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U.S. Army Lieutenant Scotty Smiley faces the biggest challenge of his young life. What will he do after learning that the wounds he received from a car bomb in Iraq have left him permanently blinded? On April 6, 2005, Lieutenant Scotty Smiley was grievously wounded by a suicide bomber while leading his infantry platoon during a combat patrol in Iraq. This is a biographical case that outlines who Scotty was prior to this incident and asks readers to consider the following fundamental question: What does this tragic event mean for who he is and how he will lead his life? And by extension, what role do life crucibles play in helping to shape who we are and how we lead?

New Resource Bank was founded in San Francisco in 2006 with a mission focused on environmental sustainability. The case illustrates the opportunities and challenges of banking on values and the challenges of organizations defining a social and environmental commitment. The case also highlights the tension and potential synergies between social mission and shareholder value in the context of the crisis of 2008, the taken-for-granted expectations and norms arising from a commercial bank charter, and the distinct perspectives of bank regulators, founders, investors, and other stakeholders of the newly founded bank.

The world famous toymaker, The LEGO Group (LEGO), assembles an internal management team to create a strategic report on LEGO's different product lines and business operations. In recent years, numerous threats had emerged against LEGO in toy industry. The acquisition of Marvel Entertainment by The Walt Disney Company created major implications for valuable toy license agreements. LEGO also recently lost a long legal battle with major competitor MEGA Brands, makers of MEGA Bloks, with a European Union court decision that removed the LEGO brick trademark. Furthermore, new competition is preparing to enter the marketplace from Hasbro, the second-largest toymaker in the world, with the company launching a new rival product line called Kre-O. It is critical for the management team to identify where to expand Lego's product lines and business operations, in order to develop a competitive strategy to continue the organization's recent years of financial success and dominance in the building toy market.

In 2006, Mudra Communications (Mudra), the third largest advertising agency in India, is in the middle of an organizational transformation in which information technology (IT) is seen by the top management as an enabler. The IT set-up itself is witnessing a transition at Mudra from manual systems to an Enterprise System (ES) which has been developed internally by the eight-member IT team led by Executive Vice President (Technology) Sebastian Joseph. As he gets ready to implement the first module of ES, known as Mudra Business Operations Support System (mboss) covering 70 per cent of the activities of the agency, Joseph is facing some managerial dilemmas related to planning the roll-out, training the end-users and managing the change that the new system will bring to the agency. He is also making a choice between outsourcing the ES architecture and owning it and between outsourcing the development of the remaining seven modules and developing them internally, as before.

A final year student of a business school estimated the net present value (NPV) of his proposed business plan using three different methods and encountered different valuation results. He approached the professor who had taught him valuation concepts in a finance course and wanted to know the reasons for the difference.

Healthcare has traditionally focused on medical outcomes and financial performance. The big question is always, "How much is it going to cost?" What would happen, though, if healthcare also considered the question of "How does the patient feel?" This case looks at the Cleveland Clinic's attempt to answer the latter question by attempting to institutionalize empathy as part of its delivery of care.

Duke Energy, an American investor-owned electric utility, confronts multibillion dollar decisions about its future fuel mix. In particular, its leaders are considering building new nuclear capacity. Whether this is sensible depends, among other things, on demand growth, capital costs, fossil fuel prices, possible regulatory or other delays in constructing the reactors, and possible future restrictions on carbon dioxide. CEO Jim Rogers believes that nuclear power makes sense from a social standpoint but also must consider the perspectives of his ratepayers and his shareholders.

