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The collective buying industry has grown by leaps and bounds over the past several years, and Groupon stands out as a major player that has revolutionized this market. The case describes the beginnings of Groupon, as well as the firm’s rise to power, the rise of its numerous competitors, its decisions and expansion strategies, and the collective buying industry as a whole. Key demographic data about Groupon’s customers (consumers and small businesses) are also described, along with recent developments at Groupon and within the industry. While Groupon has undoubtedly discovered a unique model that takes advantage of a “white space” in sales and marketing to local businesses, it is unclear what the future holds for the company. Will it be able to sustain its incredible growth rate, or is its business going to peak quickly and then fade?

In early 2011, the senior executives of the venerable Canadian hockey stick manufacturer Sher-Wood Hockey were considering whether to move the remainder of the company’s high-end composite hockey and goalie stick production to its suppliers in China. Sher-Wood had been losing market share as retail prices continued to fall. Would outsourcing the production of the iconic, Canadian-made hockey sticks to China help Sher-Wood to boost demand significantly? Was there any other choice?

This B2B case describes a common situation that arises when channel partners gain success and the perceived balance of power shifts from the supplier to the channel. The manager for Bolster Electronics, one of the largest suppliers in Canada of state-of-the-art industrial video equipment for harsh environments, must consider a request from Vickers Industrial Supplies, a regional dealer, to be upgraded from a dealership to a distributor. Vickers was generating a growing business volume for Bolster in an important market segment, the Canadian oil sands in northern Alberta. Approving Vickers’ request will generate slimmer margins for the manufacturer, which may be made up with higher projected volume, if the projections are reasonable. The potential reaction of the company's national distributors is causing concern. Although Bolster sells to regional dealerships in the United States, its policy is to distribute its products in Canada through two national distributors, and it fears that increasing Vickers’ role will alienate these distributors. Each alternative has benefits and risks.

Movie-industry analyst David Fitzhugh must estimate the value of the sequel rights associated with Chance Encounters (CE), a soon-to-be-produced movie. The producers of CE intend to use the cash from the sale of the sequel rights to help fund production of the original movie. With the purchase of the sequel rights to CE, the client intends to produce a sequel to CE--should the original movie prove successful.

Spreadsheet supplement to case UV6342.

Since its founding in 1980, Ashoka: Innovators for the Public had supported the work of over 3,000 of the world's most visionary social entrepreneurs; men and women who, in Ashoka founder Bill Drayton's words, are tireless pioneers of "system-changing solutions that advance the world's most urgent social problems." Through these efforts, Ashoka was also widely credited with building the larger field of social entrepreneurship. And yet, just at the moment when Ashoka's dynamism had propelled social entrepreneurship into the mainstream, Drayton and his colleagues embraced an even more expansive view of social change. According to this new vision, everyone in society, not only the most path-breaking social entrepreneurs, could and should be "changemakers" (the EACH vision). Drayton believed that this shift was such a "fundamental change, that it affects everything;" the revolution went far beyond Ashoka, to include not only the basic architecture of organizations -a move from walled hierarchies to teams of teams- but also the generative sources of knowledge and information which could be open sourced and widely shared. This case traces the evolution of Ashoka's mission and vision for social change, and the programmatic and organizational changes required to accommodate the EACH worldview.

Nawaal Motlekar is the managing director of Kwenta Media and founding editor of Mamas & Papas, a recently launched parenting magazine in South Africa. From her early entrepreneurial experiences, Motlekar developed a personal and professional interest in parenting magazines. As a Black South African woman married to an Indian man in an increasingly multi-racial and multi-cultural society, Motlekar recognized a gap for a parenting magazine that would appeal to a wider and more racially and culturally inclusive target market. After extensive research and development, she launched the Mamas & Papas magazine in early 2009. The case charts Motlekar’s journey as an entrepreneur, as well as her efforts between 2006 and 2009 to bring the magazine to life. The case explores the quantitative and qualitative research approaches employed by Motlekar, as well as her marketing and branding initiatives towards building a Mamas & Papas brand beyond just the physical magazine. With the magazine having been on shelves for 12 months, Motlekar and her board faced a number of decisions. These included options to increase advertising revenues and circulation, as well as choosing how to extend the Mamas & Papas brand into related categories.

The French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema contributed to strengthening the characterization of film as art in France. The note provides background information on the magazine's history, on the French film industry and on French film magazines

Noel Biderman was the president of Avid Life Media, a profitable Canadian growth company whose main businesses were various online social networks for groups seeking sexual partners and romance. Biderman was seeking to raise $60 million via a private placement offering to acquire a privately held online advertising sales company, merge the companies, and take the new and improved entity to the TSX Venture Exchange or the Toronto Stock Exchange. The Avid Life offering represented a legal and potentially lucrative investment. Nevertheless, only one investment bank (GMP Capital) was willing to help Biderman raise capital — because among the various social networks Avid Life owned the notorious Ashley Madison online community for married people seeking to commit adultery. GMP’s relationship was short-lived; after media coverage of the Avid Life offering started to focus on the bank’s willingness to service Biderman’s company, GMP withdrew its support. Possibly it was the bank’s desire to avoid being linked to someone known, rightly or wrongly, as the king of infidelity, that led to GMP’s withdrawn support, leaving Biderman unable to take a potentially lucrative investment opportunity to market.

This case is a supplement to Avid Life (A).

This note discusses the organizational challenges that startups often encounter as they begin to scale rapidly, along with approaches to addressing these challenges suggested by scholars, investors, and experienced entrepreneurs. The challenges fall into five broad areas: the need to formalize organizational structure; executive transitions; the need for management systems/processes; evolution of the board of directors role; and, preservation of an entrepreneurial culture.

