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In 2011, the Rhode Island (RI) legislature established the Commission on Health Equity and charged this group with writing a report on health disparities every two years. The case protagonist, Dr. Harper Avery, Director of Minority Health at the RI Department of Health, has recently assumed the co-chair position on the Commission of Health Advocacy and Equity in RI. Through the experiences of Dr. Avery, the reader sees the issues involved when a multidisciplinary and multi-sectoral group must work together to create the health disparities/health equity report. Such issues include how to define "health disparities" and related terms, what health outcomes and behaviors to choose to report, where to get the data required for the report, and how to measure disparities with the data obtained. Additionally, the reader is encouraged to consider the multiple perspectives of the Commission members and the various constituencies they represent. This case study takes the students through the process of developing a state-level health disparities report.

In 2011, the Rhode Island (RI) legislature established the Commission on Health Equity and charged this group with writing a report on health disparities every two years. The case protagonist, Dr. Harper Avery, Director of Minority Health at the RI Department of Health, has recently assumed the co-chair position on the Commission of Health Advocacy and Equity in RI. Through the experiences of Dr. Avery, the reader sees the issues involved when a multidisciplinary and multi-sectoral group must work together to create the health disparities/health equity report. Such issues include how to define "health disparities" and related terms, what health outcomes and behaviors to choose to report, where to get the data required for the report, and how to measure disparities with the data obtained. Additionally, the reader is encouraged to consider the multiple perspectives of the Commission members and the various constituencies they represent. This case study takes the students through the process of developing a state-level health disparities report.

This case examines the scale-up of the startup Eureka.com, an online customized gift shop. Started by a female entrepreneur in Turkey, Eureka has been the platform for providing customized gifts to individual buyers, offering professional marketing products for corporate clients, and serving designers and artists to market their creations. The case examines Eureka's financial and market position. It describes the application of managerial accounting and operations management, analyzes the performance of a startup, and investigates the necessary financial and operational decisions that the startup will have to make to scale up. This case is designed to be used in either managerial accounting or operations management courses related to entrepreneurial ventures. It contains topics important to both disciplines: contribution margin, return on invested capital, operations planning and inventory management, and performance management. The case provides an opportunity to focus solely on topics of concern to one of the specific courses or to integrate materials from both.

The manager of Water Operations at the City of London wanted to reduce the cost of pumping water by optimizing energy use. Water Operations had been consistently experiencing higher operational costs, and electricity bills accounted for up to 30 per cent of its direct costs. If the manager could predict the future cost of energy, she could schedule the operation of the water pumps to benefit from periods of low energy prices, potentially saving up to 25 per cent of the energy costs. The manager obtained the hourly Ontario electricity prices from 2003 to 2015, and wanted to use that data to evaluate how accurately she could predict future electricity prices. How should she proceed?

Student spreadsheet for case W19122

In February 2018, the co-owners of Trafalgar Ales, Meads & Distillery, based in Oakville, Ontario, were eager to take on a wide range of new opportunities. In the 18 months since their purchase of the brewery, the two co-owners had devoted great efforts to transforming the company, creating and launching several new and successful beer brands. Contract brewing was de-emphasized, and the layout of the brewery was reset. The owners became involved in the industry at the brewers association level. What they needed, it seemed, was a better understanding of the opportunities in front of them. The co-owners had to decide where they should focus their attention and their resources. Their challenge was how to grow the brewery—do more of the same, or launch products in other categories?

As the Chief Administrative Officer of UMass Memorial Health Care (UMMHC) and president of UMass Memorial (UMM) Community Hospitals, Douglas Brown had just received unanimous and enthusiastic approval to pursue his "Anchor Mission" project at UMMHC in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was extremely excited by the board's support, but also quite apprehensive about how to make the Anchor Mission a reality. Doug had spearheaded the Anchor Mission from its earliest exploratory efforts. The goal of the health system's Anchor Mission-an idea developed by the Democracy Collaborative, an economic think tank-was to address the social determinants of health in its community beyond the traditional approach of providing excellent clinical care. He had argued that UMMHC had an obligation as the largest employer and economic force in Central Massachusetts to consider the broader development of the community and to address non-clinical factors, like homelessness and social inequality that made people unhealthy. To achieve this goal, UMMHC's Anchor Mission would undertake three types of interventions: local hiring, local sourcing/purchasing, and place-based community investment projects. While the board's enthusiasm was palpable and inspiring, Doug knew that sustaining it would require concrete accomplishments and a positive return on any investments the health system made in the project. The approval was just the first step. Innovation and new ways of thinking would be necessary. The bureaucracy behind a multi-billion-dollar healthcare organization would need to change. Even the doctors and nurses would need to change! He knew that the project had enormous potential but would become even more daunting from here.

Five high school students are lured into working at a logistics warehouse for what they consider a high salary for their first job. After they start, their dreams are shattered. Over the next four months the workplace reality transforms into a nightmare.

