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Glenorna Coffee, a manufacturer and exporter of coffee powder, had been in the business of instant coffee and roasted ground blends for 34 years. It sourced coffee from India and had buyers across the globe. In 2013, the owner of Glenorna had to decide whether or not to pursue backward integration and buy coffee gardens. He had called upon the company’s accountant to find out whether it was viable to venture into the acquisition of coffee plantations or if the firm should remain with its existing business operations. With backward integration, Glenorna had a better chance of entering the specialty coffee business. If purchasing plantations was profitable, why had competitors such as Nestlé continued to source beans from the open market? Should Glenorna acquire plantations and venture into the specialty coffee business?

The large-scale abandonment of property in inner-city Johannesburg had brought waves of crime, illegal building occupation and general disinvestment. The founder of Olitzki Property Holdings (OPH) saw that an improvement at a precinct level, through carefully constructed partnerships with government, other property owners, tenants and illegal residents, was the key to building a sustainable, inclusive and socially grounded entrepreneurial business. OPH identified and bought derelict or illegally occupied buildings, then renovated and leased them to a combination of blue-chip and start-up businesses. While there was no doubt that OPH was profit focused, the ability to see the important role of development was a cornerstone of its success. Could the company — and the city — expand and maintain that success?

Capitalizing on low-cost manufacturing in China, Bally Wedding Dress Company (Bally) had grown quickly by exporting inexpensive wedding dresses to customers in Western countries. However, due to a rise in labour costs, currency appreciation, and increased prices of raw materials, the low-cost advantage in the manufacturing industry had by 2014 been seriously eroded. Competition had intensified together with a shortage in qualified labour. As both the sales volume and turnover decreased, Bally had to consider how to survive. The crisis that it faced represented a common issue for many Chinese manufacturing enterprises.

Theranos Inc. (Theranos) was a medical diagnostics enterprise based in Palo Alto, California. Having developed an innovative blood-testing system for deployment in clinical trials by pharmaceutical companies, Theranos was keen on extending the use of its system to individual consumers in the United States and Mexico. In leveraging growth opportunities for its innovation in the burgeoning field of personalized medicine, the company’s chief executive officer faced two managerial dilemmas: How should Theranos navigate the chasm between early adopters (the pharmaceutical companies) and mainstream consumers? And how should Theranos navigate the cost-benefit trade-off, as perceived by individual consumers, in a bid to promote product adoption in the mainstream market?

The chief executive officer of Kvantum Inc. received a distressing email from the human resources manager at Data Research Services. The two companies shared office space, and Data Research Services had invested seed capital in Kvantum. However, a Data Research Services employee was now accusing one of Kvantum’s most competent junior data scientists of harassment. The Kvantum employee had apparently approached the Data Research Services employee personally and then again through a popular social networking website. If the allegations were verified, Kvantum could lose a valuable employee. Moreover, a workplace scandal could adversely impact the start-up’s reputation. The issue required immediate action. Should it be considered misbehaviour? If so, what kind of misbehaviour? Most importantly, how should Kvantum resolve the problem?

A successful business executive and avid sailor had been thinking about new solutions to an old problem: safely transporting oil products. In late June 2014, the Canadian government had just approved a pipeline to carry bitumen from Alberta to the British Columbia coast. The immediate reaction from First Nations and environmental groups was extremely negative. Against this backdrop, the executive had put forward a radical proposal to refine the bitumen in British Columbia before shipping it across the Pacific Ocean. Ultimately, he would need a $10 billion loan guarantee from the federal government. In the short term, he needed $150 million to undertake a feasibility study. What, he wondered, was the best way to proceed?

Exercise to accompany "GenapSys: Business Models for the Genome".

After the Irish pharmacy industry’s deregulation, large competitors entered the market, upsetting small private players like single shop outlets and independent chains. While some of the new competitors implemented sophisticated technologies, others announced price cuts of up to 31 per cent on drugs. Not only did market shares for small players shrink, but the recession, changes in payment structures, government spending cuts and decreased consumer loyalty further reduced pharmacies’ profit margins. Many private pharmacists had observed that other pharmacies in Ireland and in the United States had successfully adopted connected health technologies (CHTs) to improve their performance. In order to compete against powerful multinational retail pharmacies, private pharmacists needed to analyze their business models and make any necessary alterations as soon as possible. Should they reinforce their current business models or try to innovate? Did they have the capabilities to develop CHTs and would these investments prove worthwhile?

