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Venture capitalist Atul Kapadia was inclined to provide seed funding for Sujeet Kumar and Michael Sinkula to found Envia Systems, a lithium-ion battery company. Admittedly, Envia was little more than the founders' vision of an affordable electric vehicle and the potential of playing in a very large market. But for Kapadia, it was precisely these two key ingredients that made Envia attractive and akin to other early-stage investments he had made at Bay Partners.

Raj Biyani faced tough challenges managing Microsoft IT India: leading a remote development organization in which key decisions were made in Redmond, and managing an organization that was perceived as less strategic than its sister Microsoft India Development Center with which it shared the Hyderabad, India site. The case follows Biyani's thought process in diagnosing the organization's problems, and poses the challenges of leading globally distributed operations.

Jon Corzine became the CEO of MF Global in March of 2010. 18 months later, and in the wake of a massive trade in European sovereign debt, the firm filed for bankruptcy, the 8th largest in U.S. history. As the firm failed it was discovered that over $1.6 billion in segregated customer assets was missing. The case explores issues that may have contributed to MF Global's demise, including its business model and the competitive pressures it faced prior to and following Corzine's arrival, and the strategic and managerial decisions taken by Corzine to reorient the firm. In addition, the sovereign debt trade, created to boost earnings, is described in some in some detail.

When MF Global failed in October of 2011, it was discovered that $1.6 billion of segregated customer assets was missing. Safeguarding these assets was the firm's responsibility, and in the words of one SEC official, its "sacred obligation." What is known about the missing assets is that they were taken from the accounts of customers trading in commodity futures and used in other areas of the firm; less is known about how it happened. The case describes MF Global's operating model, certain management decisions, its regulatory oversight, and the chaos of its final days, allowing for an exploration of how so much money could have gone missing. (Note: This case may be in read in conjunction with its companion, "MF Global: Changing Stripes" (HBS Case 312- 105), which discusses the managerial and strategic issues leading to the firm's collapse.)

Kosmos Energy (Kosmos) was founded in 2003 by a small group of oil and gas industry veterans backed by private equity capital. The company's original plan was to explore for oil along the West African coast. If a commercial discovery was made, Kosmos would sell the asset to an exploration and production (E&P) firm. In 2007, Kosmos and its partners announced a major discovery in deepwater offshore Ghana. Three years later in December 2010, Kosmos was at a crossroads. First oil from the Ghana discovery, now called Jubilee, was delivered in November 2010. Earlier in the year, a sales agreement with ExxonMobil for Kosmos' interests in Ghana was terminated. Kosmos now had to decide on its corporate future and its presence in Ghana. Should the company remain a pure "E" company or expand to E&P, and should it retain its interest in Jubilee's development? Integral to both questions was how the company could either raise capital for, or reap capital from, the Jubilee field

Supplement for case TB0297

A chief of medicine is attempting to determine the cost of the diagnoses of patients who are treated in her department. Three different cost systems are being evaluated.

This case provides students with an opportunity to think about a management control system that focuses on cost drivers and that has established clinical departments as profit centers.

This case describes a "bundled pricing" approach to managed care contracting. Bundled pricing is a contracting strategy whereby a hospital and its physicians share the risk of a fixed price contract. The case raises questions about managed care pricing strategies and hospital-physician relationships. Students must analyze the financial implications of the hospital's contracting strategy and propose an approach that provides appropriate incentives for physicians while minimizing the hospital's risk.

An introductory breakeven case designed for students with no prior experience with breakeven analysis. The purposes of the case are: (1) to teach the concept and techniques or breakeven analysis, (2) to clarify the difference among fixed, variable, and step-function costs, and (3) to demonstrate the relationship of costs and revenue to volume.

A very comprehensive case that requires students to define the organization's strategy, understand its structure, and then determine how a responsibility center network has been overlaid on it. There is a poor programming process at work, which has led the organization in some unusual directions, a budgeting process that emphasizes revenues and ignores expense, and a reporting process that does not fit well with the organizational structure or the network of responsibility centers. In short, a mess.

A rather complex case that calls for a report that gives providers a breakdown of why they are (or are not) achieving their budgeted levels of performance. Students knowledge of variance analysis is tested here by requiring them to understand and then restructure a confusing variance analysis prepared by the business manager.

A case on capital budgeting as a component of an organization's strategic planning. The case is designed for students to use their financial skills in calculating net present values, internal rates of return and in deriving appropriate discount rates. The fundamental objective, however, is not mechanical, but to assess the various components and characteristics of capital budgeting systems as to how well they fit with the specific needs of an organization.

