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Urban Axes introduced the Canadian indoor sport of axe throwing to the US market, beginning with one location in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2016. Although Urban Axes was started as a "side hustle" by four friends with corporate jobs, it soon became apparent that the concept could be both popular and profitable. The partners quickly decided to become fully involved in the business to maximize its potential. This case features a woman protagonist as chief financial officer and the originator of the business plan. It is a novel, contemporary example of the first-mover principle, highlighting the risks and rewards of creating a new line of business in a competitive and volatile industry-in this case, the indoor or experiential entertainment industry.

Shrujan, a 50-year-old social enterprise, was started to provide work for villagers following a severe drought in the Kutch region of India. The organization focused on using the villagers' appreciable skills in embroidery to create and market high-end handicrafts. The products both generated a source of added income for their households and helped to preserve the traditional crafts of the artisans. Shrujan had grown over the years, increasing sales and thus increasing the number of artisans supported by the project. However, in January 2020, a young fashion designer-the niece of the trustee manager and an employee at Shrujan-had ideas for growing and expanding the organization even further. The trustee manager needed to evaluate her niece's proposal and decide whether or not it was possible to scale Shrujan and grow the business without compromising its social commitment.

In 2020, the corporate purchasing and sustainability manager at the Plastilene Group (a plastics producer based in Colombia) needed to address a sustainability challenge. In response to media and legislative attacks and consumer behaviour changes regarding the use of plastic products globally, the corporate purchasing and sustainability manager, supported by the company's chief executive officer, was tasked with leading a strategic renewal in the 62-year-old business group known for its integration of various lines of innovation both inside and outside its organization. The organization's process of strategic renewal had arisen from the theories of sustainability and the circular economy. How could the company management enhance not only the sustainable innovation strategy within the organization's structure, but also its spirit of corporate entrepreneurship and innovation?

In December 2019, Oliver Jay, Asana's Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), was reconsidering his go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Asana was cloud-based work management software that enabled users to break up projects into discrete tasks that could be assigned, scheduled, and tracked on a single, integrated platform. Jay was wondering how to increase annual recurring revenue by year-end 2020. Just three years earlier, when Jay joined Asana as its first CRO, thousands of companies were already using free and paid versions of its software. Since Asana was a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offer, all a new user needed to do was to create an account. This meant individual users and teams could onboard easily and initially for free, using an array of self-service tools, without purchasing approval from their IT departments on conversion to paid subscriptions and without initial sales support from Asana. This mix of free and paid users proved sustainable and profitable for Asana. However, reaching senior directors, vice presidents, and executives of potential client companies to drive larger, enterprise-wide adoptions was a challenge for the Asana sales team. Jay's desire to improve sales performance led him to a novel concept: to structure the sales team based on where customers were in their adoption cycles with Asana-that is, to organize sales by stages of the customer journey rather than by the time-honored approach of organizing by account size (e.g., SMB, mid-market, and enterprise). Was this radical idea the right structure for Asana to reach its revenue growth goals-or was it fraught with too much risk?

GE Digital started out in 2009 as a center of excellence to enable the digital transformation of services to industrial customers who had previously bought GE hardware. Now it finds itself competing with a variety of other providers. The case explores the basis of its competitive advantage (data analytics) and how it positions itself to succeed in what has become a crowded field.

On 30 August 2016, Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition, ordered Ireland to recover €13 billion in illegal state aid (plus interest) that Ireland was alleged to have granted Apple over a decade from 2003. Within months of the ruling, both Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, and Enda Kenny, the Irish Prime Minister, appealed the Commission's judgment to the European General Court in Luxembourg, the EU's second highest court. In mid-July 2020, the General Court returned its verdict and annulled the Commission's ruling giving Commissioner Vestager two months and 10 days to appeal. At the very last minute, the Commissioner announced that she would seek an appeal before the EU's highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union, citing "errors of law" committed by the lower court. No date has been set for the CJEU to decide on the merits of the appeal. The case explores these events from five analytical pillars: 1) the role of Ireland's low corporate tax rate in attracting FDI; 2) Apple's decision to allocate its earnings to a paper company in Ireland with no physical presence in the country; 3) the repatriation of foreign earnings to the United States; 4) the transfer payments that Apple makes to the USA to pay for R&D; 5) the Commissioner's decision to impose a retroactive tax penalty on a foreign company that acted in accordance with the tax arrangements granted by its host country.

