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Two decades into the 21st century, agriculture and farmers faced multiple challenges. The following case study presents a success model for all Indian stakeholders involved in the agriculture sector from growing food to processing food. The business model adopted by Sahyadri Farms worked to find solutions for the problems of small and marginal farmers and make farming into a profitable venture with development of agriculture and rural community. It not only linked farmers to international markets through export channels for remunerative returns but also provided innovative technologies like blockchain to ensure solutions forcrop advisory, weather forecasting, etc. Sahyadri Farms were successful in establishing itself as India's biggest and most successful Farmer Producer Company. The Sahyadri's case explores the interventions in agriculture supply chain with technology and economies of scale (Farmer Producer Company). Though the company continues expand, the trade-offs between expansion and vision remain a dilemma.

Subir Shukla, the Principal Coordinator in Ignus Pahal, was involved in improving education for marginalized children. After working for many years at the policy level and assisting various governments across Asia in improving the public education system, he realized that the lack of access to reading material in India was hampering the children's ability to develop reading skills. In 2017 he decided to open Manan Publishing to cater to this need. He was strapped for funds for the initial years and was looking at some financial assistance for the first three years. His immediate need was to evolve a strategy for generating funds.

Kinbor, a pioneer and top brand of creative planner journals in China, was launched in 2015 by Guangbo Group (Guangbo), a leading stationery manufacturer and worldwide exporter. In January 2022, Jessie Yu-Kinbor's, founder and general manager- was facing several urgent issues in moving the start-up forward. Like many intrapreneurial projects, Kinbor was only contributing a small fraction to Guangbo's total annual revenues, so pressure to boost sales and scale up the operation was mounting. In addition, Kinbor's incongruence with the parent company's business model was making integration a challenge. Externally, major stationery industry competitors were launching their own creative planner journal brands, thereby intensifying the market's competition. Kinbor had to find the right strategy to address these issues.

Founded by CEO Steve Barnard in 1983, California-based Mission Produce was a leading supplier of Hass avocados with a global sourcing, marketing, and distribution network and $892 million in 2021 sales. Barnard had been influential in the global avocado trade's transformation in recent decades. For instance, Mission's use of ethylene gas ripening for avocados had allowed it to supply consistently ripe avocados to the U.S. market for the first time. Moreover, Mission had established an early presence in key avocado-growing countries, including Mexico and Peru, as they were on the cusp of gaining access to the U.S. and other key import markets. Barnard believed Mission's scale, global presence, value-added offerings, and vertically integrated model gave it many advantages in the maturing avocado market. Yet, he recognized the challenges Mission would face in the years to come. In its supply network, these included political instability, declining cost advantages, and the high cost of land in California. Perhaps most of all, water scarcity and cost were mounting concerns with no obvious fix. Mission recently entered the mango category, which, in the U.S., shared notable traits with the 1990s avocados market: mangos were a relatively minor U.S. product that many consumers did not know how to prepare, and their ripeness was variable at retail. Like avocados, mangos could be ripened with ethylene gas in destination markets, but they were more easily damaged during handling and had a shorter shelf life post-harvest.

Marfrig, one of the world's leading meatpackers, strived to comply with its commitment to have a deforestation-free value chain in Brazil by 2030. The company also pledged to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases in accordance with the guidelines set by the Science-Based Targets Imitative (SBTi). Controlling shareholder and chairman Marcos Molina, and Director of Sustainability and Communications for South America Paulo Painez, must figure how to achieve these goals while dealing with increased pressures from NGOs, customers, and foreign governments. The pair believed that a solution to the company's-and the sector's-challenges would only be achieved by working together with other stakeholders of the Brazilian beef industry: cattle ranchers, NGOs, the government, and civil society at large. Aligning the interests of the different players, while keeping Brazil's lead as the world's top beef exporter, was especially challenging given the country's fraught political environment and its tarnished image abroad.

