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Summit Public Schools was a very successful charter management organization with schools in California and Washington State. The students came from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, many from economically-disadvantaged households. While nearly all of its students were accepted to a four-year college, Summit's leadership discovered that nearly half of graduates had failed at college. This was unacceptable to Summit's leadership and they set out to create a new learning model that would enable its students to not only get into a four-year college but succeed there. The new learning model significantly altered the role of the teacher and brought technology to the forefront of student teaching. This new personalized student self-directed learning model was instituted to build knowledge and skills graduates needed to be successful in college. The case study describes the history of Summit and its evolution to this new learning model.

This courseware was created to allow students to model E-Leather's enterprise value (EV) in early 2014. Yellow cells in the Enterprise Value (EV) worksheets indicate where students provide inputs. The other worksheets provide information to help students make decisions about their inputs.

Following a full takeover of Darden Restaurant's Board of Directors, Darden COO Gene Lee is weighing an offer to become interim CEO.

It is 2014 and Environmental Technologies Fund (ETF) Partners, a U.K.-based venture capital firm, has an opportunity to invest in a privately-held U.K. company that manufactured engineered composition leather extracted from waste leather using an environmentally-friendly process. The end product looked, smelled and felt like natural leather. Scalable marketplace adoption of E-Leather's products looked promising, but was just that-promising. And the company's success would largely depend on management's ability to significantly improve the efficiency of its manufacturing operations. ETF needed to decide to invest in the company and, if so, at what valuation. In addition, ETF needed to decide the structure of the investment and how the firm would assess E-Leather's environmental impact.

Guillermo Jaime was the founder and CEO of Mejoramiento Integral Asistido (MIA), a for-profit company providing affordable housing to low-income Mexicans living at the base of the pyramid (BOP). This case tells the story of Jaime and Endeavor, a non-profit dedicated to leading the high impact entrepreneurship movement as a tool for economic development in countries around the world. In 2010, Jaime was named an Endeavor Entrepreneur. This case can accompany HBS Case Study "MIA: Profit at the Base of the Pyramid," No. 817073.

In January 2016, Guillermo Jaime had just returned home to Mexico City after attending a Harvard Business School executive education program. Jaime was the founder and CEO of Mejoramiento Integral Asistido (MIA), a company providing affordable housing to low-income Mexicans living at the base of the pyramid (BOP), defined as those living on less than $10 per day. Since its launch in 2009, MIA had built nearly 25,000 homes-which provided safe shelter to more than 100,000 Mexicans-while generating an earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) margin of over 8%. At the executive education program, Jaime had learned that entrepreneurs could build on their unique attributes and capabilities to expand and grow their businesses. Should he continue to expand the services MIA offered to BOP customers? Could he leverage what made MIA unique-offering affordable homes for its BOP customers in Mexico-to fulfill other critical needs at the BOP for water, clean energy, and health care services? Jaime was an expert in housing, but could he translate that expertise to such diverse sectors? If so, how should he begin?

In early 2006, BlackRock, Inc. is considering acquiring Merrill Lynch's asset management business. The asset management industry was in a state of transition. In the prior year, more than 130 mergers and acquisitions had taken place. The proposed deal between BlackRock and Merrill Lynch would change BlackRock from a chiefly U.S.-based fixed income asset manager for institutional clients, to a firm with a global footprint and a strong equities and retail business. Was this the right thing to do to grow BlackRock? Was the timing right? Was the price right?

On June 11, 2009, BlackRock, Inc., the world's fourth-largest asset manager announced it was acquiring Barclays Global Investors (BGI) for $13.5 billion in stock and cash. The deal would more than double BlackRock's assets under management (AUM), making it the world's largest asset manager. There was more than just a significant difference in investment philosophy that separated the two firms. There were also significant cultural differences between New York-based BlackRock and San Francisco-based BGI. There was doubt internally at BlackRock and externally (i.e., analysts) whether it was the right move for BlackRock, but the firm's co-founder and CEO Larry Fink was undeterred.