This case requires a differential cost analysis that introduces students to several important matters. It demonstrates the difference between various types of direct and indirect costs. The cost center report for the Dialysis Unit contains fixed, variable and step-function costs, and students must identify which is which. Overhead costs are presented in the stepdown analysis and their relationship to direct costs and a breakeven analysis must be resolved.

This case is focused principally on a chief of pathology's attempt to justify an additional technician for the pathology lab. The question of how he justifies this, however, is somewhat of a red herring, since by looking at the process he follows in attempting to prepare the data necessary for such a justification, students will become aware of the control structure, both of the hospital and in the Department of Pathology, as well as the budgetary process used by the hospital. They thus have the opportunity to put the management control structure into its broader organizational context.

A growing home health agency is experiencing cash flow problems. Students must prepare a cash worksheet and a SCF and compare the results to the accrual statements, which show an operating surplus.

This case concerns a department of gastroenterology within a department of medicine that is attempting to build its budget. The chair of medicine has asked the GI division head to give him a business plan, and the business plan is presented in the case. The chief must decide how credible the business plan is. To fully understand what is going on, the budget-building (and business plan) effort must be taken down to the individual provider level.

The case describes the international problem of money laundering and summarizes U.S. bank regulations aimed at reducing money laundering activities. The introduction of H.R. 3886 in 2000 was one in a series of attempts to formalize U.S. banks' monitoring of their customers. The bill was prompted by a government report that named and criticized U.S. banks for laundering billions of dollars linked to drug trafficking, fraud, and organized crime. Interest groups in favor of H.R. 3886 were predominantly law enforcement agencies that viewed current anti-money laundering laws as ineffective. Groups opposed to the bill included the American Civil Liberties Union, which believed that the collection of more information about bank customers' activities was an invasion of privacy, and the American Bankers Association, which claimed that the legislation would impose unnecessary costs on banks. The case can be used to introduce the distributive politics framework for analyzing non-market issues and formulating nonmarket strategies in the context of government institutions. The epilogue reveals that H.R. 3886 died before it ever reached the House floor, but that an expanded version of the legislation ultimately passed-with the support of stakeholders who originally fought it-as part of the USA PATRIOT Act after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This stance reversal provides an opportunity to explore how events, public opinion, and the media can create windows of policy opportunity.

The case examines the evolution of GE's corporate university in Crotonville, NY from its founding in 1956 through 2010 and the start of an effort of "Re-Imagining Crotonville." One of the world's first corporate universities, Crotonville became a model of leadership development and a recognized innovator in its field. The case details the role that Crotonville played under successive GE leaders, from Ralph Cordiner - who inaugurated Crotonville to train general managers to support a sweeping decentralization program - to Jeffrey Immelt. It considers how the institution changed in response to changing business needs and the factors that contributed to its vitality and success over several decades. Beginning in the 1980s, Crotonville became the nerve center of a cultural change effort launched by CEO Jack Welch, spawning programs such as "Work-Out" to cut through bureaucracy and return initiative to individual managers. Following the global financial crisis in 2008-9, CEO Jeffrey Immelt and Crotonville's leaders set in motion an exploration of the changing nature of leadership needed to confront the new realities in which GE operated globally. CLO Susan Peters initiated Re-Imagining Crotonville to align learning and development with these new leadership expectations. The case examines the choices faced by Peters and her team in re-thinking the environment, experience, and content of leadership learning at Crotonville. Learning objectives: Understand factors that have made Crotonville central to GE's leadership culture over time. Examine role of CEO and corporate leadership in driving cultural change through learning and development. Understand the unique assets and potential limitations of a 'corporate university' model for leadership learning. Explore the change management challenges of managing a legacy of success - continuing to evolve while preserving the strong 'brand' and 'secret sauce' that make Crotonville unique.

This case depicts the start-up and business development challenges faced by a streetwise entrepreneur who has invented a unique fishing rod. The capabilities necessary to invent, prototype and bring to market a limited quantity of product versus the challenges of larger scale product commercialization and managing a growing business are illustrated chronologically. The case primarily addresses why some entrepreneurial ventures succeed and grow to become large-scale corporations whereas others stay small and insignificant and why a majority of entrepreneurial initiatives eventually fail. Indigenous constructs (such as entrepreneur and organization specific factors) and exogenous constructs (such as industry, location and time specific factors that may predetermine the outcome of an entrepreneurial venture) are illustrated. A business plan, which has attracted angel investment, is presented for critical assessment. The background storyline subtly depicts that all businesses, regardless of size, face resource constraints and trade-offs and that managers must continuously adapt and upgrade their business models, competencies and management style to match the evolving threshold market standards.