Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk was owned by a charitable foundation, and since its founding in the 1920s had focused on producing insulin to treat diabetes. In 2017, however, it released Ozempic, a diabetes treatment with the revolutionary side effect of safe, effective weight loss. As demand in the U.S. reached a fever pitch, Novo faced opportunities and challenges. The case covers the markets in which Novo could expand, the manufacturing shortfalls it faced, the competition that was expected to arise, and the moral issues that came with selling a product that affected so many people worldwide.

GlassHouse Research identified accounting red flags at Catalent. Fiat Lux Partners countered most of GlassHouse's claims. Who was right? This update explores the aftermath of the short seller duel.

In September 2022, The Commons Project Foundation (TCP) CEO Zhenya Lindgardt and her team met on a Zoom call to discuss building tools to help Rwandans manage their health data. They believed that helping Africa build digital infrastructure would improve much-needed healthcare service delivery. TCP had started in the U.S. with health data, building tools and protocols that would allow people to access, store, and share their medical information. This was difficult given privacy concerns, obsolete storage methods, interoperability problems among providers, and strict legal requirements. Leaders in less-developed markets in Africa saw the value of TCP's person-centered approach to health data. TCP considered how to reach its goal and scale, and how to fund its ambitious vision. Who should pay for digital infrastructure that was a public good? Were the answers the same in the U.S. and in Africa?

Fund manager Janet Curie asked for a recommendation about the pharmaceutical company Catalent. The company seemed like a solid investment. However, a pair of research reports issued over the previous two months complicated this narrative. GlassHouse Research, a short seller that profited when stocks declined in value, identified accounting red flags at Catalent. Fiat Lux Partners, on the other hand, released a report countering most of GlassHouse's claims, arguing that GlassHouse fed investors red herrings. Both GlassHouse and Fiat Lux had anonymous funders and employees-and long disclaimers explaining their financial interests. Curie was at a loss-who, if anyone, could she trust? Who had uncovered actual wrongdoing, and who was using accounting tricks to mask or exaggerate real-world factors?

In 2019, TetraScience CEO "Spin" Wang needed advice. Five years earlier, he had cofounded a startup that saw early success with a hardware product designed to help laboratory scientists in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical spaces more easily collect data from various instruments. At the time, longtime technology CEO Patrick Grady warned the cofounders that the growth was illusory, and that they should think about how to better structure their business and to start anew thinking about design in four facets-category, product, organization, and ecosystem. Paying attention to these "first principles," Grady believed, would lead TetraScience to pivot away from its initial hardware business and into a new cloud-based service. The cofounders had rejected Grady's advice at first, but in 2019, with the company facing bankruptcy, Wang called him up again to talk strategy.

In 2023, executives with ReMo Energy (founded 2020) were deciding which size ammonia plant to build as their first project. Their innovative model produced ammonia - useful for making fertilizer and for energy storage - from renewable energy, and they had received funding from a prominent environmentally-conscious venture capital fund. However, they needed more funding to build their first plant. Smaller plants were less efficient, but bigger plants were riskier, and different potential funders had different priorities. The case prevents three size options for ReMo's first plant, with a detailed model of how various present and future factors - the price of ammonia, power supply, taxes, and more - affect risk and return.

As autonomy became a more significant part of modern life - most notably in autonomous vehicles (AVs), such as Teslas - ethical debates about whether and how to impart ethics to machines heated up. Utilitarians pointed out that autonomous vehicles crashed much less often than human-driven cars, making their adoption a net positive in terms of lives saved; deontologists worried about the implications of programming a car to swerve to kill its passengers instead of pedestrians, for example, among other high-stakes "trolley problems." Ethical issues abounded across different levels of automation and across borders. How should AVs be programmed for complex, uncertain, ethically challenging situations? Was there anything innately human about moral reasoning, or could companies imbue AVs with sound ethical frameworks?

This case explores the merits and drawbacks of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu's proposal to bring rent control back to the city in 2023. It lays out the features, objectives, and potential unintended consequences of this policy, before highlighting the expected impact of rent control on tenants, landlords, and developers. In addition, the case looks back at Massachusetts' long history with rent control to better understand whether rent stabilization efforts enacted in the 1970s and repealed in 1994, following a narrowly decided state-wide referendum, were effective in increasing local housing supply and easing rents in the Boston area.

