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This case describes Salesforce's development of Sustainability Cloud, a suite of software tools built to help companies measure, track, and report carbon emissions and other sustainability metrics. The goal of this case is to provide students with a background and foundational knowledge of three topics: software as a service (SaaS); environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards; and carbon accounting. The case places students in the role of the fictional Salesforce vice president of sustainability, who is deciding whether or not to recommend the development and launch of Sustainability Cloud 2.0. She is pondering many issues. Since Salesforce was able to become a world leader in SaaS software, could it become a leader in sustainability software, as well? After analyzing the decision at hand, students should be ready to meet with Salesforce executives and make a recommendation about next steps for the company's sustainability software products.

The owner of a tennis ball manufacturer was reviewing the company's financial performance for its third fiscal year. The bookkeeper had already recorded the fiscal 2020 cash transactions, but may have done so incorrectly. The owner recorded the opening balances, cash receipts, and cash disbursements to calculate the unadjusted trial balances for fiscal 2020. She started with the bookkeeper's unadjusted trial balances and planned to use the balance sheet and the list of cash receipts and disbursements, if necessary. She would have to figure out where the bookkeeper posted each entry, determine whether it required an adjustment, and adjust accordingly.

This note describes the exponential growth of semiconductor technology over the last 40 years, as well as the evolution of the semiconductor value chain. Semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) are essential to all modern electronic equipment and are used in virtually every industry, including consumer electronics, office equipment, appliances, and automobiles. Semiconductor complexity and processing power has increased exponentially, resulting in commensurate increases in the sophistication of and upfront costs associated with fabrication processes. The industry has evolved from a vertically integrated model of integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) to a disaggregated model of "fabless" technology companies that focus on research and design and rely on off-shore pure-play semiconductor foundries for production. An entire generation of US-based fabless semiconductor manufacturers, such as Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Cirrus Logic, have blossomed and thrived by taking advantage of high-quality, low-cost foundry services provided by the likes of TSMC, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries. The recent COVID-19 crisis and escalating US-China trade tensions have exposed the fragility of this ecosystem, and US technology companies must learn to manage an emerging set of risks. The note highlights how the natural evolution of an industry, in response to competitive and market pressures, may result in highly efficient but fragile value chains.

In January 2021, the co-founder of Mystery Books Co. (Mystery Books) was evaluating the company's 2020 performance under the leadership of his daughter as the new chief executive officer. His daughter had ambitions of securing Walmart Inc. as a key client, so the co-founder had promised her an additional performance bonus of 5 per cent of his 30 per cent ownership of common stock if she grew the company's net income by 20 per cent over the previous year. Throughout his thirty years of managing the company as chief executive officer, the co-founder had maintained very conservative accounting policies, some of which had been modified under his daughter's management. After reviewing the 2020 financial information, the co-founder harboured several concerns: Should he have specified more conditions for his daughter's performance incentive? Would the accounting policy changes pass the scrutiny of the company's external auditors? And how should he proceed with regard to the suspicious sales activity he noticed? With these questions at the front of his mind, the co-founder of Mystery Books thought that perhaps he should have somehow left more reporting guidance for the company prior to leaving.

In August 2021, Singapore Airlines Group (SIA) was at a critical juncture in its history. Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had forced commercial travel to almost a standstill, requiring SIA to idle most of its fleet. The group's overall revenues had declined by 76 per cent in the 2020/21 financial year, resulting in a loss of S$4.27 billion. The massive cash bleed forced the group to issue new capital, thus diluting the stake of its existing shareholders. Although SIA's results had improved for the quarter ended June 30, 2021, the emergence of new virus variants and continued travel restrictions meant that the group needed to make critical decisions that would have implications for both its short-term survival and its long-term performance.

This case profiles the National Hockey League (NHL), the most prestigious professional hockey league in the world. It presents the league's history, highlighting facts inherent to professional sports in North America. It also examines the NHL's value proposition, sources of revenue, and major expenses. Finally, it looks at the strengths and weaknesses of the league's business model, speculating about the future.

