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The case describes the Financial Statement Analysis interactive learning object. It is aimed at students taking the COR1307 Accounting for Entrepreneurs course in particular, as well as other basic financial accounting courses (ACCT101 and ACCT111 - Financial Accounting) and basic finance courses. The course is designed to provide a broad base coverage of issues related to accounting, such as basic accounting concepts and their applications to businesses, capital-raising, short-term and long-term financial planning, managerial accounting principles and concepts, management planning and control, as well as taxation that are relevant to future business owners and entrepreneurs. Business owners and entrepreneurs need the general foundation to help plan and control business operations and finance as well as discussing and negotiating with other stakeholders of the business.

In 2018, the legacy business of Somedia AG (Somedia)-traditional media such as newspapers, radio, and TV-was in structural decline. While its business portfolio still delivered positive financial results, it became clear that this would only be the case for a few more years. Susanne Lebrument and Thomas Kundert, the two main figures in charge as this pivotal moment in the firm's history emerged, tasked themselves with finding new business areas that would secure sustained profitable growth and, thus, compensate the declining legacy business. The firm had a rich history and was a well-respected institution in southeastern Switzerland; as such, Somedia's existing resources and capabilities would provide points of departure for new business development and diversification. Lebrument and Kundert's key strategic challenge was to change the current business trajectory toward sustained profitable growth that would compensate for the decline and eventual disappearance of Somedia's legacy business.

In August 2021, the founders of We are Marlow Corporation (Marlow) were considering the company's future. Marlow was a direct-to-consumer (D2C), subscription-based business that sold lubricated tampon kits. The company was about to receive full approval from Health Canada to sell its products and the founders needed to shift their focus to a marketing strategy for their upcoming launch. They needed to decide on their target market and pricing scheme and how they would allocate their promotional budget to sell as many units as possible. The founders wanted a plan that would contribute to Marlow's long-term sustainability and growth.

The Freedom Fund founded in 2013 to end modern slavery had raised more than half its intended target (by 2025) of $200 million. In 2021, impressed by its decentralized-partnering style of operations, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott awarded the Fund a gift of $35 million over 5 years. The beauty of the gift was that it came with no strings attached. It was completely unrestricted for use the way the company's management and staff deemed fit. Nick Grono, the organization's first CEO was wrestling with the question of how to put the money to best use.

The Freedom Fund (B) case describes the management's plan of how to use the windfall of $35 million granted by philanthropist Mackenzie Scott. The case also describes the process by which the decisions were arrived at.

On March 18, 2021, Brian Rolapp, chief media and business officer at the National Football League (NFL) presented the results of a months-long effort to renegotiate rights deals with the NFL's current partners in television-the media conglomerates behind the networks CBS, FOX, NBC, and ESPN-to a small committee of NFL team owners. Those agreements were worth a staggering $9 billion a year-a 75% increase over the current deals. The committee had swiftly accepted the new deals, clearing the way for the agreements to be submitted for formal approval by the full group of NFL team owners later in the month. But Rolapp and his team did not have time for a victory dance: they immediately focused their attention on the one remaining major package still to find a home: the NFL's Thursday Night games. Technology giant Amazon was a front-runner, having offered $1.2 billion a year. That figure would bring the total value of the NFL's media-rights deals to more than $110 billion over eleven years-by far the richest set of deals in the history of sports. Should the NFL finalize a first-ever deal of its kind with Amazon, for the Thursday Night rights?

In 2022, after five years of pursuing a new "AI-first" strategy, Google had captured a sizeable share of the American and global markets for voice assistants. Google Assistant was used by hundreds of millions of users around the world, but Amazon retained the largest share of the smart speaker market, and Apple's share was quickly growing following a strategic shift towards affordability. In addition, Chinese companies including Baidu and Alibaba dominated the smart speaker market in China, and their products were increasingly popular in foreign markets. Google CEO Sundar Pichai needed to figure out how to gain new users and grow Google Assistant's market share. Second, he needed to determine how Google Assistant would, if ever, generate revenue.

