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In early 2013, the founder of Shandong Aspop Clothing Apparel Group Co. Ltd. faced the annual "post-holiday recruitment dilemma." His challenge was typical of the growth challenges that many labour-intensive original equipment manufacturer clothing enterprises in China encountered. Facing rising domestic labour costs, a change in attitudes among workers, the gradual shift of labour preferences from manufacturing industries to service industries, and a market environment in which international orders had shifted to Southeast Asian countries, the founder needed to make a decision. Should he strive to attract and retain more skilled front-line workers, replace personnel via automation, or set up a factory in a neighbouring country to transfer part of the enterprise's production capacity?

AB InBev, the world's largest beer company, faced serious challenges in 2017. First, large food and beverage companies were under-pressure due to shifting consumer preferences towards healthier products and increasing price pressure from retailers. The beer category, in particular, showed signs of stagnation in developed markets, such as the United States and Europe. Moreover, several major trends - e.g. localization of consumption and rise of craft beers- were quickly transforming the industry. Finally, technological innovations, such as e-commerce platforms and deep data-analysis enabled new players and emptied the effects of mass-marketing. The strategy designed by the owner of legendary brands like Budweiser, Stella Artois and Michelob Ultra, was multifaceted. On the one hand, the importance of renovating the core business was undeniable, especially via improvements to the portfolio and modernization of sales capabilities. On the other hand, the company needed to catch up on the new trends and become a disruptor itself; craft beers, e-commerce, home-brewing, and innovative business models were some of those. All while preserving its powerful internal culture and keeping its shareholders satisfied.

In 2017, True Fruits, a German smoothie company, was operating in three European markets. The company had developed flash pasteurization, which was an efficient and gentle production process that made their product one of the highest quality smoothies in the world. The company successfully exported its product to premium Austrian and Swiss supermarkets, and was planning further expansion within Europe. True Fruits had strong brand loyalty, and a noteworthy, healthy lifestyle-oriented product. True Fruits' owners were convinced that entering other European markets would fuel the company’s growth.

In response to its shrinking domestic market, Japanese liquor company Suntory Holdings Limited acquired American liquor conglomerate Beam Inc. in 2014 to expand into the promising U.S. market. Although the acquisition price was high, executives of both companies were confident in the deal. However, as the new combined entity, Beam Suntory Inc., began the integration process, it encountered significant friction, particularly from its separate corporate cultures. By 2016, the new entity had not integrated to a satisfactory level. The high acquisition price had left the parent company with monumental debt, while the consolidated operations struggled to establish trust and efficiency. Had Suntory Holdings Limited made a wise decision in acquiring Beam Inc.? How should it cope with the monumental debt? How should the combined entity resolve conflicts and integrate to realize potential synergies?

Founded in 2008 in Singapore and China, ActSocial was a social marketing company that initially provided brands with word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing services. The firm then adjusted its model to focus on providing online social media and digital content marketing services. After significant success from 2013 to 2015, ActSocial was fully acquired by Linkfluence, a leading global social media monitoring and research company. As part of this larger company, the new leadership team at Linkfluence Asia now needed to decide how to proceed and wondered if they would have influence over the direction of their product, hiring decisions, team-building, and growth plans.

In 2017, significant changes were sweeping the global automotive industry: the rapid growth of electric vehicles, the race to develop commercially reliable autonomous cars and the ride-sharing phenomenon. Those trends were magnified by technological advancements around connectivity between drivers and their vehicles, as well as changes in consumer preferences, especially related to waning interest in car ownership. Additionally, China's increasing influence in the global markets and aggressive push for automotive innovation were shaking the industry. Daimler, manufacturer of Mercedes-Benz cars and one of the long-standing industry pioneers, started to react in order to preserve its leadership. Wilko Stark was made CEO of a new business unit called CASE, in charge of developing solutions to address the new trends. The multifaceted efforts in research, product development, strategic planning and technology investments faced several challenges, however. Notably, issues emerged regarding need for new talents and skills, relationship with labor unions, brand preservation, experimentation with new sales and distribution models and intense competition from traditional and new players.

In July 2016, the founder and president of Lockbox Social Inc., an American social media management company for real estate agents, was contemplating whether to offer search engine optimization (SEO) as a new product. He needed to decide whether to pivot his business to pursue SEO exclusively, include SEO with the current product mix, or stay with the status quo and reconsider SEO at a later date. How would the two products—social media management and SEO—meet his customers' needs? Would they provide a good fit with his business and personal goals? He also needed to determine how much to charge for SEO and whether the company's current pricing model was appropriate for social media management.