In early June 2013, the executive director of Art Feeds, which provided therapeutic art and creative education to school children to help them achieve mental and emotional well-being, needed to make a recommendation to her board about whether to expand the current operations in Joplin, Missouri, to Moore, Oklahoma, after a devastating tornado in Moore. She needed to determine whether the organization had the resources required to expand successfully. If the executive director recommended expansion, she also needed to recommend the method that Art Feeds should use, i.e., disseminating the Art Feeds concept, using an affiliation model, or branching.

In September 2014, the co-founder and director of Treks `n Rapids, a leading adventure sports tourism company in New Delhi, India, needs to re-evaluate the company strategy. The adventure sports tourism industry has tremendous potential for growth in India, largely due to the number of young professionals with disposable incomes and a desire for new experiences, and is witnessing increased demand from a variety of profitable customer segments, both domestic and foreign, corporate and individual. However, the industry suffers from various problems such as poor infrastructure, the country’s negative image in the minds of customers (especially with regard to safety and quality) and a string of natural disasters. Should the company focus on its currently profitable local corporate sector or diversify into other areas and other types of tourism?

The case describes Rubicon Global, a startup that aimed to disrupt the waste management industry. The company started with a bold idea: create a cloud-based, full-service waste management company providing low-cost, highly efficient, and environmentally friendly service anywhere in the country through a national network of independent waste haulers and recyclers. A player in the sharing economy, Rubicon was developing an on-demand mobile application that did for waste management what Uber had done for taxi service. Rubicon had made great progress since introducing its service. They had signed up large multi-national customers and had a number of large potential contracts in the negotiation phase. The team needed more capital to build out the network and technology platform. Management and the board had to make a number of critical decisions: how much should the company raise, for what purpose, from whom, and on what terms?

The internet is fertile ground for multisided platforms that articulate the production of goods or the execution of services between third parties, thus relying on value co-creation as their core business model mechanism. However, an understanding of co-creation that underlies dynamics and implications for business model design and innovation is still dispersed and fragmented along a number of literature streams. This article aims to provide an understanding of the value co-creation process in web-based multisided platforms. A conceptual framework is proposed based on the combination of an analysis of a comprehensive systematic literature review, interviews with academics and entrepreneurs, and an analysis of secondary data on representative cases of multisided business models based on value co-creation. We offer a model of value co-creation in multisided platforms and advance a number of propositions regarding value dynamics, including the role of the focal firm in defining and maintaining value creation, propositions, and capture structures with consequences to monetization schemes and actors' contributions and motivations for value co-creation. This article contributes to the understanding of the co-creation phenomenon, especially in multiple actor interaction regimes, and raises a number of suggestions for future research.

In March 2015, the managing director of VariCut Electronics Component Company in Shanghai, China, was contemplating whether the company should shift its business focus from label printing to label printers. Because of fierce competition and a slowdown in the company's 12-year-old label manufacturing business, the company was finding its competitive advantage hard to sustain. In contrast, the company's emerging business of producing label printers had been doing well, with 30 per cent annual growth. Although the label manufacturing business had begun to struggle, it was still the main source of company revenue (80 per cent). It was uncertain whether the company's survival and growth could be sustained if it decided to give up the label manufacturing business in order to focus on label printers. Should the company give up the label manufacturing business to make way for the label printer business? Or should it consolidate the two businesses and transition to the label printer business gradually?

The EMco and SolarT case is presented in a series of four short vignettes involved two women, Carrie and Marguerite, who have a twenty-year friendship. Carrie, a venture capitalist, sits on the board of an energy management company called EMco. When EMco's CEO reports that he is recruiting for a new VP of Sales, Carrie immediately introduces him to Marguerite, a seasoned sales executive. Marguerite soon joins EMco and the next three vignettes explore a series of issues she faces in her role. Vignette A presents a conversation between Carrie and Marguerite, 18 months into Marguerite's tenure, in which Marguerite shares with Carrie that she is considering leaving EMco for a different opportunity, fueled by her desire to become a CEO someday. The second vignette also has Marguerite discussing with Carrie her desire to move on from EMco, but to join SolarT, a solar energy company for which Carrie is also a board member. Finally, Vignette C explores the scenario where Marguerite goes to work for SolarT, which is the arch rival of another company, Blue, for which her father is a board member. All of these vignettes are presented in the context of the ethical decisions both Carrie and Marguerite must make to avoid conflicts of interest in each of these three scenarios.

