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A recent master of business administration degree graduate, had discovered a problem with inventory management in her family’s business. Agrawal Kitchenware Distributors (Agrawal), a wholesaler and distributor of kitchenware items, appeared to be well-off according to its financials, but when she had toured the company’s warehouse, she discovered several problems with the inventory, and there was no management system that could identify, track, or resolve the inventory problems. Because Agrawal was a family business, the changes needed to be acceptable to both brothers who owned and managed the business, and the changes needed to be fairly simple to implement and maintain. What inventory management technique would be suitable in these circumstances?

Spreadsheet to accompany product W26015.

In May 2021, the founder of Yardstick Educational Initiatives Private Limited, a provider of experiential learning programs in India and the United Arab Emirates, was facing various business challenges. The company was started in India in 2008 but had been increasingly focused on the more profitable Middle East market since 2012. Attempting to stay current with technology advancements in educational products, it made considerable investments to develop new products and enhance its flagship learning product, the Yardstick Experiential Learning Program. However, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 caused a major setback for the company. Cash flow issues and reduced working capital were forcing the founder to decide which client segment to continue serving and which products to support. With only three months left in the peak sales season before the next academic year, the founder had to make important decisions.

On February 16, 2021, Slave Free Chocolate removed Tony’s Chocolonely (Tony’s), a chocolate company based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, from its “Ethical Chocolate Companies” list due to Tony’s association with Barry Callebaut, a cocoa processor associated with child slavery in West Africa. Tony’s, a B Corp-certified company whose founding mission was to eradicate child slavery from the cocoa supply chain, had to address its public removal from the list immediately to maintain the company's credibility. How should the chief executive officer of Tony’s respond to the removal?

An investor in NIO Inc. (NIO), an electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer based in China, contemplated the role NIO played in the EV market in China and the world, as well as the differences between NIO’s business model and the business models of other EV makers. Specifically, NIO had built and operated a network of battery-swapping stations and often included complimentary swaps with vehicle purchases. Also, NIO was able to sell a car without a battery pack as long as the customer paid for a subscription service. Further, to fund the venture, NIO and other entities had established Wuhan Weineng Battery Asset Co. Ltd., which owned the batteries that were leased out under the battery-as-a-service (BaaS) model. The investor realized that it was important to understand the implications of these streams of revenue and how they affected NIO’s stock valuation.

The founder of Jucai Human Resources Development Co., Ltd. had witnessed the development of China’s human resources service industry over the previous 20 years. In the company’s early stages, it had mainly relied on the advantage of information asymmetry of the Internet to carry out online recruitment services. But from 2015, the founder became interested in and confident about the prospects of providing a talent assessment service for public institutions and thus decided to start such a service. After five years of development, the company had become a leading enterprise in the domestic talent assessment service for public institutions. However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, talent assessment services for public institutions suddenly stagnated. The founder realized that this service was too dependent on government policy support, although income from this service accounted for 70 per cent of its revenue. If public institutions shifted their talent assessment business from outsourcing assessment to independent assessment, the company would face a severe challenge. Therefore, the founder had to consider how his company could reduce its dependence on policies and achieve sustainable development by using existing data resources.

Spreadsheet for product W24753.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W24752.

In 2021, SunSource Energy was evaluating its growth strategy options. An entrepreneurial venture in the renewable energy sector, it was about to receive a second round of large funding. SunSource Energy had to decide whether it should exploit its expertise in India and other known locales, or whether it should explore new possibilities. It needed to apply organizational ambidexterity and a fresh approach to design thinking, especially during uncertain times in a global context. What strategy should the company use to leverage its new funding for growing the business?

A former software developer founded INK PPT in 2015 in Gurgaon, Haryana, India, after realizing that he enjoyed designing presentations. However, the market for developing corporate presentations was still in its nascent stage in India, and there was strong reluctance among organizations to outsource this work. The founder faced various hurdles growing his company, including the initial challenge of attracting customers. The situation became more challenging after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. During the resulting lockdowns, INK PPT’s regular clients cut costs by reducing their presentation projects. As the pandemic continued, attracting new clients seemed almost impossible. The founder was told, both by friends and by a successful entrepreneur, that INK PPT was too far ahead of its time. The founder had to decide if he should continue to grow INK PPT, the start-up that he had devoted all his efforts in developing, or if it was time to move on to a new venture.

In June 2021, as Toronto-based Flashfood Inc. (Flashfood) continued to grow dramatically, its founder and chief executive officer was facing critical questions about how to manage both the firm’s mission and its business model. Flashfood partnered with grocery chains to sell near-expiry food to consumers via an app, and it had an expanding network of locations in Canada and the United States. The firm had a clear sustainability-driven objective: to reduce food waste and feed people more affordably. But how should the firm focus its ongoing investment and scarce resources—both strategically, in terms of market development and service offerings, and tactically, in terms of product pricing and app improvement? Could the firm achieve sustained success while avoiding any potential tendency to drift from that mission? Note to instructors: This case also includes a supplemental student spreadsheet. See "Supporting Materials" section below to download.

Student spreadsheet to accompany product W28461.