The semester-long small business management class at Southern New Hampshire University had incorporated into the course a food truck under the brand name "Munchiez" as a catalyst for students to integrate and apply the concepts they learned about in various business classes. As such, Munchiez was a vital teaching tool at the school. However, with an 80 per cent turnover rate each semester, knowledge transfer and financial stability quickly became critical issues for the Munchiez team to assess. As of December 2016, Munchiez was operating at a deficit. Some team members suggested that Munchiez may need a general manager. In order to continue receiving financial support from the university, Munchiez's management had to answer some difficult questions: How should Munchiez increase the transfer of knowledge from semester to semester? What strategies should be used in order to break even? Would the business benefit from a general manager? If so, how could the team find the right person for this position?

Ujwal Kalra founded Memorable Shaadi in 2014 while awaiting admission to the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. The startup offered services connecting clients and vendors in the Indian wedding industry. The case elaborates Ujwal's journey as an entrepreneur and the choices he made including hiring a co-founder and working remotely while pursuing an MBA. Ujwal now faces a dilemma: should he accept a plush consulting job through campus placement or go back and scale the firm? Memorable Shaadi highlights the classic dilemma facing entrepreneurs and the choices they need to exercise at different phases of their venture.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 818064.

The existing U.S. health care system is complex. Most individuals have health insurance coverage provided by various third-party payers. The payers include employers, health insurance carriers, and government-sponsored programs, such as nationally administered Medicare and Medicaid, which is offered by all 50 states with some support from the federal government. Each payer's program varies in terms of the health services covered as well as the amount of the cost of care allocated back to the individual in the form of visit copayments, individual deductibles, and other cost-sharing strategies. These offerings are administered by various health plans and many payers offer multiple administrative alternatives. For example, Medicare is administered nationally, but there are multiple "Medicare Advantage" alternatives available as well as the basic program offering. In addition, there are numerous Medicare supplemental plans available to increase the benefits for the individual recipient. Founded in 2014, DPC Concentric Health System's (DPC Concentric's) mission is to identify the people, strategies, and capital needed to help the U.S. health care system heal itself. Based on continuous improvement design driven by continuous learning, DPC Concentric's human capital/technology initiatives deploy the power of entrepreneurial physicians in a free market. This social entrepreneurial approach responds distinctly to the incumbent relationship infrastructure of "fee-for-service" third-party reimbursement at the provider and self-funded payer levels. The DPC Concentric continuous-improvement infrastructure becomes practical, achievable, and self-perpetuating as incumbent leadership commits to catalyzing outcome-based health care solutions. It is distinctly relationship based, providing incumbent advisers ample opportunity to lead as continuous-improvement consultants to physicians and employers.

In an era of fast-paced technological change, innovation has become a business imperative. But it is not easy to make experimentation and risk-taking an integral part of an organization's business practice. This article describes a model for motivating innovation based on probability theory and experimental evidence. This research indicates that corporate leaders should create a culture that tolerates early failure and rewards long-term performance, and employees from the CEO down must be given incentives to innovate. These lessons are broadly applicable in fields beyond business, such as scientific research and the academic world.

New and existing companies are looking for ways to thrive in a competitive environment with innovative business models while respecting society and avoiding actions that harm the planet. Trends such as the circular economy, fair trade, lowsumerism, and the sharing economy are some of the many emerging entrepreneurial approaches that address this issue, but there is still a gap between what theory argues and the levels of environmental and social sustainability realized when theory is put into practice. In fact, most research on the topic of sustainable business models is still exploratory and does not fully acknowledge these emerging approaches, whose definitions, boundaries, and defining characteristics are still somewhat vague. This study seeks to contribute to the understanding of the inner entrepreneurial dynamics of innovative sustainable business models. In particular, we focus on the fashion business, a resource-intensive industry in which opportunities to reduce environmental impacts and to innovate business models abound. The aim of our research is to investigate innovative business models in the fashion industry that have sustainability as their defining characteristic, especially in terms of value proposition. In order to do that, we combine a systematic review of the literature with empirical research comprised of six interviews with specialists in sustainability, business model innovation, and the fashion industry, along with eight case studies on innovative fashion startups we define as 'born sustainable.' As a result, we propose a synthesizing framework that discloses trends and drivers of innovative and sustainable business models in the fashion industry. We also highlight opportunities and challenges for researchers and entrepreneurs interested in this topic.

