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In 2011, four Canadian non-profit organizations have a mandate to prevent injuries and face similar and worsening problems. Each organization is spending an escalating amount of time fundraising to support its operations. Key stakeholders are expressing confusion because injury prevention is a crowded space and many non-profit organizations are seeking both dollars and partnerships. Most troubling, the four non-profit organizations are struggling to assess whether they are actually making a difference by preventing injuries and saving lives. The leaders of the four organizations must decide how to proceed — and whether the best solution is offered by collaborative or competitive strategies. Use role play supplements 9B15M122A.

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For over five years, the third generation (G3) of Valley Pulp & Sawdust Carriers, Ltd.<br>had been laying the foundation for the professionalization of the family firm. However, it was met with resistance from the second generation (G2). G3 had no ownership in the family business, and no true leadership role. At the management meetings, only four votes counted—the four votes of G2 members who were shareholders of the business. G3 members needed a commitment and clarification regarding their roles and future in the company. The question was how to approach G2. The G3 cousins knew that the challenge for them to garner G2’s respect and to have G2 understand G3’s roles and contribution to the family business would be nothing short of daunting.<br><br>This case series also includes Valley Carriers (B): Working on Versus Working in the Business 9B16M096 and Valley Carriers (C): Restructuring the Governance of the Family Firm 9B16M097.

This is the second case in the Valley Carriers series, which also includes Valley Carriers (A): Establishing Status in a Family Business 9B16M095 and Valley Carriers (C): Restructuring the Governance of the Family Firm 9B16M097.

This is the third case in the Valley Carriers series, which also includes Valley Carriers (A): Establishing Status in a Family Business 9B16M095 and Valley Carriers (B): Working on Versus Working in the Business 9B16M096.

In May 2015, a managing partner in an Australian venture capital firm faced a major dilemma. As one of five partners, he held the deciding vote on whether his firm, KTN Capital, would take an entrepreneur’s idea for a solar-powered water filter and build a new company around it, or instead, invest in the entrepreneur’s company. The venture capital firm would not be doing anything illegal by taking the entrepreneur’s idea because the entrepreneur had not properly protected his intellectual property through patents, but the decision-maker was struggling with the ethics of that choice. To further complicate the situation, the entrepreneur was very difficult to deal with, and the investment firm was facing pressure from the fund’s investors to find investments that would yield big returns. The managing partner had many business and ethical considerations to factor into his decision, and it seemed there would be no easy choice.

In 2011, after decades of the eye-care needs of India's semi-urban and rural population being largely ignored by both government and commercial enterprises, the corporate team of Drishti established two eye hospitals to address these unmet needs. However, Drishti faced some tough challenges in expanding its operations. Given that Drishti’s hospitals were located in semi-urban and rural areas, attracting and retaining highly-trained professional staff was very difficult. Drishti also needed to consider the implications of accessing equity capital to pursue its social goals. With its business model showing positive results, should Drishti opt for rapid growth or achieve slower growth by using internally generated funds? In the pursuit of financial goals, would Drishti need to compromise on any of its social goals?

In 2010, the recently appointed chief executive officer of VOSS Water (VOSS), a Norwegian luxury bottled water company, had been given an opportunity to take the brand in a new direction. He knew that take-home retail markets represented a huge opportunity for growth for a company that was used to selling its water in on-premises, luxury locations such as resorts and restaurants; however, the company’s past attempts to grow into the retail space had produced dismal results. VOSS’s new leader understood that he would have to work hard to unite his team behind his vision. How could he learn from the steps of his predecessors and use hindsight to create an opportunity for the luxury water brand?

In 2010, the recently appointed chief executive officer of VOSS Water (VOSS), a Norwegian luxury bottled water company, had been given an opportunity to take the brand in a new direction. He knew that take-home retail markets represented a huge opportunity for growth for a company that was used to selling its water in on-premises, luxury locations such as resorts and restaurants; however, the company's past attempts to grow into the retail space had produced dismal results. VOSS's new leader understood that he would have to work hard to unite his team behind his vision. How could he learn from the steps of his predecessors and use hindsight to create an opportunity for the luxury water brand?

