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In early 2008, managers at Linden Lab, creator of the virtual world Second Life, faced decisions about the company's growth strategy. Despite profound initial skepticism about demand for a user-generated virtual world that was not a traditional game, Second Life had achieved profitability and strong growth. However, sustaining growth would prove challenging. Growth had strained Linden Lab's technical infrastructure. Also, although Second Life had attracted a large, loyal base of early adopters, it was unclear whether their preferences were similar to those of mainstream consumers. In this context, management faced choices about platform strategy and target markets. Should Linden Lab continue to offer an open platform or build its own solutions for customers? Should it target adult consumers, teens, enterprise customers, or the education market?

Yieldex Founder, Doug Cosman, is faced with the decision to sell his young software start-up for $4 million or to hire a CEO (Tom Shields) and pursue Series A venture capital financing. His angel investors and CEO candidate Tom Shields believe he should reject the offer and focus on building the company into a bigger enterprise. Cosman is attracted to the financial rewards offered by the potential acquirer.

Yieldex CEO Tom Shields was hired by the company's technical founder, Doug Cosman, in October 2007. One of Shields' top priorities is finding a vice president of engineering to manage the company's software development efforts. Shields and Costman disagree about the ideal profile of the new hire. Shields found a candidate that he likes, and he wonders about the implications of hiring the person against Cosman's wishes.

The promise of clean-energy technologies makes this renowned venture capitalist optimistic about the world's economic future. He foresees many "cleantech" successes that will pave the way to better times.

By 2008, a number of the firm's early cleantech investments were showing promise, and the companies were starting to need significantly more money to create the massive scale required in the energy sector. As Khosla thought about the hundreds of millions of dollars required by his portfolio companies, he wondered how he should position his firm at this stage of development. Should Khosla develop a new fund that focused on later-stage investments? Should he seek investments from large industry players such as the major oil companies? Should he try raising money from the managers of the sovereign funds in countries such as Singapore, Kuwait and China? How should the firm work with its strategic partners? Khosla knew that lining up enough later stage funding would be challenging, as the cleantech industry was still unproven for investors. Nevertheless, he was determined to continue his pattern of making bold investments in this emerging field.

Ocean Tomo's management team sought to turn the company into the leading intermediary for intellectual property. Despite its increasingly important role in the global marketplace, IP remained a notoriously illiquid asset--difficult to value, harder to trade, and often underutilized by owners. CEO Jim Malackowski and his colleagues hoped to capitalize on this inefficiency by designing and operating innovative marketplaces for intellectual property. After a successful live IP auction in the spring of 2008 (62% of 85 offered lots were sold for a total of $19.6 million), Ocean Tomo had to decide which of its five business lines to emphasize. Indeed, from its inception, Ocean Tomo had been designed as a "one-stop shop" for IP services, with five inter-related lines of business. Which of these services provided the largest market opportunity for Ocean Tomo? How should the company allocate its scarce resources (it had not sought outside funding yet) in order to get the most leverage going forward?

This case, set in 2008, examines how Google has worked to avoid potential negative byproducts of rapid growth such as bureaucracy, slow decision-making, lack of visibility, and organizational inconsistency. When the case protagonist, Kim Scott, started with Google in 2004, she wondered if she would still be there in several years as she liked small, entrepreneurial companies. In 2008, she was pleased that Google still had the same entrepreneurial energy that it had when she joined. She and her colleagues reflect on how Google has been able to maintain its culture as the company keeps doubling in size.

Provides an overview of the Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) industry and highlights the leadership role that Barclays Global Investors (BGI) has played in this developing asset class. BGI launched its first ETFs under the iShares brand name in 2000, and by mid-2007 BGI was the global leader in the $600 billion ETF market. BGI's success had started attracting the interest of other large asset management firms, and Lee Kranefuss, CEO of BGI's iShares business was thinking about how BGI should compete in the increasingly crowded market. Should BGI expand into Europe and Asia more aggressively? Should BGI, already a large manager of 401(k) assets for corporations, pursue the 401(k) market with its iShares products? Would BGI need to cut its fees as other competitors such as Vanguard started marketing its "low-cost" ETF products?

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 208033.

While facilitating a complex clinical approval process over the next two to three years for a family of new cancer drugs, Genentech must develop a long-term capacity plan for a major class of new cancer products. Adding to the complexity and uncertainty is the fact that the lead time for planning, building, and certifying a new $600 million plus production-scale facility is five years. In addition, ensuring that the best process technology is incorporated into such a new plant makes the task facing David Ebersman, the senior vice-president of products operations, and his management team a daunting one. Frames the issues Ebersman and his team face and outlines the approach to date.

Since the 1980s, Kingsford had continued to enjoy steady, moderate growth of 1% to 3% in revenues each year. During most of this time, the charcoal category as a whole grew as well. However, the summer of 2000 represented the first softening in the category in several years. Forces students to step into the brand manager's shoes, analyze the reasons for the current situation, and come up with recommendations related to pricing, branding and advertising, and merchandising and promotion of the Kingsford brand.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 506-020.

Scharffen Berger, a premium brand chocolate, is growing rapidly and must decide where and when to add capacity in the production line and with what technology. The company must consider the demands of marketing, the impact on quality and reputation, and the economics of alternative approaches to increasing output in both the short term and long term. Provides an opportunity for students to examine the existing process technology and flow, to understand the determinants of product quality, and to make recommendations about changes that will expand the capabilities of the firm in supplying its premium products to a rapidly growing market segment.

Explores the phenomenon of software becoming a service. Salesforce.com has catapulted into the lead for offering a customer relationship management (CRM) solution as a Web-based service. Siebel, the leader in CRM packaged software sales, has to devise a strategy to compete with salesforce.com

Describes Yahoo!'s management of the launch of version 6.0 of its Instant Messenger (IM) product, which incorporates features from 12 other Yahoo! properties, including Search, Music, Games, Photos, Personals, News, and Shopping. The integration of features from so many properties--all of which face urgent competitive priorities beyond their support of IM--presents a complex set of product and strategy development problems. Yahoo! has a distinctive approach for managing such "network integration," which it sees as its key competitive advantage vs. Google and Microsoft's MSN.

Illustrates the challenges associated with centralizing IT decisions at Cisco after a decade of decentralized planning and project funding. When Brad Boston became Cisco's new CIO in 2001, he found that managers were starting to get frustrated with the results of their latest IT initiatives. Boston believed that Cisco needed to focus on its global infrastructure before investing in more functional tools and applications. Under the leadership of Boston and an executive operating committee, Cisco selected three major enterprise projects that required an unprecedented level of process planning and cross-functional cooperation, a major change from Cisco's legacy of entrepreneurial drive. As these three projects started to wind down in 2004, Boston and the operating committee were thinking about what types of new projects the IT organization should support. Raises issues about change management, centralized planning, IT prioritization and resource allocation, enterprise cooperation, and project funding.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 605-015.

The large food service company SYSCO has decided to purchase business intelligence (BI) software, a technology intended to provide superior monitoring and analysis capabilities. Twila Day, assistant vice president of technology and applications, is in charge of the BI project and must determine exactly how much software to buy. She must also plan the BI implementation throughout the company. After conferring with Business Objects, the BI application's vendor, SYSCO has decided initially to configure the software and train employees to address only a limited set of questions.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 604080.