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In the fall of 2019, Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg are facing increased scrutiny on multiple fronts. Regulators from around the globe are threatening the company with punitive measures. Users are organizing against it. But there is little consensus around what, precisely, Facebook has done wrong, or what strategies Zuckerberg and his team should put in place for the future. "Facebook Faces the Regulators" traces the trajectory of the pioneering social media company up to this critical moment and considers its future, focusing on the core questions of governance that have recently engulfed it. Has Facebook simply become too powerful, the case asks? Has it violated the spirit of many countries' most sacred laws, if not the actual letter? Most fundamentally, what kinds of rules should be imposed on firms that run the world's social media markets? And who should make them?

Supplement to case 719019

In April 2003, entrepreneur and MBA student Christy Jones was planning a new venture to help women preserve their fertility. Her company, Extend Fertility, would commercialize a technique known as egg freezing, in which a woman's eggs were extracted and stored at low temperatures until she was ready to become a mother. To date, the emerging technology had mostly been used to preserve the fertility of cancer patients whose treatment course could damage their eggs. Jones's business would target a massively broader population: healthy women wishing to postpone motherhood. Before Jones could launch Extend Fertility, she needed to answer two pressing questions. What, exactly, would an egg-freezing service be selling? And to whom?

In 2006, Afghanistan remains a country in turmoil. It has a newly elected democratic government, a rebounding economy, and considerable economic potential. But the country is still torn by rival factions and dominated by the opium trade. Explores how Afghanistan has been rebuilt since the U.S. invasion of 2001, and what it means to create a modern state. Can state institutions be imposed from the outside? And what are the prospects for democracy in such a perilous place?

An abstract is not available for this product.

In 1996, Kari Stefansson launched a new kind of biotechnology company and a whole new way of attacking diseases. Based in Iceland, his firm, deCODE Genetics, plans to identify the individual genetic markers that lead to society's most prevalent diseases. To do so, it plans to create an unrivaled database of genetic and medical information, drawing on Iceland's unique genealogical records and patient information from a countrywide medical database. But when patient advocate groups form to oppose the plan, deCODE is forced to change its strategy.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 706041.

Describes China's phenomenal development from a poor, communist country to a global powerhouse. Provides background on China's history and culture, details the reforms launched in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping, and describes the situation as of 2006, focusing on the government's attempts to equalize China's financial markets without giving up the reins of central control.

Persistent demand from people who have been denied the blessings of parenthood has created an assisted-reproduction market that stretches around the globe and encompasses hundreds of thousands of people. In the United States alone, nearly 41,000 children were born via in vitro fertilization (IVF) in 2001. Roughly 6,000 came from donated eggs, and almost 600 were carried by surrogate mothers. U.S. legislators have been reluctant to regulate this market. As a result, there are no national policies for IVF, which requires creating--and often discarding--embryos, or for many other technologies. State laws vary widely, and many states have no legislation on these subjects whatsoever. Although fertility specialists generally seem delighted to practice in an unregulated gray area, a modicum of regulation and the establishment of agreed-upon norms could lead to substantially lower prices, wider access, and an expansion of the market to the millions who have not yet sought out assisted reproduction. Among those millions are fertile individuals seeking to ensure that they'll be able to produce offspring in the future. For example, the technology already permits young women to freeze their eggs, thus preserving their fertility (in case, for instance, they marry late in life). The fertility trade is in some ways analogous to the markets for personal computers and DVD players, which were initially considered luxury items but migrated to the mass market, earning manufacturers the revenues to finance further innovation. A widening of availability and the introduction of property rights, rules, and institutional policies would make the marketplace more sensitive to the social, medical, and ethical issues that are emerging from the science. For example: Should there be age limits on infertility treatment? Should new procedures be subject to rigorous testing? It is time for U.S. society to begin discussion of these complex questions.

In 1996, a meningitis epidemic swept across Nigeria. Thousands of children were struck and, lacking appropriate medicine, were liable to die from the disease. Doctors at Pfizer had an antibiotic that could probably save most of these children's lives. The drug was new, however, and had not yet undergone clinical trials with children. The company must decide whether to use the Nigerian outbreak as the site for a new and potentially risky trial.

