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A joint venture company that started its operations in 2004 in India was in the business of growing, processing and marketing fresh fruits and vegetables, both in India and abroad. As new market opportunities emerged in response to the growing demand for frozen products in the domestic market, the company launched frozen vegetables in the Indian market in 2011 and successfully established the supply chain covering contract farming, processing and distributing the product. The following year, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the company was reviewing the first year’s performance of frozen vegetable business as part of the annual business plan process. The business was still small and not profitable. The CEO had to decide how to scale up and make the business profitable.

In recent years, the critical function of expanding GCS Consulting’s information technology consulting business had lost priority as the managing director of the firm was increasingly preoccupied with World Bank engagements as an IT consultant. He was aware of the immense potential in new areas of consulting and changing business models. However, he was also conscious of the investment of time, effort and finances that would be required on his part to strengthen GCS’s marketing activities and build up a team of professionals well versed in newly emerging consulting areas such as social media, mobile, analytics and cloud computing. Should he promote GCS or move ahead as an individual IT consultant?

This case examines an exciting new approach to health care that will help care providers identify when hospice services are the appropriate type of care for patients. The company, Medalogix, already has a product on the market that uses a proprietery algorithm to consider dozens of factors and determine when a patient qualifies for a hospice care eligability review. The product has started to gain traction, and the case explores how Medalogix can scale and disseminate its innovative product.

As the co-founder of a software platform called Ushahidi, Ory Orykolloh watched the unfolding catastrophic earthquake crisis in Haiti and had to decide how her company’s crisis-mapping software could assist international authorities as they moved into Haiti to provide help and relief. Ushahidi was developed as an open-sourced mash-up platform combining Google Maps with publicly reported (text-based) incidents of election violence during the Kenya 2007 elections; thus, the system effectively managed to bypass government censorship. Expansion into other uses during both political crises and a variety of national/international events provided opportunities for growth. With Haiti, Ushahidi’s management team had to consider how its software could be used to provide assistance during a catastrophe like an earthquake.

In September 2013, Ranger Creek Brewing and Distilling was in its third year of operations and had so far been a success. Its beers and bourbons had won several tasting awards and its financials were meeting expectations, but the management team was starting to feel acute growing pains. Before the owners could even focus on growth plans, there were some unanswered questions they needed to tackle. Considering the current production records, what was the maximum attainable capacity of the plant? Would brewing capacity need to be expanded and, if so, what equipment should be purchased? Should the focus be placed on automating the brewing or filling process? Finally, what were the operational consequences of the recently passed beer laws in Texas? The owners had to choose an operational scenario for the 2014–2019 capital and manpower budget that would address these concerns.

Juchheim Co. Ltd. was a confectionery family firm located in Japan. The chief executive officer and owner faced two important issues related to the future success of the firm: managing succession into the next generation and determining the company’s expansion strategy in the overseas market. Under the Japanese tradition of patriarchal primogeniture, the owner’s eldest son was the heir apparent and would take over the company. However, the market scenario had changed; new demographic and economic conditions had brought challenges that the company had never faced before.

Established in 1994, the Tsinghua Science Park ("TusPark") is one of the earliest university science parks in China and was rated the first A-class university science park by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Education. The main functions of TusPark are to promote regional independent innovation, build a university-industry cooperation platform, facilitate the commercialization of research achievements, and incubate start-up enterprises. Today, TusPark hosts about 550 enterprises, including 380 technology companies. These enterprises have created total sales revenue of over RMB 4 billion, and together, they apply for more than 2,000 intellectual property rights each year. Despite these remarkable achievements, Mei Meng and his team are looking further into the future. As China is transitioning from a manufacturing-based economy to an innovation and entrepreneurship-driven economy, there is an enormous opportunity for TusPark to play an important role in this transition. Nevertheless, changes in the external environment also prompted TusPark to adjust its development strategy accordingly, and the question is, how?

Setting equitable and "market" level compensation for founders and early employees of startups is one of the most important elements of a new venture. It is not only central to attract and retain the best human capital for the startup, but is critical to align incentives between investors and management. This note provides a framework to think about compensation in startup ventures and is intended for entrepreneurs thinking about starting a venture, as well as for employees looking to join a young high-potential startup.

This Reading takes a deep look at the venture capital (VC) industry in the United States. VCs have a unique perspective on opportunity evaluation, deal structure, new venture support, and exit strategy. Their work at all stages of the entrepreneurial life cycle offers many lessons to company founders, even those whose ventures are not backed by VCs. This Reading follows the chronological cycle of VC activity from the entrepreneur's vantage point: deal evaluation, deal pricing, structure and terms, working with VCs once the deal has been signed, and exit. The topics of deal pricing, structure, and terms are treated in particular depth through a detailed examination of a term sheet -- the contract that sets out the terms of the VC financing.