This case deals with an exporting challenge faced by Ferro Industries, a small enterprise within the steel industry in India. The company’s manufacturing facility was located in the National Capital Region of Delhi. Ferro’s main products were roll-forming machines, cut-to-length lines, and slitting lines; the company was one of only three firms in the Indian sub-continent catering to the market for such products. This case raises two basic questions in relation to Ferro’s role as an exporter. Firstly, at what stage should an importer have to pay an exporter? Secondly, should the exporter release consignment to the importer before receiving payment? The case illustrates the challenges of exporting and international entrepreneurship for a small firm, taking into account payment risk, product pricing, deal-making strategies, promotional strategy, and client-management strategies. It also addresses the complexities involved in the decision-making process while exporting, as well as outlining various conflict-resolution techniques for closing a deal effectively while considering the appropriateness of taking risks.

This case traces the history and growth of Forbes Marshall (FM), a family-owned company in India. FM provides steam engineering and control instrumentation solutions for the process industry. The company has evolved into a leader in process efficiency and energy conservation through technology tie-ups and focused investments in manufacturing and research. Its joint ventures with the world's leading firms enable it to deliver quality solutions in 14 countries. Forbes Marshall's business practices and processes have combined into a unified philosophy of being trusted partners who provide innovative solutions.

Green-Tech Inc., a Canadian company founded in 2006, was dedicated to developing, manufacturing, and marketing portable and stationary systems for the production of bio-oils and bio-char from biomass residues and wastes. Green-Tech was a recent spinoff from a large university research centre with a very good reputation for providing bio-energy solutions. Although focused and well positioned, Green-Tech had to manage relationships with large companies such as Shell that controlled vast and complete supply chains of oil-related businesses, as well as small firms and clients that were unable to manage their waste effectively. Large firms could provide plenty of business opportunities for Green-Tech, but could also jeopardize the company’s autonomy. Small customers on their own might not bring in enough cash flow, but could give Green-Tech sufficient freedom to pursue its own strategic goals. Both relationships seemed to lead to a promising future for this entrepreneurial start-up company, but also created serious risks. At the time of the case in 2011, Fernando Bruteque, vice president and one of the principal engineers of Green-Tech, was seeking the appropriate growth approach for Green-Tech. Being in charge of business operations, Bruteque also had to maintain a balance between research and development (R&D), investor and client concerns, and business opportunities. What would be the appropriate growth strategies and business operation strategies for a resource-constrained firm such as Green-Tech? How should it proceed?

Nothing can bedevil a high-potential startup more than its "people problems." These problems typically result from choices that founders make as they add team members to their startup team. Three characteristics of startup teams must be aligned for these teams to function well: relationships, roles, and rewards (the Three Rs). Early decisions that founders make about the Three Rs can significantly affect their startup's direction and success. This note explores some of these choices and their long-term implications.

Jon Pastor and Lawrence Zhou were inspired by the same problem: the Internet was surprisingly unhelpful in the hunt for an apartment. The online apartment rental market was fragmented, opaque, and wrought with misinformation. The leader in this space was the website Craigslist, which was the most highly trafficked classifieds site in the world and the tenth most visited site in the United States despite introducing almost no innovations in its 15 years of existence. Having suffered as consumers, Jon and Lawrence saw this chaotic space as fertile ground for entrepreneurship. But the routes these entrepreneurs chose to take were different. "Killing Craigslist" explores the business Jon and Lawrence built to improve the online rental experience, and examines strategies to attract users and monetize their sites, all in shadow of a deeply entrenched incumbent.

Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) strategies are widely recommended for established firms to solve growth- and economic performance-related problems that they encounter in highly competitive business environments. However, relatively little empirical light has been shed on practical CE strategy processes and how they function in the everyday lives of organizations. The case study presented herein addresses this underexplored issue by describing how one long-established firm in dire economic circumstances renewed its strategy, as related by an interview with the company's managing director. The analysis draws on the theoretical ideas of corporate entrepreneurship models and focuses on practical activities within the strategic renewal process: What did the case firm actually do to compensate for decreasing turnover and to improve its longer-term position in the market? The findings underscore the progressive, proactive, and impermanent nature of CE strategies; further, they suggest that firms need clients and other external partners with equally ambitious business objectives in order to successfully implement their CE strategies.

This case describes the organizational and strategic challenges of outsourcing research and development (R&D) activities from Denmark to China. Nokia Denmark was founded in 1996 as a subsidiary of the Nokia Corporation and contained the largest Nokia R&D unit, concentrating on the development of mobile phones, outside Finland. In 2007, Nokia Denmark received instructions from corporate headquarters to drastically increase the number of mobile phones developed. Motivated by the need to alleviate pressure on its in-house capacity, Nokia Denmark outsourced certain product development projects to the Taiwanese company Foxconn in a joint R&D (JRD) setup. Foxconn, one of the world’s largest electronic component manufacturers, which was also developing products for many of Nokia’s competitors, was given the responsibility of developing and testing selected standardized and less complex mobile phones. However, by 2010 Foxconn had become a central figure in Nokia Denmark’s product development process with responsibility for increasingly complex projects. <br><br>Given the growing importance of Foxconn for Nokia Denmark, the rising pressure from the corporate headquarters, and the competitive market environment, Nokia Demark thus faced the question of how to proceed with the JRD. Three alternatives were outlined for the future of Nokia Denmark’s JRD with Foxconn: the management could decide on scaling up, phasing out, or continuing the status quo.