The case describes Shopify's journey from a small online store to a global technology company with an ecosystem of partners that comprised of tens of thousands of developers and partners. From the inception of the company, Shopify's competitive advantage had come from being merchant obsessed. Having an easy to set-up and easy to use technological platform, as well as a commercial model that leveraged an ecosystem of partners, had accelerated Shopify's growth in building a merchant centric digital business. The case describes in detail the processes and drivers that had led to the success of Shopify. However, by 2022, competitive pressure from the other forms of commerce including live streaming commerce, social commerce and commerce from super apps had started to mount. Amazon, one of the world's largest online marketplaces, had started to encroach on Shopify's market by imitating its business model. The fusion of online and offline commerce had also driven Shopify to rethink its business model and the company started to shift its focus from eCommerce to general commerce. Shopify also wanted to penetrate the Southeast Asia (SEA) market further. High growth rates had been predicted for the region, but it was a heterogeneous market with lots of challenges including less than developed logistics infrastructure.

It was March 2019, and Fermin Diez, Deputy CEO of the National Council of Social Service (NCSS), ran the Sun Ray scheme that had been launched in 2014 to mitigate manpower issues due to pay disparity and lack of career progression in the social service sector. Singapore's heretofore prosperity did not result in an even distribution of wealth, and with the changing demographics, Social Service Agencies (SSAs) required assistance in identifying and improving various programmes to support vulnerable groups. The government had recently announced plans to provide more support with the goal of building a more caring and compassionate society. NCSS had administered several leadership programmes to develop human capital and support organisations in the sector to strengthen the local social service ecosystem. However, the previous leadership programmes introduced experienced limited success due to low participation rates and the heavy workloads of staff in the social service sector. The newer Sun Ray scheme would instead centrally hire potential social service leaders under the NCSS payroll and second them out to SSAs. In return, the SSAs were required to pay a subsidised secondment fee to NCSS. This way, individual SSAs would benefit from good leaders at subsidised salaries while the impact of each Sun Rayz would not be limited to any particular SSA. Diez knew that the scheme had been successful, but sought to make improvements.

Set in February 2018, the case follows Gillian Tee and Lily Phang, the co-founders of Homage, a Singapore-based tech startup providing on-demand home care service to the elderly. Homage was founded as a solution to the growing social problems caused by an ageing population-the proportion of Singaporeans aged 65 years and above was on the rise while the support ratio was declining rapidly. Challenged by the shortage of skilled labour, the limited capacity of facilities, and rising costs, the government was keen on promoting the concept of families and communities as the first line of care for the elderly. However, tending to the needs of elderly family members was affecting the social, family and work life of family caregivers. Such informal caregiving was also causing discomfort to the elderly care recipients. The incumbent care agencies relied on foreign workers due to the shortage of a trained local workforce; their conventional operating model was less effective in meeting the requirements of the care recipients, and coordination between the care recipient and the care professionals was erratic and tedious. Homage's smartphone-based application addressed these problems in caregiving by matching elderly care recipients to care professionals based on more than 50 different criteria. The application empowered heretofore dormant caregivers to choose service requests that matched their terms and skill levels. By automating the entire process, the application rendered a seamless and cost-effective on-demand service for the elderly while creating flexible income opportunities for those who had dropped out of the workforce. After gaining ground in the market and securing funds for growth, Gillian and Lily were gearing up for scaling the business by driving up its adoption and usage. However, they had to prepare for the accompanying potential challenges.

The case describes the decision dilemma faced by an entrepreneur, Jack Sim, whose social initiative aims to establish an innovative platform in Singapore and South Asia to serve the base of the pyramid (BoP), which represents a majority of the population of the world (about 60%) who live in poverty. The primary objectives of Sim's initiative, BoP Hub, are to provide professional services to social entrepreneurs catering to the BoP market, and help them develop and scale their businesses. Social entrepreneurs who want to address the needs of this segment of the population face a plethora of challenges: most notably, the lack of affordability in the BoP, inadequate access to basic facilities, and the dearth of channels of access to the BoP market. However, in addition to the social objectives, the BoP also has economic incentives, as the potential volume in this segment is huge, and it has aspirations to move into the middle class. The challenges faced by Sim in creating a platform to catalyse innovative products and services for the BoP include lack of access to traditional fundraising methods, the need of a common organisational strategy for entrepreneurs serving the BoP leading to multiple services being required by them, and the requirement of a well-understood model for scaling their businesses.

This case is set in January 2015 and follows Future for Children (FFC), a poverty eradication charity initiated by Swiss banker, Daniel Elber, in Muntigunung, Bali (Indonesia). FFC began by piloting a phased development programme in one village by establishing local social enterprises that address key development hurdles and improve livelihood outcomes. Following the success of the pilot programme, the initiative is now ready to be replicated and rolled out to other villages in Muntigunung. However, some key challenges need to be addressed. For example, management of the social enterprises needs to be handed over to the local community. In addition, more funds are needed to replicate and scale up; and a sense of community ownership of the programme needs to take hold. In addition, the business model of FFC needed to be reviewed for its efficacy in achieving the mission's goal.