Former law firm chairman/CEO Harvey Freishtat was actively involved in the formation of The Conversation Project, a national public engagement campaign to promote earlier end-of-life care discussions among loved ones and then with providers to ensure that end-of-life care wishes were both expressed and respected. The Conversation Project's media campaign and three-pronged strategy of targeting people where they live, work, and pray, was beginning to yield results. However, questions still remained. Would the health care industry create the mechanisms needed to follow people's end-of-life wishes? Was The Conversation Project taking the right steps to fulfill its mission of culture change?

In 2013, TAV Airports Holding prepared a bid for the concession to build and operate the third Istanbul airport. This process involved input from various parts of the firm with operating and financial expertise. Burcu GeriÅŸ, the CFO of TAV Airports Holding, and her team created a model to evaluate the opportunity and formulate a bid.

Hailey Song walked out of the 88th floor boardroom and paused before making her way towards the elevator. For the first time in three months as Head of Real Estate at New Asia Wealth Fun she had a clear view of the burgeoning city. The chaos of her daily commute to the office and the noise of 24-hour construction sites that kept her awake at night had made her question her decision to leave Boston. Looking out over the newly constructed highways, airports, and industrial zones she could finally appreciate the order in the city's ten-year urban development plan. She only wished the same could be said of the real estate fund.

The world's largest peer-to-peer (P2P) lender annually disbursing over a million loans totaling $10 billion, China's CreditEase, must decide whether to IPO in the NYSE its online lending platform, Yirendai, before the year-end window closes in 2015. Yirendai sought to capture its customers and make virtually instantaneous credit decisions online. CreditEase's commercial success makes funding Yirendai's growth not an issue. P2P lending in China, after explosive growth followed by notorious frauds, is increasingly controversial. On the way to becoming a global example of financial inclusion, as a result of its original business model, CreditEase also pioneered and became a leader in the wealth management industry in China, serving the country's new mass affluent and high net worth families. With so many options, how should Ning Tang, founder and CEO, chart the future strategic direction of CreditEase?

The chief executive officer (CEO) of Rosch Innovations and his team had developed a kinetic power plant that used the buoyancy force of air in water to generate electricity. This breakthrough innovation defied old principles of physics and was therefore difficult to comprehend and communicate. The CEO and his team had grown their network behind the scenes, careful not to raise too much attention from the powerful German energy lobby in the beginning. They had selected partners and investors that Rosch could manage without losing control. The plan to pursue an initial public offering (IPO) was shaping up in 2016. Major clients and investors were on board, yet the energy lobby was trying to discredit the company and its founder. With major projects lined up for funding, what was the right strategy? Which type of endorsement would help mute the critics and lead the way for an unprecedented IPO?

California-based Silver Spring Networks designed, developed, and deployed the large-scale networking platforms and solutions that enabled the “Internet of Things” to control power grids. In 2010, there was an opportunity for Silver Spring Networks to partner with another start-up that wanted to integrate electric vehicle charging technology with the power grid. At the same time, leading-edge smart city developments—projecting significant savings for utilities and governments—were gaining traction. Both endeavours held significant upside potential and could be used to attract the attention of utilities and other firms, along with state and federal governments and their regulatory commissions. There were signs of disruptive technology innovation, and Silver Springs Networks had to devise a roadmap for entering the market at the right time with the right product in the right sequence.

Amazon was the biggest Internet-based retailer in the United States and had frequently been featured on lists of the most admired companies. In 2015, The New York Times published an article that portrayed Amazon as a ruthless employer with brutal human resource management practices and a toxic work atmosphere. Employees were divided in their opinions; some found the culture invigorating and others found it hard to survive in. Leaders in the industry came to Amazon's defence, while employees at other organizations began to disclose their own experiences of toxic work environments. Could Amazon continue to grow, thrive, and retain employees if it maintained its current employee management strategy? Did stress foster innovation, and, if so, at what point did that stress become destructive?

The associate director of hospitality services at a large university had to address overcapacity at an on-campus eatery. The eatery was experiencing long lineups and severe bottlenecks, especially at its full-service coffee outlet. Seating capacity was also short of demand, and no additional space was available. The associate director also faced pressure from university administration to consider closing a nearby eatery as a result of its poor profitability, but doing so would put additional strain on the already overcapacity eatery. After examining profitability and completing a corporate assessment, the associate director expected to have a better idea of how to tackle the current capacity and profitability issues.

