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This case features CRM technology firm Salesforce, and its CEO, Marc Benioff. In 2015, the state of Indiana's new Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) was signed into law by then governor Mike Pence. The RFRA was criticized as legalizing blatant discrimination of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning (LGBTQ) community. Because Salesforce had recently expanded to Indianapolis and anticipated future growth there, Benioff decided to ban company travel to the state and threatened to reduce the company's presence in Indiana if RFRA was not repealed. Salesforce was joined by many other large corporations in vocalizing disagreement with RFRA and threatening to reduce or eliminate investment in Indiana. The case explores Benioff's decision to take a public and aggressive stand against the new Indiana law. Some disagreed with Benioff's extreme action that put the company at risk. Others applauded him for taking a stand.

In 2017, the new chairman of A. P. Møller-Maersk confronted one of the worst cyberattacks in history, which crippled the company's vast global shipping network that accounted for nearly 20 per cent of global container shipping. NotPetya was a particularly virulent strain of ransomware that, within seconds, destroyed Maersks's servers and personal computers around the world. Maersk's senior system administrators had warned the company that its network was vulnerable, but the necessary upgrades were never completed. How can the company recover from this devastating event? And how can it protect itself from cyberattacks in the future?

In 2019 Walmart was still the world's largest company, with over $500 billion in annual revenue and operations around the world. Although it had mostly vanquished its rival discount retailers in the U.S., it was struggling to find the right growth strategy. Facing a mature U.S. market, it had looked to ecommerce and international sales as an engine of growth. Walmart leadership also faced intense competition from dominant online retailer Amazon. In such a competitive environment, how should Walmart respond to the reality that its traditional strengths no longer guaranteed robust growth?

In 2018, Nick Molnar, the founder of the Australia-based online payment service Afterpay began its expansion to the U.S. market. The service had gained a loyal following in Australia by enabling customers to pay for online purchases through four interest-free installments. Customer advocacy and the brand's ability to improve customer acquisition for its retail partners had contributed to strong network effects, leading to rapid growth. In the United States, however, competitors were abundant, the regulatory environment was unfamiliar, brand awareness was lacking and retailers were seeking to partner with service providers capable of supporting an omnichannel experience. This new set of challenges required Afterpay to reevaluate its strategy: should the company fast-track the rollout of its offline offering in the United States or was it prudent to wait to acquire a larger customer base to justify the capital expenditure and operational changes this would require?

In September 2018, the executive team at Ariadne Labs (Ariadne), a Boston-based organization dedicated to improving health systems through the discovery and implementation of simple tools, faced a number of strategic decisions. Chief among them, the seven-year-old organization needed to determine how it might establish and shepherd successful partnerships with a wide range of diverse entities-ranging from major international public health organizations like the World Bank to small non-profit implementing organizations.

The importance of a good peer or coworker is widely discussed, but understanding the glue that makes coworkers valuable is less understood. This case sheds light on the importance of peers and the practices and environments that make a group greater than the sum of its parts. Facing threats to its growth, digital marketing and sales company Clear Link Technologies, LLC (Clearlink) decided to run an experiment to test strategies for improving sales productivity. The experiment compares the efficacy of two interventions: group incentives and management-directed peer learning. The case surfaces some of the mechanisms driving peer effects in the workplace and the managerial levers to tap into peer effects for improving operations. The case also provides an introduction to experiments in organizations and how these experiments may differ from traditional randomized controlled trials in marketing or pharmaceutical development.

Kara Medoff Barnett, executive director of American Ballet Theatre (ABT), widely regarded as one of the world's premier ballet companies, faces several challenges. It is June 2018. Despite its prestige, the company's $45 million annual budget and $22 million endowment are far below those of peers like New York City Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, and The Royal Ballet in London. Also, although those institutions rely heavily on talent developed in-house, ABT has traditionally mostly attracted dancers who had been trained elsewhere. Known for having featured some of the world's most high-profile stars, ABT's biggest current star arguably is Misty Copeland. What can Barnett learn about Copeland's rise to fame that could help her have ABT's other dancers' stories resonate? Looking to the future of the ballet company more generally, how could Barnett promote a "constellation of stars," as she puts it, rather than bank on one or two individual superstars? And what is the right balance for ABT between developing and acquiring talent?

