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Saffronart, a five-year-old online art auction company, leads the market for modern Indian art and now faces competitors in the market it created. Established in 2000 by the wife-and-husband team of Minal and Dinesh Vazirani, Saffronart.com is an innovative online auction firm that specializes in modern and contemporary Indian art. Having been the first firm to offer Indian fine art with authenticity guarantees in an auction setting that increased the transparency of prices, Saffronart succeeded in establishing the genre of modern and contemporary Indian art in the art world, and in creating a market for it. This market, and Saffronart's revenues, grew rapidly from 2000 to 2005. Saffronart's estimate was that the Indian art auction market would be worth $125 million in 2006, with their revenues being $45 million. While this success was gratifying, the firm and its founders faced new internal and external pressures; particularly worrisome was the entry of auction giants Christie's and Sotheby's into the market. The Vaziranis' main challenge now is to consolidate their leading position in the market they created in the face of the unpredictable cyclicality of the secondary art market and increasingly strong competitors.

Focusing on one entrepreneur, Jerry Rao, this case examines the international career paths of Indian business professionals and engineers since the development of public policies beginning in the 1960s to attract them to developed countries like the United States. Explores why these professionals often chose to leave India in pursuit of economic opportunities abroad in the 1960s through 1980s and why many seem now to be returning to their homeland to start or run businesses. Also, considers the role of Diaspora of Indian professionals in contributing to the development of the export-oriented Indian IT sector.

In 1938, the Mexican government expropriated the assets of foreign oil companies. Explores the legal and moral arguments in favor of and against expropriation.

Taught in the elective MBA course entitled The Evolution of Global Business. Examines the development of an international cartel in the oil industry in the 1920s and 1930s. Focuses on the decisions and actions of the leading multinational oil companies--particularly Standard Oil of New Jersey, Royal Dutch/Shell, and Anglo-Persian (BP)--in acting together to try to stabilize prices and market shares beginning in the late 1920s through the Achnacarry or "As-is" Agreement. Set against the backdrop of the development of the global oil industry, it examines the causes of the change in firm strategy from competition to cooperation and offers an opportunity for readers to assess the success of efforts at inter-firm coordination and stabilization. Also explores the personal and professional relationships between the leading oil-industry executives who forged the cartel, including Henry Deterding, Walter Teagle, and John Cadman. Important subissues include the changing nature of the oil industry in the 1910s and 1920s, the rise of oil diplomacy, and the impact of U.S. antitrust laws on the global oil business.