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This case series focuses on Theranos Inc. (Theranos), a health care technology start-up founded by Elizabeth Holmes in 2003. Theranos focused on developing a revolutionary blood-testing technology that was supposed to be able to detect diseases using only a few drops of blood. Once valued at US$10 billion, the company never demonstrated its alleged technological breakthrough, and Holmes was eventually charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud and deceit. In 2018, Theranos was forced to shut down its operations, and in January 2022, Holmes was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The case series explores Theranos's history, as well as the role of overconfidence bias in Theranos's downfall.

This case study follows the journey of William Shum, who left his banking career to pursue his passion for watchmaking by establishing Memorigin, a brand specializing in tourbillon watches. The case explores how Memorigin competes with well-established luxury watch brands by creating unique, culturally inspired designs and collaborating with global franchises such as Marvel and Star Wars. Students will learn about consumer motivation, the importance of culture in marketing, and the role of brand and design partnerships in creating competitive advantages.

The company concerned is Agria Corporation. Several months after a successful IPO, a board member and the key executive in the on-shore operating company in mainland China demanded more money and company shares and threatened resignation if the demands were not met. The board learned of this, and was faced with two important decisions. First, whether or not to agree to the demands, given that this executive may be very difficult to replace. Second, what should be disclosed to the public and when should this disclosure be made. Given the unstable group corporate structure of this on-shore Chinese company, the situation could easily and dramatically affect the share price, and even spread to similarly structured, US listed, mainland Chinese companies.

Sexual Harassment in Virtual Workplaces is a collection of eight vignettes set in India that describe various sexual harassment incidents perpetrated by supervisors, colleagues, and clients at virtual workplaces involving video calls, social media groups, and online chats. The harassment occurred both as one incident and as a series of incidents and consisted of behaviours such as requesting video meetings, comments about appearance, sharing pictures without permission, verbal put-downs, offensive comments, and sexual propositions, all of which led to adverse impacts on their targets.

This case explores the debate over which sustainability philosophy should drive a corporation's strategy: circular economy, green growth, or degrowth. The case uses IKEA and its enormously successful "fast furniture" business model to illustrate several potential strategies for increasing sustainability. The strategies relate to the concepts of enterprise integration of sustainability-companies "being less bad"-and market transformation-companies "doing more good." The case describes IKEA's sustainability efforts to date and areas for expansion, including its: 1) line of circular products; 2) forest stewardship roles; 3) secondary market program; 4) experiments with a furniture rental model; and 5) product servicing efforts. Also explored is IKEA's option to discourage consumerism directly and publicly, in line with a degrowth mentality. Students are asked to consider whether IKEA can decouple its resource use from growth, or alternatively, whether IKEA can remain profitable while selling less.

Large language models like ChatGPT are generating excitement about their potential use cases. A pair of business strategists decided to test whether the tool can support ideation, experimentation, evaluation, and storytelling as part of the strategy creation process. In a series of experiments, they posed a realistic question of strategy to ChatGPT, followed by iterative follow-up questions. In this article, they share three lessons that emerged from their experiments with generative AI.

In 2022, Ola Electric Mobility Private Limited (Ola Electric), a motor vehicle manufacturing company based in Bengaluru, India, was embroiled in a privacy controversy pertaining to the use of customer data. Ola Electric had voluntarily published the telematics data of one of its customers on its Twitter account. This was done in response to allegations by a customer whose son was involved in a serious accident while riding a scooter manufactured by Ola Electric. The company's actions sparked Internet-wide discussions regarding data privacy, with numerous people voicing their distaste for its response. Moving forward, Ola Electric needed to take action to mitigate the effects of the controversy. Meanwhile, governments, companies, and consumers needed to understand their responsibility in relation to data privacy, given that data collection would become more prevalent in future.

This case make the analysis of potential markets for the internationalization of the company Saurios and, especially, to the selection and entry modes to these markets. It is developed from the reflections and analysis of Juan Manuel, owner of Saurios and Jorge, his partner. This entrepreneur has technical know-how in the production of caiman, but little knowledge and experience in international markets. For this reason, he has dedicated himself to researching and learning about international marketing and negotiation, so that, with as much information as possible, he can make the best decision to internationalize his company. For him it is clear that the way forward is to sell his products in international markets, since the Colombian market does not offer him greater opportunities. He is also aware that his company's future depends on its internationalization. Therefore, the company's survival depends on its internationalization. The case tells the story of Juan Manuel and Jorge's search for information and after months of research and analysis, they confirm that they have great opportunities for their products. The case presents the viable alternatives for the entrepreneurs to enter international markets: exporting the leather directly to Spain and the meat to Hong Kong, exporting the leather to Italy through an international agent or broker, and entering into a joint venture with a Japanese company to sell the leather in that country.

Supplement to IS0007

Supplement (B, C, D cases)

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case IM1329

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case IM1332

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case IM1334

The case describes how Coffee Commune, a China-based social enterprise founded by a German entrepreneur named Eric Baden, had been trying to reach a balance between social impact and sustainable business. This teaching note is designed for a 45-to-60-minute teaching plan, where students could play the main protagonist, Eric Baden, and follow his journey with Coffee Commune since 2016. As a German citizen who had lived in China for more than two decades, Baden was passionate about helping the poor coffee farmers in mountainous Yunnan by improving and promoting their beans in China and abroad. Baden and his team, in this case, could lead the students through the decision-making processes in various challenging scenarios, such as why and how Coffee Commune needed its own unique value chain called "crop-to-cup", how to fit the value propositions into a sustainable business model, whether and how to attract outside investment for Coffee Commune's organic growth, and most essentially, how to maintain positive social impact while delivering viable financial goals to sustain this purpose.

