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Paul Polizzotto, a serial social entrepreneur, believes that his new technology startup idea, Givewith, will enable businesses to tie social impact giving to their everyday business transactions, and thereby open up the floodgates to more resources for social and environmental change. Fundamental to the viability of Givewith is what Polizzotto calls "Social Value Economics", the construct that attaching social impact giving to a business transaction can increase its value - through enhanced brand, more satisfied employees, and higher Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings. With his employment contract meeting coming up next day with CBS, the media conglomerate, Polizzotto has to decide whether or not to pursue Givewith and whether to launch it as an independent startup or as a corporate venture. Students are given the opportunity to integrate their analyses of the case, including Polizzotto's entrepreneurial competence and motivation, validity of social value economics, and viability of Givewith to arrive at their recommendation.

This case was a finalist for NACRA's Curtis E. Tate Award for the best case published in the Case Research Journal in 2013. Caffébene founder Sun Kwon Kim has achieved phenomenal success in a highly competitive South Korean coffee industry dominated by American and conglomerate-founded brands. The case illustrates Kim's strong entrepreneurial orientation and describes the unusual decisions he has made to differentiate Caffébene and achieve rapid growth. Kim's success in South Korea continues to fuel his global ambition and causes him and his management team to consider entering either China or the U.S. as its next target market. The case introduces a wide range of topics relevant to entrepreneurship as well as franchising, including developing a new retail concept, creating and sustaining competitive advantage, managing rapid growth, and new market entry strategies. Kim is faced with a difficult stay-the-course vs. abandon decision when he experiences a major slipup with Caffébene's flagship store in the U.S. The discussion should raise fundamental questions about what made Caffébene successful in the first place, if those success factors are transferable to the U.S., and how Kim's strong entrepreneurial orientation affects his decision making process. Unique aspects of the case include(1) presents a rare story of an entrepreneurial service concept of Asian origin attempting to expand internationally and enter the U.S. (most cases of this sort are about companies going the opposite direction); (2) describes the process of developing and refining a new retail concept in a highly competitive market; (3) explains strategies for stimulating and managing remarkable growth in a short period of time; and (4) exposes students to Caffébene management's unorthodox thought process in the company's international expansion strategy.

This case discussed an innovative for-profit social venture that connects talented artisans in developing nations with customers worldwide. Though raised in the US, co-founders and lifelong friends Roberto Milk, Andy Milk, and Charles Hachtmann have always been exposed to global influences. All three grew up with family from other countries. All three traveled a great deal in their youth. All three were multilingual. Similarly, all three were surrounded by people whose life mission was to make a positive social contribution. When Roberto meets his future mother-in-law, Armenia Nercessian de Oliveira, a professor and UN employee who has dedicated her life to helping others across the globe, the stage is set to launch NOVICA. While Roberto has an entrepreneurial vision about which he is passionate, he is also a thoughtful and patient leader. With NOVICA, he first builds, over the course of a decade, an executive team composed of his family and friends; then develops the most critical operational components of the organization; and finally scales the business to profit. The case ends with Roberto and his team facing a critical decision about how at last to propel the company from slow to rapid and substantial growth. By 2009, NOVICA has reached $15 million in annual revenue, helped better the lives of more than 75,000 artisans and their dependents worldwide, and retained the tight-knit founding team of its earliest days. The founders, however, want NOVICA to be a truly global presence, offering help in new parts of the world, in new ways - bringing in $100 million annually and benefiting at least 1,000,000 people. The case allows students to explore the role of profit and the centrality of sound business fundamentals in the context of doing good. It also motivates consideration of the prerequisites for and possible paths to organizational growth - asking what criteria should be considered in making growth decisions and what sorts of growth strategies are appropriate.

This paper examines 30 entrepreneurs who created profitable companies, and who were also exemplary in their efforts towards social responsibility. It examines their management practices to understand how these socially responsible entrepreneurs created and built their companies. The study reveals that these socially responsible entrepreneurs founded their companies, at least in part, to achieve idealistic objectives, and pursued financial and non-financial objectives simultaneously. Most avoided financing from institutional sources, hired employees for their shared values, and shrewdly leveraged their social identities to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. Many of these entrepreneurs made unusual efforts to create a strong organizational culture and implement sustainable operational processes to meet their self-imposed ethical standards. These socially responsible entrepreneurs gave a substantial amount of their profits to causes of their choosing, and volunteered themselves as role models for other businesses and entrepreneurs to follow.