orit Pollak is a second-generation industrial leader based in Peru and a participant in Harvard Business School’s OPM 67 program. She leads her family’s manufacturing group, incl...
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Season 1
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Episode 25
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27:20
Carolyn Deng: How Discipline Becomes Wisdom
“You don’t have to ask a hero where she comes from—you have to understand how she thinks.”Carolyn Deng’s journey is shaped less by titles or geography and more by the evolution of her judgment. Raised in China’s highly disciplined...
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Season 1
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Episode 24
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26:40
Shailu Tipparaju: Frameworks for Repeatable Entrepreneurial Success and the Power of Pausing
“The best feedback a parent can ever get is when a child says: I want to be like my mom or dad.”Shailu Tipparaju says this knowing his sons still tease him for being “boring” and overl...
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Season 1
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Episode 23
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28:52
Deepak Narayanan on Why Failure Is No Longer a Stigma in Indian Business
India’s business ecosystem is undergoing a profound reset. Failure is no longer viewed as a lasting stigma for entrepreneurs, private equity has firmly entered the capital stack, and regulatory reforms have steadily improved the ease of ...
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Season 1
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Episode 22
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43:53
Faisal Charania: Living Like the Game Is Rigged in Your Favor
“Rumi says you have to live life like it’s rigged in your favor.”For Faisal Charania, that mindset is inseparable from his belief that small business in America is the best business in the world. As he puts it, small bu...
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Season 1
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Episode 21
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22:14
The Wisdom of Great Exits: Why the Best Companies Are the Ones You’d Own Forever — Ludimila Mangili
After 19 episodes of Beyond the Case, it finally happened - someone from OPM 67 actually said “BATNA” out loud. (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement)More importantly, this conversation is crucial list...
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Season 1
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Episode 20
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28:59
Grant Collard: Fired, Broke, a New Dad. From Basement to Billion-Dollar Portfolio
Grant Collard, Founder and CEO of Redstone Residential, shares his unconventional journey into entrepreneurship and real estate. Raised in a non-entrepreneurial environment, Grant initially pursued...
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Season 1
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Episode 19
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42:42
Iman Mutlaq: The Apex Who Hunts Her Own Success
Iman Mutlaq is a self-made, belief-driven, high-agency leader whose identity was forged by early responsibility, sustained by discipline, and expressed through fearless execution - without waiting for permission from culture, circumstance, o...
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Season 1
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Episode 18
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31:50
Jaber Abdul Wahab: Governing Across Geographies in a Diversified Family Business
What happens when a founder steps away early and the next generation is handed responsibility without a roadmap? Jaber Abdul Wahab, Group CEO of the diversified Bridgeway Group, talks abou...
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Season 1
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Episode 17
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19:55
Michael Jang Parker: Entrepreneurial Burnout, Founder Loneliness, and Mental Health Recovery
This episode opens with an unfiltered conversation about entrepreneurial burnout, mental health, and the deep loneliness of building companies—a place nearly every entrepreneur has found themselves at some point, even if few speak about ...
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Season 1
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Episode 16
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39:23
The Slow Cooker Journey of a Maxillofacial Surgeon: Ritika Khanna & Ramandeep Singh
One important question didn’t make it into the conversation: why do doctors have such bad handwriting? After hearing Ritika’s journey, the best explanation seems to be that when someone spends their life healing faces as a maxillofacial ...
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Season 1
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Episode 15
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46:36
Sam Patel on Storytelling, Conviction, and the Long Game of Entrepreneurship
Sam Patel, founder of Astra Culture & Looped shares that storytelling isn’t marketing fluff - it’s how people emotionally decide to buy. He is a Chicago-based MD...
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Season 1
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Episode 14
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55:08
When the Chinese Government Chose Her Degree, MiuMiu Miao Chose Entrepreneurship
Born and educated in China, MiuMiu Miao's university major, computer science was assigned by the Chinese government, not chosen by her. By her second year, she realized it wasn’t her path, dropped out, and discovered her true calling through an...
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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22:48
The Power of a Founder Forum: with Rafael Sierra
From powder to purpose: how one founder turned niche know-how and crisis moments into a durable company.Rafael “Rafa” Sierra, founder of EPSA Mexico, a specialist in automating powder handling fo...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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29:52
Rebuilding From Zero: Filippo Ghirelli on Resilience, Creativity & the Art of Thinking
From losing everything in a foreign country to rebuilding a global sustainability group, Filippo Ghirelli’s story is a masterclass in resilience, philosophy-driven leadership, and creative reinvention. In this conversation, the
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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30:26
Growing Up Together, Leading Together: Anik Dharamshi on Gujarati Bonds, Seamless Succession, and Going Public
Anik Dharamshi, Executive Director of HD Fire Protect, shares the journey of one of India’s oldest fire-protection manufacturers. Founded by his uncle in 1990, the business began by developing Indian...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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21:26
Ryan Walker: The Heart Behind Entrepreneurship—Hope, Love & Leadership
Ryan Walker is the founder of Matrix MKTG, a full-service creative and experiential marketing agency. It was born from a client opportunity he initially saw only as a short-term consulting gig.Ry...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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22:04
Loyal Teams, Transforming Systems & Big Shoes to Fill: Sameer Mohamed on Second-Gen Leadership
Sameer Mohamed shares the story of taking forward his father’s entrepreneurial legacy at Jaleel Holdings and the family office MVK Holdings. His father, a born entrepreneur, started working in his early teens i...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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21:01
