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This case provides a post-mortem of the advertising technology (adtech) company Sizmek. Sizmek grew via multiple acquisitions, with the vision of becoming an integrated adtech company that could leverage AI to buy digital media, while creating and serving display and video content. At its peak, one of its acquisitions had an IPO valuation of almost 1 billion dollars. However, Sizmek struggled with an integration that was taking longer than expected, but also with misalignment of agency incentives, stricter data privacy regulations, and the rise of the walled gardens - Google, Facebook, and Amazon - that made the adtech ecosystem very competitive, with dynamics of winners-take-all markets. By 2019 Sizmek had to file Chapter 11, and was sold in pieces. Is there anything Sizmek could have done differently in their go-to-market strategy, product road-map, or overall partnerships to avoid such rapid collapse?

Liz O'Sullivan, an employee at a fast-growing technology company called Clarifi, had a moral dilemma: She disagreed with Clarifi's decision to sell its image-recognition technology to the U.S. Department of Defense for possible use in weaponized drones. This case examines her career to this point and the potential ways in which she can address her concerns. The CEO has been receptive to her ideas, but there is little chance he will cancel the contract. She can either continue to advocate internally, or she can quit. If she quits, she wonders whether she should leak the details of the contract-and her decision to quit-to the media. The case contrasts her dilemma-in the voice-loyalty-exit framework-with that of Jack Poulson, a senior Google employee who quit the company in protest over Google's decision to build a censored search engine for the Chinese market.

SRS and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) follows the process by which SRS, a lean maker of remotely-operated submersible vehicles, navigates the DIU's acquisition process. Set up in 2015 to speed the U.S. military's access to promising commercial technologies, the DIU supports U.S. innovation while aiding early-stage ventures in multiple ways: with revenues via prototype agreements, with technology validation for potential investors, and potentially with sizeable production contracts. In 2019, the DIU was looking to augment this effort by investing in pre-prototype startups and commercialization efforts earlier in the technology development cycle, but its limited size and resources begged larger questions of how to build capacity and scale.

By January 2020, sustainable investment firm Generation Investment Management (Generation), founded in London in 2004, had grown from a shared vision among seven founders to a 90-person firm managing $27 billion in public and private equity. Throughout its history, Generation had worked towards its mission of seeking to generate superior financial returns by investing in sustainable companies that created long-term value. The case examines Generation's investment process in general, and in particular with respect to a global manufacturer of agricultural equipment. It also examines some of the strategic decisions and challenges facing the firm.

Owing to its intangible nature and oligopolistic structure, the Media & Entertainment industry used to seem particularly difficulty to disrupt, and Disney was sitting right at the top. Yet, ten years after Netflix launched its online video streaming service, incumbents acknowledged that surviving the online revolution requires drastic changes. Until 2017, Disney had not taken the threat seriously. Its streaming strategy could be described as exploratory, at best: It had a 30% stake in Hulu, a third-party streaming platform jointly owned by media giants, and it sold its "old" content to Netflix. However, as Disney's cable partners (e.g., Comcast) started to lose millions of highly profitable subscribers, the company realized that its half-hearted approach to online streaming was a recipe for disaster. That year marked the turnaround of Disney's approach to streaming. First, it shocked the world in August, when it announced that it would gradually withdraw its movie content from Netflix. That same month, it revealed it had taken a controlling stake in BAMTech, a technology company providing streaming video technology. Finally, in December, it announced its intention to acquire 21st Century Fox in a deal that closed 15 months later, giving it a controlling stake in Hulu and greatly expanding Disney's already formidable content library. With the nomination of Kevin Mayer at the helm of DTCI in March 2018, Disney realized its intention to transition into a B2C company. However, it was going to be a long road for Mayer, who faced both external and internal challenges. The case explores Mayer's options to succeed in a rapidly evolving marketplace in which former partners and internet giants have become the competitors. It also examines how Mayer can position DTCI within Disney, addressing the complexities of collaborating with other business units and the potential cannibalization of the Media Networks division.

Matt Barnard, CEO of the indoor vertical farming company Plenty, analyzed the agricultural supply chain in the United States and determined it had a four-pronged problem that people would pay to have solved: flavor, waste, environmental footprint, and nutrition. So, in 2014, Barnard and his cofounders incorporated the business that is now Plenty: a technology company that aimed to reshape the inefficient, but entrenched, agriculture sector and build a global brand by selling fresher, tastier, and more nutritious produce. By early 2020, Plenty had 300+ employees and had attracted hundreds of millions in investment from the likes of Bezos Expeditions, Innovation Endeavors, and SoftBank Vision Fund and had a valuation of $1.05 billion. This case details Plenty's journey from an idea to a path-breaking company that is disrupting the field of agriculture and valued at over a billion dollars.