In 2022, the National Football League (NFL) created the International Home Marketing Areas program with the goal of stimulating global fandom for American football. As part of the program, the league assigned individual teams exclusive commercial rights to international territories, effectively giving teams the opportunity to create "international home markets." As a result, the Eagles, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania were granted access to Ghana, making it the first NFL team to officially enter a market in Africa. But how should the Eagles' marketing team go about creating a fan community in Ghana? How should it market the game of American football? What media or social channels should the team use to reach and connect with Ghanaian audiences? What activation points should it leverage? Should the team prioritize educating Ghanaians on the rules and nuances of American football or focus on building awareness and interest in the Eagles franchise specifically? And how should the Eagles evaluate whether their marketing efforts are succeeding? These were all questions Jen Kavanagh-Senior Vice-President of Marketing and Media for the Philadelphia Eagles-needed to answer before she could formalize the Eagles' marketing strategy in Ghana.

This field-based case set uses qualitative and quantitative research during the early stages of app development to unfold circumstances that allow for an analysis of the problems people have around financial health, consumer insights, and the largest market opportunity. The material provides the opportunity to explore data gathered through focus groups, quantitative survey research, and factor analysis for segment inputs. This further enables exploration of experimentation, practice in using and interpreting qualitative data, and discussion of using qualitative data as a stimulus for generating quantitative data. Key takeaways include when and where a focus group approach is appropriate, risks, and other research techniques that might be considered, as well as learning around segmentation, targeting, positioning, and new product development. This A case opens with the founders of Upli, Michael Krause and Christof Meyer, seeking to understand problems around financial health and using focus groups to generate insights into who would use a financial wellness app. The B and C cases follow them as they use qualitative data from the focus groups to design surveys, then use quantitative data from the surveys to create segments, and finally design and finance their app. This case set can be used in a first-year MBA or executive MBA program in a core marketing course, in a second-year elective on consumer behavior or marketing research, or in a strategy course on design thinking. It would also fit in courses on entrepreneurship and new product development. The material works well in a module on understanding consumers and consumer insights with focus groups.

This field-based case set uses qualitative and quantitative research during the early stages of app development to unfold circumstances that allow for an analysis of the problems people have around financial health, consumer insights, and the largest market opportunity. The material provides the opportunity to explore data gathered through focus groups, quantitative survey research, and factor analysis for segment inputs. This further enables exploration of experimentation, practice in using and interpreting qualitative data, and discussion of using qualitative data as a stimulus for generating quantitative data. Key takeaways include when and where a focus group approach is appropriate, risks, and other research techniques that might be considered, as well as learning around segmentation, targeting, positioning, and new product development. In the A case, the founders of Upli, Michael Krause and Christof Meyer, use focus groups to generate insights into who would use a financial wellness app. This B case follows them as they use qualitative data from the focus groups to write survey questions to test quantitatively. The quantitative survey data allows exploration of several different segments, and they use factor analysis to identify which variables appear to be most potent for segmentation inputs. Meyer and his team then construct a framework to compare segments to one another. The C case reveals their design and funding efforts. This case set can be used in a first-year MBA or executive MBA program in a core marketing course, in a second-year elective on consumer behavior or marketing research, or in a strategy course on design thinking. It would also fit in courses on entrepreneurship and new product development. The material works well in a module on understanding consumers and consumer insights with focus groups.

This field-based case set uses qualitative and quantitative research during the early stages of app development to unfold circumstances that allow for an analysis of the problems people have around financial health, consumer insights, and the largest market opportunity. The material provides the opportunity to explore data gathered through focus groups, quantitative survey research, and factor analysis for segment inputs. This further enables exploration of experimentation, practice in using and interpreting qualitative data, and discussion of using qualitative data as a stimulus for generating quantitative data. Key takeaways include when and where a focus group approach is appropriate, risks, and other research techniques that might be considered, as well as learning around segmentation, targeting, positioning, and new product development. In the A and B cases, the founders of Upli, Michael Krause and Christof Meyer, use focus groups to generate insights into who would use a financial wellness app, then use qualitative data from the focus groups to write survey questions to test quantitatively and create segments, and finally use factor analysis to identify which variables appear to be most potent for segmentation inputs and construct a framework to compare segments. This C case reveals the steps they took to design the Upli MVP and push it out to a small group of people. It also offers insight into entrepreneurial motivations to keep moving forward and allows discussion of different ways to finance entrepreneurial ventures. This case set can be used in a first-year MBA or executive MBA program in a core marketing course, in a second-year elective on consumer behavior or marketing research, or in a strategy course on design thinking. It would also fit in courses on entrepreneurship and new product development. The material works well in a module on understanding consumers and consumer insights with focus groups.

Little is known about how design leaders foster design excellence "at scale" within large organizations. To bridge this gap, this article reports on interviews with 59 senior design leaders. Using a paradox perspective to frame the findings uncovers major challenges when leading design teams inside large organizations. It also identifies five pairs of opposing leadership behaviors that address these tensions and balance the overarching paradox of integrating design into the fabric of an organization while maintaining its distinctive character: being transformative yet affirmative; being directive yet accommodating; being proactive yet responsive; being intuitive yet systematic; and being holistic yet specific.