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Food Donation Connection is a for-profit company that creates sustainable value - value for both shareholders/owners and stakeholders - by facilitating the redistribution of surplus prepared food from donor corporations, such as restaurants, convenience stores and grocery stores, to charities that distribute the food to people in need. In fulfilling its mission of "Let nothing be wasted," the company addresses the extensive food waste at the retail and wholesale stages of the food supply chain, a key pressure point in global food waste. Food Donation Connection has operated successfully for more than 20 years in the United States; however, the founder and chief executive officer is now considering the company's future. He must determine whether and how to expand the company's services globally.

Universal Print Systems Limited, located in Southern India, provides self-adhesive label printing for such end-user businesses as the passenger car and alcoholic beverages industries. Although larger markets exist in Western and Northern India, 80 per cent of its customers are located in Southern India. Because of the company's low capacity utilization, management is contemplating its operations strategy options, including aggressively pursuing business in Southern India, expanding to Northern and/or Western India, sourcing online orders and digital printing, or exporting. Management is unsure of the best option to pursue.

The director of marketing for Lawrence & Mayo (L&M) was reviewing the company's results for the past financial year. Far from encouraging, the results were a reflection of an addition to the company's existing product portfolio: accessories. L&M was an established name in the field of ophthalmic and optical instruments. The prestigious brand had maintained an exclusive positioning for over 100 years. When L&M launched premium watches under its existing brand, it took a bold step. The product was, no doubt, world class in quality and design. However, the company's detractors wrote it off, calling it an attempt to ride two horses at the same time. Did the recent financial results vindicate these critics? The director of marketing wanted to comprehend the impact of the new product line, the reasons behind the poor performance and the way forward for L&M.

The purpose of this note is to give a brief introduction to dynamic programming. The note introduces dynamic programming terminology and notation and provides motivation for why these problems are difficult to solve. Five examples illustrate how dynamic programming can be applied in a variety of settings.

The co-founder and chief executive officer of The Asylum, a movie production company headquartered in Burbank, California, must decide whether the company needs to explore other avenues for growth or change its current business model to boost profitability. The company has developed a unique imitation strategy to reduce the uncertainty of financial success in filmmaking - its "mockbuster" business model is to produce B-rated movies that use plotlines similar to that of major Hollywood films already in production and release them at the same time as or just before the comparable Hollywood film. It can thus take advantage of the large marketing and promotion campaigns that large film production studios employ to promote their films while producing a substantially cheaper (but somewhat similar) film. To date, all of these mockbusters have been profitable, but changes to property rights regulations and increased litigation cases may come to affect the bottom line. There are three options going forward: maintaining the status quo, focusing even more on producing mockbusters or shifting toward completely original film production. What should the company do to ensure future success?

Mahindra First Choice Services Limited, a multi-brand car-servicing business in India, needs to create a unique customer value proposition to differentiate its brand in a highly competitive landscape. In India, the aftermarket services market comprises original equipment manufacturers, independent garages and few organized players. The marketing head and his team need to position their company's brand to capture customers that have previously relied on local garages and original equipment manufacturers.

Whereas there is much focus on improving the cognitive aspects of ethical decision making, many of the drivers of managerial action are nondeliberative. The explosion of academic work in behavioral science has highlighted a number of decision traps, blind spots, and behavioral biases that can substantially influence ethical decision making and action. This note focuses on a number of specific behavioral influences and how they relate to ethics. In addition to highlighting how these behavioral influences can impair decision making, we discuss ways they can be harnessed to potentially improve ethical decisions and actions.

This note identifies the importance of employee/moral voice in organizational functioning. Yet despite the many benefits of employee/moral voice for effective organizational functioning, the process of speaking up about ethical matters can be difficult for both employees and their managers.

Based on actual historical events, this case presents the narrative of when the Idaho Fish and Game Department decided to transplant beavers from a rapidly growing area of human habitation by catching them in live traps, flying the beavers to a more hospitable environment via airplane, and parachuting the caged beavers to the ground. Students are asked to evaluate the wisdom of this plan from ecological, economic, and ethical perspectives. This case is intended for an advanced undergraduate or graduate course in sustainable business practices, environmental management, business ethics, and/or wildlife conservation.

This case explores the Branch Metrics' cofounders' early days as a team and their pursuit of a viable idea for their startup. The three original cofounders, who met in business school, transformed their business concept entirely several times before finding the idea for Branch Metrics. Starting with a fitness collar for dogs, then starting over with developing a mobile application for low-cost, high-quality photobooks, and ultimately developing a deep app-linking solution for mobile developers, the team experienced multiple setbacks and product failures in their first two years as a team. The case explores the lessons learned through these failures, including how to find product-market fit, staying together as a team, maintaining investor relationships, facing burnout, and having difficult conversations.

