In May 2000, Sonia Syngal, director of procurement strategy and supplier relations at Sun Microsystems, needed to make a critical decision. Under Syngal's leadership, the company had just completed its first "dynamic bidding" pilot tests and, as a result, cut its sourcing costs by 30%. Given these results, the potential for cost cutting via the implementation of a dynamic bidding system on a widespread scale at Sun was enormous; on an annual basis, the company was currently spending about $9 billion in direct materials procurement. Although the potential to cut costs significantly was clear, Syngal had several other issues to consider, including: 1) Sun's suppliers and the potential impact of a dynamic bidding program on the company's critical relationships; 2) the reaction of Sun's internal constituents, namely, its commodity directors who had spent years trying to identify the most effective way to work with the company's suppliers; and 3) selecting the best software vendor, which would be difficult in a crowded space.

Since the 1960s, corporate venture capital has had a mixed history. Companies seem to form separate venture capital programs during boom years and then withdraw their commitments during economic downturns. This case opens with a fictional situation: Ron Flores, the vicepresident of corporate development at AllTech, the world's largest enterprise software company, is trying to evaluate whether the company should establish a separate corporate venture-capital group to spearhead investments in young companies. Flores has two days to put together a recommendation for the company's CFO. To make his decision, Flores reviews several documents, which make up the bulk of the case, including an overview and brief history of corporate venture capital and an overview of the venture investing activities at Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., and Xerox Corp.

After opening the first Gordon Biersch brewery restaurant in July 1988 in Palo Alto, California, Dan Gordon and Dean Biersch successfully built Gordon Biersch into a $20 million company, with restaurants in five locations and a small retail beer business. By early 1995, they aimed to open 20 new restaurants throughout the United States by 1999 and to expand the brewing side of the business. To do so, they needed to grow at a much faster pace, which required additional funding and management expertise. Therefore, in November 1995, they accepted an investment of $11.2 million from the Fertitta family. In exchange, Dan and Dean gave the Fertittas majority control of the company. This case provides students with an update of what happened at the Gordon Biersch Brewing Co. after receiving funding from the Fertitta family in 1995 and up to 2002.