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Headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, Kat Rose was founded in 2009 to produce small strategic business conferences and corporate hospitality events. After mixed success, it was presented with an opportunity in 2011 to organize a cricket match in Toronto. Although sports were not on its radar, the company decided to use the project as a base for expansion. It put in place an aggressive advertising plan, largely aimed at South Asian and West Indian communities in the city who were fans of the game, and contracted Universal Productions, an ethnic marketing agency, to procure sponsorships. However, with only 10 weeks to go before the International Cricket All-Star T20 Match was scheduled to kick off on May 12, 2012 at the Rogers Centre, Toronto, only $60,000 had been raised; $750,000 was needed to break even. Management had four choices: give Universal Productions more time, offer it a financial incentive to step up performance, switch to another agency with a proven track record in this field or increase its own in-house sales force to focus on countertrade barter agreements. Each option required different skills, knowledge, experience and risk. Given the severe time constraint, any change must be implemented immediately. What should Kat Rose do?

It is year-end 2013 and management at Gabriel Resources, a Canadian junior mining corporation, is attempting to handle investor relations and political tensions surrounding its Rosia Montana mine project in Romania. Recently, the Romanian Parliament voted overwhelmingly against granting the final permit for the gold and silver mine until a more thorough environmental and legal framework is established. Although the company promises that its project will bring significant financial benefits to the state and needed infrastructure improvements and employment in the region, both national and international civilian and non-governmental organizations have protested vociferously against a development that they see harming not only the fragile geographic ecosystem but also historical artifacts that have been a major tourist draw. The draft bill was set to allow the company to begin work on developing the potentially lucrative mine, which has been 15 years in the making and has not yet generated any revenues. Investors are worried and the company's share price is sinking. How can the company calm shareholder panic and negative stock price movement? What can it do to persuade the Romanian government and people to support the mine?

Student spreadsheet for W14431.

The Anheuser-Busch InBev case represents a major cross-border M&A transaction. Because the material covers a large, well-known transaction involving food and beverage companies, students can focus on both the strategic rationale behind the transaction as well as understand the various valuation issues associated with any M&A deal-including some specific to cross-border M&A, such as currency conversion of foreign sales. The material includes both student and instructor spreadsheets.

The Anheuser-Busch InBev case represents a major cross-border M&A transaction. Because the material covers a large, well-known transaction involving food and beverage companies, students can focus on both the strategic rationale behind the transaction as well as understand the various valuation issues associated with any M&A deal-including some specific to cross-border M&A, such as currency conversion of foreign sales. The material includes both student and instructor spreadsheets.

Organizing speedy and efficient supply operations for unpredictable major natural disasters was a continuing challenge for the U.S. military, and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti was both unique in its operational scope and political complexity. As he reviewed the after-action reports, George Topic, the Vice Director of the Center for Joint and Strategic Logistics at the National Defense University wondered how the performance of disaster relief efforts should really be measured. How should the efficiency of the response be characterized? He wondered if they could overcome some of the hurdles to applying concepts from commercial supply chains. The case explores some of the lessons learned from the Haiti disaster, and offers an opportunity to test well-known supply chain concepts.

In May 2012, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) founded edX, a new non-profit joint venture that would provide a platform for massive open online courses (MOOCs). edX did not produce original courses or instructional content-it made a web platform through which Harvard and MIT, and subsequently dozens more "partner" universities, could offer their lecture courses as MOOCs. While the future role of MOOCs in higher education remained a topic of public debate, edX needed to answer concrete managerial and strategic questions. For example, what should edX's scope be? Should edX try to develop a consumer brand of its own, or rely on the brands of its partners? And how could edX monetize its services to recoup Harvard and MIT's investments and reward participating universities? This case presented the history of edX and the online education market as background for a discussion about edX's strategic choices.

