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In mid-2013, as FasterCures celebrated its 10th anniversary as a center of the Milken Institute, Executive Director Margaret Anderson thought about what the organization should do to ensure it had even more impact in its next 10 years. FasterCures was a non-profit "action tank" whose mission was to speed up the process of moving new therapies from discovery to patients in need. Although their annual conference ("Partnering for Cures") to improve how government research was organized was a huge success, Anderson considered refocusing their resources on greater challenges.</p><p>For example, current trends in the US showed that investors were increasingly supporting late stage research with higher probabilities of success while funding for riskier early stage research was drying up. Should FasterCures raise money and direct it toward early stage breakthrough therapies? Another issue was the US clinical trial process system. It's complicated, takes a long time, and is very expensive. Should FasterCures reorganize to better understand this issue and make a high-level push to improve it? Or perhaps FasterCures should look at drug reimbursement decisions. Anderson needed to determine where FasterCures should get fully involved, what it should do, and whether it could make a difference.

Susie Gordon and Antonio Barile, a married couple, own a manufacturing company together. When their first child was born, they agreed that Susie would stay home with the kids while Antonio ran the business, and then, after a few years, they would swap roles. Now Susie is itching to get back to work, but Antonio is reluctant to step out of the CEO's job and return home. Does he have to honor their original deal--and what will happen if he doesn't? This fictional case study is written by Jim Sharpe and James Weber and features expert commentary by Paola Carniglia, Linda Katz, and Mike Katz.

Susie Gordon and Antonio Barile, a married couple, own a manufacturing company together. When their first child was born, they agreed that Susie would stay home with the kids while Antonio ran the business, and then, after a few years, they would swap roles. Now Susie is itching to get back to work, but Antonio is reluctant to step out of the CEO's job and return home. Does he have to honor their original deal--and what will happen if he doesn't? This fictional case study is written by Jim Sharpe and James Weber and features expert commentary by Paola Carniglia, Linda Katz, and Mike Katz.

Susie Gordon and Antonio Barile, a married couple, own a manufacturing company together. When their first child was born, they agreed that Susie would stay home with the kids while Antonio ran the business, and then, after a few years, they would swap roles. Now Susie is itching to get back to work, but Antonio is reluctant to step out of the CEO's job and return home. Does he have to honor their original deal--and what will happen if he doesn't? This fictional case study is written by Jim Sharpe and James Weber and features expert commentary by Paola Carniglia, Linda Katz, and Mike Katz.

Julia and Nate Burstein were living their dream running their own business and balancing the demands between their work and family obligations while creating a company that was responsive to their employees' and their customers' needs. The Bursteins had joined a large multinational manufacturing company after receiving their MBAs from HBS, but soon left to join Julia's family plastics business. After the business was sold, they struck out on their own to search for a similar business. They purchased Elasto Therm, with $8 million in revenue from manufactured rubber and urethane components, with their own cash, bank financing, and the seller, partly in the form of an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). Initially, Nate ran the business and after a few years changed roles with Julia to stay at home with their young children for three years. The two were in charge as co-CEOs before Julia relinquished her responsibilities to be at home again. The couple significantly strengthened the organization's talent, focused on innovation, growth, and provided a learning environment for their employees. Through cost efficiencies and pricing strategies, Elasto Therm was able to achieve higher margins than their competitors and focused on low-volume, short-run orders as they continued to expand the business. The 2008 recession forced them to reexamine all aspects of the business, and it retained profitability after painful cutbacks in the organization. To continue their growth into the next decade, they are faced with the choice of acquiring other businesses or growing more organically by adding to their sales organization to achieve geographic expansion.

An executive from pharmaceutical company GSK must choose how much to integrate a recently acquired biotechnology firm, Sirtris. Moncef Slaoui, GSK's global head of R&D, championed the acquisition of Sirtris to gain access to its potentially revolutionary science. Slaoui must balance the need to recoup shareholder value after paying a two-times premium for Sirtris with his desire to retain Christoph Westphal, Sirtris's co-founder and CEO, and other key individuals at the company. His desire to protect Sirtris from GSK's size and bureaucracy occurs in a period when GSK has launched major changes in its R&D organization, which focus on decentralizing and externalizing R&D, as well as revamping the resource allocation process to parallel more of a venture capital-based model. The case also explores the views of Christoph Westphal on the early challenges of the integration and the impact GSK was having on Sirtris. Can be used in conjunction with a separate case that focuses on Sirtris's business model.

Addleshaw-Goddard (AG), the 15th largest law firm in the UK, is seeking ways to serve larger clients on more important legal matters. Part of this strategy involves its "Client Development Centre (CDC)," an innovative idea and set of services launched by Dr. Jim Hever who holds a Ph.D. in Strategic Leadership Development. The mission of the CDC is to improve the capabilities of clients' in-house legal departments by making them better partners with the business units and improving their leadership skills. The CDC has adopted an innovative pricing structure. Rather than charging direct fees for these consulting services, it proposed to the client that it contract with the firm for five times this amount in legal fees that might otherwise have gone to another law firm. It is in this way, AG hopes to increase its position with its larger clients. AG has also developed a very systematic program for identifying and serving its key clients, developed in collaboration with Cranfield School of Management. It is these clients that will be the focus of the efforts for the CDC. In addition, the firm has co-developed a training program with Cranfield to improve the skills of its own partners. The case explores whether these initiatives will lead to a long-term competitive advantage. The firm believes what really will produce competitive advantage is its "Me-To-You Mindset" initiative that encourages partners to look at the world through their clients' eyes. At the end of the case Hever is reflecting on a proposal he submitted for providing CDC services to one of the largest UK companies. The general counsel wants to pay for these services in cash should he decide to accept the proposal, rather than hiring AG for more legal work. Hever is wondering if this is a good way to take advantage of recent reforms allowing law firms to provide other professional services, like consulting, or if this is "off-strategy" for the mission of the CDC.

