In 1997, Lifeline Systems continues to grow its service business to $32 million, 56% of the company's total revenues. More local hospital Lifeline programs turn over their monitoring service to Lifeline Central, expanding the company's subscriber base by 30%. The company decides to invest over $11 million in a new subscriber monitoring system to maintain its market leadership. At the end of 1998, Lifeline moves its corporate headquarters from Cambridge, MA to suburban Boston to lower real estate costs. Changes in the eldercare industry also spell growth: employers become interested in providing eldercare referral as an employee benefit, cuts in Medicare result in less home health care by nurses, and Lifeline forms strategic partnerships with the American Red Cross and an assisted-living community developer.

OXO, a kitchen tools and gadgets company, was started by a businessman who had 30 years of experience in the housewares industry. With his wife and son as founders, he creates a new niche in the gadgets industry for high-end gourmet stores. The company has headquarters in New York City, but it outsources product design to a NYC industrial design firm, manufacturing to Asia, and warehousing to a site in Connecticut in order to manage start-up costs and growth. Because of the veteran businessman's reputation and industry sense, the company grows quickly and in 1992 is sold for $6.2 million to a large housewares distributor, General Housewares. The original owners stay on as consultants to the parent company and decide to turn over management of the company to a Harvard MBA who also has extensive industrial design experience. Innovative product design is the key to OXO's success, and the company has worked exclusively with one design firm based on royalties of sold products. The new managing director initiates new product category programs for the bathroom, the garden, and home baking. He must coordinate the outsourcing of the design and development function.

Midnight Networks, Inc., is a small computer network validation company. This case describes how the five founders built their business from operations earnings and how they established "best practices" operational processes to run their firm successfully. Operational processes include developing a company procedures manual and assigning topics to specific people to maintain procedures; cross-training every employee in support and sales functions; employees entering weekly tasks and accomplishments on an online whiteboard that the whole company can view; group reviews of computer code for quality; performance reviews done by a committee of supervisor and peers. The company grows quickly, and a larger firm offers to buy it. Midnight Networks also has been considering going public. The founder must decide whether to go public or sell the firm to continue its growth.