The transition to a low carbon economy introduces many risks and opportunities for businesses. Risks emerge from regulatory actions, such as carbon taxes and cap and trade systems, technological innovation that develop alternatives for customers making existing products and services obsolete, changes in market preferences, such as consumers shifting purchases towards low carbon products, and liability concerns, from litigation connected to the physical impacts of climate change. Opportunities arise from new products and services that will be needed for the world to decarbonize (i.e., renewable energy, battery storage, hydrogen, plant-based protein, carbon capture and storage etc.). The business analysis of climate-related risks and opportunities will be critical for the optimal allocation of resources inside organizations and markets. This paper presents a generalizable framework for such analysis. Risks create demand for decarbonization solutions which in turn create opportunities for the supply of these solutions. Central considerations include the measurement and analysis of organizational carbon exposure, sensitivity, and adaptability.

Fortum started operations in India in 2012 as a producer of solar energy and soon became one of the country's leading clean-energy companies. It was driven by the values and code of conduct established by its parent company, Fortum Oyj. headquartered in Espoo, Finland. In December 2019, Fortum acquired land in Jaisalmer (Rajasthan, India) to construct a 250-megawatt solar power plant. The Covid-19 pandemic hit the world soon after. India initiated a complete national lockdown. Construction activities were suspended, resulting in joblessness of the migrant construction workers. Fortum faced a sudden and acute shortage of construction workers in Jaisalmer. Although the Government of Rajasthan allowed extended work-hours, Fortum India Pvt. Ltd. struggled in deciding what to do. Each choice came with a consequence of either delaying the plant commissioning or bearing additional and high costs towards ensuring safety and health of the workers amidst the fast-spreading pandemic. Employing fewer workers for longer hours may breach universal labour practices, and could thus attract negative attention. Keeping the construction workers employed using regular work hours is expected to increase the construction time due to shortage of construction workers.; Measures to protect workers from COVID infection will increase project costs, rendering the produced power uncompetitive and violating the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA). What should Fortum do?

The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) was named a top ten plastic polluter by the Break Free from Plastics coalition in 2019. P&G faced backlash over the plastic waste associated with the distribution of consumer goods in single-use sachets. While sachets provided access to everyday household necessities to low-income individuals, they also created negative environmental externalities. The company had to decide how to tackle the problem of waste they were responsible for and, at the same time, deflect accusations of greenwashing. How could this environmental issue be solved without raising prices for low-income individuals? What did P&G's key stakeholders expect? How could P&G achieve the "triple bottom line" by caring for profits, people, and the planet?

On June 5, 2021, an eleven-story building developed by the BROAD Group was completed in Changsha, China, in just 28 hours and 45 minutes. This building, known as the Holon Building, had the advantages of a long lifespan, short construction period, strong earthquake and typhoon resistance, low cost, high comfort and energy savings, and global transportability. Because of its standardized installation and 100 per cent factory prefabrication of all modules, Holon was well suited to various types of buildings. However, as a newly emerging technology, the Holon Building needed time and great effort to gain wide acceptance. BROAD's chairman and chief executive officer, Zhang Yue, was wondering about the feasibility of Holon buildings' global market expansion.

Economic growth is a recent phenomenon in human history. This technical note explores this phenomenon in detail, examining the work of Nobel laureate Robert Solow, whose growth model is the dominant paradigm for practitioners when evaluating countries' growth prospects. For math-oriented readers, this note pairs well with a companion technical note, "Determinants of Economic Growth: Supplemental Note" (UVA-GEM-0204).