By the end of 2015, BlackRock had succeeded beyond any of the early dreams of its founders. The firm remained the world's largest asset manager, with more than $4.6 trillion under management, and other financial services companies used BlackRock's Aladdin platform to monitor an additional $12.9 trillion of assets. With its success, the firm had become far more complex. The scale and scope of BlackRock were helpful to clients when the parts of the company worked together, but that very same scale and scope made working together harder. BlackRock's leadership took stock of the investment landscape in early 2016 and what the firm would need to do in the future to continue to grow.

The online virtual learning (K-12) industry in 2017 remains an industry moving fast with many different players and stakeholders. While online virtual learning is beginning to make its way into school districts, it is far from being mainstream and a long way from full adoption. One company - Connections Education - is at the forefront of the movement. The case provides information on the company and the industry (historical and current as of 2017) and introduces the challenges the company faces in its quest to create a better way of learning for all students.

Investment manager Eliza Baena confronts an apparent convertible bond arbitrage opportunity when she notices a narrowing spread between two Boston Properties (BXP) bonds, one a convertible bond and the other a straight bond, in the wake of the 2008 Lehman bankruptcy. Baena must decide if there is an opportunity, how to structure a trade to exploit it, and how much of her fund's capital to allocate. Case exposition includes descriptions of basic financing arrangements that support arbitrage strategies, such as rehypothecation and margin lending.

This (D) case is a supplement to HBS case no. 717-404 "BlackRock (A): Selling the Systems?"

This (C) case is a supplement to HBS case no. 717-404 "BlackRock (A): Selling the Systems?"

This B case is a supplement to HBS case no. 717-404 "BlackRock (A): Selling the Systems?"

The Container Store (TCS) is a Texas-based retailer of organization and storage solutions. The company prides itself in taking care of its employees first and its co-founder and CEO Kip Tindell practices Conscious Capitalism. Since it beginnings in 1978, TCS grew to a chain of around 70 stores located in over 20 states by 2013. Tindell believed TCS's employee-first culture and the seven Foundation Principles, which guided the company, were what differentiated the company from other retailers. With plans to grow to 300 stores, TCS went public in late 2013. Since its IPO same store sales have suffered and the company's stock in early 2016 was trading well below its IPO price. As such, the company's culture and Foundation Principles were being put to the test. This product can be used with the free Job Design Optimization Tool (JDOT), available at: hbsp.harvard.edu/jdot

N12 Technologies was a startup founded in 2010 that employed nanotechnology to manufacture a patented material to improve the performance of carbon fiber composites, which were used in a wide variety of products, ranging from bicycles to automobiles to aircraft parts. By 2016, the company had grown to 27 employees and was able to produce its product in small volumes. While much had been achieved, the company's success hinged on its leadership's ability to scale both the organization and production capabilities exponentially. The case describes the company's evolution from a newly created startup to a young "loosely structured" company as well as the challenges ahead.

The Libra Foundation is exploring how to grow the food sector in Maine using the strategy of creating a food cluster initiative. Maine is one of the poorest states in the United States and the food sector is one of the largest employers. Multiple efforts in agriculture, aquaculture, and food processing exist but are not coordinated. The Foundation owns three food companies. Its CEO needs to decide what action if any the Foundation should take given the data from the Cluster Tool-a nation data set and other research on successful food cluster initiatives in other states.

This (B) case describes the actions Andre Wyss, President of Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., took in early 2012 to transform the company's General Medicines group and build its speciality medications marketing the selling capabilities in the face of falling revenues and an imminent workforce reduction. Rather than downsize the organization quickly to save costs, Wyss and his team took a different approach. They told the organization's employees that there would be a significant workforce reduction but it would not occur for several months. In the meantime, Wyss asked the employees to help build the new capabilities and put processes in place to support the move into specialty medications. It was a bold decision and defied convention.