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James Baker is general manager of a large lumber mill in rural Virginia, Johnson Lumber. While on a business trip with the owner (the founder's grandson) and the owner's son, he receives the news that the company's planing mill has caught fire and is burning down. Baker, the owner, and the owner's son must decide what to do in the wake of losing the planing mill. Choices include rebuilding, seeking partnerships with other mills to use their facilities to fulfill existing business, or possibly closing shop and simply taking current profits. If they rebuild, Johnson Lumber will have to shut down for a year, risking the loss of customers and putting several people from the struggling community around the mill out of a job. If Johnson Lumber closes entirely, it will put its workers in an even worse position. But would it be feasible to use other mills' facilities? What if the other mills turned them down? On top of everything, the owner and his son have differences in their attitudes about and goals for the business. Baker must consider the options carefully and balance the pressure to please both the current and future owners of Johnson Lumber with what would be best for the business and the local community whose families it helped support.

Jeffrey Offutt had overcome many hardships and personal difficulties to better himself and build his own graphic-design and corporate-printing business: Jita Printing. Just as it seemed his efforts had begun to pay off in the form of steady work and a loyal clientele, Offutt was hit with two problems. First, designing and printing marketing materials for a small local theater had started as a quick, small undertaking for deeply discounted prices, but had turned into a drawn-out job with multiple design stages. Second, a hardcover book design for a flower shop, involved an entirely new business venture for Jita, and Offutt was having a difficult time coming up with a quote that was both competitive and profitable. How should Offutt deal with these two problems? This case is used in entrepreneurship electives at Darden, but would also fit well in a small business strategy course for non-MBA audiences.

Jane Ryan is founder, owner, and CEO of iCompute, a computer-services firm. Ryan founded the company in 1995 and it has grown steadily, providing computer and networking services to a variety of clients. Initial growth was fueled by large contracts with large institutions, but more recently, growth has come from middle- and smaller-sized contracts. Furthermore, the industry space has become crowded with competitors and computer services is more of a commodity than it had been even five years before. Ryan is contemplating how to respond to a conflict between two of her key employees, Samuel Marsh and Becky Jones. Jones wants Ryan to penalize Marsh for poor performance. Jones is a good performer, and there is reason to believe that her area of business has the best growth potential, but she has spoken harshly to Ryan, and Ryan has long-standing loyalty to Marsh.

This case continues the story of Bill and Elaine Jardine from "Quail Cove Farms (A): One Night and a Big Decision." The Jardines, having moved into distribution, now face two decisions. First, they must evaluate whether they should continue to pursue each of their three channels of business (farming, retail sales, and distribution); second, they need to decide if they should shift their sales and marketing efforts to the internet with the help of an employee, Becca Williams.

Nearly every dollar Bill and Elaine Jardine had earned over the previous decade had been invested in their farm and warehouse. They had spent more than $150,000 in land and equipment. And they had sunk into their business, Quail Cove Farms, immeasurable amounts of what Bill Jardine considered to be their biggest asset: their labor. They had lost nearly everything. Now, the couple had some soul-searching to do. The Jardines gave hard thought to which direction they wanted to go-if, for that matter, they even had a choice. What was the value, now, of the sweat equity they had gained from pursuing a dream of organic farming?

This field-based case introduces Ron Helton, a partner in a civil-engineering and design firm called Thompson & Litton. The firm has just learned that it did not get two major contracts it had bid on. Sales are flat. Still, there is a proposal on the table for Thompson & Litton to begin working with a consultant to develop and initiate new construction deals with the state. There is a good upside to the proposal, but the downside is that the risk is significant. Meanwhile, because prison reform has become a prominent political issue, Helton is exploring an alternative option-building new rehabilitation facilities instead of prisons. Helton and the rest of the firm's management must decide how to proceed. This case can be useful in courses exploring government procurement contracts, public-private partnerships, and political attitudes about business practices.