In 2019, the chairman and chief executive officer of Valeo, an automotive supplier and partner to automakers worldwide, faced the challenges of maintaining the company's speed of growth and balancing its growth with profitability. Valeo had started as a small automobile component manufacturer in 1923 in France. By 2019, however, it was partnering with automakers to design innovative solutions for smart mobility with a focus on intuitive driving and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Valeo had grown not only organically, but also through partnerships and acquisitions, which enabled it to develop new technologies and new markets. What should the chairman and chief executive officer do to achieve the twin challenges of maintaining the company's speed of growth and balancing growth with profitability, while not losing sight of the three current automotive revolutions-vehicle electrification, vehicle autonomy, and digital mobility?

The Inspector-General of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Fatma Özdamar, receives two highly distressing pieces of news concerning the UNHCR-administered refugee camps in Lundya. The first is an anonymous letter detailing rampant levels of corruption at the camps, including fraud and abuse by UNHCR officials. To make things worse, a key UNHCR donor country informed her that its Ambassador in Lundya had received a personal threat and a demand to leave the country. Investigations revealed that the note to the Ambassador had originated from employees of the Lundyan refugee camps. Thus, the donor country was threatening to withdraw its financial support to UNHCR. Having been told to prioritise the investigation of incidents involving UNHCR staff elsewhere, Inspector-General Özdamar faced hard choices on how to proceed.

Vox Capital was a pioneer as an impact investment company in Brazil, with the purpose of creating a world where businesses can generate positive social transformations. Vox Capital decided to invest in businesses that improve the current essential service provision, such as the Health Sector, and that contribute to the reduction of social inequalities in Brazil. In 2015, Vox Capital decided to invest in Magnamed, a Brazilian company, 100% national, which develops, manufactures and sells medical equipment, specialized in pulmonary ventilation for the care of hospital patients dependent on critical care (intensive care) and transportation of patients in ambulances. Around 70% of the Brazilian population relied on the public health system (SUS) when they needed assistance, especially low-income classes. But SUS had a mayor problem, which was the shortage of beds in hospitals, mainly due to lack of both equipment and trained personnel capable of operating them. Vox Capital invested in Magnamed because its products could make SUS better, reducing inequalities in access and quality of health service. Their products were cheaper, easy-to-use and were better adapted to the living conditions of our country (have longer-lasting batteries and take up less space). Magnamed's main markets were emerging countries, in which the characteristics of the Brazilian equipment were suited to local realities. In 2017, the company announced bold internationalization plans with the opening of its first international factory, with an investment of $ 2 million, in the United States. The situation portrayed in this case is fictional and reflects some questions faced by Gilberto Ribeiro, a partner of Vox Capital. In this scene, Gilberto was challenged during a public event by the moderator of the panel in which he participated with the question, "In seeking to grow abroad, does the company [Magnamed] continue with its social focus?

Technology is advancing at a rapid rate, changing various aspects of our everyday lives. Businesses and governments are trying to adapt to this change by embracing positive aspects, while remaining attentive to negative aspects. This note focuses on technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data, considering the ethical issues that these technologies create within our society and also how these ethical issues are being addressed.

Kombucha Canada Inc. sold kombucha beverages to restaurants and grocery stores in British Columbia, Canada. Restaurant and store closures, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, had affected the company's sales. The business owner wanted to value her inventory at year-end using the first-in, first-out method of valuation and calculate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on her inventory.

Urban Spring is a successful social enterprise. Every day, people in Hong Kong buy around 2.5 million bottles of water. Until Urban Spring marketed its award-winning high tech Well井 water fountains, most plastic containers were sent to landfill, adding hazardous chemicals to the environment. Urban Spring's founder has made it his mission is to reduce the city's plastic waste and to encourage people to take a more sustainable approach to bottled water. By providing consumers with clean chilled water - free of charge, 24/7, Urban Spring has replaced more than 5.28 million plastic bottles, which would otherwise have been sent to landfill. Led by its CEO, Ada Yip, the Urban Spring design team created a fountain that is monitored remotely for hygiene, water quality, and data collection. Units are leased to corporations, hotels, schools and learning institutions. With its second-generation fountains ready for release, the company now needs to make crucial decisions about its future expansion and potential partnerships.

