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Technology start-ups typically become successful by using injections of capital to grow as rapidly as possible and tolerating high risk in a rush for market domination. Entrepreneurs far from superstar innovation cities demonstrate that start-ups can achieve outsize success by following a different path. Frontier start-ups take a more balanced approach to growth, build resiliency into their models, and take a long-term outlook. In emerging markets, they are more likely to tackle fundamental societal challenges and to invest in their workforce.

In 2014, the founder and chief executive officer of Beyond Meat, Ethan Brown, reflected on the question that had led him to start the company: “How difficult can it be to change what you eat for dinner?” The small start up based in Los Angeles, California, had faced considerable challenges in changing customer perceptions and attitudes since it was founded in 2009. Its intention was to address both health and environmental problems related to meat consumption by creating plant-based meat. The company had successfully developed plant-based meats that were similar in taste, texture, and composition to regular animal meat. However, Beyond Meat needed to change customer perceptions and behaviours to persuade US consumers to switch from animal- to plant-based protein. What strategies could Beyond Meat use to market its disruptive innovation and become a game changer in the meat industry? Should the company invest in aggressive research and development to make its product taste and feel more like real meat, or should it focus on marketing the product based on its nutritional, health, and environmental benefits? Should it target vegetarians or meat eaters, and what demographic changes should it consider?

In March 2019, entrepreneur Greg Pahl was contemplating the next steps for Medicine Hat Meat Traders; the past year was the company’s best in terms of beef jerky sales. Should Pahl keep the business running at its current state while focusing on streamlining the operations to realize some additional profits? Should he consider a partial expansion that would allow for a potential increase in sales? Or should he build or lease a new facility that would allow production to be tailored for current use and future expansion while also adding new product lines? Was there another option that Pahl had not yet identified? What were the risks and benefits of each of the options, and how could they influence Pahl’s decision?

In June 2016, Mohammad Arif, the director of Student Biryani, seemed depressed about the all-time low performance of the franchise in Canada. Hard work and persistence not only enabled the company to become Pakistan's first and largest Pakistani food chain but also to establish a presence in global markets such as Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Oman, and Australia. But the all-time low performance of the Canadian outlet had put severe pressure on Arif because the brand image was at risk. Arif convened an urgent meeting with the management team. The meeting continued for three hours, but members seemed divided and the meeting was adjourned for the next day. Arif needed to find the causes of the problem and how to cope with them.

The Kamoriongo Poultry Co-operative consisted of 10 families who were involved in poultry farming in Nandi County, in the North Rift Valley of Kenya. The purpose of the co-operative was to pool savings to help individual families pay for tuition when their children came of age. Because of heavy rains during the region’s rainy season, many of the co-operative’s chickens were contracting waterborne illnesses that made them incapable of producing eggs. In order to keep up with demand from the wholesaler who bought from them once a week, the farmers had to find a way to keep their chickens healthy and to produce enough eggs to increase profits. In 2018, to combat this problem, the co-operative was considering purchasing either a new hen shelter or a commercial incubator. With a continuing decrease in egg production, the farmers needed to evaluate each alternative, determine how to finance these investments, and prepare both short- and long-term plans for sustaining their business.

The owner of Dunlop Livery Antiques in Dunlop, Ontario was considering a comprehensive marketing strategy with a focus on digital marketing. The industry was changing, popularity was wavering, sales were falling, and distribution channels were shifting. A new strategy was needed to increase revenue, profit, and brand awareness in the shrinking industry. Several placement choices were available, including selling online or at trade shows. A promotion plan also needed to be developed and implemented, which included advertising options such as Instagram and magazines. He needed to catch up with the competition in terms of promotion and distribution. With retirement looming, he had to make some tough choices—how could he promote and improve sales to ensure the future success of his antique business?