The EMco and SolarT case is presented in a series of four short vignettes involved two women, Carrie and Marguerite, who have a twenty-year friendship. Carrie, a venture capitalist, sits on the board of an energy management company called EMco. When EMco's CEO reports that he is recruiting for a new VP of Sales, Carrie immediately introduces him to Marguerite, a seasoned sales executive. Marguerite soon joins EMco and the next three vignettes explore a series of issues she faces in her role. Vignette A presents a conversation between Carrie and Marguerite, 18 months into Marguerite's tenure, in which Marguerite shares with Carrie that she is considering leaving EMco for a different opportunity, fueled by her desire to become a CEO someday. The second vignette also has Marguerite discussing with Carrie her desire to move on from EMco, but to join SolarT, a solar energy company for which Carrie is also a board member. Finally, Vignette C explores the scenario where Marguerite goes to work for SolarT, which is the arch rival of another company, Blue, for which her father is a board member. All of these vignettes are presented in the context of the ethical decisions both Carrie and Marguerite must make to avoid conflicts of interest in each of these three scenarios.

The EMco and SolarT case is presented in a series of four short vignettes involved two women, Carrie and Marguerite, who have a twenty-year friendship. Carrie, a venture capitalist, sits on the board of an energy management company called EMco. When EMco's CEO reports that he is recruiting for a new VP of Sales, Carrie immediately introduces him to Marguerite, a seasoned sales executive. Marguerite soon joins EMco and the next three vignettes explore a series of issues she faces in her role. Vignette A presents a conversation between Carrie and Marguerite, 18 months into Marguerite's tenure, in which Marguerite shares with Carrie that she is considering leaving EMco for a different opportunity, fueled by her desire to become a CEO someday. The second vignette also has Marguerite discussing with Carrie her desire to move on from EMco, but to join SolarT, a solar energy company for which Carrie is also a board member. Finally, Vignette C explores the scenario where Marguerite goes to work for SolarT, which is the arch rival of another company, Blue, for which her father is a board member. All of these vignettes are presented in the context of the ethical decisions both Carrie and Marguerite must make to avoid conflicts of interest in each of these three scenarios.

The EMco and SolarT case is presented in a series of four short vignettes involved two women, Carrie and Marguerite, who have a twenty-year friendship. Carrie, a venture capitalist, sits on the board of an energy management company called EMco. When EMco's CEO reports that he is recruiting for a new VP of Sales, Carrie immediately introduces him to Marguerite, a seasoned sales executive. Marguerite soon joins EMco and the next three vignettes explore a series of issues she faces in her role. Vignette A presents a conversation between Carrie and Marguerite, 18 months into Marguerite's tenure, in which Marguerite shares with Carrie that she is considering leaving EMco for a different opportunity, fueled by her desire to become a CEO someday. The second vignette also has Marguerite discussing with Carrie her desire to move on from EMco, but to join SolarT, a solar energy company for which Carrie is also a board member. Finally, Vignette C explores the scenario where Marguerite goes to work for SolarT, which is the arch rival of another company, Blue, for which her father is a board member. All of these vignettes are presented in the context of the ethical decisions both Carrie and Marguerite must make to avoid conflicts of interest in each of these three scenarios.

In the dynamic online travel industry, the founders of mygola.com (mygola) needed to decide on the company’s future growth trajectory. The online travel industry was booming, but online travel planning was at a relatively nascent stage. In the travel-planning space, mygola’s initial service offering had been well received but the need to scale up was pressing. The existing product leveraged technological efficiencies and human judgment to provide customized answers for users’ travel queries. The new product, on the other hand, could change mygola’s way of doing business going forward. Though it was untested, it had the potential to put mygola on a higher growth path. The choice of product would mean that mygola would have to make a host of other decisions regarding the business. The decisions that the co-founders had to make could very well turn out to be the most important in mygola’s growth story.