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In 2009, brothers Patrick and John Collison began working on a start-up called Stripe that made it simple for companies to send and receive money around the world. By the end of 2016, Stripe had expanded far beyond an online payment mechanism. Fueled by a belief that the Internet and developers would drive rapid economic growth across the world, Stripe created tools for social commerce and online marketplaces, as well as products to facilitate the creation and management of new businesses. Having raised nearly $450 million, Stripe was sufficiently funded to take advantage of a variety of industry tailwinds, including growth in global e-commerce, the proliferation of smartphones and mobile applications, and a rise in social media usage, among others. "Stripe: Increasing the GDP of the Internet" explores the challenges and opportunities faced by Stripe as it expanded from a small start-up to a company valued at $9 billion. Specific obstacles addressed in the case include: evaluating business opportunities, prioritizing new customers and markets, and assessing competition in a rapidly changing market. In a world with seemingly endless opportunities, the Collison brothers would have to be ruthless in prioritizing Stripe's product pipeline, geographical expansion, and partnerships, while continuing to provide value for Stripe's existing customers.

Parsana Health Centre Private Limited, one of the pioneers of the organized fitness industry in the city, of Ahmedabad, had been actively engaged in inculcating, nurturing and promoting a healthy lifestyle to the general public through fitness regimes over the last two decades. The thirteen Parsana centres in the different parts of the city were reduced to eight centres facing stiff competition from the local players and the Parsana brothers had to set their priorities right, in order to discover the best strategy for growth. They thereby had to put together an appropriate promotional and positioning strategy in view of the long term objectives.

In 2011, a health care director at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) asked one of her managers to review two candidates for promotion to a front-line coordinator position. The manager was tasked with the job of choosing between two promising candidates who were quite different from each other. He had to carefully review the qualifications of the two candidates and determine which one would be better suited to the role. Use with supplement.

Supplement to case W16823.

In 2012, a former crown attorney for Canada's Department of Justice started Timeless Herbal Care, a company that was intended to capitalize on Jamaica's deregulation of marijuana for medical purposes. The entrepreneur and his family relied on their ties to Jamaica and his legal expertise to create a legislative framework for Jamaica's medical marijuana industry to meet international standards. Concurrently, Canada was readying legislation to allow qualified individuals to purchase and use medical marijuana. As one of about a dozen Health Canada-authorized licensed producers of the product, the new venture was entering uncharted space where legal and business issues would likely emerge within the next few years. The entrepreneur needed a strategy to combat the misconceptions about the use of marijuana for medical purposes and concerns regarding the importation of Jamaican marijuana product into Canada.

In April 2016, the owner of Kreative Works, a small-scale furniture manufacturer in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India, decided to expand his company's product line in response to increased market competition and a shift in consumers' buying patterns and preferences. The intent was to extend the company's market reach from its traditional target of educational institutes and offices to a consumer market by marketing a premium lounge chair and a family of dining chairs. The owner also wanted to expand the market geographically. Kreative Works did not have the capacity to open multiple retail outlets. Given these circumstances, should the company market its new product line in a single retail outlet or through an exclusive dealer or distributor (a centralized channel structure), or by distributing its products through multiple distributors or retailers (a decentralized channel structure)?

CircusTrix Trampoline Parks (CircusTrix) was started in San Francisco, California, in 2011 after the founder first experienced an indoor trampoline park. Less than five years later, the business had grown to more than 28 facilities worldwide, grossing US$24.5 million in 2014 alone. The company had originally expanded internationally to maintain its first-mover status in the emerging extreme recreation industry, but was now facing a problem that could derail the company's international growth for years to come. A customer in the brand new CircusTrix park in Edinburgh, Scotland, had injured himself and blamed CircusTrix. As a result, city officials had shut down the facility, with another park scheduled to open in just over two weeks in Glasgow. The public relations issue was threatening to cost the founder not only his brand new operations in the United Kingdom, but likely also the additional upcoming locations in Germany, France, and Holland.

These exercises complement the WDI Publishing Case "Pink Tax: Gender and other Price Discrimination Factors". Diana Kelly is the brand manager for a company that has a new cream that gives consumers brighter, shinier nails. It will be sold in major retail outlets like Target, Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens. Kelly is given various segmentation schemes produced by consultancy teams to evaluate. Students are asked to evaluate the segmentation schemes and determine how the product should be versioned and priced.

