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The case is set in 2021 and explores the journey of Chiranjeev Restaurant and Foods Pvt. Ltd., located at Koregaon Park, Pune. It has evolved sustainable business practices, delivering innovative organic food products from farm to table to its customers at the restaurant over the last 25 years. The case underlines Malaka Spice's efforts to mainstream sustainability in the restaurant ecosystem by challenging the current food system followed by fine-dining restaurants in India. Malaka Spice, led by the founder Praful Chandawarkar and his experienced management team, has implemented a circular food system by incorporating natural farming practices, enrolling local suppliers, having an integrated supply chain, training staff to efficiently use the produce, composting waste and feeding the compost back into the soil, and closing the system's feedback loop. The case explores critical events in Praful's personal life and the entrepreneurial journey that persuaded him to pursue a mission to bring prosperity to all, including the restaurant's employees and the planet's ecosystem. Malaka Spice's culture is rooted in the Indian management thought process inspired by the sutras from Kautilya's Arthashastra (ancient Indian treatise on economics, statecraft, warfare, etc.). The principles derived from the sutras led to unconventional practices within the organization. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, the management team empowered the employees to start their own enterprises while continuing to be employees of the restaurant chain. They were trained to source materials and supply them to the restaurant. Malaka Spice influenced the competition to adopt its best practices and created an environment of trust to promote the cross-learning of ideas within the hospitality industry. Finally, the case delves into green solutions that the Malaka Spice team designed and prototyped to tackle the climate crisis proactively.

Open innovation rests on the idea that not all the smart people work only for you, and managing human interaction across organizational boundaries is therefore central to open innovation. This article starts with outlining and reviewing research on this human dimension of open innovation. The article develops seven principles of innovation- producing encounters that can guide managers in enabling value creation through open innovation. We continue by introducing the rest of the special section, which expands beyond the human dimension to also include firms, platforms, and ecosystems, with important implications for the creation and capture of value from open innovation.

In early 2020, Scarcity Labs Inc. (Scarcity Labs) was created as a spinoff from ViewFin Canada Corporation, a financial technology company providing a wide range of blockchain and cryptocurrency services. Scarcity Labs’ chief executive officer (CEO) and chief product officer (CPO) sat in the company’s Toronto office discussing potential opportunities for blockchain applications. In particular, they pondered the possibility of developing a non-fungible token (NFT) platform for artist, where works of art could be turned into NFTs, which people could then buy and sell. The CEO and CPO wondered what Scarcity Labs needed to do to successfully launch such a platform.

In early 2020, Scarcity Labs Inc. (Scarcity Labs) was created as a spinoff from ViewFin Canada Corporation, a financial technology company providing a wide range of blockchain and cryptocurrency services. Scarcity Labs' chief executive officer (CEO) and chief product officer (CPO) sat in the company's Toronto office discussing potential opportunities for blockchain applications. In particular, they pondered the possibility of developing a non-fungible token (NFT) platform for artist, where works of art could be turned into NFTs, which people could then buy and sell. The CEO and CPO wondered what Scarcity Labs needed to do to successfully launch such a platform.

In May 2022, Ethiopian social entrepreneur Berhanu Gebeyehu had to decide on next steps for his clean drinking water business, Brightwater Ethiopia (Brightwater), which he had begun in 2019 in the southern town of Dilla. Ninety-six per cent of Dilla’s households had reported on surveys that the clean water available in the town was inadequate for their needs and that school-aged girls regularly missed class because they bore the burden of collecting water, often from unsafe sources. Following two successful years of business, during which Gebeyehu had striven to contribute to the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals (SDGs) by providing clean drinking water and boosting gender equality while also making a profit, Gebeyehu now wanted to reduce his business’s dependency on the foreign non-governmental organization (NGO) that had helped fund and set up the business. He was also considering expanding his social enterprise’s model across Ethiopia as well as developing a capability that would deliver clean water in plastic bottles.

In May 2022, Ethiopian social entrepreneur Berhanu Gebeyehu had to decide on next steps for his clean drinking water business, Brightwater Ethiopia (Brightwater), which he had begun in 2019 in the southern town of Dilla. Ninety-six per cent of Dilla's households had reported on surveys that the clean water available in the town was inadequate for their needs and that school-aged girls regularly missed class because they bore the burden of collecting water, often from unsafe sources. Following two successful years of business, during which Gebeyehu had striven to contribute to the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals (SDGs) by providing clean drinking water and boosting gender equality while also making a profit, Gebeyehu now wanted to reduce his business's dependency on the foreign non-governmental organization (NGO) that had helped fund and set up the business. He was also considering expanding his social enterprise's model across Ethiopia as well as developing a capability that would deliver clean water in plastic bottles.

