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Kiah Williams started SIRUM as a Stanford undergraduate alongside her classmates Adam Kircher and George Wang. Nearly two decades later, the medication donation nonprofit was now operating in five states across the country and had helped facilitate medication donations to reach 150,000 uninsured and underinsured patients. SIRUM's technology enabled donors with excess medication supply to donate unexpired, sealed, non-opioid medications to those who needed it most. SIRUM had been largely funded by philanthropic sources and had secured funding through 2025. Williams was now pondering different growth paths for the nonprofit. SIRUM could attempt to grow quickly by expanding into new states or offering a wider range of medications. It could pressure test its pricing model. Or it could build new lines of business related to data, reporting, and compliance. The growth path was unclear. Williams wanted to demonstrate that SIRUM could be a model for social enterprises to succeed and achieve both deep impact and long-term financial stability. How should she build SIRUM's growth strategy?

Analyzes the company's decision on Project Cowboy following the events described in the B Case.

Analyzes the company's decision on Project Cowboy following the events described in the A Case.

Spreadsheet supplement to case 223009

In July 2019, Graphic Packaging CEO Michael Doss was proposing a $600 million investment in a new machine to produce coated recycled board (CRB), a type of paper packaging used for consumer products (cups, cereal boxes, beverage boxes, etc.) that utilized recycled paper as an input. Graphic Packaging was an integrated producer of paperboard packaging for consumer products and the market leader in CRB. What made this decision difficult was that for the past 30 years, plastic packaging had been replacing paper packaging because of cost and ease of manufacturing. Yet a growing interest in environmental sustainability among paperboard manufacturers, consumer goods companies (immediate customers), and consumers (end users) was creating the possibility of a transition from plastics back to paper-based products. If these trends actually materialized, there would be greater demand for CRB mills that could use recycled inputs and create recyclable products. Was this the right time for a capacity neutral investment (GPK planned to shut older plants when the new one came online) particularly when the sustainability trends were still unclear. By closing older, less efficient mills in favor of a newer, larger, and more efficient machine, GPK could save $100 million per year in costs. In short, this decision had a clear economic benefit as long as sustainability trends continued, competitors did not add new or more efficient capacity, and GPK actually removed existing capacity once the new machine was operational.

Yup Kim, the Head of Investments, Private Equity at the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), reflected on the pension fund's private equity strategy. In July of 2022, the fund was in the midst of a multi-year turnaround strategy with the goal to "consistently deploy capital at scale in order to build a diversified, cost-efficient portfolio of high-conviction investments that outperform [its] PE policy benchmark." CalPERS had also recently increased the overall allocation to private equity from 8% to 13%, making it even more critical that Kim and the private equity team achieve their goals. Moreover, CalPERS faced a global economy seemingly headed into a recession and changes within the private equity industry as a whole. Kim needed to decide if they had the right strategy in place to achieve their long-term vision. This case also explores the U.S. public pension system and private equity co-investments.

Cara Nicoletti was an emerging food entrepreneur that had recently launched her first product, a sustainably sourced, vegetable-infused meat sausage. Brooklyn, New York City-based Seemore Meats & Veggies had seen promising signs of success in local markets and pockets of the west coast, such as Los Angeles, California. Customers overwhelmingly approved of the product, and bought them by the case. Nicoletti was ready to scale her operation. However, she encountered challenges meeting the mounting demand for her products nationwide. She had already managed to enter a crowded industry dominated by industry giants Tyson Foods, JBS USA, and many others. Faced with the challenge of costly delivery expenses in her direct-to-consumer business (DTC), Nicoletti needed to decide whether she should, remain a digital DTC brand or shift to a multi-channel sales strategy that could include any combination of options such as grocery store, private label, or food service partners. Shrinking cash reserves left from her Seed Round expansion made the problem more pressing. Nicoletti needed to prove to investors that she could effectively scale, which would allow her to campaign for the funds to expand her product offering and sales operation.

J.M. Huber, one of the largest and oldest family-held companies in the US, had strategically repositioned itself several times since it was founded in 1883 as a dry-color business. Visionary family leaders and a committed senior management team had transformed the group into an international player with operations in more than 20 countries and about half of its 4,000 employees based outside North America. A portfolio management company (PMC), J.M. Huber became one of the key players in hydrocolloids, specialty chemicals and minerals, and engineered woods, and in 2017 it booked sales of US$2.3 billion. In 1993, Peter T. Francis, a fourth-generation family member, became chairman and CEO. For the fifth time in J.M. Huber's history, the family took complete leadership of the company. The years ahead were not always kind. In 2004 the firm had levered up its balance sheet to complete the largest acquisition in its history. Then, 2006 brought the collapse of the US housing market, and the economic crisis of 2007 hit many of J.M. Huber's key markets hard, putting the group under pressure. In the midst of the crisis, the company faced another significant milestone in its long history: Peter T. Francis had already announced in 2004 that he planned to retire in 2009. He was well aware that leadership succession was one of the most delicate moments for a family business, even in the best of times. How did the family and the board of directors support Peter T. Francis's decision to step down from his dual leadership function in the middle of the global recession? How was the succession engineered? What came first: CEO succession or chairman succession? Who was chosen for the CEO and the chairman positions: internal or external candidates, family or non-family members?