This case set follows Eric and Holly Nelson, founders of Special Hope Network, a nonprofit organization providing holistic therapy services for children with intellectual disabilities and their families in Lusaka, Zambia. Eric, a pastor, and Holly, a special needs teacher, had previously adopted three children with Down syndrome and moved to Zambia to form this enterprise. They worked hard to overcome systemic obstacles to their mission, including a cultural bias against bringing children with intellectual disabilities out in public; a feeling that the family was to blame for the child's disabilities; a scarcity of qualified therapists; and a variety of economic and regulatory factors. Having originally relied on donations from US-based friends and family, they needed to finance their therapy centers, which were targeted to low-income Zambian families, and were highly subsidized. Options they explored included fundraising with local businesses, "child sponsoring" on their website, grant writing, teaching other educators and nonprofits, and tourism fundraising. This A case takes place in 2012, when the Nelsons are considering opening a for-profit resource center, marketed to middle- and upper-class Zambians. It explores the viability of this option, and asks, "Does a for-profit resource center fit with our mission to serve the neediest children?" This case is suitable for an undergraduate, graduate, or executive education class on nonprofit management or strategy. The focus is the alignment of a firm's activities, and whether they support its core mission-which can sometimes have a different answer depending on whether the firm is for profit or nonprofit.

This case set follows Eric and Holly Nelson, founders of Special Hope Network, a nonprofit organization providing holistic therapy services for children with intellectual disabilities and their families in Lusaka, Zambia. Eric, a pastor, and Holly, a special needs teacher, had previously adopted three children with Down syndrome and moved to Zambia to form this enterprise. They worked hard to overcome systemic obstacles to their mission, including a cultural bias against bringing children with intellectual disabilities out in public; a feeling that the family was to blame for the child's disabilities; a scarcity of qualified therapists; and a variety of economic and regulatory factors. Having originally relied on donations from US-based friends and family, they needed to finance their therapy centers, which were targeted to low-income Zambian families, and were highly subsidized. Options they explored included fundraising with local businesses, "child sponsoring" on their website, grant writing, teaching other educators and nonprofits, and tourism fundraising. In the B and C cases, which take place between 2018 and 2019, it is revealed that while the for-profit resource center did provide a number of valuable intangible benefits, it was ultimately not profitable. This case is suitable for an undergraduate, graduate, or executive education class on nonprofit management or strategy. The focus is the alignment of a firm's activities, and whether they support its core mission-which can sometimes have a different answer depending on whether the firm is for profit or nonprofit.

This case set follows Eric and Holly Nelson, founders of Special Hope Network, a nonprofit organization providing holistic therapy services for children with intellectual disabilities and their families in Lusaka, Zambia. Eric, a pastor, and Holly, a special needs teacher, had previously adopted three children with Down syndrome and moved to Zambia to form this enterprise. They worked hard to overcome systemic obstacles to their mission, including a cultural bias against bringing children with intellectual disabilities out in public; a feeling that the family was to blame for the child's disabilities; a scarcity of qualified therapists; and a variety of economic and regulatory factors. Having originally relied on donations from US-based friends and family, they needed to finance their therapy centers, which were targeted to low-income Zambian families, and were highly subsidized. Options they explored included fundraising with local businesses, "child sponsoring" on their website, grant writing, teaching other educators and nonprofits, and tourism fundraising. In the B and C cases, which take place between 2018 and 2019, it is revealed that while the for-profit resource center did provide a number of valuable intangible benefits, it was ultimately not profitable. This case is suitable for an undergraduate, graduate, or executive education class on nonprofit management or strategy. The focus is the alignment of a firm's activities, and whether they support its core mission-which can sometimes have a different answer depending on whether the firm is for profit or nonprofit.

The US-China trade war in 2019 led to major shifts in global trade and supply chains, highlighting the recent trend in deglobalization. This case discusses the patterns of international trade and capital flows across the two countries, determinants of trade imbalances, and the role of national savings, policies, institutions, and exchange rates. The material allows for an examination of several factors, including the broader context of tech competition between China and the United States. The case raises a series of questions around the uncertainty the trade war created, the impact of tariffs on both economies, and diverging views from the two sides on who is winning. The case has been successfully taught in second-year MBA classes and executive training programs on global economies and markets.

The case discusses the international expansion strategy of The WeWork Company (WeWork), a co-working space company. In the United States and Europe, the expansion of WeWork occurred through greenfield investment; membership focus was on freelancers and entrepreneurs. In Asian markets such as India, where WeWork entered through a joint venture, enterprise customers were the revenue generators. In June 2019, a co-founder of WeWork considered buying the entire stake of its partner in the Indian joint venture. However, given that revenues continuously remained lower than losses, investors doubted the expansion strategy and business model of WeWork. Should WeWork's pace of expansion be slowed? Can WeWork's business model be revamped for more profitable returns, and if so, should it?