This case looks at the impact of an innovative digital marketing campaign on bringing new customers and increasing brand awareness and recognition.It is set in September 2013, when Groupon India, a local e-commerce marketplace, decided to sell onions online. The price of onions in India had been rising sharply throughout 2013, making this humble vegetable nearly unaffordable for the average Indian household. With the idea of launching a bold public relations campaign, the marketing team proposed selling onions on its website at a heavily discounted price. The deal, which was accompanied by a tongue-in-cheek advertising campaign, was an immediate hit. At the end of seven days, Groupon India had acquired 15,000 new and the daily average value of business had increased by an impressive 50% over the seven days of the promotion. The media coverage of the deal was even more remarkable - both the Indian and the global press couldn't get enough of what was being termed as "the great onion digital deal". Now Ankur Warikoo, head of Groupon India, is thinking ahead. How will he ensure that the new and existing customers drawn in by the onion bargain continue to spend on his company's website? How can he convert the strides made in brand recognition into brand loyalty?

This case describes the challenges facing CEO Kent Thiry and DaVita as they being thinking about how to integrate a recent acquisition, Health Care Partners (HCP). DaVita had been primarily a kidney dialysis company with a very strong culture built around teamwork, fun, continuous improvement, accountability, and service. The senior management saw DaVita as "a community first and a company second." HCP was an integrated health care provider with a substantially different workforce from DaVita. The case describes the history of DaVita, its industry, its unique culture, and its success over the previous 15 years. It provides a detailed description of how the culture was developed and managed through the use of a series of processes and events including the careful use of language, symbols, and traditions (the company is a "village," team members are "citizens," the use of slogans such as "one for all and all for one," three musketeer costumes, wide sharing of information, involvement of team members, extensive recognition and reward programs, investment in training and socialization, and even a company song). This culture was a competitive advantage in DaVita's financial success by attracting and retaining staff and patients, maintaining control of costs, and improving clinical outcomes. The new challenge was whether this culture could, or should, be exported to Health Care Partners.

In 2013, democratic Colorado state senators John Morse and Angela Giron were recalled from office in the wake of a successful recall campaign launched by grassroots groups angered by the senators' support for newly-enacted gun control legislation. After Morse and Giron were recalled, Democrats retained a one-seat majority in the Senate. Some critics thought Morse should have anticipated the recall election result and resigned while others expressed concern that Morse's ouster had legitimized the use of recall politics-typically used to unseat politicians over ethical issues-as a way for voters to punish supporters of controversial issues. The case asks students to consider the benefits and drawbacks of recall elections and how they can be used by political activists and interest groups as a tool to manage political representation.

GoodJobz was a non-profit organization that funded its job training and education programs by re-selling donated goods through its retail stores. The organization helped train over 11,000 people in 2012 and hoped to double that number within five years. To do so, the vice-president of marketing and community development believed that the organization should adopt a "giver" culture. After making significant progress in instilling a giver culture within his own department, he shifted his focus to another department: Business Services. However, the vice-president of business services hindered any efforts to do so. The vice-president of marketing and community development was faced with the challenge of how to handle this crisis.

In February 2014, a McKinsey Global Institute report proposed tracking an empowerment line that could enable India's citizens to get out of poverty by providing the resources they needed to build better lives. This prompted Ela Bhatt, founder of the India-based Self-Employed Women's Association, to take stock of her initiative to empower women working in India's informal sector. Since 1972, her organization has been widely acclaimed as a global first mover and active champion of grassroots development. Quickly approaching two million members in India and six neighbouring countries, and inspiring similar efforts in South Africa, Ghana, Mali and Burkina Faso, it exemplifies a unique form of positively deviant organizing by speaking to the centrality of human beings at work. Given resources, support and encouragement, its many members have used their own human agency even in the direst of circumstances to better their lives in ways most meaningful to them, for instance, by creating childcare, health care, banking, farming and education cooperatives. However, as she reaches retirement and contemplates the future, Bhatt wonders if the new generation of Indian leaders will take up the Gandhian socially minded path or follow the commercial careers opening up in the country's multinational sector.

Supplement case for W14413.