The sharing economy is growing globally in terms of user numbers, service providers, and novel concepts. Peer-to-peer (P2P) asset sharing, or asset rental between private individuals, has attracted the attention of entrepreneurs and researchers alike. P2P asset-sharing networks need to focus on two distinct customer groups: (1) asset owners willing to rent out their assets, and (2) renters interested in renting others assets. Despite consumers' high interest in P2P asset sharing, participation rates lag projections, which is mainly attributable to lack of participating asset owners. This could be problematic for P2P networks as they do not own assets; instead, they rely on a sufficient number of asset owners to participate. Detailed indications on the participation motives of users are required to distinctly position P2P asset sharing and enhance communication of consumer-relevant benefits. To this end, we have engaged in a detailed investigation of participation motives in the P2P car-sharing context. We have conducted in-depth interviews with car owners and renters to derive usage types that represent consumer decision profiles that participate in P2P car-sharing services. Based on our findings, we provide extensive recommendations to entrepreneurs in the P2P asset-sharing market.

Maker technologies, including collaborative digital fabrication tools like 3-D printers, enable entrepreneurial opportunities and new business models. To date, relatively few highly successful maker startups have emerged, possibly due to the dominant mindset of the makers being one of cooperation and sharing. However, makers also strive for financial stability and many have profit motives. We use a multiple case study approach to explore makers' experiences regarding the tension between sharing and commercialization and their ways of dealing with it. We conducted interviews with maker initiatives across Europe including Fab Labs, a maker R&D center, and other networks of makers. We unpack and contextualize the concepts of sharing and commercialization. Our cross-case analysis leads to a new framework for understanding these entrepreneurs' position with respect to common-good versus commercial offerings. Using the framework, we describe archetypal trajectories that maker initiatives go through in the dynamic transition from makers to social enterprises and social entrepreneurs.

The business models of digital maker-entrepreneurs in open design are inextricably linked to the broader open design community. Digital makers share designs on online platforms such as Thingiverse and use digital manufacturing technology such as 3-D printing as a generative mechanism for their entrepreneurial activities. There is a general understanding of how sharing works in that community and the basic design parameters that determine the business models of these digital maker-entrepreneurs, which are based on a portfolio of activities. This study is based on in-depth interviews with 11 digital maker-entrepreneurs from the open design community. We investigate the activities that constitute their business models using activity theory as a lens with which better to understand them. This study provides a perspective on the complexity of the relationships in which these activities are embedded and analyzes the activities related to the production, distribution, and consumption of value. Finally, we examine the exchanges between digital maker-entrepreneurs in the community, shedding light on how digital maker-entrepreneurs share and exchange goods, services, and knowledge as peers.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) begins to dominate the technology landscape, there will be new products and services that will become technically and financially feasible. Internet technologies and advancements in social interaction tools have led to an increase in the use of the crowd as a provider of business solutions. Yet we have just seen a fraction of the possibilities of crowdsourcing technologies. This is because most of the development, discussion, and research around crowdsourcing has focused on active-input crowdsourcing. However, the real transformative pressure will come from passive sources of data generated primarily by developing and growing sensor technologies. This next generation of crowdsourcing will be a game changer for entrepreneurial opportunities. As crowdsourcing systems proliferate, more input will be acquired from sensors, artificial intelligence, bots, and other devices. As a result of this explosion, the variety of product and service opportunities will swell as entrepreneurs become more aware of technologies merging, such as the combination of crowdsourcing, sensors, and big data into a new type of entrepreneurship-sensor-based entrepreneurship. The purpose of this research is to contribute by, first, clarifying the next generation of crowdsourcing and, second, developing and presenting a framework to help sensor-based entrepreneurs plan, develop, and map their new products and services.

Embedded between the broader fields of social and digital entrepreneurship, the concept of 'smart cities' can be conceptualized as a domain that is currently pre-paradigmatic-that is, one in which multiple yet unaligned models exist, marked by the absence of a single dominant one. Despite such shortcomings, there is a reflective similarity across ecosystems as the various players attempt to converge on a common understanding of the term smart city. The common objective of smart city implementation is to spark economic growth and social development, facilitated by collaborative dialogue and innovations in technology. We integrate theoretical lenses to explore the roles played by ecosystem actors, stakeholders, and socioeconomic and political agents in creating economic value and solving societal problems-particularly highlighting opportunities and challenges to bottom-up innovation from local entrepreneurs.