In 2019, the managing director of Sarva Pharmaceuticals Private Limited, a pharmaceutical company based in India, was considering an expansion of his company by entering the growing pharmaceutical market in Myanmar. He needed to identify the best way to execute this expansion plan, assess whether his company's product range was adequate and suitable for the Myanmar market, prepare for possible risks and cross-cultural marketing issues, and plan the management staffing approaches in Myanmar.

In July 2019, Green Trend Holdings Co. Ltd. (Green Trend) faced a difficult situation with regard to flaws in the preparation of its proposed initial public offering on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. According to the remedy measures raised by the underwriter facilitating the initial public offering process, Green Trend needed to raise additional capital of ¥1 billion with a proposed annual interest rate of about 30 per cent. Of course, the company could have postponed the initial public offering; however, without the long-awaited return following a successful initial public offering, all the efforts taken in past years would be in vain. The uncertainty of the capital market would further complicate the future road to an initial public offering. Did Green Trend have better alternatives?

This case looks at the product shortages of N95 and N99 masks, hand sanitizers and wipes as a result of a new coronavirus, COVID-19. Students have to respond to the question: What are some alternate strategies to control product shortages and how do they impact consumers and disease control?

THRIVE's mission was to accelerate, invest in, and work with entrepreneurs, investors, and Fortune 500 corporations to advance the future of food and agriculture through innovation. Comprised of top agriculture, food and technology corporations, universities, and investors, THRIVE had built a community of more than 2500 startups from 90 countries. With John Hartnett as CEO and Helen Hartnett as COO, THRIVE ran an accelerator, a fund, and, in partnership with Forbes, a major agricultural technology (agtech) summit. Interest in its mission and services seemed to be growing exponentially. Indeed, the sector was generating so much excitement that THRIVE was inundated with a diverse set of opportunities and calls for its founders' mindshare. Excited as they were about the opportunities before them, John and Helen were beginning to feel as if they held a rubber band that was getting increasingly stretched. "Business has grown substantially," explained John, "400 or 500 percent, and it's going really, really well. So we're sitting here in 2020 thinking: How do we expand without bringing ourselves down to our knees?" This case explores THRIVE's options as it looked to expand both domestically and around the world.

Thingtesting, a brand discovery and testing digital community devoted to uncovering and exploring direct-to-consumer brands, had just received seed funding and was contemplating a second year of growth. The new year brought many challenges, as founder Jenny Gyllander had to decide how to scale her fledgling company. As the company matured, she had to decide what role she would play going forward: should she continue to operate as head curator and content developer of her own reviews or open up her platform to invite and crowdsource the reviews of her followers. Her value proposition positioned her at the nexus of several different audiences: millennial consumers eager to try new brands, venture capitalists eager to invest in them, and the companies and brands themselves, who were interested in seeing their new products succeed. What was the best path to monetizing the business? As Gyllander navigates the emerging landscape of influencer marketing, she needs to decide how to transform her online audience into a co-creating community and how to best wield her own influence to create value for her followers and other constituencies in a way that could fund a profitable business model.

In recent years the world has witnessed a growing wave of entrepreneurial ventures in developing economies. CB Insights reports as of March 2020, developing economies have produced 160 unicorns, equivalent to 35 percent of all unicorns in the world. Much of the success of these unicorns can be attributed to entrepreneurs having increasing access to financing. Our study, however, found that access to financing varied significantly across developing economies and remained as a key challenge for entrepreneurs in most of those economies. Differences in legal structures, operating conditions, talent pools, and available capital sources created myriad conditions for entrepreneurs to navigate when seeking funding to build and scale their ventures.

Although manipulations of visual and auditory media are as old as the media themselves, the recent entrance of deepfakes has marked a turning point in the creation of fake content. Powered by the latest technological advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, deepfakes offer automated procedures to create fake content that is harder and harder for human observers to detect. The possibilities to deceive are endless-including manipulated pictures, videos, and audio-and organizations must be prepared as this will undoubtedly have a large societal impact. In this article, we provide a working definition of deepfake together with an overview of its underlying technology. We classify different deepfake types and identify risks and opportunities to help organizations think about the future of deepfakes. Finally, we propose the R.E.A.L. framework to manage deepfake risks: Record original content to assure deniability, expose deepfakes early, advocate for legal protection, and leverage trust to counter credulity. Following these principles, we hope that our society can be more prepared to counter deepfake tricks as we appreciate its treats.