Vision 2020 aimed to achieve annual revenues in excess of $200 billion by offering innovative integrated solutions to major global challenges such as the availability of water, energy and infrastructure. To "dream the client's dreams," the plan required over 200,000 new employees worldwide, united by a common entrepreneurial bond. Such projections would have sounded extravagant for any other firm; for Odebrecht, these were simple linear extrapolations of the company's performance over the last 10 years, during which the firm grew its revenues at an annualized rate of over 21%... Odebrecht also aspired to become a model of sustainable development and socio-environmental responsibility. For this, it could already rely on its massive investments in "green" plastics and ethanol production facilities. It also rallied behind a colossal hydroelectric project, pioneering CSR practices and novel turbine and dam technology to reduce the impact of such facilities on sensitive Amazon ecosystems. These investments set the tune for the firm in the second decade of the century. For Marcelo, the issue was how to translate the vision into "a dream with a deadline." Could he depend on the old recipes for growth? Were historical clients the right ones going forward? Would the forces and culture that had created the opportunities in the past support the future? Was Odebrecht ready to handle another massive bout of growth? As Marcelo assumed sole executive leadership for the $23 billion family business at the age of 42, he was aware of his responsibility and challenges. He knew he was expected to build on his forefathers' successes, and they had set a very high bar for him, but he also knew he could rely on the entrepreneur-partners he inherited. Learning objectives: Managing growth, family business governance, succession, CSR, sustainable development, renewable energy, managing the value chain.

During its 50-year history, adidas had spent heavily to establish its three-stripe logo as a symbol for athletic achievement. When value-priced shoe retailer Payless ShoeSource started selling athletic shoes with two or four vertical stripes, adidas brought an action against Payless. adidas claimed Payless' lower-cost athletic shoes could dilute its famous logo in the minds of consumers and tarnish its brand by association with a lower-quality product. In 2008, the jury found in favor of adidas, awarding $305 million, believed to be the largest verdict in a trademark case. In this case students examine the histories and brand status of adidas and Payless as well as both companies' legal arguments before discussing consumer psychology, branding, and whether the jury made the right decision.

In 2007, the Dow Chemical Company and the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation announced plans to launch a multibillion-dollar joint venture. Later known as K-Dow Petrochemicals, it would be one of the largest manufacturers of chemicals and plastics in the world. Analysts widely hailed the planned joint venture as a game-changing deal for both companies. Shortly after the announcement, cable network CNBC requested an interview with Andrew Liveris, Dow's CEO, about this massive transaction. Liveris needed to decide how to respond. This case provides a brief background on the industry, both companies, and plans for the joint venture as of January 2008.

The vice-president of communications for Domino's Pizza International (Domino's), faced a significant threat to his company's reputation involving negative social media exposure. A video had been posted online two days earlier via YouTube by a Domino's employee, and showed two Domino's employees at a North Carolina franchise tampering with customers' pizza and sandwich orders. The employee stuck cheese up his nose, and sneezed on the food prior to boxing it up and could be overheard in the video gleefully admitting the orders would soon be delivered to unsuspecting customers. The video went viral; it had been reposted to Twitter and Facebook, and received almost a million views and various comments on YouTube. The video was also receiving attention from both local and national media channels. The senior executive team of Domino's was meeting with the vice-president in a matter of hours, and Domino's social media team would need to devise a plan to respond to the viral video to protect Domino's strong brand image before it was too late.

This is the second of a four-part case charting the influence of technological shifts on decision making in the light bulb industry. As Philips begins to challenge GE's dominance in the lighting market, it is not clear whether the emergence of compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) technology will change buying behavior significantly. The case supports exercises related to the determination of demand and breakeven requirements and capacity decisions in a shifting market.

This case describes the recent boom in Brazil and recent developments in the private equity industry in that country. At the center of the case is Dave Roux, partner of the technology-focused, private equity firm Silver Lake, who is examining whether to open an office in Brazil. His decision will depend on the state of the Brazilian economy, of the private equity industry, and, ultimately, on the value proposition of Silver Lake. Is the current boom in Brazil a sign of a structural change or is it a bubble? Is it too late for a private equity firm to go to Brazil? Is the Brazilian market too saturated? How do private equity firms add value in Brazil? What's the right entry strategy for a private equity firm in Brazil? Should Silver Lake open an office in Brazil?

This note consists of three valuation/analysis exercises often found in venture capital financing deals.

