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This is a supplement to Charles Chocolates (A).

A new president has been hired to double or triple the size of Charles Chocolates, a high end chocolate producer and retailer in Portland, Maine. The case allows a comprehensive analysis of marketing, manufacturing, human resource, financial and strategic positioning issues in a small company with manufacturing, retailing, wholesaling and Internet operations.

Bettina Hein, founder-CEO of Pixability, is meeting with her board of directors to discuss her startup's fundraising prospects and the recent strategic pivot. Though Bettina loves the entrepreneurial exhilaration of "riding a rollercoaster every day," the company's current cash position gives them only a four-month runway. For Bettina, though they can at times be tense, board meetings and their preparation have become an exercise in reflection that gives her encouragement. In her prior startup, SVOX, Bettina learned a lot about managing a board of directors. While she can apply many of those lessons to her experience at Pixability, she's had to continue to develop new practices for portraying the company's progress, and for soliciting advice from her directors while projecting confidence. While preparing for the upcoming meeting, Bettina wonders: How should she structure and lead the meeting? How might her board react to her team's updates? What difficult questions might the board members pose and how should she answer them?

After leading a management buy-out, Harold Mills transformed ZeroChaos into a global staffing enterprise. Poised to raise additional capital to fund the company's next phase of growth, he was also confronting the liquidity demands of his early-stage investors and relationships were becoming strained.

This case tells the story of Azza Al Qubaisi, a female Emirati role-model entrepreneur - how she successfully developed a novel business idea, established a business, and created a new market for jewellery design "Made in UAE".

<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER - Laurier School of Business and Economics Best Case Award</strong></p><br>The owner of Sawchyn Guitars makes fine handmade acoustic guitars and mandolins. After 40 years of operating from a two-storey backyard garage, he contemplates a shift from a solely custom-order business to a storefront location. Although his custom-order business is still strong, the owner sees the opportunity to realize his dream of providing a full-service musical instrument haven for the local music community through a proper storefront. After opening a new retail location, public reception to the new store is overwhelmingly positive, but the success in new business lines restricts the capacity to build new instruments. Despite the enthusiastic response to the store, the business is experiencing unanticipated growing pains related to managing small-business growth.

A small-scale school bus company was founded five years ago to facilitate the home-to-school transportation of high school and middle school students who were enrolled in specialized programs. The company was owned by a husband-and-wife team who worked full time to arrange private bus transportation to four schools within their neighbourhood school district. The company was operating below break-even, and the owners wondered how they might increase ridership or revenues.

A small-scale school bus company was founded five years ago to facilitate the home-to-school transportation of high school and middle school students who were enrolled in specialized programs. The company was owned by a husband-and-wife team who worked full time to arrange private bus transportation to four schools within their neighbourhood school district. The company was operating below break-even, and the owners wondered how they might increase ridership or revenues.

This case follows Aditya Challa, a craft beer aficionado whose passion for good beer led him on an international quest to study the art of brewing in Scotland and eventually to Singapore, where he started a microbrewery business with his friends in 2011. By October 2012, sales of his craft beer have been increasing 20% per month, bringing up his production to about one-third operating capacity. However, future growth remains uncertain - with specific challenges in distribution and branding. Craft beer is still a relatively unknown concept in the city-state, and consumers remain skeptical of premium priced local beer. Moreover, big breweries in the Singapore market have already locked down most retailers with exclusive draft contracts. Challa has to review his business model and growth strategy in terms of how and where he can sell his beer while continuing to build the Jungle Beer brand.

Ron Laufer is the new Senior Managing Director of MedImmune Ventures', the corporate venture capital arm of AstraZeneca, a leading pharmaceuticals firm. Laufer has to decide whether to pursue a high-potential, but very risky, early-stage investment. The decision Laufer will make will reflect his vision for MedImmune Ventures and more broadly the incentives he faces as a corporate venture capitalist.

