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This case describes the creation of Dr. Tim’s Pet Food Company, a small company centred on providing superior nutrition for dogs used for athletic and competitive purposes. The company has developed a brand image of high quality and premium natural ingredients, and has gradually extended its product line while maintaining the quality of its original formula. Although the company has been very successful and has grown at an ever-increasing rate, its founder is concerned about the difficulties of expansion that Dr. Tim’s Pet Food now faces. Located in an isolated area of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the company is not easily accessible to sales representatives or larger populations. Furthermore, the company’s founder does not want the brand to lose its high quality or natural image, and is therefore resistant to the idea of distributing his company’s products in large discount retail outlets. In addition, the founder of Dr. Tim’s Pet Food Company runs a veterinary hospital and is therefore hoping to limit the physical expansion of his newest entrepreneurial project. While keeping all of these limitations in mind, the case presents four growth strategies open to Dr. Tim’s Pet Food Company: penetration, product development, market development and diversification. Students are asked to consider which option would be best suited to the company’s expansion based on the information provided.

Describes Lake Nona, a 7,000-acre residential and research cluster in central Florida, and its process and innovation culture, and Lake Nona Institute, the organization behind the planning and governance of this new eco-friendly community. Emphasis is placed on the institutional collaboration and governance decisions behind Lake Nona's "Medical City" component. Five years after development began, the site boasts a research cluster that has succeeded in attracting scientific talent and residential interest, and has put in place a collaborative governance structure intended to encourage innovation, trust-building and communication. When the Institute's president is asked to decide who the next tenant in Medical City should be, he considers what kind of process would allow them to best grow going forward. Focuses on: 1) the nature of collaboration in the development of new ventures; 2) the managerial challenges of mediation between hierarchical organization processes and consensus-driven structure; 3) the product development process of a developer in a nascent industry.

Whaling was a prominent global industry in the nineteenth century and the United States was dominant. By 1850 there were about 900 whaling ships in the world and 700 of these were American. Rates of return on capital were high compared to benchmark investments, at least in the early years of the nineteenth century. The whaling industry was one of the earliest to grapple with complex issues in relation to the provision of high-risk investment capital, syndication, organizational form, ownership structure, incentives, team building and principal-agent tradeoffs. It represents an important starting-point for exploring the origins of American entrepreneurship and venture financing.

Considers the decision faced by state pension fund manager Rod Calhoun as he decides whether to invest $200 million in Bain Capital's eleventh global buyout fund: Bain Capital Fund XI. For the fund, Bain was offering its limited partners a choice between three different fee structures: first, a "conventional" fee structure of a 1.5% management fee with 20% carried interest and a 7% preferred rate of return; second, a 1% management fee with 30% carried interest and a 7% preferred rate of return; or third, a 0.5% management fee, 30% carried interest, and a 0% preferred rate of return. Should Calhoun invest in Bain? If he should, which fee structure should Calhoun choose?

The management team at Predilytics, a healthcare analytics firm, must decide whether to accept a Series A venture capital financing deal. The company provided analytic services to healthcare plans, typically Medicare Advantage plans, in efforts to draw conclusions from massive amounts of patient data. The company still had enough funding from a seed round to operate on a low-key basis for a few more months, but the team hoped to move forward aggressively and scale its business. They also needed to make business choices about next steps.

Rock Health was a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization offering accelerator services to spur innovation at the intersection of healthcare and technology. The company was the creation of Halle Tecco (HBS '11) and her HBS classmate Nate Gross (HBS '11), who met early in their first year at the HBS Healthcare Club meeting and decided to undertake a year-long field study that married their shared interests in healthcare, technology and entrepreneurship. Rock Health supported health-tech entrepreneurs with a startup grant of $20,000, office space and a wide variety of professional support services. Entrepreneurial teams that participated in Rock Health's programs promoted services ranging from data-driven technologies that helped manage stress to mobile tools that attempted to diagnosis medical conditions as diverse as Alzheimer's disease and foot ulcers. The case is set in August 2011, as Rock Health is wrapping up its third group of entrepreneurs in a Boston program and planning for its fourth class at the home office. The case should enable students to identify emerging challenges, evaluate Rock Health's funding model, debate the effectiveness of its incubation service and assess its long-term viability.

The partners at Innova Capital, a leading mid-market private equity investor in Poland, must negotiate a transition of power between the two ex-patriate founders and three talented young Polish partners. If they fail to find an accomodation, the entire firm will self-destruct. This case explores the long-running process through which they were able to reach an agreement and the different motivations and goals that each partner wanted to achieve.