Supplement to case IN1561

Supplement to case IN1561

Supplement to case IN1561

Corporate governance is pivotal for Russian companies to ensure sustainable development, to expand beyond national borders, and to attract foreign investments. This fictitious case illustrates the process for establishing internal corporate governance in a state-owned enterprise, MediaRus, focusing on the role of independent directors in corporate boards. The story of MediaRus's formation and development depicts the evolution of the changing role of the board of directors from an insider model to the outsider model of corporate governance. Readers are encouraged to apply the principles of corporate governance in Russia to the MediaRus case, serving as a point of departure for more detailed analyses of existing codes of good state-owned firms. The case also provides a general overview of current board practices in Russian governmental corporations, highlighting the key tensions faced by independent directors.

V.Rose is a Shanghai-based company founded in 2009 by Leo Cui. The company sells natural skin-care products imported from Latvia to Chinese customers. Case A focuses on the company's business expansion strategy. In 2014, V.Rose faced intensifying competition in the handmade, natural cosmetics market in China. To expand its business, the company had a number of options to choose from, each with pros and cons. One option was to enter the Hong Kong market to raise its brand awareness. Without knowledge of the Hong Kong market, however, senior management was uncertain about how to enter the market and what its managerial and financial implications were. Another option was to expand the online business to reap the benefits of the industry's fast-growing online sales. This case gives students an opportunity to discuss and compare different business-expansion strategies.

In contrast to the decision on business expansion in Case A, Case B focuses on the company's decision to narrow its business scope. Changing government policies, including stricter labor laws, increased the company's operation costs. The closing of department stores forced the company to rethink its strategy and to focus more on online business. The company has made a series of changes in product offerings, sales channels, strategies, pricing schemes, and IT management. In Case B, students are required to identify the company's competitive resources and discuss whether the company is moving in the right direction by focusing on online business and scaling down its product range.

Presentation to accompany product 8B19M017.

In January 2018, the chief executive officer (CEO) of logistics company Supergroup Limited (Supergroup), considered the ideal weighting of Supergroup’s offshore activities given a weak South African rand and slow growth in the country. The company had nearly become bankrupt in 2009, and the CEO had been hired as the “turnaround” leader who headed its steady recovery, stabilizing the company and building its initiatives toward growth. Now that Supergroup had made a successful recovery, shareholders were asking the CEO whether Supergroup should be focusing its investment strategy outside Africa. The CEO, too, was concerned about the group’s concentration in Africa. Although he and the executive team preferred organic acquisition growth to dividends, they were grappling with the question of what their future focus of acquisitions should be.

Gun control is an important issue in American politics. In 2014, in light of recent gun violence, gun control advocate organizations lobbied retailers to prohibit customers from carrying guns into their stores. The organizations had successfully lobbied Target Corporation, then turned its attention to The Kroger Co. (Kroger), petitioning it to change its store policy allowing customers to carry guns where state law permitted it. However, Kroger elected to maintain its existing policy. Gun violence increased in the United States over the subsequent years and gun safety advocates increased their lobbying efforts, raising the question of whether Kroger should revisit its position from 2014, allowing customers to carry guns in its stores, and if so, what position it should take.

This case details how semiconductor company PMC-Sierra implemented different corporate entrepreneurship strategies to take advantage of two major industry disruptions: 1) the transition from hard disk drives to solid state drives; and 2) the rise of cloud computing. The core business of PMC-Sierra's enterprise storage business was developing products called controllers that interfaced directly with hard disk drives. The company sold these controllers to the world's largest storage equipment manufacturers, including HP, Dell, and IBM. The case focuses on the years 2010-2012, during which the company strove to develop a new type of controller optimized for solid state drives-while maintaining the strength of its existing core hard disk drive business. With the rise of cloud computing, PMC-Sierra added a major new customer base: giant cloud service providers like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. As these cloud service providers grew in strength, they upended the industry supply chain, negatively impacting PMC-Sierra's traditional core customers such as Dell and HP. The big challenge, and opportunity, for PMC-Sierra was to retain its current large customers while capturing new growth opportunities. The case ends in 2012 at a decision point for PMC-Sierra. Should the company continue building solid state drive products internally, given that it was emerging from two major setbacks-or look for an acquisition possibility, which would be very expensive? Either way, the company had to decide how to organize its next development effort, drawing from corporate entrepreneurship lessons it had learned in the previous few years. Additionally, the company had to decide whether to develop a newer, but riskier, technology on the horizon. Could PMC-Sierra launch and maintain development of two new technologies, or would it have to choose one or the other?

The (B) case starts with PMC-Sierra's decision to acquire for $100 million a solid state drive controller business, which included a prototype and a team of 50 people. The company also acquired intellectual property required to build PCIe switches-a related product family that was newer and cutting edge, but riskier to develop. After the acquisition, PMC-Sierra created a new, isolated business, the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group (NSG), and protected NSG's resources. To encourage rapid decision making, PMC-Sierra rolled marketing, R&D, and technical support under NSG's leader. NSG was indeed able to move quickly to produce a new product. At the same time, carving out this dedicated business meant that PMC-Sierra lost some efficiencies in the company as a whole. The acquisition and formation of NSG also put some burden on other parts of PMC-Sierra, as NSG required dedicated attention and resources during its start-up phase. A few months after the acquisition, PMC-Sierra leadership shut down the existing internal group working on the solid state drive controller, because the company had two teams and two sets of products. This proved to be one of the company's biggest tradeoffs-and an unpopular decision. Along with that decision, the company opted to develop the newer, riskier product that it had acquired the intellectual property for, PCIe switches.