The case is about Ecoalf, a Spanish sustainable fashion brand that manufactures garments, sneakers and accessories from recycled materials. By providing information on Ecoalf's products and initiatives, while simultaneously illustrating the difficulty of balancing social and financial goals, this case introduces an interesting real-world setting that touches upon various issues related to social innovation, entrepreneurship, strategy, CSR and ethics. Particularly, the case offers insights on the delicate phase in the growth of a firm in which sales are booming and the company is expanding, while the company still does not make a profit and its long-term continuity is still uncertain. The case confronts students with questions such as 'What strategic decisions should be made to ensure Ecoalf's long-term profitability?' and 'How should social and financial objectives be balanced?', and allows them to explore these questions using real company and market information.

Suk Shah, the chief financial officer at Avant, needs to consider the marketplace lender's future relationship with traditional banks: might Avant and the banks be able to work together as complementors to offer loans to consumers, or must they always be competitors? The case describes Avant's operation, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages that marketplace lenders, and more generally fintechs, have relative to traditional financial institutions. Shah's decision must take into account the challenges marketplace lenders face in terms of customer acquisition costs as well as in terms of attracting investors to its platform. Avant faces competition from other marketplace lenders, like LendingClub, as well as competition from banks. Regulation also has an important effect on Avant's ability to directly compete with banks and its need to cooperate with them.

From his time as a young engineer at Microsoft in 1993, to the challenge of building Glassdoor from the ground up until it reached a valuation of over $1 billion, in 2018, Robert Hohman had come a long way. Now, from his spacious office with a picturesque view of Richardson Bay in Mill Valley, California, Hohman confronted one of the most important decisions of his life. Glassdoor, the company he cofounded in 2007 with Rich Barton and Tim Besse, had grown consistently over the years. It had been fueled by multiple different investors and VC firms, under various circumstances and deal structures. Like most start-up founders, they expected to take the IPO route at some point. Then, in early 2019, when it seemed that the company was finally ready to go public, one of its largest competitors placed an offer that was hard to refuse.

From his time as a young engineer at Microsoft in 1993, to the challenge of building Glassdoor from the ground up until it reached a valuation of over $1 billion, in 2018, Robert Hohman had come a long way. Now, from his spacious office with a picturesque view of Richardson Bay in Mill Valley, California, Hohman confronted one of the most important decisions of his life. Glassdoor, the company he cofounded in 2007 with Rich Barton and Tim Besse, had grown consistently over the years. It had been fueled by multiple different investors and VC firms, under various circumstances and deal structures. Like most start-up founders, they expected to take the IPO route at some point. Then, in early 2019, when it seemed that the company was finally ready to go public, one of its largest competitors placed an offer that was hard to refuse.

Can Singapore urban design, policy continuity, and system of laws be exported outside of Singapore to accelerate the effective development of new urban agglomerations? Nina Yang, CEO of Sustainable Urban Development at Ascendas-Singbridge, a large real estate company based in Singapore, was considering whether to build residential or commercial space in one of its sustainable urban development projects, Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City. Could such a long-gestation urban development project be commercially viable? What were the partnership issues working with the Guangzhou government? Could Singapore livability concepts, planning expertise, safety for capital, and comfort for multinational corporations be successfully exported outside of Singapore into large urban agglomerations on a repeated basis?

This case details The Boeing Company's raw material supply chain risks and explores appropriate strategies to mitigate them. Aluminum and titanium accounted for about 75% of the weight of a typical large commercial aircraft, so Boeing and its suppliers bought hundreds of millions of pounds of these metals every year in order to manufacture structural parts. But Boeing's forecasting methodologies for aluminum and titanium consistently underestimated true demand, which cost the company significant time and money. The case describes an ineffective scrap recovery process which failed to recover millions of dollars of precious scrap material, as well as a disproportionately low allocation of risk mitigation resources to raw material mills. Students will analyze purchasing policies pertaining to supplier evaluation and develop new strategies to minimize raw material costs.

Breakthrough Career Strategies for Women's Success is a 12-chapter book published by Business Expert Press in 2019 and written by Saundra Stroope, who is a consultant and coach with over 20 years of human capital experience. In this book, the author explains how although the number of women entrepreneurs, business owners, and leaders in corporate leadership roles is growing, there are still many challenges women face that are different from those of their male counterparts. Women sometimes have beliefs or career myths that may interfere with their personal career satisfaction and success. A survey of more than 180 women, interviews with over a dozen influential women in leadership and professional roles validated career myths that have an impact on their satisfaction at work and career success. The women also provide helpful tips, advice, and recommendations for helping women overcome challenges and achieve career success. This book explores the barriers that women may encounter at work and offers you an opportunity to reflect on your strengths and development areas and create a plan for moving toward greater satisfaction and success in your career. Chapter 1, Career Myths Impact Women's Success, provides an overview of the book and the research behind it, identifies the top five career myths, and offers a guide for how to use the book.

