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Bandhan, the largest microfinance institution in India, has 13,000 staff members and 2,016 branches in 22 states and union territories, 5.2 million borrowers and loans outstanding of INR 57.04 billion. However, its overdependence on external sources of funds along with recent steps by the country's banking regulator have started worrying Bandhan's management, from a profitability and sustainability perspective. The banking licence policy declared by India's central bank in February 2013 came as an opportunity for Bandhan to resolve the predicament it had met. The founder chairman and managing director is now trying to address the question of transforming Bandhan into a bank. Does the present business require any change? As a bank, the cost of funds for Bandhan would come down, as it would be able to raise funds by drawing deposits from clients. But is Bandhan ready to become a bank? How will it meet the various challenges in achieving business transformation?

The general manager of an engineering solutions department at Robert Bosch Engineering India, a subsidiary of a major German supplier of automotive components, must expand his department from captive to non-captive (i.e., non-Bosch) business and grow rapidly. He believes that non-linear growth is feasible if he leverages competencies and talent built over the years within his division. He faces complex strategy execution challenges, including challenges related to funding, sales and marketing and the existing captive-oriented culture, in shifting from a captive to non-captive mode of business for growth. The automotive ecosystem, within India and abroad, is rapidly changing with its focus on high technology and offers opportunities while also posing threats. At the same time, senior management's expectations for the general manager are high. He must decide whether to focus more on the development of non-linear products/services or on captive jobs in order to meet his firm's revenue goal. He could also adopt a hybrid approach.

Societies face many pressing challenges with serious implications for business leaders. These include pollution and climate change, poverty and income inequality, obesity and public health, and corruption and regulatory capture. This note presents a way of analyzing the economic, legal, and ethical implications of these challenges for business leaders, in their capacities as corporate fiduciaries and citizens. The note offers a unifying framework by organizing major contemporary societal challenges into four "tragedies of the commons" and by developing the notion of a "capitalist's contract" that can help students consider how they, as future business leaders, will respond to these tragedies.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 214063.

In August 2009, the newly appointed president of the Federal Development Agency for Southern Ontario, FedDev Ontario, is contemplating the task in front of him. The region's manufacturing sector, especially the auto industry, had been hit hard by the global recession of 2008; for the first time in its history, Ontario was now a "have not" province, and the federal government was hoping that enthusiasm for this new regional development agency would not only result in the creation of more jobs but would lead to support for the Conservatives in the upcoming election. The new president knew he would need to gain the confidence of his minister and political staff while developing a three-month short-term plan to get up and running as well as a one-year longer term plan to grow the agency and develop its programs. Expectations of both program and political success were high; the new voyage on which he was embarking would be the riskiest of his career.

Tokyo Jane is an accessible fashion jewelry company that makes and markets its products as "luxury for less" by designing, importing and selling fashion jewelry pieces that look luxurious but cost only a fraction of the high-priced items that inspired them. Finished products are air-shipped to company headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark from factories in China, stocked in the head office and delivered to 400 retail partners -small fashion boutiques, big department stores and online shops - who then sell to consumers in Europe, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Canada. The two partners who founded the firm in 2005 are facing several problems: the brand definition is not well enough developed to support the next stage in the firm's growth, certain challenges have outstripped available human resources - they have only three permanent employees and a revolving number of interns - and distribution operations and management need to be rethought as the firm rapidly increases the scale of its operations. Things come to a head in April 2013, when they are confronted by an important customer about quality issues with their products. How can they not only save their company but continue to grow?

In 1997, the Ontario Health Services Restructuring Committee mandated the merger of four facilities that treated patients with mental health and addiction issues to create what was later named the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. This new centre, to be situated in Toronto, would provide support and clinical care to those suffering from illnesses such as schizophrenia, anxiety and mood disorders, as well as substance addictions. In 1999, the newly appointed chief executive officer and his management team have to present their recommendations to the board of trustees for implementing this complex merger. The plan will need to recognize and address significant infrastructure, strategic, organizational and stakeholder challenges. The merger will be a large change for vulnerable patient populations and their families, as well as the staff at the four merging organizations and the neighbourhoods bordering the new facility.

GetClarity Inc. is a start-up firm that specializes in the accumulation, analysis and sale of various types of data, including the firm's own data, which has been attained through an exclusive contract. The company's current job involves working for an auto-manufacturing client to identify a potential location for a new dealership. Two young analysts conduct data analysis on the age of the area and the market size, based on the customer demographic data.

Student spreadsheet for case W14290.

Supplement case to product W14290.

Student spreadsheet for case W14292.