In September 2015, Pooja Viswanathan, a post-doctoral research scientist, emerged perplexed after a meeting with her post-doc supervisor. The purpose of the meeting had been to debrief on Viswanathan's progress in response to the unexpected multi-stakeholder feedback received on the outcome of her six years of research: a prototype of an anti-collision system that enhanced wheelchair users' mobility. To her considerable surprise and confusion, there seemed to be no consensus on the commercial viability of her prototype. Viswanathan stood in the corridor outside the meeting room and pondered her next steps. One option was to return to the post-doc bench and continue to develop her academic work and publish her findings. Alternatively, she could try to address the feedback she had received and start up her own venture, whereby she could commercialize a solution with stronger market potential. Viswanathan knew she had reached a fork in the road and now had to make a decisive career choice.

In January 2022, a partner in Homeland Foods was identifying Canadian distribution channels through which to launch dried fruit products from his company based in Armenia. He needed to identify the most appropriate initial target market, select the most effective distribution channel(s), and develop an effective marketing strategy. Distribution channels under consideration included general grocery stores, ethnic food stores, natural food stores, gourmet food stores, and online distribution. Promotions concerns included finding a plan that would reach an appropriate customer segment on a limited budget. He was also concerned about how well the Armenian branding would transfer to a Canadian audience.

This briefing sheet reviews a four-step "Be SURE" negotiation preparation framework. It was developed to complement educational and resource materials accessible through the HKS SLATE Negotiate WELL (Work, Education, Life, and Leadership) Case Collection, including the Strategic Preparation Workbook and related cases. It is adapted from the Harvard Business Review article, "Negotiating Your Next Job: Focus on Your Role, Responsibilities, and Career Trajectory, Not Your Salary," by Hannah Riley Bowles and Bobbi Thomason, and a related HKS Case, "Self-Advocating in Early Career", by Hannah Riley Bowles and Zoe Williams.

In April 2020, Rachel Jarrett, President and COO of wedding technology company Zola, called a meeting with the organization's key decision-makers. The company had previously launched three business expansions: a vendor marketplace, a wedding apparel division, and a honeymoon-planning service. However, the March 2020 onset of COVID-19 had prompted many couples to delay or cancel their weddings, and it was unclear how long the pandemic would last. As a result, Jarrett and Zola CEO Shan-Lyn Ma knew that they could only fully invest in one of the three new businesses, while they could pursue a second business with limited funding. To decide the appropriate path forward, Jarrett and Ma sought the perspectives of the company's leadership team through a four-step decision-making process that Jarrett had developed. The process, which the team called "taking a vote," began when the key decision-maker delivered a data-driven presentation on a discrete set of options for a given strategic dilemma. Next, the team conducted an anonymous vote, followed by a discussion in which each team member explained the reasoning behind their vote. Finally, the team voted a second time on the ideal path forward. During the meeting, the Zola team must decide which business to pursue, which to continue in a limited way, and which to pause. Jarrett must also decide how to proceed if the team's opinion differed from her own.

The media industry is explored in this paper, highlighting both ongoing changes and recent trends. Students will learn about large transactions in recent years that have changed the media landscape as well as the growth of new competition of subscription video.

When Covid-19 hit the US in 2020, the grocery retail industry underwent a greatly accelerated digital transformation as consumers' habits changed drastically in a matter of weeks. As Americans sought to avoid their risk of exposure to the coronavirus, the adoption of online grocery shopping, click-and-collect and self-checkout skyrocketed. By 2022, it appeared this shift was here to stay, changing the grocery business for the long term. Yet, while big supermarket chains were scrambling to capture this new wave of digital shoppers, Trader Joe's consciously decided not to invest in e-commerce or omnichannel solutions. The company doubled down on experiential retail, choosing to remain a pure brick-and-mortar player and to keep its stores low-tech. Can this maverick company maintain a competitive advantage by going against the macro-trend of digitalization?