The case examines the scope, history, and scale of the fintech industry, while also defining what fintech may be...and what it is not. The protagonist, management consultant Carolina Costa, is tasked to advise a client bank executive regarding alternative paths into fintech that he could choose. The material includes an overview of the fintech market, including analysis of entrants from start-up incubators, banks, and technology companies. The case figures and exhibits provide data to allow students to analyze the current market saturation and consumer needs in regard to fintech products. This case was designed for a second-year MBA elective course on financial institutions and markets but can also be taught in a first-year module on banking and financial institutions/financial landscape or as an opener to a core financial management course on strategic options, investment strategy, and value creation.

The case describes the decision dilemma faced by an entrepreneur, Jack Sim, whose social initiative aims to establish an innovative platform in Singapore and South Asia to serve the base of the pyramid (BoP), which represents a majority of the population of the world (about 60%) who live in poverty. The primary objectives of Sim's initiative, BoP Hub, are to provide professional services to social entrepreneurs catering to the BoP market, and help them develop and scale their businesses. Social entrepreneurs who want to address the needs of this segment of the population face a plethora of challenges: most notably, the lack of affordability in the BoP, inadequate access to basic facilities, and the dearth of channels of access to the BoP market. However, in addition to the social objectives, the BoP also has economic incentives, as the potential volume in this segment is huge, and it has aspirations to move into the middle class. The challenges faced by Sim in creating a platform to catalyse innovative products and services for the BoP include lack of access to traditional fundraising methods, the need of a common organisational strategy for entrepreneurs serving the BoP leading to multiple services being required by them, and the requirement of a well-understood model for scaling their businesses.

In early 2016, after the success of its first two smartphones, the OnePlus One and OnePlus 2, China-based startup smartphone maker OnePlus was deciding how to build on its early success and grow into a global contender in the highly competitive smartphone market. Technology enthusiasts and geeks had flocked to purchase the first two generations of its smartphones and expectations were high for the company's next product. The company's founders, Pete Lau and Carl Pei, faced the challenge of broadening the appeal of OnePlus to address the mainstream market without alienating its core customer base. "Crossing the chasm" from the early adopters to the mainstream market involved addressing three interrelated questions: First, what segments should OnePlus target as it sought to grow beyond its loyal fan base? Second, what value proposition and positioning strategy should it adopt to appeal to these target customers? Finally, what distribution and marketing communications strategy should it employ to make best use of its limited financial resources? A key consideration in formulating its strategy was to stay true to the company's culture and mission of "Never Settle" by charting its own course and not emulating the strategies of much larger competitors like Apple, Samsung, LG, and HTC.

By 2016, Count Anton-Wolfgang von Faber-Castell had led the 255-year-old pencil manufacturer Faber-Castell through waves of technological change. The pocket calculator decimated Faber-Castell's slide rule business in the 1970s, and computer aided design technology undermined the company's manual drafting tools in the 1980s. With each new threat the Count had to decide whether to adapt to new technologies, or maintain focus on the company's core products and identity. Analysts continued to ask Count Anton-Wolfgang the same question they had posed to his grandfather: could the company strategy endure in the modern era?

Supplement to case UV7217. The purpose of this document is to describe each step in the development of a model for the case "A Late Night at The Virginian Restaurant."

A global science and technology company's Canadian national manager of channel markets is evaluating a potential change to the company's distribution strategy for its innovative health care products to hospitals. The company currently relies on value-added resellers to distribute its products to Canadian hospitals. Recently, however, customers have been pressuring the company to ship products directly to hospitals, expecting that major cost savings could be achieved through a "direct distribution" model. The channel markets manager needs to assess the quantitative and qualitative issues related to direct distribution versus maintaining its current supply chain structure.

Saint Elizabeth, a leading Canadian health-care enterprise, had been managing innovation through what it called the Innovation Tripod. This had three components-Ideas (which involved generating innovative ideas from among employees), Solutions (involving outside ventures in innovation), and Impact (consisting of ways in which results were measured). The chief executive officer (CEO) was facing a dilemma with each element of the tripod. How could staff engagement be improved? What was a better way of managing external partners? How could the prevailing metrics of innovation be fine-tuned? What was the way forward for the CEO?

This note introduces the concept of a marketing technology blueprint (MarTech Blueprint), instructs students how to create one, and gives real-world examples of how a MarTech Blueprint might be used.