In October 2018, the owner of Sam’s Pizzeria (Sam’s) in Orillia, Ontario, needed to determine how he should staff his business to keep up with an increase in demand on Halloween. Halloween had often been a source of frustration, as Sam's struggled to keep up with demand on that day. Providing customers with good-quality pizza and fast delivery was critical to Sam’s success. Not wanting to repeat the mistakes of the past, the owner knew that he would need a better plan to staff his pizzeria if Halloween were to be any different this year.

In late May 2018, Grant Sparling, chief development officer at Cowbell Brewing Co. (Cowbell), a high-growth destination brewery located in rural Blyth, Ontario, was considering the company’s long-term growth strategy. Whereas most craft breweries started in leased commercial space, Cowbell opened its doors in the summer of 2017 with a state-of-the-art brewing facility, packaging operation, bar, and restaurant, all housed in an iconic barn-style building on land owned by the Sparling family. Sparling was considering a range of expansion projects, including increasing Cowbell’s brewing capacity, launching a working farm concept, building a 15,000-capacity event venue, offering a bus shuttle service to and from London, constructing an on-premises hotel or inn, and opening a second restaurant location, possibly in Toronto. But how should he decide on the next offering to fuel Cowbell’s growth and expansion?

From its humble beginnings as a start-up in China’s Jinjiang County in 1989, Joeone Company Ltd. (Joeone) had grown to become the country’s best-selling producer of men’s pants. Over the past three decades, the company’s founder and chairperson had faced several substantive turning points, including a quality crisis, a period of mediocre growth, and the need to enhance the sophistication of the company’s management approach. These turning points led to continuous business model innovation through the three stages of creation, sustaining innovation, and efficiency. By June 2019, the company was doing very well: an initial investment of ¥720,000 had built a company with sales of ¥500 million by the end of 2003, and the company had been publicly traded since its initial public offering in 2011. Clothes from Joeone’s three brand platforms were sold via direct sales channels in key cities and through major online shopping channels. However, the founder was still grappling with questions of how to align the company’s strategy to ensure its long-term success. Against the backdrop of pressures to further increase efficiency, expand the business (potentially internationally), and respond to changes in the larger competitive and political environment, how could the company sustain its competitive advantage and further improve its operational efficiency and flexibility? What lessons from the past 30 years could be applied to the company’s next 30 years of growth?

Farmery’s mission was to supply fresh, pure cow’s milk, to households in the National Capital Region of India within 24 hours of milking. After two years of operations, Farmery had become profitable and had introduced many firsts in the consumer milk market in India. It delivered raw cow’s milk to 5,000 households daily, maintained a cold supply chain, and adopted a capital-efficient business model and end-to-end technology-driven operations and customer service. In early 2018, Farmery was facing a challenge in scaling the business for the next phase of growth. Farmery’s funding constraints prevented it from expanding in more than one direction at a time. Co-founder Arora therefore had to choose: should he consolidate Farmery’s operations within its existing geographic market and offer customers a wider portfolio of products, or should Farmery continue limiting its offerings to fresh milk products but expand geographically, in order to maximize new customer growth?

In FY2018–19, Prabhu Bank, an ‘A’ class Nepalese commercial bank, reported its operating profit of Rs1.74 billion, a significant decrease of 34 per cent from the previous year. The bank had aggressively grown through several mergers with local banks. In 2014, it merged with the problematic Kist Bank, and to everyone’s surprise, managed to recover a large amount of bad debts. In 2016, it decided again to merge with another ailing bank, which raised doubts about the health of the combined entity. The central bank of Nepal had continued to raise the paid-up capital and tighten the rules to strengthen the financial stability. Could Prabhu Bank continue to achieve its ambitious growth and profitability through such aggressive mergers?