The task before Siddhidhar Parulekar seemed challenging. Only eight months before, in March 2021, he had joined Dovrex Company (Dovrex) as senior director of global strategic supply chain. In an industrial-equipment company that utilized roughly a thousand suppliers and tens of thousands of part numbers, he knew there were bound to be opportunities for savings and supply chain improvements-but where were they? And how should he start to find them? Parulekar formed an internal team to partner with a consulting firm to conduct a procurement diagnostic, which he hoped would justify investment in a transformational strategic sourcing initiative. The consultants produced a "spending cube" (included in the accompanying student spreadsheet) that covered every line item of every purchase order over the prior 11 quarters. As Parulekar perused the spending cube, he realized the team needed to prioritize a subset for the initial analysis. This case is taught at Darden in the second-year "Operations Strategy" course in a module covering strategic sourcing. It could also be used in a course with the focus or one on the broader topic of supply chain management.

Spreadsheet supplement for case UV8883.

In this field-based case, the founders of udu, Inc. (udu-pronounced "you-do"), a company whose proprietary technology helped private equity clients source deals by identifying target companies and overlooked opportunities, and by shortening the business-development cycle. Clients who had found success with udu's help raved about the technology, but despite their product's promise, the founders were still struggling to find a scalable and profitable application for it, and to grow revenue for the company. The founders eventually sought funding in the amount of $5 million to boost udu's growth potential, but Jay Sarcone, a general partner at Brotherhood Park Ventures, had said udu wasn't ready for that amount because it would not result in a desirable company valuation, and made a far lower offer: $1.3 million in convertible note financing. All three founders agreed that $1.3 million fell far short of their hopes, and that udu would need another fundraising round in a year. But any money, at this point, would help udu progress. Should the founders accept Sarcone's offer, or risk alienating a trusted ally by seeking $5 million elsewhere? And if they did seek $5 million, would it result in a low valuation for udu?

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case UV8900.

In many cases, data analysts are given the question to answer or the data set to be analyzed. It's important, however, to understand that there are numerous steps, before and after the empirical analysis is done, that define an overall rigorous scientific process. This note outlines the basic steps that are important in asking an empirical research question, answering it, and presenting findings. The process described in the note generalizes to any empirical research domain. Given the rising prominence of data analytics in sports, we illustrate the process here using a question that is often discussed by basketball observers: Does calling a timeout in basketball end a run being made by the opposing team? At Darden, this note is used in the MBA and Executive MBA class "Data Analytics and Leadership Judgment in Sports"; it would also be suitable in many data analytics courses or a module in any course introducing the basics of an empirical research process.

This case introduces Aaron Johnson, a formerly at-risk youth who spent three years in prison, and who now faces many daunting tasks related to building his career: securing his first job, gaining admittance to the University of Virginia's (UVA's) McIntire School of Commerce (McIntire), getting an internship, and networking his way to a full-time offer. Johnson has just been offered a very appealing role in the Advanced Technology group at Opportune Delivery Services (ODS) as a financial analyst, but the salary offer came in lower than he expected, and he must decide whether he should accept the offer, try to negotiate, or look for a job someplace else. This case was designed to be taught in courses for non-MBA audiences that explore aspects of financial and social capability, such as storytelling, the power of creating connections and networking, the challenges that previously incarcerated people face when reentering society and looking for a job, and salary negotiation.

In April 2022, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Agilus Work Solutions (Agilus) was considering how to handle the future of work at the company. With the company's employees having worked primarily remotely since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, he wondered if now was the time to bring them back to the office. If so, would employees return to the office full-time, or was a hybrid model preferable? With employees having conflicting viewpoints on the issue, the CEO knew that whatever option was chosen would need strong justification and to be skilfully communicated to Agilus's employees from coast to coast.

On March 5, 2022, Ronni Kahn sat at her desk in Sydney, Australia, reflecting on what she was going to share at an international conference on leadership. Kahn was the founder and chief executive officer of the food rescue organization OzHarvest, a charity with the goal to nourish Australia through redistributing food and food waste to those in need. Kahn's work involved a combination of running OzHarvest and being an international ambassador for and keynote speaker on sustainable food practices and living with purpose and meaning. As Kahn reflected on the work that had been done over the last eighteen years, what were the leadership lessons she had learned that she could share with others?