Mekong Capital, a private equity firm based in Vietnam, is considering exiting its stake in restaurant chain operator Golden Gate. Despite robust growth, Golden Gate's profitability is lagging. Students are asked to evaluate the best means of exit and whether operational improvements are required to attract buyers or create the foundation for a successful IPO. Please visit the dedicated case website http://cases.insead.edu/mekong-capital to access supplementary material.

The Charles Lake Mill had experienced more than 200 days of strike in the previous 10 years, and its employees were accustomed to returning to the mill the morning after a settlement was reached and going directly back to their jobs. But this time the mill management team is determined that things at the mill would change. This case follows the Charles Lake Mill as it goes from being one of the most unsafe mills with a terrible production record to one of the safest mills with solid production gains each year.

In early 2016, Stanley Litow, IBM's Vice President of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs and President of the IBM International Foundation, made his travel arrangements for still another flight from New York to discuss possibilities for application of a new model for high school called P-TECH, for Pathways in Technology Early College High School, the name of the first school in Brooklyn. In the past month alone, he had flown to Little Rock, Arkansas, to meet with Republican governor Asa Hutchinson and to Providence, Rhode Island, to meet with Democratic governor Gina Raimondo to discuss bringing a P-TECH model to their states.

Evive Health is a company that manages communication campaigns on behalf of health insurance plans and large employers. Using big data techniques and insights from behavioral economics, Evive deploys targeted and effective messages that improve individuals' health behaviors. This case follows Prashant Srivastava, Evive's Chief Operating Officer, and Jennifer Lindner, Evive's Creative Director, as they design a messaging strategy for promoting influenza vaccination at the free workplace clinics of a large utility company.

Residency Select, LLC provides psychometric assessments for matching medical students to residency programs. After a series of successful pilots, founder Alan Friedman is considering whether to continue developing his offerings in this area, or whether to expand into new areas in the healthcare field, including offering assessments for administrative or executive positions. The case provides a walkthrough of the decision-making process of a young firm making a strategic leap, and how Friedman weighs many factors, including his own personal mission and desires. Friedman is also an alumnus of HBS's "Launching New Ventures" Executive Education program, and the case discusses how he makes use of the lessons from that course.

CFX Inc, an e-commerce start-up based out of India, has built a large e-marketplace that allows sellers and buyers to transact online. The firm currently has 30,000 sellers and aims to have around 50,000 sellers by FY 2015-16. The company has around 6Mn customers today and anticipates their growth to triple in the next 2 years. In order to provide best shopping experience to their growing customer base, the firm needs to collect, store and analyze different kinds of data (transactional, behavioural, syndicated, and demographic) and improve their customer shopping experience. The company is in the process of identifying and designing suitable data management systems to sustain and manage their business growth. As part of this initiative, they hire a consultant to study their data management requirements, design a data model and offer implementation related recommendations. The management expects the consultant to come out with a concrete set of recommendations in terms of the nature of solution, choice of the database, a data model that suits CFX's requirements, cost-benefit trade-offs involved and implementation considerations.

NoSQL refers to a new class of database systems used in big data environments. These database systems aim to address some of the limitations of traditional database management systems. This technical note describes the key challenges in traditional database systems and introduces the concept of NoSQL databases. The design for NoSQL databases are also explained with illustrative examples.

Airtel, the leading mobile operator in India was going to launch the "Airtel Zero" platform that would charge service providers and OTT providers on the internet for mobile data traffic but would allow end consumers free access to the web sites that were signed up for the platform. The case revolves around the questions of pricing these data services to the service providers in a market where the price to one set of customers (the end consumer) was not independent of the price to another set of customers (the OTT service providers) - typical of two sided markets. Issues of net neutrality and competition have been considered alongside.

Written to accompany the Airtel Zero: Data Pricing Case (A00118), this note is intended to provide supporting information, models and frameworks on the issues of net neutrality in two two sided markets and how these influence the range of options available to price data services in the context of the online data services in the Indian market.

This technical note provides an overview of capital structure policy. Through a series of hypothetical situations and real-world examples, students will gain an understanding of the benefits and costs of debt and equity financing. This note explores the value and cost of capital implications of capital structure policy with the intent to explain why businesses such as Hilton Worldwide and Computer Sciences differ so dramatically in their capital structure policy