Breakthrough Career Strategies for Women's Success is a 12-chapter book published by Business Expert Press in 2019 and written by Saundra Stroope, who is a consultant and coach with over 20 years of human capital experience. In this book, the author explains how although the number of women entrepreneurs, business owners, and leaders in corporate leadership roles is growing, there are still many challenges women face that are different from those of their male counterparts. Women sometimes have beliefs or career myths that may interfere with their personal career satisfaction and success. A survey of more than 180 women, interviews with over a dozen influential women in leadership and professional roles validated career myths that have an impact on their satisfaction at work and career success. The women also provide helpful tips, advice, and recommendations for helping women overcome challenges and achieve career success. This book explores the barriers that women may encounter at work and offers you an opportunity to reflect on your strengths and development areas and create a plan for moving toward greater satisfaction and success in your career. Chapter 2, Myth: Women's Skills and Experience Matter More Than Communication Style and Appearance, argues that women are frequently viewed as less competent, less experienced, and as having less impact on the work they are performing based on their appearance and communication style. It then proposes ways for women to overcome these biases.

Breakthrough Career Strategies for Women's Success is a 12-chapter book published by Business Expert Press in 2019 and written by Saundra Stroope, who is a consultant and coach with over 20 years of human capital experience. In this book, the author explains how although the number of women entrepreneurs, business owners, and leaders in corporate leadership roles is growing, there are still many challenges women face that are different from those of their male counterparts. Women sometimes have beliefs or career myths that may interfere with their personal career satisfaction and success. A survey of more than 180 women, interviews with over a dozen influential women in leadership and professional roles validated career myths that have an impact on their satisfaction at work and career success. The women also provide helpful tips, advice, and recommendations for helping women overcome challenges and achieve career success. This book explores the barriers that women may encounter at work and offers you an opportunity to reflect on your strengths and development areas and create a plan for moving toward greater satisfaction and success in your career. Chapter 3 Myth: If Women Are Assertive and Drive for Results, It Will Always Benefit Their Careers argues that women who are assertive are perceived less favorably than men are. It then offers strategies for overcoming this bias.

Breakthrough Career Strategies for Women's Success is a 12-chapter book published by Business Expert Press in 2019 and written by Saundra Stroope, who is a consultant and coach with over 20 years of human capital experience. In this book, the author explains how although the number of women entrepreneurs, business owners, and leaders in corporate leadership roles is growing, there are still many challenges women face that are different from those of their male counterparts. Women sometimes have beliefs or career myths that may interfere with their personal career satisfaction and success. A survey of more than 180 women, interviews with over a dozen influential women in leadership and professional roles validated career myths that have an impact on their satisfaction at work and career success. The women also provide helpful tips, advice, and recommendations for helping women overcome challenges and achieve career success. This book explores the barriers that women may encounter at work and offers you an opportunity to reflect on your strengths and development areas and create a plan for moving toward greater satisfaction and success in your career. Chapter 4: Myth: Advancement for Women Is Only Dependent on Performing Well identifies numerous reasons why women often do not get the recognition they deserve for superior performance. It then offers strategies for advancing one's career.

Breakthrough Career Strategies for Women's Success is a 12-chapter book published by Business Expert Press in 2019 and written by Saundra Stroope, who is a consultant and coach with over 20 years of human capital experience. In this book, the author explains how although the number of women entrepreneurs, business owners, and leaders in corporate leadership roles is growing, there are still many challenges women face that are different from those of their male counterparts. Women sometimes have beliefs or career myths that may interfere with their personal career satisfaction and success. A survey of more than 180 women, interviews with over a dozen influential women in leadership and professional roles validated career myths that have an impact on their satisfaction at work and career success. The women also provide helpful tips, advice, and recommendations for helping women overcome challenges and achieve career success. This book explores the barriers that women may encounter at work and offers you an opportunity to reflect on your strengths and development areas and create a plan for moving toward greater satisfaction and success in your career. Chapter 5: Myth: Women Can Expect to Be Compensated Fairly and Awarded for Their Contributions to the Workplace argues that women should not expect to be compensated fairly and discusses reasons for such treatment. It then offers strategies for addressing this inequity.