Since 1834, eight generations of the Ayala family have used their conglomerate to fund nation-building projects in the Philippines, including investments in tramcars, telecommunications, hospitals, and schools. In 1997, Ayala's subsidiary, Manila Water, took control of the failing water distribution system in Metro Manila's east zone, vowing to rebuild the infrastructure and bring cleaner, safer, and more widespread water to the area. Manila Water largely succeeded in this mission in its early years, but, as time went on and the climate grew more unpredictable, it became increasingly difficult to source water for the growing population. By 2019, Manila Water became unable to bring its customers a consistent supply of water, prompting both public and political outrage directed at the firm and the Ayala family. With their legacy at risk and the problem of water scarcity enduring, how should Manila Water and Ayala move forward?

Since 1834, eight generations of the Ayala family have used their conglomerate to fund nation-building projects in the Philippines, including investments in tramcars, telecommunications, hospitals, and schools. In 1997, Ayala's subsidiary, Manila Water, took control of the failing water distribution system in Metro Manila's east zone, vowing to rebuild the infrastructure and bring cleaner, safer, and more widespread water to the area. Manila Water largely succeeded in this mission in its early years, but, as time went on and the climate grew more unpredictable, it became increasingly difficult to source water for the growing population. By 2019, Manila Water became unable to bring its customers a consistent supply of water, prompting both public and political outrage directed at the firm and the Ayala family. With their legacy at risk and the problem of water scarcity enduring, how should Manila Water and Ayala move forward?

Jerren Chang, CEO and co-founder of GenUnity, had to choose a strategy to scale his civic engagement-focused nonprofit. Based in Boston, Chang could grow the organization there or begin to expand to other cities. He also had to select candidates for a board of directors that would align with his chosen growth strategy. Chang also had to decide how to sequence these choices for an optimal outcome.

The case explores the challenges of revenue recognition and financial reporting for Stride Funding (Stride), a fintech startup that has disrupted the student loan market. Stride leveraged proprietary machine learning and financial models to underwrite alternative student loans via Income Sharing Agreements (ISA). Under an ISA, borrowers agree to share a portion of their future earned income with a lender for a set period of time. Stride has adopted a distinctive business model that is analogous to the Software as a Service (SaaS) business. Rather than issuing ISAs directly, Stride performed as a program manager and created lending platforms that enabled educational institutions and programs to fund ISAs using their own capital. As a fund manager, Stride was responsible for developing credit models, administering the ISA contracts, managing account status, producing the loan documents, and updating the platform and program structure. In return for their services, Stride charged various fees to the institutions and programs. Having successfully completed its Series A round, Stride experienced substantial growth and improved business performance. As the company grew, its executives recognized the need to change its current financial reporting based on cash accounting to comply with U.S. GAAP. They anticipated that this change would affect how to report some of its revenues which are important financial metrics for early-stage companies like Stride. The CEO of Stride Funding wanted to know the full financial impact of this change and its implications for the next funding round. Moreover, they needed to determine whether it made sense for Stride, with its innovative business model, to adopt the GAAP reporting at this juncture.

In 2020, Amazon, the $386 billion online retail behemoth, built an eight-story shelter for women and families experiencing homelessness on its expanding headquarters in Seattle, Washington. The shelter, operated in partnership with a non-profit organization known as Mary's Place, was designed to address what had become a searing problem for Seattle and many other wealthy American cities: although urban areas like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco were thriving economically from a recent influx of major tech companies and their well-heeled, well-educated work forces, poorer populations in these cities were being simultaneously hit by the declining availability and surging cost of what was once affordable housing. Amazon's partnership with Mary's Place was a novel experiment in addressing this problem at its core, using some of the firm's own resources to fund and create attractive living space for families struggling with homelessness. Yet, critics of the firm argued that its apparent charity was misplaced. Rather than trying to fix homelessness, many held, Amazon and other tech giants should stop acting in ways that were only making the problem worse. Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary's Place is an opportunity for students to understand the problem of homelessness in American cities and to investigate business's role in both causing and addressing it.