This is the syllabus and course outline for "Entrepreneurship in Healthcare IT and Services (EHITS), taught by Prof. Bob Higgins in the fall of 2013. Contains the course overview, objectives, goals and themes.

Desi Shack is a "fast casual" restaurant, started by two HBS alumni, that serves Indian and Pakistani cuisine in midtown Manhattan. The founders are looking to expand into a second location and also plan to hire a COO, and there is very little room for error in the decision-making process if Desi Shack is to continue operating. This case discusses questions of location choice and hiring decisions, and provides an example of a framework entrepreneurs might use to think about the many factors that must go in to making these choices.

The chairman of Stag International faced a number of challenges. As the number one table tennis brand in India and one of the top five companies globally, Stag could go after market share, diversify into domestic distribution, do both or just sit tight. The chairman also needed to set the business up for the fourth generation to step in and drive the family-owned business forward. The dilemmas he faced were defining the strategic intent, strategic choices and resourcing for the business as it entered its 90th year of existence as a leading manufacturer and exporter of sports goods in India.

Ben Kaufman founded Quirky in 2009 to enable anyone with a product idea to access an online network of people to help evaluate and improve the idea, and potentially bring it to market. By the end of 2012, Quirky was shipping 74 products, and had many more in development. Its products were sold in 35,000 stores worldwide. Each week, the company took three products into the research and development process, out of more than 1,000 submitted online. It paid 10 percent of third party sales, and 30 percent of direct sales, to its community members based on their participation in developing products-more than $2 million in 2012. Despite these signs of success, the company faced substantial challenges. Margins were low, and had to be dramatically improved before the company would become profitable. The product development model, using both online participants and internal staff, was stressed by the ever-increasing number of products being developed. The supply chain, relying on external manufacturing, had to adapt to a continual stream of new products. And retail partners were not well suited to the Quirky model-retailers focused on a few high-selling products. This case describes the business model used by Quirky, and challenges students to address the unique challenges facing the company.

In a business world where virtually all of the basic advantages have been competed away, organizations can still succeed by solving a trade-off that other people accept. That's why 'Integrative Thinking' is such an important concept, says the author. Introduced by then-Dean Roger Martin at the Rotman School of Management in 1998, the concept has evolved significantly over the years. The author, who has worked closely with Roger Martin on his writing and teaching, explains how Integrative Thinking is ultimately about creating new answers to our toughest problems.

This Course Outline and Syllabus gives an overview of the Fall 2013 class Building Life Science Businesses.

Ockham Technologies' three founders are about to craft their founding agreement and split the equity among themselves. Uncertainty lingers over each member's future contributions, though - how is the team to devise a durable and effective split? Jim Triandiflou and Ken Burows worked resolutely to plan for the launch of their sales management software company. Soon they recruited a third member, Mike Meisenheimer, to lead product development. Each founder had contributed significantly to bringing the Ockham concept to life. The trio had provided the seed capital of $150,000, contracted a development team to build their product, garnered serious interest from a potential investor, and readily agreed on their roles within the company (Jim was CEO, Ken was COO, and Mike was Head of Product Management). But as Ockham entered its initial phase of product development, pressure began mounting for the team to discuss and finalize a founding agreement. What should they include in the agreement, and how should they structure their equity split?

Inspired by software development boot camps in New York and San Francisco, Bitmaker Labs has just launched a similar offering but without considering the operational constraints unique to doing business in Canada. The result is governmental scrutiny just as the business is taking off with 42 students enrolled, each having paid $7,000 for a nine-week web development boot camp. Government investigators raid Bitmaker Labs, confiscating financial documents and threatening penalties and possible jail time for running an unregistered career college.

The founder of Hummus Bar, a successful restaurant in Hungary, is considering expansion. He is struggling to identify and select the most promising market. Should he pursue domestic expansion or consider internationalizing his concept? The founder wants to recruit and involve additional investors to spread risk, enhance the brand through diversified skill sets and ensure he selects the most appropriate entry strategy.