Stemina Lubricants (Stemina) was an automotive lubricant manufacturer in Udupi, Karnataka, India. All Stemina products were a blend of high-class base oil and imported branded additives. Stemina competed with leading brands-one that was strong in the market and at mechanics' locations, having leveraged its consumer brand equity and strong advertising support to win over mechanics and dealers, and another that had a strong presence in the forecourts of gas stations in India. Customers looking for oil changes at gas stations were likely to purchase these company brands rather than a local brand, and Stemina faced an uphill battle to establish itself in a market with such entrenched distribution. How could this small business, with few resources for branding and distribution, successfully establish itself in the market?

The owner of Physio2U, the largest provider of in-home physical rehabilitation services in Western Canada, was forced to rapidly transition to telehealth amid the growing threat of COVID-19 in early 2020. While the Physio2U team and its patients were pleasantly surprised by their success with telehealth, as vaccination rates increased and the threat of COVID-19 infection became less significant, she had some tough decisions to make. She wondered if telehealth was (a) just a temporary solution to survive the pandemic; or (b) an opportunity for her business going forward. Before she invested any more resources in telehealth, including marketing funds, the owner needed to make sure she had both a strong business case and a comprehensive strategy for offering telehealth post-pandemic.

When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, he shifted the company's competitive focus from card networks to cash itself. Mastercard's new vision of a "World Beyond Cash" distilled into a three-pronged framework: Grow the core business, Diversify customers and employees, and Build new businesses that reinforce Mastercard's core capabilities. With digital technologies on the rise, Banga knew that innovation would need to become a strategic imperative. Yet, in a 2010 survey, Mastercard's 7,000 employees ranked "innovation" as the 26th most important factor for the future of Mastercard in a list of 27. Banga tasked Garry Lyons, who had joined Mastercard through the 2009 acquisition of Orbiscom, with infusing innovation into Mastercard's culture. With a significant incremental investment, and free reign to spend it as he pleased, Lyons created Mastercard Labs-a global R&D network that became a catalytic force for change at the company. In December 2017, Lyons is stepping down from his role as Chief Innovation Officer and reflecting on the path ahead for Mastercard and its Labs.

When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, he shifted the company's competitive focus from card networks to cash itself. Mastercard's new vision of a "World Beyond Cash" distilled into a three-pronged framework: Grow the core business, Diversify customers and employees, and Build new businesses that reinforce Mastercard's core capabilities. With digital technologies on the rise, Banga knew that innovation would need to become a strategic imperative. Yet, in a 2010 survey, Mastercard's 7,000 employees ranked "innovation" as the 26th most important factor for the future of Mastercard in a list of 27. Banga tasked Garry Lyons, who had joined Mastercard through the 2009 acquisition of Orbiscom, with infusing innovation into Mastercard's culture. With a significant incremental investment, and free reign to spend it as he pleased, Lyons created Mastercard Labs-a global R&D network that became a catalytic force for change at the company. In December 2017, Lyons is stepping down from his role as Chief Innovation Officer and reflecting on the path ahead for Mastercard and its Labs.

China Huarong Asset Management Co., Ltd. was a majority state-owned financial asset management company in China, with a focus on distressed asset management. On 30 June 2020, Huarong had around CNY1.7tn in total assets. It missed the deadline for its 2020 annual report filing to the SEHK at the end of March 2021, and its shares were suspended from trading after 1 April 2021. A major concern the investors had about the company was a direct result of the execution of its former chair, Lai Xiaomin, in January 2021 for financial crimes involving the abuse of power to allocate credit through Huarong. In April 2021, offshore US dollar bonds issued by Huarong plunged in value, and credit agencies downgraded the company's ratings as an issuer and as a company. There was also pressure on Huarong for the repayment of around CNY143bn in Chinese corporate debt due at the end of 2021. In order to reduce the risk of the market tumbling and to assist Huarong's cash flow, Chinese regulators asked Chinese banks to provide loans to the company, in order to stabilize the banking industry. In addition, the regulators suggested Huarong had the option of restructuring.

Ascend Behavior Partners provided applied behavioral analysis (ABA) services to families with children with autism. The growing autism services market presented a massive opportunity for Ascend to provide quality care to families in need. Ascend's delivery model relied on board certified behavior analysts (BCBAs), who were the backbone of providing care to families with children with autism. But the severe imbalance between supply and demand for these critical skills posed a challenge for companies like Ascend looking to hire qualified BCBAs. After struggling with its BCBA offer acceptance rate, Ascend made a counter-intuitive decision in December 2018 and altered its BCBA hiring process to make it substantially more challenging and time-consuming. The new process was designed to give applicants a chance to experience Ascend's culture in a more meaningful way throughout the hiring process. The epicenter of the revamped hiring process was an in-person, full-day interview, where applicants spoke with a range of employees across the company. Almost immediately after implementing the change, Ascend saw its offer acceptance rate spike from 50 percent to 90 percent. This case discusses how to create a hiring process that accurately conveys the culture of a company.

