Open English, a Miami-based startup offering online English language learning services, had more than 30,000 active students across Latin America in 2012. The company had just closed a $43 million financing round in order to rapidly scale its service to the next level. Nicolette Moreno, Co-founder and Vice President of Product Development, felt that a substantial portion of the new funding was needed to rework Open English's platform to enable the additional growth. She was concerned that the company's learning platform (LP)-the core set of software systems used to deliver online lessons-was beginning to show its age. Although one path would be to shore up the LP's capacity incrementally to allow the company to sustain its momentum with minimal disruption, Nicolette felt it was just a matter of time before they had to tackle a complete rewrite of the platform. Although daunting to undertake, a rewrite would allow the company to grow beyond the current LP's capabilities and position them for future success. Nicolette needed to give the board a full sense of what she saw-was now really the right time for a complete rewrite of the LP? What were the risks? And how should she approach the effort?

The Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore was initially established with the intention of transplanting the Duke University School of Medicine curriculum to Singapore, where the British style of medical education had been dominant. A small team of pioneer faculty faced many challenges, including transplanting the U.S. model while trying to improve upon and adapt it to the local environment, facing skepticism from the local medical community, and securing support for an innovative educational approach both inside and outside the school. The public watched carefully as the first cohort of students prepared to graduate. How would these graduates perform? What would their performance say about the efforts of the Duke-NUS faculty and its supporters?

The president of General Mills Canada wants to build a culture of innovation in his firm. Prior to a senior management meeting in 2010 to review the company’s plans for 2011 and beyond, he met with the vice-president of Human Resources and asked him to provide feedback and suggestions about what the organization could do to change its corporate culture. A conservative organization with a collegial atmosphere where consensus and support were essential to moving projects ahead, General Mills Canada had developed an analysis-based, detail-oriented culture that was not necessarily conducive to innovation. This case provides an opportunity to engage in a discussion about the uncertainty faced by senior management in terms of specifically how to build a culture of innovation. While the senior leaders know they want to build a culture of innovation, the real question is how they should go about doing this. Also available is supplement case 9B14M016.

Supplement to 9B14M015. This case highlights many of the changes that were made at General Mills Canada to build an innovative culture. The results were positive, however, not all employees were convinced that being innovative would enhance, not harm, their careers. This follow-up case explores what else can be done to more fully build the culture of innovation, focusing especially on the challenges of cultural change.

Diamond Cab has developed a business model to provide improved transportation for wheelchair users. The model shows that services considered as social welfare can actually be profitable, as wheelchair users have increasingly demanded better transportation beyond inconvenient rehab buses and commercial taxis. Diamond Cab has navigated the regulatory environment and cultural norms of Hong Kong to offer its award-winning service, and other cities have come to learn from its initial success. As a social enterprise nurtured by Social Ventures Hong Kong, a venture philanthropy fund, it faces the challenge of soliciting more investment and talent to scale up the operation with a larger fleet of taxis and eventually return monetary and social dividends to the investors of the fund.<br><br> A <a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iiuhNxDz5k>video is available for viewing online.

In 2012, after conducting thorough research, two young entrepreneurs in Rwanda realize they have the opportunity to target the international budget tourists commonly referred to as “backpackers.” Only one European-style backpacker hostel currently exists in the capital city of Kigali, and the low-budget tourism industry remains significantly underdeveloped throughout the country. The partners have seen how successful this type of tourism has become in neighbouring countries and desire to replicate it in their homeland. One of them has inherited a piece of land in a quiet nature area by a lake only five minutes’ drive from a major international bus terminal. Although they have very few financial resources between them, they realize that a hospitality business providing tent accommodation and basic services will be cheap to operate and will attract budget-conscious travelers. Now, they must raise US$19,000 to start construction within the next six months before Rwanda’s high tourist season begins, and design a successful marketing plan to attract customers once the business opens.

After conducting thorough research, two young entrepreneurs in Rwanda realize they have the opportunity to target the international budget tourists commonly referred to as "backpackers." Only one European-style backpacker hostel currently exists in the capital city of Kigali, and the low-budget tourism industry remains significantly underdeveloped throughout the country. The partners have seen how successful this type of tourism has become in neighbouring countries and desire to replicate it in their homeland. One of them has inherited a piece of land in a quiet nature area by a lake only five minutes' drive from a major international bus terminal. Although they have very few financial resources between them, they realize that a hospitality business providing tent accommodation and basic services will be cheap to operate and will attract budget-conscious travelers. Now, in order to start construction, they must not only raise $19,000 within the next six months before Rwanda's high tourist season begins but design a successful marketing plan to attract customers once the business opens.

The case series focuses on Melbourne Trains' viral advertising campaign to improve safe behaviors around trains among young people. This iconic, low budget campaign swept the Cannes Lions advertising awards in 2013 and became a social media sensation.

As of the date of this note, financing environments varied significantly across developing economies. Differences in legal structures, operating conditions, and available capital sources created a myriad of conditions for entrepreneurs to navigate when seeking funds to develop their ventures. One systemic trend, however, did exist: entrepreneurs consistently cited access to financing as one of the top three obstacles to achieving growth. This note does not seek to provide a "one size fits all" model to addressing this challenge. Rather, this note is intended to provide entrepreneurs with a starting point to better understand the types of financing available in developing economies, the sources of this capital, and the means to locate these investors. Entrepreneurs can use the examples in this note as a springboard to craft solutions for the challenges posed by their specific financing environments.