Can innovation and entrepreneurship stimulate economic growth in diverse communities, or is it only effective in a few unique places like Silicon Valley? This article identifies the salient components, behaviors, and linkages that characterize Silicon Valley and explores how these characteristics apply in a diverse selection of economic communities in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. It focuses on the role institutions-such as governments, universities, major corporations, and NGOs-play in shaping such communities. It provides insights for government policy makers on how to enhance their region's innovation potential, and offers strategies for entrepreneurs and venture investors as to how to leverage the benefits of clusters of innovation, wherever one is located.

When it comes to agility, startups have an edge over large corporations-whereas large corporations sit on resources which startups can only dream of. The combination of entrepreneurial activity with corporate ability seems like a perfect match, but often goes unused. This article examines how large corporations from the tech industry have begun to tap into entrepreneurial innovation from startups. Prominent examples are used to inductively derive a set of four models commonly used to engage with startups and to describe their characteristics, challenges, and rationales. While corporate equity is the key mechanism behind more established models, newer approaches replace equity with shared technology to connect both worlds with fewer organizational costs. This article presents a typology of corporate mechanisms to engage with startups that balance speed and agility against control and strategic direction, to map the ways companies can bridge the gap between themselves and the startup world.

A couple who had moved to a new home in Toronto noticed that the area did not offer any dining options similar to the New York diners they had loved in their four years of living there. The couple, who had two young children, could not find a place nearby that was child-friendly and served chef-quality food. Rather than waiting for someone else to fill the gap in the upscale neighbourhood, the couple opened Uncle Betty’s. The restaurant was successful from day one. Now the owners want to grow Uncle Betty’s but they have some key questions. What growth options are realistic in light of their current resources and capabilities? What would be the right pace for growth to prevent others from copying the Uncle Betty’s experience?

As a newcomer in the automobile industry, Tesla Motors had distinguished itself by redefining automobiles and rewriting some of the rules of the automobile industry. Ten years after its founding, it had begun to make inroads into China — a totally different market from Europe and the United States — and commenced its globalization efforts. China had set “new energy” as its major strategy for sustainable development and national security. Which path should Tesla follow to make China its second-largest market? How can Tesla’s director for China overcome the company’s strategic challenges in innovating in the Chinese market?

The entrepreneur and founder of Sonnentor, an organic food production company, has grown his business by focusing on unusual strategic and operative choices. Sonnentor emphasizes socially and environmentally responsible behaviour in all its actions and has built its business on fair partnerships with employees, suppliers and other partners. The case highlights the role of “embedded sustainability” in the success of the business and presents the challenge of transferring the founder’s unique business philosophy, both to other domains and to a new managerial generation.

Excel exercise to accompany Loki Capital Management HBS. No. 814-049

DaVita had launched Paladina in early 2011 and the startup was struggling to gain traction: Paladina had already used a significant amount of the $40 million in funding committed by DaVita; the company's primary care clinics had not yet reached the number of patients necessary to sustain a profitable business; and it was in the midst of trying to integrate with another primary care clinic operator that it had acquired years earlier, but was just now merging into Paladina. Although the startup was young and still finding its way in an emerging industry, Thiry believed that Paladina would benefit from Golomb's experiences at Rx, which had also struggled in its early years. The situation at Rx became so precarious at one point that many of DaVita's senior leaders wanted to shut it down entirely. Rx made it through those challenging early years though, and was expected to exceed $600 million in revenues for 2013. However, Golomb wondered how relevant his Rx experience was to Paladina. Rx was closely tied to its parent company-DaVita provided dialysis services to patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and Rx supplied medications to ESRD patients-while Paladina's connection to DaVita was less obvious. If Golomb took the job, what could he do to make Paladina's clinics as efficient as possible in terms of service and its economics, without compromising on its value proposition? Was Paladina just too different of a business to be part of the DaVita family? This case offers an example of "intrapreneurship"-i.e. entrepreneurial ventures launched within large companies-at a Fortune 500 company. DaVita has already had a successful experience launching Rx (after some difficult early years), and the company is now even serving patients from some of DaVita's leading competitors. However, Paladina is the company's first intrapreneurial venture outside of its core focus of serving end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients-DaVita's main function is to provide dialysis se

Better World Books (BWB) was founded as a for-profit "B corporation" committed to a triple bottom line of financial, social, and environmental performance. Early success with an innovative business model leveraging social entrepreneurship allowed BWB to grow revenue to over $80 million in 2014. BWB now faces challenges expanding further while sustaining their social-entrepreneurship business model. BWB currently faces such issues as narrow margins, shrinking supply, low brand awareness, and even copycat competitors. Chief Executive Office Mike Miller must decide how to handle these issues in a way that keeps BWB competitive in the crowded used-book industry and also creates value for all BWB's stakeholders.