In 2018, Erica Coletta became Mars Petcare's Chief Human Resources Officer, and immediately found herself dealing with high-stakes inclusion and diversity issues. U.S. employees especially were ready for substantive action after unprecedented racial justice protests, and its 100,000 employees across six continents eagerly awaited next steps from previous commitments to equity in hiring and management. How could she effectively capitalize on the energy for change?

Sarah Kunst knew the elements of a successful startup from her tenure at venture capital firms. In April 2018, however, her own app - Proday, a home fitness platform featuring exercises filmed by professional sports stars - was floundering. Kunst theorized that Facebook algorithm changes had ruined her marketing plan, but needed to be confident in her diagnosis before allocating resources to a solution. She thought back to Proday's launch two years earlier to see if she could pinpoint where it all went wrong.

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said "hell freezing over" was more likely than him upgrading the "sell" rating he had maintained on movie and television streaming giant Netflix since 2011, despite meteoric subscriber and share price growth. In 2022, however, Pachter raised his rating - twice. The case explores the sell-side equity analyst industry, Netflix from the perspective of an equity analyst, Pachter's "bear" thinking through the years, and his logic in becoming a "bull."

In 2015, David Crane was the CEO of NRG, the second-largest energy producer in the United States. NRG got most of its power from fossil fuels, but Crane - hired as CEO in 2003 as NRG emerged from bankruptcy - had invested heavily in alternative energy, loudly proclaiming the business benefits of being a leader on climate change. But by 2015, facing investor and board pressure, Crane was forced to spin off NRG's renewable assets, marking the end of his bold strategy.

In the midst of increasing press scrutiny of the bottled water industry's environmentally harmful practices, FIJI Water made a series of sustainability promises. The boldest of these was a pledge to go "carbon negative." The company said that not only would they offset or mitigate all of their carbon emissions, but would go further, making every purchase of their hip, luxury bottles a net benefit for the environment. The unusual methodology they used to calculate their environmental benefit drew skepticism, and FIJI executives needed to evaluate how to move forward with their sustainability agenda.

Ample Hills Creamery started in 2010 as a temporary ice cream pushcart in Brooklyn, New York City. On the strength of inventive flavors and clever marketing, husband-and-wife founders Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna built a premium, artisanal dessert empire of 16 retail locations in four states. However, some decisions that fueled their rapid growth were double-edged swords. Licensed partnerships with Disney raised the brand's profile, but necessitated expanding production. The factory they built was expensive and introduced new logistical challenges. And the native New Yorkers were unhappy with a pricey West Coast expansion. In March 2020, they filed for bankruptcy, disappointing the venture capital investors they had attracted and the legions of fans who did not understand why the popular brand was not turning a profit. The protagonists' story continues in The Social (HBS No. 822-074), which tells the story of their second ice cream venture.

This case features the same protagonists as Ample Hills Creamery (HBS No. 822-073), and can be used as a continuation of that story. Ample Hills Creamery started in 2010 as a temporary ice cream pushcart in Brooklyn, New York City. On the strength of inventive flavors and clever marketing, husband-and-wife founders Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna built a premium, artisanal dessert empire of 16 retail locations in four states. However, some decisions that fueled their rapid growth were double-edged swords, and the couple filed for corporate and personal bankruptcy in 2020. After ruminating on their mistakes, Smith and Cuscuna decided to start another premium ice cream brand, at a much smaller scale, using the lessons they learned in their Ample Hills experience.

Agora was a civic technology (civic tech) startup founded by Elsa Sze, who wanted to enhance the connection between political officials and their constituents by facilitating virtual "town halls," making underrepresented voices heard and benefiting elected and appointed leaders who often struggled to collect meaningful feedback. Despite success in startup accelerator programs, challenges and complexities with government sales cycles led Sze to pivot the company multiple times, until she was selling customer service software to corporations and pondering whether she still wanted to build and sell Agora. A short financial runway meant she had to quickly decide where to invest her energy.