It is August 1, 2015, and the 32nd InnovAstra Convention, an annual competition meant to showcase and recognise the innovation achievements of individuals, teams and business units in the Indonesian conglomerate PT Astra International Tbk (Astra), was just a fortnight away. Ekuslie Goestiandi is the head of the Corporate Centre that organises the InnovAstra Convention, and manages development programmes for facilitators to promote InnovAstra's standards and values in the company. Astra's employees have been inculcated with a spirit of striving towards continuous innovation from very early on in the company's history. Over the past two decades, Astra has expanded the scope of innovation across all group companies to encompass all employees, including the top management. Despite initiatives such as the InnovAstra Convention, Astra's leadership team is aware that much more is needed to be done for the group to successfully manage the challenges of the future. The business climate in Indonesia is expected to become far more volatile and demanding, influenced by intensified competition and rapid technological advances. In addition, the younger generation of employees and consumers will have different sets of needs and preferences that need to be understood and met. To manage these challenges, Astra has to plan for the 'next level of innovation' in the company, and that requires clear direction from the top. A key element of Astra's future direction is establishing a "synergistic business chain" that enables different activities within each business and across businesses to become mutually supportive. The question Ekuslie is mulling over is: what would it take to bring Astra to the next level of innovative capability?

Ed Williams Mens Wear, a family-owned retailer of high-quality men’s clothing, had a single location in Calgary, Alberta. The store had been very successful for over 20 years. The founder’s son was planning to take over the business, but he had concerns about the company’s aging market and was looking to grow and/or diversify the business. Available options included opening another location, expanding the store, or changing the product offering. Competitive conditions in the Calgary marketplace were heating up with the entry of a number of higher-end American retailers. The founder's son needed to evaluate all the alternatives in order to carry Ed Williams Mens Wear into the future.

Swedish camera manufacturer Hasselblad was founded in 1841. The brand reached new heights in 1969, when astronaut Neil Armstrong used a Hasselblad camera to take the first photos on the moon. For decades, Hasselblad was renowned for making the world’s best high-end, medium format cameras for professional photographers. Faced with the paradigm shift from film-based to digital imaging, the company launched digital cameras and also diversified into the luxury digital camera market through a strategic partnership with Sony. On November 5, 2015, Hasselblad announced a minority stake investment by Shenzhen-based DJI, a global market-leader in aerial camera photography. Changes to Hasselblad were inevitable. Was Hasselblad poised to take its core competency in medium format photography to the next level?

The Boeing Company, one of the dominant players in the aerospace industry, aimed to construct a supply chain architecture that was effective both domestically and globally, while simultaneously building its capacity to enter into agreements with small and diverse suppliers. A top executive at Boeing, who was responsible for both corporate supplier relationships and small business liaisons, needed to determine the approach that would yield the most optimal results for the company. Should she adapt supply chain principles to incorporate diversity, or should she view supply chain management as one element in an overall drive to increase diversity at the company?

In early 2009, Shailesh Naik founded MatchMove, a Singapore-based online entertainment service provider. Naik and his business partner had identified a gap in the Asian online gaming market and their vision was to plug this gap with a company-specific platform that incorporated casual gaming, social networking and e-commerce capabilities. MatchMove signed up global technology giant Yahoo! as its first large client. The company also contracted with game developers to create its own store of quality games that it could offer to its clients. MatchMove's key value proposition was to act as a conduit between game companies with a high content and low web traffic profile, as well as companies like Yahoo! and Microsoft with a high traffic and limited content profile. It eventually visualised itself as a closed e-commerce system to accept payments for services on its clients' websites, as well as an open payments portal for all users for multiple merchants. By 2012, MatchMove had further ventured into 'gamification', a domain related to its core business. Fast-forwarding to January 2014, Naik sees an opportunity in the market to create the next technological disruption to e-commerce. His vision is that of an open network which taps into the current trend of catering to the 'unbanked' and 'un-carded'. Will this work? Can he do it alone, or should he look for a partner? How should MatchMove evolve its business model to seize this next big opportunity?