From 1989 to 2003 civil war raged in Liberia, causing GDP per capita to drop an unprecedented 90% from peak to trough. The roots of Liberia's conflict and economic decline are complex and intertwined, resting on over a century of discriminatory elite rule and twisted by ethnic politics during a military dictatorship. By late 2011, eight years of post-conflict government have restored basic order, re-opened the country to foreign investors, and jump-started the small economy. But the country's business model may unsettle its political stability. As Africa's first democratically elected female head of state (and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize) Ellen Johnson Sirleaf goes into her reelection campaign for Liberia's presidency, she must decide how to keep the country on its fragile but quick recovery, sowing the seeds for peace and prosperity rather than renewed conflict.

The Telemonitoring at Visiting Nurse Health System case presents one home healthcare organization's efforts to use telemonitoring to improve the quality of care provided to at-risk patients who were discharged from hospitals and needed home care. After two years of using the Health Buddy system for telemonitoring at-risk patients, Mark Oshnock, President of Visiting Nurse Health System (VNHS) must decide whether to invest in buying more Health Buddy units. While Oshnock believed that there were real benefits associated with telemonitoring, he was having difficulty quantifying those benefits and he was concerned about VNHS' ability to continue investing resources in telemonitoring given the realities of the health care reimbursement environment in which they operated. While several studies had demonstrated the benefits of telemonitoring, Oshnock felt that the long-term benefits accruing to the health system as a whole were not immediately quantifiable or visible to the hospitals and insurance companies. Without external support for the telemonitoring initiative from insurance companies, it would be difficult for VNHS to keep up the momentum and ramp up telemonitoring through additional purchases of Health Buddy units. From a purely financial standpoint, such an investment would be very difficult for VNHS to justify. The irony was that with the new regulatory pressures and increased focus on preventative healthcare, telemonitoring pointed to an effective tool in managing and reducing acute care hospitalizations. However, balancing these benefits against limited financial support from other key players in the health care system would be challenging.

GoodGuide, a high-technology start-up company, founded by University of California Professor at Berkeley Dara O'Rourke is at a critical junction. The venture capital funded company has yet to find the business model to monetize a very promising product that provides consumers and manufacturers with information about the sustainability of a product.

The winter of 2009 posed challenges to Cengage Learning, a highly levered provider of textbooks and professional materials that had been carved out of Thomson-Reuters through a 2007 LBO. The recession had not only weakened its pricing power, but its benchmark bonds had plunged to a level that in ordinary years would indicate a distressed value. Yet paired with these difficulties came an opportunity to reduce debt amid dislocations in the high yield and leveraged loan markets. In this case students study materials such as Cengage's capital structure and debt recovery analysis to create a pitchbook recommending whether the company should pursue debt repurchases, a debt-for-debt exchange, or maintain its current position.

The owner of a large hardware, furniture and building centre faced a dilemma regarding how to manage the upcoming wage review process. After two consecutive years of frozen wages, employees were impatient for financial progress, but there was no spare money in the budget. It was possible to pump savings from upcoming process improvement initiatives into wage increases. However, the owner had limited motivation to channel hard-won funds to underperforming employees. On the other hand, he was eager to reward the people who added value. A plan that rewarded only some employees could result in an angry backlash. He had to decide whether he wanted to divert the savings into compensation, and if so, he needed an effective distribution plan.

Hassina Sherjan was born in Afghanistan but grew up and was educated in the United States. A trip to Afghanistan when she was an adult inspired her to move back to her home country with two missions. The first was to educate young women through a non-profit organization she started called Aid Afghanistan for Education and a for-profit company, Boumi, that manufactures and distributes products for the home such as curtains, cushion covers, tea cozies, coasters, bedclothes, and bathroom accessories. The mission of Boumi is to create jobs in Afghanistan, especially for women, based on traditional Afghani designs and using only locally grown cotton. Sherjan wants to grow Boumi so that it can be a substantial, if not major, funding source for Aid Afghanistan for Education. In order to grow Boumi, Sherjan must confront a number of challenges including funding, finding and managing skilled workers, and getting distribution for Boumi products in major markets such as Europe and the United States.