In 2003, Radiometer was the world's leading supplier of blood gas analysis equipment and accessories for critical care patients. Based in Denmark, Radiometer sold through a combination of sales subsidiaries and distributors around the world, and generated sales of over DKr 1,791 million ($272 million). Blood gas analysis formed part of the $27.7 billion in-vitro diagnostic market. Although sales were strong, Radiometer remained focused on its future. The market for blood gas analysis was growing slowly, driven mainly by new technologies that threatened to displace the high volume testing equipment that Radiometer supplied. Radiometer's recent attempts at competing in these new technologies had failed. Should it remain focused on blood gas analysis and redouble its efforts? Or should it turn to other opportunities for growth? CEO and controlling stockholder, Johan Schroder, had denied rumors of a potential sale, but an acquisition by a stronger partner could help the company expand into the United States. How should the company position itself for future success?

Discourses on the links between eating, health, and social standing in America have deep roots. As mechanisms of food production, distribution and storage were developed in the nineteenth century, Americans began receiving information about what to and not-to eat, from public and religious figures, scientists, government officials, and food companies. In an increasingly industrializing and urbanizing society, such information translated into consumer decisions that had both economic and cultural antecedents and consequences. Even before the growth in the market for organic, health, and gourmet foods in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, food choices were associated with lifestyle.

This supplemental case follows up on the Netflix Prize Contest described in Netflix: Designing the Netflix Prize (A). In the A case, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings must decide how to organize a crowdsourcing contest to improve the algorithms for Netflix's movie recommendation software. The B case follows the contest from the building of the platform in 2006 to the awarding of the highest prize in 2009. The B cause also considers the aftermath of the contest, and the issues of successfully implementing a winning idea from a contest.

Describes the challenges facing Dr. John Noseworthy, President and CEO, in implementing a long-term strategy for the growth of the Mayo Clinic-a leading academic medical center with a reputation for excellence in tertiary and quaternary health care. The case highlights the concurrent forces of regional and national competition and federal health care reform as factors complicating the plans of Mayo Clinic to grow through several channels. Students must ultimately decide whether Mayo Clinic should focus its future growth on its current areas of expertise (regional provision of integrated medical care and international provision of tertiary and quaternary care), new opportunities in a broader range of services and treatment channels (e.g., telemedicine, mobile health, enterprise learning and training for other health care systems), or some combination of these opportunities.

In 2010, Pfizer established four small research units in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and San Diego located close to several premier Academic Medical Centers (AMCs), or hospitals with adjoining medical schools. The goal of these units was to redesign collaboration with Pfizer and academic medical researchers with the purpose of developing new, innovative drugs candidates for testing in patients. Project teams consisted of Pfizer scientists and academics working side-by-side to reduce the time needed to bring a therapeutic drug from the lab to a patient's bedside. This case explores the academic collaboration model developed by Pfizer. What were the strengths of and challenges facing this model? How would the model evolve in the future? And how would new, similar collaboration models surfacing at other major pharmaceutical companies pose a threat to the Pfizer model?

Cree, a North Carolina-based maker of light emitting diodes (LEDs), has just introduced its first consumer product - an LED light bulb. It is designed as an energy efficient replacement for the ubiquitous incandescent light bulb. But given that it is an unfamiliar technology and that it costs ten times what an incandescent bulb costs, there are questions about how best to promote adoption and what sales level might be expected.

By 2014, IKEA Group was the largest home furnishing company, with EUR28.5 billion of sales, and planned to reach EUR50 billion by 2020, mainly from emerging markets. At the same time, IKEA Group had adopted in 2012 a new sustainability strategy that focused the company's efforts on its entire value chain from its raw materials sourcing to the lifestyle of its end consumers. The plan especially centered on wood, which represented 60% of IKEA Group's total procurement in volume and constituted a key lever for the company to increase its positive impact on sustainability. IKEA Group Management therefore had to decide how to manage its portfolio of wood sustainability initiatives, especially in the context of the company's aggressive growth plan.