EFL provides credit-scoring services in developing countries using psychometric assessment, but the potential loss of a large customer makes them reconsider their scaling narrative.

The advent of the world wide web and the entry of private players in India's post-liberalization era resulted in India Post losing a substantial volume of its business to e-mails, faxes, short-message services and private-courier-service providers. Additionally, government policies regarding India Post had long remained unchanged. As a consequence, India Post was caught up in a vicious cycle of decreasing mail traffic, low levels of technology investment, poor financial performance and poor customer service. Critics also raised questions regarding India Post's lack of market orientation. Nevertheless, India Post responded by taking advantage of its huge distribution network, pursuing related diversification and modernizing its facilities. Despite these efforts, undertaken between 2005 and 2012, India Post was unable to report any profits, although the efforts generated revenue growth. Among all the services that the postal department provided, only postal insurance generated significant profits. It was from this perspective that India Post's management wondered whether it should follow the example of countries like Germany and the Netherlands, where the postal services had been privatized, or whether it should wait for the 2005-2012 initiatives to generate profits for India Post in the coming years.

The advent of the world wide web and the entry of private players in India’s post-liberalization era resulted in India Post losing a substantial volume of its business to e-mails, faxes, short-message services and private-courier-service providers. Additionally, government policies regarding India Post had long remained unchanged. As a consequence, India Post was caught up in a vicious cycle of decreasing mail traffic, low levels of technology investment, poor financial performance and poor customer service. Critics also raised questions regarding India Post’s lack of market orientation. Nevertheless, India Post responded by taking advantage of its huge distribution network, pursuing related diversification and modernizing its facilities. Despite these efforts, undertaken between 2005 and 2012, India Post was unable to report any profits, although the efforts generated revenue growth. Among all the services that the postal department provided, only postal insurance generated significant profits. It was from this perspective that India Post’s management wondered whether it should follow the example of countries like Germany and the Netherlands, where the postal services had been privatized, or whether it should wait for the 2005-2012 initiatives to generate profits for India Post in the coming years.

This note provides information on the state of startup financing in Silicon Valley in 2013. It details different avenues startups have to raise funding, including venture capital, corporate venture capital, angel investors, incubators, and crowdfunding.

In the first decade of the 21st century, national debt as a share of GDP rose dramatically in the United States and across the developed world. This case consists of excerpts from leading commentators explaining and commenting on this trend and the economic and moral problems it poses. Instructors may also obtain a Teaching Note, written by this case's author, that provides suggestions for using this case effectively in the classroom.

Managers must understand their marketing efforts as precisely as possible in order to determine how much to spend on each marketing channel. This technical note explores marketing analytics-the process of systematically using empirical data about customers, companies, and industry context to inform strategic marketing decisions and create models that are helpful in understanding consumer behaviors. Resource allocation is the endgame of analytics for any company. Using marketing analytics properly, any firm should be able to determine the optimal level of spending it should make on each of its marketing channels to maximize future performance and success.

In 2012, Marissa Mayer became the CEO of Yahoo!, a tech giant with a tumultuous past. When Mayer tries to reinvigorate the company, she hires Jacqueline Reses, who has a private equity background, to head both human resources and mergers and acquisitions (M&A). As part of Mayer's turnaround strategy, Reses looks to build a mobile technology product development team by executing an "acquisition-hire" (i.e., "acqui-hire") to acquire New York City-based start-up Stamped, a mobile application company launched by former Google employees, Robby Stein and Bart Stein. Without an M&A team that is fully staffed and before new acquisition processes have been formalized, Reses must decide whether acquiring Stamped is a wise strategy. The case also considers the perspective of Robby and Bart and explores if selling Stamped to Yahoo! and transitioning the Stamped team into Yahoo!'s mobile product development team is the right exit strategy for their start-up.

On September 11, 2013, the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied St. Jude's request to rehear an appeal on the "double patenting" ruling for the '439 patent. Further, it removed the injunction threat that was hanging over the company. The future looked bright for AccessClosure as 2013 drew to a close. The company expected 2014 revenues of more than $100 million with a gross margin of greater than 70%. It was also anticipating FDA approval on a significant product improvement within the next several months.

The case focuses on the challenges still confronting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the end of 2013, a year after he has been in office. It also gives an overview of Japan's earlier economic performance, focusing primarily on the period after it suffered a stock market and real estate crash in 1989-1992. During his first year in office, Abe introduced three sets of policies designed both to reverse the deflation that had plagued Japan since around 2000 and to increase the Japanese growth rate. The first of this three-pronged approach consisted of appointing a central bank governor who committed himself to raising the inflation rate and who vastly expanded the Bank of Japan's balance sheet in an effort to accomplish this. The second involved a fiscal policy plan whose initial thrust was expansionary, but which also sought to reduce future budget deficits. The last one involved a series of microeconomic reforms aimed at expanding GDP and labor productivity. These included initiatives aimed at increasing female labor force participation to compensate for Japan's aging population, reforms of the electric power sector directed at reducing electricity costs, and efforts designed to promote the "health and longevity sector." The case ends by discussing Abe's foreign policy challenges, including Korea's and China's reactions to visits by Japanese officials to the Yasukuni shrine.