The eHomemakers project was founded in 1998 to provide skills and employment for disadvantaged women in Malaysia. The women worked from home, weaving baskets out of recycled magazines from which they could generate income. This means of self-support was particularly beneficial to stay-at-home mothers and disabled women who were unable to work. By 2011, the enterprise was struggling for viability in Malaysia, which led the founder to consider crossing the border to Singapore to explore opportunities in that country to avoid having to give up on her social enterprise altogether.

The two co-founders of India’s online retail aggregator Baggout needed to come up with some ideas that would create new growth for their company. Baggout’s e-shopping website had been operational for two and a half years, and during that time, the start-up had enjoyed considerable success in the highly competitive and rapidly growing online retail market. The two partners wanted to establish a strategic growth plan for the upcoming year in 2016, but they knew they would first have to address some important questions if they hoped to identify ways to capture a larger share of the digital marketspace: What technical and digital capabilities would Baggout need for success in the future? What were the possible scalability issues for Baggout? What marketing strategies could the company implement to ensure increased adoption of the Baggout mobile application?

It was May 2016, and Desmond Lim, CEO and co-founder of QuikForce, a moving and logistics company based in Boston, U.S., had just concluded a five-hour long meeting with his team. QuikForce had been founded to simplify the stressful moving process for both the customer and movers, by acting as an intermediary that provided a technology platform which would pair potential customers with suitable moving companies based on their moving requirements. Ten months had flown by since the QuikForce website was first launched, and within two months of its launch, QuikForce was profitable. The meeting left two questions on Lim's mind. First, given QuikForce's initial success, should he begin to establish a presence in his home country, Singapore, or at least in Asia? The meeting with his team saw opinions split among three options-(a) broadening the service offerings in the company's existing U.S. locations (Boston, New York and Miami), (b) expanding to new cities in the U.S., or (c) pursuing expansion into Asia. Lim knew that a decision was looming. Second, was his present team the 'dream team' that would be able to take this company forward to the next level?

Today's startups are a major source of innovation, as they employ emerging technologies to invent products and reinvent business models. Corporations that embrace an open innovation strategy increasingly look to startups as a source of external innovation. Corporate accelerators offer a potent approach to nurturing innovations from entrepreneurial ventures. However, the vast differences between corporations and startups make collaboration a challenge. Corporate accelerators need to be designed effectively to add value for startups and create innovation benefits for the company. Based on information obtained during interviews with managers and participants of corporate accelerators (n=40), managers receive a framework and strategies for designing corporate accelerators. To leverage startups' innovation and to make corporate accelerators an effective part of a firm's overall innovation strategy, managers need to systematically and thoughtfully consider the design dimensions of proposition, process, people, and place.

In 2012, Graham’s Pharmacy opened to offer more traditional pharmacy services and counselling in contrast to franchise pharmacies. The business was the brainchild of a pharmacist and entrepreneur with a strong commitment to the pharmacist profession. Located in the heart of the historic business sector of Kingston, Ontario, Graham’s Pharmacy had taken over a historic building that formerly housed a bank. The pharmacy was intended to improve the quality of life of its clients through prevention and active engagement, rather than merely through the passive and mundane role of a pill dispensary. However, the pharmacy needed to be profitable if the vision was to be fully realized. Although the founder was confident in the capabilities of his team, and that a market existed for a pharmacy that provided personalized service and advice, he wondered how to market the business in light of competition from much larger rivals.

In October 2014, the owner of Rajwant Engineering Pvt. Ltd., a small-scale manufacturing business in Jamshedpur, India, needed to make some key strategic decisions. The immediate challenge was that the company had recently been asked for a bribe by the procurement manager of its most important client. The business owner was a highly ethical entrepreneur, so he was tempted to discontinue his relationship with the client on ethical grounds. However, the business was facing major financial difficulties, and the owner felt great responsibility toward his employees. The business owner wondered if he should instead compromise on his values in order to save his business from bankruptcy.