The founder of Jucai Human Resources Development Co., Ltd. had witnessed the development of China's human resources service industry over the previous 20 years. In the company's early stages, it had mainly relied on the advantage of information asymmetry of the Internet to carry out online recruitment services. But from 2015, the founder became interested in and confident about the prospects of providing a talent assessment service for public institutions and thus decided to start such a service. After five years of development, the company had become a leading enterprise in the domestic talent assessment service for public institutions. However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, talent assessment services for public institutions suddenly stagnated. The founder realized that this service was too dependent on government policy support, although income from this service accounted for 70 per cent of its revenue. If public institutions shifted their talent assessment business from outsourcing assessment to independent assessment, the company would face a severe challenge. Therefore, the founder had to consider how his company could reduce its dependence on policies and achieve sustainable development by using existing data resources.

This case describes TerraCycle's history as an innovative recycling platform and focuses on the business model of its newest endeavor, Loop. After significant growth of TerraCycle and successfully orchestrating recycling solutions for hard-to-recycle materials through relationships with sponsor brands, logistics companies, and recycling processors, Loop was launched to address the global waste crisis at the root level. The key insight upon which Loop's value proposition was built is the notion that no one needs or wants to own the containers their goods were packaged in after the product has been used. With inspiration from the traditional milkman concept, Loop set out to leverage its extensive brand network and logistics relationships to orchestrate a reuse model.

In 1965, Smithtown, Arkansas, had virtually no natural resources, core competencies, human capital advantages, or infrastructure advantages. The local river was impassable and not suitable for transport, and the town had no rail line and no airport. Smithtown's young population (about 18,000 scattered across two counties) was pretty much stagnant and comparatively less educated than the rest of the United States. Although Smithtown had low-cost land and labour, which was ideal for tourism, it lacked anything that tourists typically looked for and had just a few natural attractions, although nothing spectacular. The town's leaders wondered what the future would hold and whether there was anything they could do to steer the town's future direction and avoid its ruin.

In August 2021, uTrade Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (uTrade) was considering various options for its future. The financial technologies (fintech) company was founded in 2011 and based in Mohali, India. By 2021, uTrade had become a trusted state-of-the-art technology solutions provider to India's major stockbrokerage firms. However, the changing market landscape, declining brokerage margins, and market disruption by discount brokers were creating challenges for uTrade's business model, forcing the company to consider alternative growth strategies that were more aligned with the new market requirements. Although vertical integration could help uTrade capture a larger share of the value chain, it could also create a potential conflict of interest with existing clients. Horizontal expansion through a new banking, insurance, or digital payment venture could also have benefits and potential challenges in terms of resource deployment and compatibility with the existing business model. Another issue was a push from uTrade stakeholders to sell the company and enter another segment of the fintech industry. The founder had to make a decision.

This annually updated exercise assesses one's exposure to the rest of the world's peoples. A series of worksheets require respondents to check off the number and names of countries they have visited and the corresponding percentage of world population that each country represents. The summary of a group's collective exposure to the world's people will inevitably be the recognition that together they have seen much, even if individually some have seen little. The teaching note provides discussion questions that consider why there is such a high variability in individual profiles, the implications of each profile for one's business career, and what it would take for respondents to change their profile.

A 24-year-old female employee landed her first career job at Exeter Group only a few months after graduating from university. The employee worked as an assistant to the company's co-founder and chief executive officer. A few months after the employee began her new job, her boss began making work requests that seemed personal and then began making repeated sexual advances, which made the employee feel increasingly uncomfortable. The employee tried to curb the boss's behaviour on several occasions, but she felt caught between dealing with harassment from her boss and trying to develop her career. One late evening during a business trip, the boss drunkenly and forcibly disrupted the employee in her hotel room and attempted to coerce her into having sex with him. The employee evaded the advance by locking herself in the bathroom of her hotel room. As she sat on the floor of the bathroom, she wondered how she had found herself in this extremely difficult situation and how she would get out of it.