Spreadsheet supplement for Case HK1345

Herend Porcelain Manufactory Ltd. (Herend) was an almost 200-year-old porcelain manufactory located in western Hungary. The company had weathered multiple social and political changes, world wars, and hardships and had variably experienced prosperity, international recognition, and, on one occasion, bankruptcy. However, under the current chief executive officer, Herend had become a stable and profitable organization. Then, in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges. Government-mandated lockdowns-an attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19-restricted consumers from shopping in person at Herend's shops and diminished the use of porcelain in hospitality and gastronomy where the porcelain sets would be used. The health safety of employees, production disruptions, and decline in orders were other concerns. How could Herend prepare for and survive this extraordinary challenge?

OnlyFans, a paywalled platform primarily known for hosting adult content, had drifted towards sexually explicit content since COVID-19-related lockdowns began in March 2020. However, given pressure from its investors, in August 2021 OnlyFans announced it would ban sexually explicit content from its site later that year. Following the announcement, the company came under fierce criticism from its adult content creators, who maintained that OnlyFans owed its growth to pornography, an industry that had been evolving as technological advancements arose. On August 25, 2021, upon renegotiating with its capital providers, OnlyFans suspended the ban, though irreversible damage had been done. Considering the related information technology (IT) management and ethical issues, what should the chief executive officer of OnlyFans have done when OnlyFans' different stakeholders pulled the platform in different directions and expressed opposing ethical views? How was an open platform like OnlyFans supposed to judge what was ethical and what was not? Was banning (or not banning) sexually explicit content ethical?

In May 2021, Asahi Group Holdings, Limited (Asahi), a Japanese global beer, spirits, soft drinks, and food company, shifted its focus to non-alcoholic beers. The shift was made after spending US$20 billion to acquire premium beer brands from Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, a Belgian multinational drinks and brewing company. The Japanese beer market had been shrinking for decades with Japan's declining population, and more recently, the market had shrunk further because of restrictions imposed during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In response, domestic beer producers were looking abroad for better market opportunities.<br><br>Asahi needed a strategy to compete against the Belgian beer giant. Considerations included whether to pursue growth in Asahi's core beer business or diversify in the food industry, how to position a growing portfolio of products to minimize cannibalization, whether to shift focus from the premium to the lower-mass beer market, and how to approach the potential Chinese beer market. Regardless of growth strategy, Asahi needed to deal with a loss in share value, triggered by investors nervous about Asahi's acquisition spree. To regain investor trust, Asahi needed to manage its financial leverage.

After years of learning from the best bakeries around the world, Polish entrepreneur Monika Walecka returned to her native Poland and, in 2019, opened her artisanal bakery, All in Flour. The bakery was an extension of her values and struck a delicate balance between financial and social objectives. All in Flour was located in one of the most upscale districts of Warsaw and focused on top-quality bread products. It used high-quality, diverse, and expensive ingredients sourced from small, local suppliers, and its bread prices were probably the highest in Warsaw. Walecka was considering whether to pursue any development options. In fact, her preferred option, at present, was to do nothing. She knew that growth was not an obvious choice because it came with risk, costs, and problems. Nevertheless, the decision of whether to change something was becoming the most important challenge of her entrepreneurial career as a baker.

In innovation, experimentation is much talked about in the abstract, but poorly understood in practice. It bridges solution generation and implementation, yet often takes the form of smaller-scale pilots rather than learning-oriented experiments. Building an evidence base behind new ideas, and particularly being ready to discard what doesn't work, is critical for successful innovation. This technical note provides a hands-on, step-by-step guide and templates to lead students in any discipline through a structured process for the design of experiments, from what it takes to frame testable ideas all the way through to choosing the best experimental design and prototype.