In 2019 Southwest was the only US airline to remain profitable for nearly 50 years in a row, to never file for bankruptcy, and to never furlough or lay off employees. At the core of its profitability was a commitment, unlike other airline carriers, to keep only Boeing 737s in their fleet, thereby streamlining operational costs and training practices. This keep-it-simple corporate strategy was supported by a strong sense of community and shared values that fostered a cross-functional cohesion among Southwest employees-a culture that other low-cost carriers found difficult to replicate. However, The company's keep-it-simple corporate strategy was tested in March 2019 when Southwest (along with other airlines ) was forced to ground 34 of its newest 737 MAX aircraft, after the Federal Aviation Administration cited safety concerns following the crash of two 737 MAX planes. As a result, Southwest considered parting with its long standing single carrier policy. In this case, students will be asked to consider what ripple effect a move away from a single-source vendor might have on the company's highly efficient operations and organizational culture.

First emerging in China in early January 2020, the lethal COVID-19 virus quickly spread throughout Europe and to the US east coast, with New York City as the epicenter. In March the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Policy makers agreed that a vaccine would be necessary to control the virus, however, interim measures would be necessary until a safe vaccine could be developed, manufactured and distributed. The key initiatives undertaken in "flattening the curve" of the virus's spread included voluntary social distancing, frequent sanitation of hands and surfaces, and, in some instances, mandatory lockdowns. These measures forced many businesses to operate at limited capacity and also reduced the supply of some inputs such as labor. By December 2020 several vaccines had been developed and the world awaited mass distribution, while thousands of people continued to succumb to COVID-19 every day. In this environment, despite regulatory, monetary, and fiscal responses to the crisis, there was both uncertainty about the short-run path to economic recovery as well as the long-term impact of COVID-19 for the global economy. In this case, students will work with a Microsoft Excel-built simulation tool to help understand how disease dynamics work and how it affects the economy.

David Swensen and the Investments Office staff must decide whether to continue to allocate the bulk of the university's endowment to illiquid investments-hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, real estate, natural resources-given the impact of the COVID-19 public health crisis on the financial markets. The case explores the risks and benefits of a different asset allocation strategy and considers how to create financial models to prepare for unexpected events. It highlights the issues around allocations across different subclasses, e.g., between venture capital, hedge funds, and real assets.

Construction of buildings and infrastructure is one of the largest industries in the world in terms of volume. It is also one of the most physically risky, financially uncertain, and politically impacted. The industry is highly fragmented since there are few economies of scale, substantial location advantages, and almost all of the work is site built from unique plans. In order to achieve long term above average returns on effort and on invested capital, it's crucial that firms plan with intent with respect to markets and clients served, services provided, roles played in the industry value added system, and the matching of skills and assets to opportunities. The longest lived firms also determine which markets, products, customer types, and roles to avoid even when there might be attractive short term opportunistic contracts to be pursued. This note covers both the idiosyncratic nature of this industry that makes many classic strategic planning tools unhelpful, and also details the specific steps strategists should follow to gain the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of competition in this industry.

In 2020, Ndidi Nwuneli, founder and CEO of Sahel Consulting in Nigeria, faced a thorny set of problems. Her firm partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in a large project to develop the local dairy industry as a way to facilitate equitable growth and conserve foreign exchange. The Nigerian dairy market was dominated by imported, powdered milk, but the country had a large population of cows owned by pastoralists. Nwuneli had to devise a plan to get local dairy processors, multinational firms, local pastoralists, and the Nigerian government to work together to make local cows more efficient, connect smallholder farmers with processors, and compete with imported milk powder. The stakes were high: the project, if successful, could play a large part in reducing Nigeria's deadly farmer-herder conflict and reducing the country's macroeconomic imbalances. The case explores the variety of interests involved and asks students to debate whether Nwuneli and others should push for protectionist policies as a way to catalyze local production.

Doing business on the dominant digital platforms makes it difficult for companies to differentiate their products and services and pursue competitive strategy. Platform-dependent businesses must understand the risks and how to navigate them.

Business ecosystems provide valuable access to external capabilities, scale fast, and can be very flexible and resilient. But only 1 in 7 ecosystems achieves sustainable success. The metrics and red flags described in this article can help you track the key drivers of ecosystem health and ensure that your company beats the odds.