HIGHLY COMMENDED CASE - Family Business Runner-up, 2012 European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Case Writing Competition. Scholtes Waterservices was a second-generation family firm in the Netherlands that specialized in installing and selling water pipes, primarily for the horticultural industry. In 2008, Rijk Scholtes Jr. and his brother, Ben, took over management of the firm from their father and gradually assumed ownership through a buyout plan. It soon became evident that their father, Rijk Sr., could not let go of the company. This especially affected Rijk Jr., as he worked in an office close to the place where Rijk Sr. lived. As a result, the relationship between father and son began to steadily deteriorate. Moreover, Rijk Jr. began to feel isolated as the relationship and collaboration between Rijk Sr. and Ben was not adversely affected. Instead, the once-strong relationship between the brothers began to deteriorate. Rijk Jr. was left wondering whether anything could be done to rectify the situation or whether it was time to leave the family firm.

An executive from pharmaceutical company GSK must choose how much to integrate a recently acquired biotechnology firm, Sirtris. Moncef Slaoui, GSK's global head of R&D, championed the acquisition of Sirtris to gain access to its potentially revolutionary science. Slaoui must balance the need to recoup shareholder value after paying a two-times premium for Sirtris with his desire to retain Christoph Westphal, Sirtris's co-founder and CEO, and other key individuals at the company. His desire to protect Sirtris from GSK's size and bureaucracy occurs in a period when GSK has launched major changes in its R&D organization, which focus on decentralizing and externalizing R&D, as well as revamping the resource allocation process to parallel more of a venture capital-based model. The case also explores the views of Christoph Westphal on the early challenges of the integration and the impact GSK was having on Sirtris. Can be used in conjunction with a separate case that focuses on Sirtris's business model.

Describes a set of key strategic decisions facing the scientific founder and CEO of a promising, early stage bio-pharmaceuticals company. Should the company establish a proposed alliance with a pharmaceutical firm? Should it create a nutraceuticals business in parallel to its effort to develop anti-aging therapeutics? And, should it in-license a second drug development candidate?

The case discusses the development of palm oil in Malaysia. This experience provides important insights about when and how government intervention can be successful in developing new sectors in the economy.

Souk el Tayeb, Lebanon’s first weekly farmers’ market, and Tawlet, a farmers’ restaurant — the former adopting the legal structure of an NGO and the latter being an income-generating company — were joined by one vision to “celebrate food and traditions that unite communities and support small-scale farmers and producers and a culture of sustainable agriculture.” Souk el Tayeb’s founder, Kamal Mouzawak, first launched Souk el Tayeb in May 2004 in Beirut, Lebanon. The idea was to create a communal space for farmers across the country to sell their organic produce and products. The overarching vision was to create a platform that joined different people celebrating food, culture, and traditions and promoted and supported the agricultural sector in Lebanon. Mouzawak and his business partner were in the process of brainstorming ways to grow the impact of their business without compromising quality standards, all while meeting the ever-looming challenge of financial sustainability.

As Boston's Mayor Thomas Menino had repeated many times before many audiences, between his widely noted 2010 address and May 2012, "There has never been a better time for innovation in urban settings than now and there should be no better place than in Boston."

Three years had passed since Blackstone's investment in Intelenet Global Services, their third largest investment in India. Great progress had been made, but now a new challenge loomed. Globank, a large global bank, was Intelenet's largest customer. Intelenet's contract with Globank was set to expire in the next seven months, and all of Intelenet's assets and people working on the account, would move to Globank. Amit Dixit, managing director at the Blackstone Group, estimated that in the next four years this would result in Intelenet losing $160 million of revenue and $48 million of EBITDA. Blackstone could either channel large amounts of capital and human resources towards renewing the contract, or focus on growing third-party business at Intelenet. Dixit had to firm up his strategy quickly in order to begin negotiations with Globank.

Flibe Energy is a startup in the nuclear power space seeking to find a safe way to enable nuclear energy using a technology previously dismissed by the US government since it could not be used for making material for nuclear weapons. The founders believe they have found a way to create safe, clean energy using a proven but forgotten technology. The challenges are steep, however, as proof of the technology will require hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.

The head of research and development at MedicalTech, a new manufacturer of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) coils and software, had just met with MedicalTech's founder and chief executive officer (CEO). They had been discussing the technology development requirements decided so far in their attempts to build MedicalTech's first technology offering for diagnosing cancer. The head of research and development needed to advise the CEO regarding the best technology development approach (services-oriented technology co-creation and product-oriented technology creation); selecting the appropriate hospital partner to co-create the first public prototype; and determining the value propositions of all end-users for the features and functions chosen. The head of research and development gave some thought to seeking the advice and partnership of more developed competitors in the industry, as she was confident that this start-up company could be a success, but wondered whether the company could succeed on its own.

mHS is a social enterprise for the provision of affordable housing in India. After India's microfinance industry collapses, mHS needs to reposition itself for continued operations and long-term growth.

Women's Professional Soccer (WPS), which began play in March 2009, rose from the ashes of the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA), a league that played its third and final season in 2003. After WUSA failed under the mounting pressure of flagging attendance, failure to attract sponsors, and high operating losses, its dedicated supporters immediately regrouped to learn from their past mistakes and try again. This case chronicles the experience of WPS's founding team.