Farmery's mission was to supply fresh, pure cow's milk, to households in the National Capital Region of India within 24 hours of milking. After two years of operations, Farmery had become profitable and had introduced many firsts in the consumer milk market in India. It delivered raw cow's milk to 5,000 households daily, maintained a cold supply chain, and adopted a capital-efficient business model and end-to-end technology-driven operations and customer service. In early 2018, Farmery was facing a challenge in scaling the business for the next phase of growth. Farmery's funding constraints prevented it from expanding in more than one direction at a time. Co-founder Arora therefore had to choose: should he consolidate Farmery's operations within its existing geographic market and offer customers a wider portfolio of products, or should Farmery continue limiting its offerings to fresh milk products but expand geographically, in order to maximize new customer growth?

Receiver Coffee (Receiver), a Prince Edward Island-based coffee roaster and café, had found success since opening in 2012. Co-owner Colleen MacKay and her partners were trying to grow the wholesale side of the business, selling high-end coffee to cafés, restaurants, and other businesses outside of their usual trading area, with a focus on Ontario and Quebec customers. Sales growth of wholesale coffee had been limited, despite the overall success of the brand in its home region. Receiver had a clear identity as a high-quality local coffee roaster, a well-defined set of marketing tactics including price and promotion, and ambitious growth goals. Now in 2018, the question for MacKay was how to go about finding a market that could take Receiver to the next level.

China's digital commerce platforms engage billions of consumers daily across a number of routine tasks from banking, retail purchases, travel, gaming, payments, and more. These platforms are the most sophisticated/informed and highest performing/capable in the world. While often business leaders refer to Amazon as a leader in digital exchange, this case highlights the vital areas where the Chinese platforms lead. Of special note is the merging of the retailers' on and offline capabilities into a unified consumer experience. Retailers like Walmart China have fundamentally altered their business model and federated with these Chinese platforms to build a better consumer experience, sell more, and manage costs and investment. While not all of these practices are globalizing, the non-china platforms are copying them fast to reach the new global standards. Leaders need to be informed and respond.

This case touches on the topics of project-based work, agile methodology, and skill and talent management through Catalant's evolution as a company. Catalant's journey to becoming a software platform and talent marketplace provides context for students to explore new models of work and ways companies are mobilizing talent internal and external to their organization. This case urges students to contemplate how these considerations might shape the critical decisions business leaders will need to make about how to manage their organizations and use their resources to capitalize on their own vision for the future. This case also provides valuable lessons for technology entrepreneurship, introduces students to important gig economy concepts, and asks students to consider the unique challenges facing companies like Catalant that are selling a gig platform as part of their product or service.

David Cancel and Elias Torres, the co-founders of Drift, scaled their business to thousands of users and hundreds of thousands in revenue. However, they were falling short of the annual revenue target they communicated to the board of directors. Having scaled the business to date with a team of largely product and engineering resources, they contemplated bringing on their first sales hire. Within one week of announcing the plan for the hire, three promising candidates surfaced. Was it time for the team to bring on a salesperson and, if so, which candidate was ideal?

In early 2019, the founders of Anomalie, an online direct-to-consumer provider of bridal gowns, have just agreed to an $13.6 million Series A investment from a Silicon Valley VC. They are considering three major initiatives as they move forward. (1) To scale their very successful organic acquisition process that already engages 25% of the brides-to-be in an active discussion, (2) to automate their largely manual offering that allows the bride to design her own dress, or (3) to invest heavily in technology to support their unique strategy of buying direct from the factories in Suzhou, China bypassing both the distribution and retail channels.

In June 2019, the Indian government's think tank, Niti Aayog, mandated that all new motorized two-wheelers with an engine capacity of up to 150 cubic centimetres (cc) would need to be electric-powered by 2025. The chief executive officer and co-founder of Ather Energy wholeheartedly supported this mandate, as his firm's objective was to develop India's first smart electric scooter. Despite his confidence in revolutionizing the concept of two-wheeler driving in India, the task ahead was challenging and complex. How could the company encourage consumers to purchase Ather Energy’s products? What personality types should the company cater to? What roles did Indian consumers' requirements and psychology play in motivating them to purchase Ather Energy’s products?