In 2002, a handful of entrepreneurs began to ship drugs from Canada into the United States, taking advantage of regulatory and price differentials across the neighboring countries. Using the Internet and a low-cost network of Canadian pharmacies, firms like Rx Depot allowed U.S. customers to order their prescription medications in the United States, purchase them at a substantial discount from prevailing U.S. prices, and deliver the medications directly to their homes. It was a powerful business model that made Rx Depot a prominent player. In November 2003, however, a U.S. court decreed that Rx Depot violated federal law. The company was forced to close, but its founder, Carl Moore, announced that he was ready to fight. Did Rx Depot simply breech U.S. laws of intellectual property? Or did its actions suggest that the laws were ready for change?

In a world context of international institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund and their interaction with developing countries, this case looks at an African development initiative to address its own problems: The New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). With an emphasis on democracy and governance, NEPAD's primary objective is to eradicate poverty in Africa and bring long-term and sustainable political, economic, and social change to the region. Examines in depth this initiative "by Africans for Africans" and how it is likely to evolve.

Recent decades have witnessed the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the emergence of activism across a wide variety of issue areas. On topics ranging from human rights to labor conditions, NGOs and activists represent an increasingly important constituency in a firm's nonmarket environment. Explores the different ways in which firms manage NGO pressure, noting instances of preemption, capitulation, and resistance. Considers three case studies--Unocal, Nike, and Novartis--and evaluates a series of hypotheses about the economic and noneconomic factors that drive the varying firm responses to NGO activism.

In the years since independence, tiny, landlocked Botswana has gone from being one of the world's poorest nations to becoming a stable, prosperous state, blessed with the highest sustained growth rate in the world. This case highlights the role that foreign direct investment (FDI) has played in this success, as well as how strong local institutions have helped to harness the benefits that the foreign investor--here, the giant De Beers company--has brought. Also, examines how Botswana was able to avoid the natural resource curse that has haunted so many other resource-abundant countries.

Supplements the case.

Describes how major pharmaceutical firms changed their strategy and pricing policies in the years 2000 to 2002 to respond to the growing AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Describes the evolution of WorldSpace, the world's first major provider of digital radio service to the developing world. The brainchild of Noah Samara, an African-born, American-trained lawyer, WorldSpace has a dual commercial and social mission. Samara wants to address the problem of development by bringing "information affluence" to the people of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Specifically, he wants to provide high-quality news, entertainment, and education content transmitted through a low-cost digital radio system. In less than a decade, Samara has achieved a great deal: He has raised over $1 billion for the project, acquired the rights to a vast swath of the world's digital radio spectrum, and launched two proprietary satellites. The question now is, Can he combine his social objectives with a for-profit mission? And will the people of Africa, Asia, and Latin America want what WorldSpace is selling?

In the final years of the 20th century, the world was hit by a plague of epidemic proportions--AIDS, a life-threatening disease that remained stubbornly immune to any cure or vaccine. In the developed nations of the West, AIDS was slowly brought under control through a combination of education, prevention, and cutting-edge medicines. But in the developing world, where health care expenditures were often paltry, AIDS continued to rampage. By the year 2000, 25 million people in Africa alone were infected with the disease. Millions had already died. Nearly all of the medicines that treated AIDS had been developed--at great expense--by the major western pharmaceutical firms. These medicines were expensive to produce and often difficult to administer. They demanded levels of income and structures of distribution that often were sorely lacking in the developing world. Increasingly, activist groups were demanding that the pharmaceutical companies respond to the AIDS epidemic with drastic measures, giving their drugs away for free or abandoning the patent rights that had long protected their intellectual property. The pharmaceutical firms needed to respond to their critics. The question was, how?

In April 1994, the world witnessed a political milestone in South Africa. After decades of repression and racial segregation, South Africa's black majority came to power at last, as the African National Congress (ANC), led by the celebrated Nelson Mandela, rode into power with 63% of the vote in the country's first racially inclusive election. Eight years after this electoral victory, however, many South Africans are starting to question the shifting priorities of the ANC. Although the political situation of the country has vastly improved, the economy remains fragile, and some of the ANC's most loyal allies are decrying what they see as a change of faith. Thabo Mbeki, a former political exile who became president in 1999, must now decide what democracy means for South Africa and how best to preserve it.

Supplements the (A) case. A rewritten version of an earlier supplement.