In 2006, Gauri worked with Marketing Professor Elie Ofek on a Harvard Business School case study on our Clocky product. They explored a number of different ‘positioning’ issues surrounding the product. They asked questions like, “Is Clocky for the need market or the fun market?”

Since its publication, MBA professors around the country have been teaching the case. Gauri has given talks at Columbia, New York University, and Harvard among other schools to lend her perspective on the entrepreneurial experience. This morning, we received a message from professor Michael Norton at Harvard Business School. He’ll be teaching students about companies who understand some fundamental aspect of human nature, and then students will be asked to apply those principles to other companies and industries. In the case of Clocky, the fundamental aspect is that people have different selves, a want self and a should self; at night the should self sets the alarm for 6am, in the morning the want self turns it off; Clocky fixes the problem.

If you’d like more information, or want to order the case study, you can check Harvard Business Publishing.

Side note – Professor Ofek and Gauri are working on the follow-up to the original Clocky case. More on that in the next couple of months.