Lil Mixins was a Philadelphia-based infant health company founded in 2017 with a dual commitment to purpose and profit. Motivated by her experiences as a mother of a son who had several food allergies, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) developed and launched a product line of powders that could be mixed in infants’ diets to immunize them against food allergens. She kept the price low to make it easily endorsable by pediatricians and insurance payers and more available to lower-income households. After three years of operations, however, the adoption rate was slower than projected. The CEO considered introducing a new higher-priced product that could keep the business going, but it excluded the broader market she had hoped to serve. How could she preserve her company’s accessibility and social goals while ensuring Lil Mixins’ viability?

In May 2022, Getwell Pharma India Private Limited was an independent neighbourhood pharmacy in Amritsar, India. Pharmacy retail in the country was largely dominated by traditional independent stores, until the emergence of pharmacy chains and e-pharmacies with scale advantage, extensive financial resources, large numbers of stock-keeping units, store brands, and new technology. These changes were making traditional pharmacies less attractive to customers, who were increasingly asking for heavy discounts to match those of the new competitors. However, the discounts were not manageable for independents that were positioned at the end of a long and fragmented supply chain and stuck with limited margins. As a result, Getwell Pharma India Private Limited was losing its customer base, despite offering quality products and services. With revenues and profits falling, should the company consider allowing a major competitor to absorb the business?

Lil Mixins was a Philadelphia-based infant health company founded in 2017 with a dual commitment to purpose and profit. Motivated by her experiences as a mother of a son who had several food allergies, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) developed and launched a product line of powders that could be mixed in infants' diets to immunize them against food allergens. She kept the price low to make it easily endorsable by pediatricians and insurance payers and more available to lower-income households. After three years of operations, however, the adoption rate was slower than projected. The CEO considered introducing a new higher-priced product that could keep the business going, but it excluded the broader market she had hoped to serve. How could she preserve her company's accessibility and social goals while ensuring Lil Mixins' viability?

In May 2022, Getwell Pharma India Private Limited was an independent neighbourhood pharmacy in Amritsar, India. Pharmacy retail in the country was largely dominated by traditional independent stores, until the emergence of pharmacy chains and e-pharmacies with scale advantage, extensive financial resources, large numbers of stock-keeping units, store brands, and new technology. These changes were making traditional pharmacies less attractive to customers, who were increasingly asking for heavy discounts to match those of the new competitors. However, the discounts were not manageable for independents that were positioned at the end of a long and fragmented supply chain and stuck with limited margins. As a result, Getwell Pharma India Private Limited was losing its customer base, despite offering quality products and services. With revenues and profits falling, should the company consider allowing a major competitor to absorb the business?

Why do some entrepreneurs succeed and others do not? Are there personality traits that lead someone to become an entrepreneur? Although many questions still remain, there has been significant research on the "entrepreneurial personality." This note provides an overview of the most frequently studied entrepreneurial traits, including a set of "Big 5" traits, a need for achievement, locus of control, innovativeness, and risk tolerance. Where data exist, we chronicle what is correlated with a desire to be an entrepreneur and what is associated with actual success as an entrepreneur.

It is September 2021, and Kalshi is a new, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)-approved trading platform for event contracts. Kalshi went online just a few months earlier, after a successful round of Series A funding. Sumer Sao, the first (and at the time the only) member of Kalshi’s growth team, realizes that the key to the company’s sustained success is to quickly grow the number of daily active users to increase liquidity on the trading platform. To achieve that, Kalshi needs to find the right pricing structure that can potentially attract different target segments while also encouraging trading.

A Hong Kong start-up, Senior Deli develops a wide variety of soft meal products targeted at mostly elderly patients suffering from dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing and chewing. Its patented technologies help supply softened food that retains the original taste and appearance and appeals to local palates. There is significant market potential for soft meal products amid the aging populations in Hong Kong, mainland China, and other developed countries. Yet the team has found that some patients and care homes have hesitated to adopt the products. In general, soft meal products are still new to many people and suppliers in Hong Kong. The stakeholders seem to hold up in adoption of the products. This market chasm is too costly for Senior Deli or any single start-up to overcome. Therefore, Senior Deli’s major issues are educating target customers, legitimizing soft meals, and promoting its products amid such uncertainty. At the end of 2022, a localized guideline for care foods was announced in Hong Kong, but will it create an opportunity for Senior Deli to overcome the issues it has been facing?