In March 2016, Bahrain Development Bank's existing board term came to an end and Khalid Al Rumaihi was appointed the new chairman. Determining a need for change, he immediately overhauled the board and replaced the Bank's long-standing CEO. The new board quickly concluded that the Bank needed to refocus on its core business of lending to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and selected an experienced Bahraini corporate banker to implement this strategy. However, within six months, the new CEO resigned and the board had to once again look for a replacement. Expanding their search globally, they found Sanjeev Paul, a Singaporean with immense experience in SME lending, who was appointed CEO of BDB in May 2018. Over the next 20 months, with the board's support, Paul headed an organization-wide revamp aimed at enabling the bank to refocus and achieve its mandate of supporting SMEs. By December 2019, the changes started to pay off; after three years of losses, BDB turned its first profit. However, Paul and the board recognized their work was far from over. The Bank's cost structure was higher than that of competition, they paid below-market salaries, and had an outdated core banking system. As Al Rumaihi looked ahead to his second term as chair, he wondered how the board could help Paul and his management team in addressing these challenges.

Building on his father's legacy, Omar Alghanim (MBA 2002) had been working on strengthening a performance-driven culture based on meritocracy in the family business, Alghanim Industries. The task had been particularly challenging because of traditional Middle East practice of relying on relationships and influence to conduct business. Omar's vision attracted and empowered like-minded employees who were rewarded on merit and who delivered on the firm's mission of providing excellent service to its customers. Together, they revamped the company's performance and compensation system and established a well-structured control and compliance mechanism. The next challenge for Omar was to transform the workforce from a mono-culture, male-dominant expat community to a diverse mix of people, cultures, backgrounds, and viewpoints. In particular, he needed to find a way to attract talented women and local Kuwaitis to become part of his organization.

Kamil Yazici and Izzet Ozilhan founded and built Anadolu Group Holding; a family business that grew into a multi-billion-dollar regional powerhouse. For 57 years they were equal partners in running the company. They then handed over a leadership role to a next generation family member; Izzet's son Tuncay; who became the CEO and later also chairman. Under Tuncay's leadership; the company was primarily run by professional managers; supplemented by a limited number of second- and third-generation family members in senior executive positions. However; in 2017; when the number of next-generation family members reached 85; Kamil and Tuncay began work on a governance structure they hoped would sustain the company when they left. Under their plan; family members would no longer be allowed to hold general management positions. As a result; Tuncay retired as CEO and other family members with senior executive roles resigned. A holding company was created to bring all the company's subsidiaries under a common structure. And a process was created to allow some members of the two surviving families to hold board seats. Although the stock market reacted positively to the increased transparency brought about by the changes; it remains to be seen whether the new formula will achieve its goal of successfully transitioning the company from a family-managed business to professionally-run company.

In early 2014, Paul Bills, CFO of Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), sat down with David Wan, the company's CEO, to discuss budget preparations for the coming year. Bills noted that the performance of Corporate Learning, one of HBP's three business units, would be affected by a business model change for its largest product that required a change in the timing of revenue recognition. Corporate Learning was in the process of revamping its flagship product, Harvard Manage-Mentor (HMM) from version 11.0 (HMM11) to version 12.0 (HMM12). The revamped software would be hosted exclusively on HBP's server rather than on its clients' servers, allowing updates to take place continuously. Given the change, accounting standards required HBP to change the recognition of revenue from the date of software delivery (for HMM11) to ratable recognition over its contract life (for HMM12). As Bills and Wan discussed the accounting change, they recognized that its impact on Corporate Learning's and HBP's performance could be material and would have to be reflected in the budget. In addition, they wondered how the new accounting would affect the company's policy for awarding sales incentive compensation on HMM, as well as how they communicated with employees and the firm's sole shareholder, the Harvard Business School.