The owner and founder of a quickly-growing small business selling gluten-free, naturally sweetened, vegan protein snacks across Canada, had to decide how to move forward. She was a passionate entrepreneur but also worked full-time as a teacher. The company had grown rapidly in only two years and she now needed a strategy to ensure growth and success. Her time was limited, and she needed a strategy to increase both the business’s demand and its supply capacity. She had to decide how to scale the business she enjoyed while remaining committed to her full-time teaching job.

The success of Antiga Confeitaria de Belém had been built around the uniqueness of its signature product. Many comparable custard cakes, known as pastéis de nata, were available, but the bakery had established its Pastel de Belém as a distinct product with the power to attract tourists from all over the world. The Pastel de Belém stood out because its recipe had been a well-kept secret for decades. The 2020 COVID-19 crisis propelled Antiga Confeitaria de Belém to try new ways of selling its product outside of its single shop location, and this experiment could trigger new business opportunities. Now, the strategic challenge for the bakery's chief executive officer was to assess whether the exclusive nature of the Pastel de Belém allowed for new business development.

FunctionFox Systems Inc. (FunctionFox) was a small company headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, specializing in project management and timesheet tracking software. Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing restrictions, FunctionFox decided to move to 100 per cent remote work in late 2020 and sold the building where its office had been located. In early 2022, when the pandemic appeared to be subsiding, the president of FunctionFox was considering whether the company should continue with fully remote work, return to in-person work, or find a hybrid mode. She had to consider the pros and cons of each alternative and prepare a recommendation for her colleagues.

Confecciones La Montaña (CLM), a social business founded by former Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) combatants in rural Colombia, emerged out of the peace deal signed between FARC and the Colombian government in 2016. The business was part of the effort of former combatants to rejoin civilian life and help alleviate poverty in conflict-affected areas, thereby nurturing appropriate conditions to sustain peace in the country. However, the workshop had a limited productive capacity, which hindered its ability to grow, and, in 2021, the general manager had to determine the best way to increase capacity and ensure the sustainability of the business. Should CLM outsource some of its manufacturing to others in the area, or should it support the development of other clothing workshops created by former combatants across the country?

Founded in California in 2012, Ravel Law Inc. (Ravel) was a legal tech start-up that developed groundbreaking legal analytics products. In 2017, Ravel’s co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) was deciding between two very different paths to take the company—a decision that would shape Ravel’s future and ultimately determine how the CEO would exit the company. One path would lead Ravel to an acquisition or sale, and the other would allow the company to further develop its technology and eventually lead to an initial public offering (IPO). Should the CEO sell Ravel now and harvest its existing value, or should he hold on to the company and raise money to build internal capital for a future IPO? As the leader of Ravel, the CEO had to weigh the benefits and costs of fundraising for a third round of investor money against the benefits and costs of selling Ravel. While doing so, he also had to consider what would bring the most value to Ravel’s stakeholders as well as satisfy his personal interests in the venture and in an exit.

Maya Fonseca, the marketing analyst for video streaming service FilmCast, and her colleague Rupert Cruz had to interpret the results of a conjoint analysis conducted by their company. FilmCast was a large company, competing against Videosource and Webflickstream. The marketing analysts were debating whether it made sense to lower the price of their services and if the conjoint analysis results supported this idea.

If all goes well, a new body within existing accounting standards institutions will soon drive standardized approaches in sustainability reporting in Canada. There are some important challenges and critical questions that need to be addressed when forming the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board (CSSB) and defining its focus, composition, and mandate. The authors identify the following major questions that the committee should consider as it contemplates future oversight of sustainability standards: 1) How can Canadian standards setting be a model of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples? The consultation process needs substantive Indigenous involvement or participation in the formation of the committee and in the development of the related consultation paper. 2) How will the CSSB manage tensions between international consistency versus local adaptation? In the establishment of the working rules of the new CSSB, it is important that maintaining international comparability is the north star for standards setting, and the development of the Canadian versions focuses primarily on additional elaboration that facilitates and enables adoption in the Canadian context. 3) How will the CSSB manage tensions between single-materiality (i.e., primary consideration of the impact of sustainability issues on the firm and its immediate stakeholders) and double-materiality (also providing comprehensive and comparable information on the wider impact of the firm on the environment and society)?

In January 2020, the human resources (HR) head of MAGIS Infotech (MAGIS), a software solutions provider to banking and financial firms, was asked to come up with a set of new HR measures to resolve problems related to coordination between employees at MAGIS’s two locations—in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and Coimbatore, India. The Abu Dhabi location had all of the client-facing roles and support functions such as HR and finance, whereas Coimbatore had the back-end roles related to software development and testing. The HR head, located in Abu Dhabi, was responsible for HR matters for both the Abu Dhabi and Coimbatore locations. Within the next two months, MAGIS would recruit and onboard a large batch of employees to double the workforce at the Coimbatore location, which faced a lack of cohesion between employees at different levels. In addition, there was friction between the Abu Dhabi and Coimbatore teams. The HR head had to come up with HR measures to resolve these issues before the new employees were recruited.