Cipla Global Ltd. (CGL) is a real-life, undisguised decision case. CGL is one of India's top pharmaceutical companies. Thanks to India's process patent regime (1970-2005), Dr. Yusuf Hamied, the company's chairman, managed to catapult the company to its position as a leading generics manufacturer. However, in 2005, India changed its Patents Act to make it TRIPS compliant. Faced with Western pharmaceutical companies' 'evergreening', CGL became a prominent crusader against multinationals. It fought and won patent cases in Indian courts. On the other hand, the government of India took advantage of the TRIPS provisions to authorize Indian companies to manufacture copies of patented drugs without the patent holder's permission. This infuriated Western pharmaceutical companies because they saw this provision as an infringement on their rights, which would lead to decreased revenues. As a consequence, they started lobbying their respective governments to put pressure on the Indian government. The case ends with a dilemma about the best course of action for CGL going forward, given the various options offered by the industry, on the one hand, and the ambitions of its chairman, on the other.

Raven's Sun Enterprise Ltd. is a small oilfield and construction site delivery business operated by firefighter Mike LaPlante on his days off. Mike is the firm's only driver, so scheduling his time profitably is the critical success factor. Students will have to consider an unusual measure of volume, Mike's available work days, to assess potential profitability and risk during a recession. They will have to apply constrained resource analysis and cost-volume-profit analysis (CVP) to three different sales mixes, which in this service business involve combinations of in-city and long-haul deliveries. Finally, their recommendations will relate the CVP analysis to work/family balance and safety issues.

This case study presents the dilemmas faced by the Country Manager of Pioneer Energy in Turkmenistan. He has to find closure on a variety of issues ranging from procurement of steel casings to complete test wells in the Turkmen region, to implementing a new performance evaluation system mandated by Pioneer's headquarters in Dallas, localization of the workforce, and challenging cross-cultural matters associated with an upcoming trip by Turkmenistan officials to the US offices of Pioneer

This case study presents the dilemmas faced by Pioneer Energy in Turkmenistan. The company has to find closure on a variety of issues ranging from procurement of steel casings to complete test wells in the Turkmen region, to implementing a new performance evaluation system mandated by Pioneer's headquarters in Dallas, localization of the workforce, and challenging cross-cultural matters associated with an upcoming trip by Turkmenistan officials to the U.S. offices of Pioneer.

Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has taken Amazon.com from an online bookstore to the largest online retailer and comparison-shopping site in the world. Bezos has followed the trend of integrating hardware and software, products and services, and online and brick-and-mortar stores. Amazon diversified into cloud computing (with Amazon Web Services, or AWS) and content delivery and original content creation. Its membership service, Prime, offers free two-day shipping, instant video streaming, music, grocery delivery service, Kindle lending library, and other benefits. Amazon finds itself engaged in a fierce competitive battle for control of the emerging digital ecosystem, pitted against technology giants such as Apple, Google, Facebook, and Alibaba. Yet, profitability eludes Amazon-how much longer will its shareholders be patient with Jeff Bezos?

Tesla Motors, Inc. was founded in 2003 in San Carlos, CA, with the mission "to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass-market electric cars to market as soon as possible." By 2015, Tesla is now a public company that faces multiple challenges, including scaling-up production, market acceptance, the lack of a clear technology standard, timing and launch of a mass-market vehicle, and increased global competition. Moreover, the competition in the automobile industry is getting more intense as gasoline prices have fallen by 50 percent in the United States. CEO Elon Musk must decide how to handle these issues to keep Tesla successful.

An equity analyst at a value fund considers pitching to his fund manager the Canadian software maker Constellation Software Inc. The last software company he pitched was rejected for failing to meet the value fund's investment criteria of low analyst coverage and small market capitalization with either a strong competitive advantage or a low price-earnings ratio and a low price-to-book ratio. The analyst has heard that Constellation Software is earning very high returns on invested capital deployed and wonders whether the company's current valuation makes it a great business investment at a fair price.

In 2008, the newly appointed chairman and managing director (CMD) of Bank of Baroda, one of India's largest public-sector banks, was exploring ways to implement the vision of making the bank one of the most popular and customer-oriented public-sector banks in the country. Under the tenure of the previous CMD, a strong foundation for growth had been built, and subsequently, the bank had made tremendous progress and had been ranked third among its peers. However, the bank continued to suffer from the typical malaise of large public-sector organizations - although change was taking place, the firm was sluggish, inadequately responsive to customers, and using outdated processes and technology. Consequently, the new CMD was faced with the challenge of managing the legacy of his predecessor. To accomplish his goal, he took on the task of reinventing the bank by dispelling the culture of fear and caution that prevailed. Could he make the firm more agile and customer-savvy, while quadrupling revenue?

Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. (MSIL), a subsidiary of Suzuki Motor Corporation Japan, is considering a new product introduction to defend its pre-eminent position and retain its competitive advantage in the Indian car market. Three different choices have emerged, out of which only one can be pursued. There is a need to reassess MSIL's potential growth opportunities and strategy for competing in the "A-segment." Which product should MSIL invest in to successfully defend its position?

In April 2013, Colgate-Palmolive, a long-term front runner in a consumer goods business that specialized in oral care products, lost its dominance for the sensitive teeth toothpaste market in India. It was a dominance that Colgate-Palmolive had managed to build over the years by being a first mover and by leveraging its reputation as a leader in oral care products. However, new global and local competitors entered the market with diverse product variants and aggressive marketing campaigns, and started to erode the company's market share. By mid-2013, the fight for market share was fierce and on the verge of becoming even more intense. Could Colgate-Palmolive regain its dominance? How should the company navigate these extremely competitive tides to regain its lost market share?