On Tuesday March 15, 2011, all 1,200 global Partners of McKinsey & Co. gathered at the Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center near Washington, DC for their annual Partners' conference. The atmosphere was tense as Partners, in addition to their normal agenda, discussed the Galleon Group insider-trading trial and the recent allegations against the Firm's former Managing Director, Rajat Gupta. Three months earlier Senior Partner, Anil Kumar, plead guilty to providing confidential information about McKinsey clients he served to Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam. The McKinsey Partners were shocked and dismayed by the actions of Kumar, as well as the recent allegations against Gupta and were closely monitoring the situation. Could a former Managing Director of their Firm have conspired to enable insider trading? And if so, what did that mean for the future of the Firm?

On Tuesday March 15, 2011, all 1,200 global Partners of McKinsey & Co. gathered at the Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center near Washington, DC for their annual Partners' conference. The atmosphere was tense as Partners, in addition to their normal agenda, discussed the Galleon Group insider-trading trial and the recent allegations against the Firm's former Managing Director, Rajat Gupta. Three months earlier Senior Partner, Anil Kumar, pled guilty to providing confidential information about McKinsey clients he served to Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam. The McKinsey Partners were shocked and dismayed by the actions of Kumar, as well as the recent allegations against Gupta and were closely monitoring the situation. Could a former Managing Director of their Firm have conspired to enable insider trading? And if so, what did that mean for the future of the Firm?

This is the syllabus and course outline for "Entrepreneurship in Healthcare IT and Services (EHITS)" taught by Prof. Bob Higgins in the spring of 2017. Contains the course overview, objectives, goals and themes.

The case describes how a leading Chinese management software provider Yonyou (formerly known as "UFIDA") disrupted its value chain-based business model to transform itself into a platform provider. The case describes Yonyou's past success, the market forces and internal reasons for the change, and what Yonyou did internally to make the transformation happen. In (2013) when the new strategy was launched, Yonyou faced typical problems as it transformed into an Internet-based platform company. These included: Capitalizing on its past strengths to support the new models; simultaneously both changing its business model and stabilizing its business in a stressed industry; attracting and retaining new staff without incurring serious cultural dilution.

This article analyzes the differences between frequent and rare risks for supply chain disruptions, and proposes a new, improved risk measurement and prioritization method to account for the characteristics of rare risks. The varying idiosyncrasies of decision makers are integrated into this method such that risk management can be brought into alignment with an individual manager's preferences. Also woven into this tapestry is the notion of detection, which is familiar to those who have applied failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA), but novel in the arena of supply chain risk management. Rare risks in the supply chain are, by their nature, unsettling: unforeseen disruptions are always present, probability estimates are imprecise, and comprehensive data collection is impossible. These difficulties are taken into account by the presented risk management framework. While the proposed ordinal scales are perhaps unsettling to many who desire greater precision, measurement methods must fit the precision that is possible. By considering rare risks along with frequent risks, managers can be better positioned to deal with the unforeseen.

The American public raised serious concerns about product safety in 2007, when the number of product recalls broke a new record. Following a temporary drop in 2008, both the number and retail value of recalled units have been increasing, despite various efforts exerted by government agencies and private companies to combat this trend. Currently, many countries--including China itself--are expressing serious concern over adulterated or unsafe food made or sold in China. What are the underlying reasons for some Chinese suppliers to adulterate product? When law enforcement is still weak in China, what can western manufacturers do to reduce the risk of product adulteration? To develop effective deterrence mechanisms, we first identify four underlying factors that create incentives for some Chinese suppliers to produce unsafe products. Then we propose ideas to discourage Chinese suppliers from producing adulterated products based on two underlying strategies: (1) creating economic incentives through contingent payments, and (2) creating a social incentive by threatening public exposure through the power of the Internet and social networking sites.

Globalization has led to the creation of hyper-efficient supply chains that work well in a predictable world. However, with globalization comes a world full of uncertainties, and these efficient supply chains often cannot cope with unpredictable fluctuations in demand and supply. These supply-demand imbalances are a major business risk in a vast array of industries--including aerospace and defense, automobiles, chemicals, engineered products, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors-- because capacity is very expensive. Mix flexibility--whereby a plant can produce more than one kind of product--is an attractive antidote to this risk. In this article, we discuss better and worse ways to embrace mix flexibility. To begin, senior executives need to answer two key questions: How do we create flexible plants? And how do we go from flexible plants to a cost-effective flexible network? Successful companies will not blindly apply the same flexibility tactic throughout their business: they will tailor the Four Ps--product design, process design, production technology, and people--to fit the different characteristics of different tiers in their production chains. Successful companies will not sacrifice cost at the altar of flexibility: they will create cost effective flexible networks by strategically configuring partially flexible networks in a way that delivers almost all the benefits of totally flexible networks.