Shelly Sun had founded BrightStar Care, a home health care and medical staffing agency, 20 years earlier and had grown the business to over 300 franchised locations and $654 million in annual system-wide sales. Sun had spent years working to get "the right people in the right seats" and now had a strong bench of executive talent. Sun loved being an ambassador for BrightStar and spent considerable time with external stakeholders, including policymakers. But there were times she still felt she needed to take the reins-after all, no one knew BrightStar like she did.

The owner of Primes and Zooms, a retail still photography rental organization based in Pune, India, was facing a hard choice in the spring of 2022. After ten years in the business, he saw that the market was changing in some unexpected ways. These changes, coupled with the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic had brought, meant that Primes and Zooms needed to determine a new growth strategy. There had been fast-paced growth in the video photography space, compared to the still photography space. The options were as follows: should Primes and Zooms enter new geographies with its existing still photography business, or should it expand its current locations to include video rental services?

The owner of Primes and Zooms, a retail still photography rental organization based in Pune, India, was facing a hard choice in the spring of 2022. After ten years in the business, he saw that the market was changing in some unexpected ways. These changes, coupled with the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic had brought, meant that Primes and Zooms needed to determine a new growth strategy. There had been fast-paced growth in the video photography space, compared to the still photography space. The options were as follows: should Primes and Zooms enter new geographies with its existing still photography business, or should it expand its current locations to include video rental services?

Mylab Discovery Solutions is a biotechnology firm based in Pune, Maharashtra, a state in the western part of India. The company is focused on developing and commercializing diagnostic solutions and automation in molecular, serology, and immunology areas. Its applications are in clinical diagnostics, drug discovery, biomedical research, agri genomics, and animal and food safety. Till early 2020, like any other young venture in a nascent market, Mylab was struggling to raise funds and spread awareness of high-priced but more accurate "molecular diagnostics" in a price-sensitive market. Its fortunes changed in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The firm was dubbed the "poster child of the COVID-19 pandemic" after it rose to the limelight for developing COVID-19 RTPCR and rapid antigen test kits. The next two years saw it raising funds, automating and scaling production, doubling down on research and development, launching multiple new products, and pursuing inorganic growth through acquisitions and alliances. However, by January 2022, the pandemic seemed to have run its course. The founders, Hasmukh Rawal and Shailendra Kawade, were considering strategies to maintain Mylab's growth momentum. Through a series of interviews with key players at Mylab, we have developed a case study to delve into how a startup in the nascent biotechnology industry in India succeeded in turning out innovation after innovation and scaling up production of test kits from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands in the span of a few months. The learning objectives of this case are to understand the unique challenges faced by ventures in nascent markets, compare the ecosystem of ventures in nascent industries with those in mature industries, and discuss how stakeholder relationships evolve as a venture advances in its journey.

The case explores the journey of developing and implementing an electronic medical record (EMR) solution across the vast LVPEI network. The leadership team at LVPEI decided to take the unconventional approach of developing the EMR solution in-house and chose Anthony Vipin Das, an ophthalmologist with a flair for information technology (IT), to head this development project. The case is set in 2017 and illustrates the challenges that Das, Consultant Ophthalmologist at LVPEI, faced and overcame in developing and implementing the eyeSmart EMR software. Although LVPEI had expertise in developing and implementing eye care solutions both inside and outside India, it needed a fresh strategy for developing and scaling up eyeSmart EMR. With the efforts of Das and his team, eyeSmart EMR was successfully implemented within the LVPEI network. The case ends with Das considering different options for the evolution of eyeSmart EMR.

Compared with start-ups, established corporations have many resources and capabilities that ought to give them a head start: customers, products, operations, licenses, distribution, marketing, and capital. But corporations lack one critical capability: the entrepreneurial muscle to take an idea from small to big, from zero to one. The authors describe a new model-the hybrid start-up-which differs from typical internal cor­porate ventures. It combines the best of people, processes, and resources from both inside and outside the company. They show how many big companies are creating their own hybrid start-ups to unlock the value of their assets and defend their markets while becoming digital leaders. They draw on lessons from more than 190 such ventures launched over the past eight years with the help of BCG Digital Ventures, including those created by companies such as UPS (Ware2Go), Mercedes-Benz (RepairSmith), Volkswagen (Heycar), First American (Endpoint), AIA (Snackbox), Airbus (UP42), and others. The data provides strong evidence both that the model works and that hybrid start-ups are two or three times as likely to succeed as independent start-ups.

This is the student handout which accompanies 8B10M108.