This note describes the Congruence Model, a method by which an organization can assess whether its building blocks (critical tasks, formal organizational arrangements, people, and culture) are aligned (congruent) with its strategy. The model postulates that misalignments are at the root of performance gaps within the organization.

Protagonist leads an apple industry association that hopes to develop a market for New England apple slices to improve demand for apple products. Apples grown for slicing have characteristics that differ from most apples grown in New England. Case allows students to examine whether it makes sense for a farmer to begin to grow apples for slicing. The case also describes the distribution of apples and apple products so that students can examine how a market for sliced apples might get developed and which industry participants might enjoy a position of power in the market.

Claude Grunitzky, a media entrepreneur, develops, maintains, and leverages an extensive personal and professional network across three continents. The case considers the steps he has taken to build and cultivate a network that creates value for himself and others.

The purpose of this case is to help students critically evaluate the market value of LinkedIn's stock following its recent IPO. In the context of strong investor appetite for social media companies, LinkedIn is the lamp bearer among U.S. companies in that industry that are considering tapping into public markets. The case can serve to illustrate the challenges of valuing an early-stage high-growth company with a great deal of uncertainty about fundamental value and how quoted prices might reflect expectations that are hard to justify. Regardless of which valuation method is employed (e.g., residual income, discounted cash flow, multiples), the case provides a platform (i) to map the firm's key success and risk factors into forecasts and estimates for its future performance and cost of capital, and (ii) to critically assess the implied assumptions underlying the market's expectations. The case is best suited for a course on business valuation at all levels (undergraduate, MBA, executive programs).

Throughout its first two decades, City Year, a non-profit organization, was dedicated to recruiting young adults to give a year of public service. It had passed through several growth phases but by 2010 a new challenge, and opportunity, had arisen when City Year and its partners in a school turnaround collaboration - Diplomas Now - won a prestigious Department of Education Investing in Innovation grant. This accelerated City Year's role in turning around low performing schools, but added pressure on the organization. New systems and practices had been developed, but more needed to be done to ensure that City Year became efficient in deploying its limited resources, in maintaining its funding sources, and employing the right interventions in schools. In November 2011, Jim Balfanz, City Year President, and Michael Brown, CEO and co-founder, wondered what else the changes would mean for City Year.

Kevin Laracey, founder of Paydiant, needed to figure out how to launch a payment processing company with a new technology based on smart phones. Consumers had increasingly turned to electronic payment methods such as credit cards and debit cards to make purchases. Retailers, however, felt that major credit and debit card issuers had too much market power which was leading to higher costs for retailers to accept such payment forms. Consumers were increasingly adopting smart phones and using those phones to manage their lives. Market watchers believed that consumers would soon demand to use their smart phones to make purchases. Retailers liked this because it increased competition in the payments industry. Paydiant had developed a software-based product that required no new hardware for retailers and enabled consumers to use their smart phones to make purchases. The company needed to decide how to bring this new product to market. The case also describes the existing payment processing market structure, identifies some of its major players, and introduces some other new entrants into the payment industry.

The case describes CME Group, the world's largest commodities exchange, futures and options on futures contracts, history, regulation, and the strategic choices the company faced. CME Group was formed from the oldest and most well-known exchanges in the world. Traders on the exchange bought and sold contracts in order to hedge risk or speculate on future price trends. In recent decades trading had undergone significant growth. From its roots in agricultural commodities, with trading typically occurring in face-to-face transactions in pits on exchange floors, CME introduced new hedging products in metals, energy, and finance, and electronic trading, which brought new market participants. Some of these new participants, such as pension funds, were significantly larger and had different strategic agendas than the traditional agricultural related participants. The case raises the question of whether increased speculation was helping or hurting the exchange or its participants. In addition, the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 was driving new regulation in the industry which brought new challenges and opportunities to CME.

MME is a farmer-owned cooperative that produces ethanol from corn. The cooperative has performed well in comparison to other producers but margins in the industry had declined as industry production levels neared market demand limits. MME farmers needed to decide whether to take advantage of their success and expand through acquisitions, whether they should sell the plant, or whether they should continue current operations. MME must consider ongoing regulatory changes that impacted the industry, the possible impact of imported ethanol, the power of the petroleum industry which bought its product, and ongoing uncertainty about corn and ethanol price swings.

Gazelle has pioneered a reCommerce intermediation model: it buys used electronics from consumers and resells them on eBay or to wholesalers. Going forward, its two main strategic challenges are: 1) deciding how much to rely on partnerships with large retailers for growth; 2) deciding whether to continue as a "merchant," i.e., buying and reselling goods (and thereby taking inventory risk), or to transform itself into a "two-sided platform" connecting sellers and buyers without taking inventory risk.

Tennant, a leading producer of floor cleaning equipment, must determine the business model to use for its new chemical free cleaning technology. In 2005, Tennant Company had developed an innovative, environmentally friendly, cleaning technology that could potentially revolutionize cleaning. Historically, Tennant was a producer of floor and carpet washing machines for industrial and commercial markets. Over time, it became clear that the technology had applications far beyond Tennant's core markets. In mid-2009, the company set up a new venture to develop the technology's promise. In 2010 this venture was wholly owned by Tennant and run by a Tennant manager. The case examines the decisions the CEO and new venture head must make to best structure and position the venture to succeed.