Bandy was no stranger to entrepreneurship and the problems brought about by success. Having honed his programming skills in the 1980s, he had already founded a database company that had seen great success-and then had been squeezed out by investors. He spent a few years after that working for a computing firm in Richmond until a chance remark by his young son spurred him to become an entrepreneur again. In 2005, he founded BandyWorks, a computing services consulting firm.

This case traces the history of an engineering consulting firm and highlights differences between its two principals. The partnership worked very well overall, and Longview Services made money from the start. But it soon became clear that the duo had some differences in style that would need to be worked through.

The new president and CEO of ACCION New York, a community development loan fund, was considering leading her organization in a combination with an affiliate organization, ACCION USA, and that morning, she would be conducting a meeting to discuss how to present the combination question to the directors at Friday's board meeting.

Arnie Katz was thinking about his company's recent expansion into Richmond. It was a different environment than Charlottesville, where the company had started up and experienced its first successes. In a larger, less tight-knit city such as Richmond, he did not believe the company could rely on the same organic word of mouth that had fueled its early growth in Charlottesville. Acquiring new customers in Richmond might require traditional advertising. What kind of mix of the two approaches should he employ?

Every time Jim Fonner thought about how his own business had zigged and zagged, he was prone to laugh. Once employed at Weyerhaeuser, the international paper- and wood-products company, Fonner had left the management ranks to transform himself into something very different: one-half of the Beach Blues Brothers, a duo of singing, dancing, Hawaiian shirt-clad salesmen selling patio furniture door to door to Florida hotels. Ten years later, in 2007, he was running a company in Lexington, Virginia, supplying commercial outdoor furniture nationally. It had not exactly been a linear progression to the Shenandoah Valley.

Now in his mid-40s, Tom Bandy was not a novice entrepreneur. He was a veteran of the IT revolution two decades earlier. He had started a company after college that successfully exploited a market niche in database management. But by his late 30s, he had lost the business. Now he was ready to launch a new business. And guided by experience, he had some thoughts about how to finance it.

It was 2010, and the Salazar family wanted funding to expand their animal husbandry support services business. They believed the time was right to pursue a bigger share of the expanding market for government, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology contracts with research labs.

This case traces the history of a local, family-owned office supply business as it faces competition from national retailers.

Katrina Didot's local organic food business, A Bowl of Good, was on the upswing now, and there was a chance to expand operations. In order to do that, Didot knew she needed a partner to shoulder some of the work. Didot had the recipes and knowledge-and she had drive. She needed someone who could make the trains run on time and ensure things flowed smoothly when it came to operations.

Sitting at their kitchen table early one morning, Renee and Gary Harris agreed that they finally had almost everything in place: a solid business plan, a great network of suppliers, an appealing and well-priced menu, start-up capital from their own personal savings

Using computer spreadsheets to track the finances for his restaurant-CC's Gourmet Kitchen-was one of Carl Coleman's least favorite things to do. This had been especially true at the end of each month since he opened. This evening in July 2010 was no different, as one figure in particular, the paltry $2,800 in profit, was characteristically depressing. "If I don't make some changes soon," Coleman said to himself, "I'm not going to be able to afford this."

This case follows a protagonist as he tries to secure start-up capital to get his entrepreneurial venture going.

Jane Darcy stared in dismay at the spreadsheet. As the editor of Bolt, a free daily newspaper in Richmond, Virginia, Darcy had been working since January 2007 to build a devoted readership. Published Monday through Friday, Bolt featured topics such as local news and sports and was written in a snappy style for readers between 18 and 34 years old. Advertising had been steadily climbing. But its parent company was suffering, and Bolt might therefore be on the chopping block. What could Darcy do to save her beloved paper?

David Brown sat at his desk in the stock room of his toy store, Huckle Buckle Beanstalk, looking at the three résumés in front of him. He needed a new store manager, and these three résumés were his top choices. Each offered a different mix of skills and experience, and he hoped he would have the unusual luxury of having one rise to the top in the afternoon interviews. He had fired his previous store manager just over a month earlier for theft, and he knew that the business would suffer if he had to continue managing the store himself.