US-based lingerie retailer Victoria's Secret Stores Brand Management, LLC (Victoria's Secret) was started by a man who had been embarrassed to shop for lingerie for his wife and aimed to make the lingerie purchasing experience more comfortable for men. In 2020, after struggling to adapt to changing consumer habits and tastes and suffering from decreasing quality in its products and increasing competition from online retailers, the company faced a final blow from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Revenue streams were drying up, stores were closing, and the company was struggling with a tarnished image resulting from its links to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Its parent company's top management team and board of directors now faced a critical decision: Should they attempt to repair Victoria's Secret's brand image and fight to strengthen sales, sell the Victoria's Secret brand, or spin off the brand?

In 2020, Alejandro Simón, CEO of Sancor Seguros Group, a nearly 75-year-old cooperative that had become Argentina's insurance leader, had to decide about the Group's digital transformation strategy. The Group's values and history needed to be considered during the analysis, especially regarding its relationship with individual agents selling Sancor Seguros Group's products, who drove much of the Group's revenues. Sancor Seguros Group had always taken into consideration agents' input when making important decisions, which extended to the Group's recent efforts on its digital transformation. Yet, not all of them had adapted to new technologies. However, the use of digital channels to sell goods and services accelerated after almost two months of a mandatory quarantine that restricted out-of-home activities to buying essentials such as food and medicines. Would the momentum gained by these digital channels persist, serving as the platform for agents to catch up with the industry's newest global trends? Accordingly, how could Sancor Seguros Group help agents capture the value created by new technologies? How should the Group approach its presence on less personalized channels, like the ones offered by brokers or digital channels? The Group could also concentrate its efforts on long-term actions and focus on revamping its product offering.

In 2021, Alejandro Simón, CEO of Sancor Seguros Group, had to reassess the Group's digital transformation strategy.

In 2017, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, realized that the company needed a new talent development strategy to prepare its employees for the future of work, particularly a learning ecosystem that could support an enterprise-wide digital and talent transformation. The following year, Thirumala Arohi, Infosys's Senior Vice President and Head of Education, Training and Assessment, and his team developed Wingspan: a first-of-its-kind digital learning environment with internally developed content as well as content from Infosys's external alliance partners. Wingspan was initially tightly integrated with other Infosys systems, but eventually it became a full-fledged product offered to Infosys's corporate clients. In 2020, Wingspan's adoption got an unexpected boost due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Infosys staff migrated to online learning, by the end of the year nearly 220,000 employees had collectively chalked up over three million hours of learning time on Wingspan. By March 2021, more than one million client users relied on Wingspan through their own organisational learning platforms. The case study shows how Wingspan had managed to achieve scale while embodying Arohi's opinion that Infosys was a company where, "lifelong learning is the North Star for organisational progress and talent development." In early 2022, Arohi wondered what was next for Wingspan.

Proponents of the subscription model argue that it offers customers a better user experience and a lower barrier to access, while providers gain predictability and ease of communication with customers. But the risks of supply chain disruption and inflation are calling into question vendors' ability to fulfill their service commitments to customers and retain them over the long term.

Increasing recognition of the economic and social inequities experienced by Black Americans is spurring new investments in Black businesses and entrepreneurs. Making such investments in both the U.S. and in Africa can help increase diversity in entrepreneurship and create economic opportunities for communities of color, to the benefit of local economies. The authors explain why the period known as the golden age of Black business still offers lessons for leaders to help such businesses prosper.

Spreadsheet supplement for case A00462.

Since its beginning in 2021, Stitchwheel LLC (Stitchwheel), a needlepoint canvas painting service, had seen immediate success. From the company's inception, the co-founder of Stitchwheel had been assessing the advantages and disadvantages of an expansion strategy and wondered what barriers she might encounter. She was also assessing the viability to expand beyond painted needlepoint canvases to achieve substantial growth. Within a short time frame, the company had enjoyed strong brand recognition and offered a meaningful unique selling proposition, but there were still many questions about the company's next steps, including which growth strategy would be most suitable. Did the company have the necessary resources and skilled management team to adequately monitor and support growth? What marketing and operational issues was the company likely to encounter with expansion?

In February 2020, Peter Maxwell received his share from the sale of the Australian property development company he had co-founded in 2002: US$115 million. He began organizing his reflections on four of the most significant company decisions that had occurred at the company in recent years and how they had impacted the business. They focused on installing effective board governance; rejecting a move into resort development; maintaining ownership and control; and considering the personal health of the senior executives. Having been invited to speak at his alma mater, Maxwell was planning to ask the students to rank these decisions in terms of importance.

A commercial real estate expert contemplated the best use of his family-owned land parcel through hotel development. The venture- and capital-structures were put in place as a lender committed to the debt capital. After considering operations, financing and taxation cash flows, the project could have potentially met the equity holders' return expectations. But things did not go as expected, and the costs overshot to outlier levels.