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Founded in 2008 at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Collibra was a data intelligence company that found product-market fit in the years after the global financial crisis, when many companies were under pressure from consumers and governments to improve their data management efforts. Over the years, Collibra expanded its product offering from a Semantic Data Integration tool to a Data Governance Platform with a range of data management and governance tools, and also expanded geographically from Belgium to the U.S. and other countries. In 2019, with more than 350 clients, Collibra became a unicorn with a valuation of more than $1 billion. Now, co-founders Felix Van de Maele, Stijn Christiaens, and Pieter De Leenheer needed to decide how to move from "data governance" to "data intelligence

In 2015, a Shanghai businessman contacted the director of ObiSoft, an American software company, to request becoming the company’s partner in China. Over the next two years, they proceeded to develop the partnership and grow ObiSoft's business in China. The Shanghai businessman became ObiSoft’s partner and master reseller in China. In 2018, the Shanghai businessman proposed moving the company's research and development on software to China, and ObiSoft scheduled an August 2018 board meeting to discuss this issue. What should ObiSoft’s board decide regarding the company’s software development and future in China?

WittyFeed, an emerging digital content and technology company, was launched in September 2014 by three friends in the small Indian town of Indore. Within four years, the company had become one of the world’s largest creators and distributors of content that was followed and circulated online. In the process of scaling up and becoming larger, WittyFeed’s founders faced many challenges in areas like technology, distribution, and talent. These internal and external market issues interacted in a constantly changing environment. In January 2018, the founders were in the process of finding strategic solutions that would help their company double its existing number of monthly impressions to achieve 1 billion touchpoints, while becoming independent of its dominant revenue source, Facebook. What strategies could the founders deploy to reach this target?

The Dot autonomous agricultural platform, manufactured by SeedMaster Manufacturing, an innovative farm equipment manufacturer in White City, Saskatchewan, was a driver-less vehicle designed to replace the farm tractor. This vehicle allowed large-scale farmers to spend more time focusing on the farm business while the Dot platform planted, sprayed, or conducted other farm-field activities. In late 2019, the reliability and safety of the disruptive Dot technology when left unattended was not yet fully tested. Issues of sales, training, and servicing were yet to be determined. The company had identified three potential commercialization paths for consideration: Should it focus on retailing Dot and Dot-ready implements through a network of farm dealerships in a traditional manner? Should it create a Dot showroom and sales-and-service team, selling primarily online in a virtual showroom, like Tesla? Or should it create a “pop-up” custom seeding and spraying business to further revise the technology while promoting it?

At the end of March 2018, the director of the Barcelona office of Street Child, a charity organization with headquarters in the United Kingdom, was looking back at the changes he had introduced in 2017. The Barcelona office was responsible for growing Street Child in continental Europe, so it was internally known as Street Child Europe. Since January 2018, the office had added a paid employee. This employee was also the director of Street Child Netherlands and a former program support officer in Sierra Leone. The office could now employ up to eight interns, twice as many as before. However, Street Child Europe still needed to accomplish five key tasks: address its governance structure, clarify its brand positioning, consolidate its fundraising strategy, increase the appeal of its international volunteer program, and sett up an internal system to use its network effectively. The director needed concrete and executable strategies to ensure stable and sustainable growth of the charity across Europe.

TikTok was a short-video sharing app based in China. On November 9, 2017, TikTok’s parent company, the Chinese tech company Beijing ByteDance Technology Co. (ByteDance), announced a strategic acquisition of Musical.ly, a popular short-video sharing app based in the United States. With more than 100 million users and similar features to TikTok, Musical.ly was a powerful competitor for TikTok’s international expansion into the North American markets. For ByteDance and TikTok, the closing of the Musical.ly acquisition in August 2018 was not the end goal, as it would create another new challenge. Would it be better to keep Musical.ly as a separate platform, as Musical.ly had achieved a good reputation and millions of users in the United States? Or should Musical.ly be replaced to create a global app under the TikTok brand, which was relatively new to the US market?

In March 2017, the director of operations at Namratha Oil Refineries Pvt. Ltd., a leading manufacturer and distributor of high-quality packaged coconut oil in southwest India, faced a challenge. Because of inefficiencies in the company’s packaging division, pouches, jars, and bottles were being overfilled with coconut oil, leading to an “oil giveaway” that had weakened the company’s bottom line. The director analyzed the current processes and discovered improper data recording, frequent breakdowns, poor allocation of the maintenance crew, and an improper inventory management system. His experience told him that the existing production facilities were sufficient to meet the company’s requirements, and therefore, the existing processes needed to be streamlined to ensure minimal or no loss of oil. What strategy should he recommend to reduce losses and restore the company’s profitability?

This case introduces students to the history of women in the venture capital industry. It explores the impact of gender diversity on both company performance and fund returns, describes the lack of funding for female founders, and highlights examples of women-led venture capital firms.

The case describes how the Italian multinational Enel Group, one of the largest power utilities companies in the world, embraced the transformation of the energy sector, combining open innovation with sustainability - or what the company calls "Innovability"). CEO Francesco Starace believes that technology and business model innovation are the key to reducing CO2 emissions and creating a more sustainable future by boosting renewable energy production. From 2014, he makes innovation and sustainability his strategic pillars, embracing the notion of 'open innovation' - harvesting ideas externally (rather than just in-house) from an ecosystem of start-ups, SMEs, universities, researchers, suppliers, other corporations, and employees.

This was largely achieved through alliances and collaborations with public and private organizations. The case ends when Ascardio's Administrative Technical Council was discussing the organization's options to face the progressive loss of support from key actors, in an increasing complicated economic and political environment. On one hand, Ascardio had the option of modifying its fee system. Crosssubsidies were becoming increasingly difficult to manage and the remuneration of residents required urgent updating. Also, public and private contributions to patients in need of financial support to access Ascardio's cardiological services were declining. On the other hand, Ascardio had the option to use the social capital of Dr. Finizola and his family, as well as the one accumulated by Ascardio, to launch an aggressive fundraising campaign, and seek contributions in volunteering hours from the citizens of the region-well known for the mutual trust and solidarity of its citizens and organizations. Having analyzed both options, students will decide if Ascardio: 1) Should sacrifice universality to ensure financial sustainability and market positioning, while running the risk of losing legitimacy among its stakeholders. 2) Should seek alternatives for mobilizing the region's civil society and different forms of volunteering to secure an inclusive health service, available for all public regardless of their ability to pay, but risking to lose quality of service.

This case lays out the steps for creating a Business Model Canvas (BMC)-a comprehensive and intuitive framework intended to facilitate description and discussion of a new venture idea. Focusing on both the efficiency and value generating aspects of a new business, the model directs the founding team members to consider key aspects of a core model, including the company's value proposition, customer relationships, revenue streams, cost structure, and competitive environment. A variation on the model for nonprofit organizations, a Social Impact BMC, is also presented, adding additional items such as impact metrics. The case includes several real world business examples and asks students to prepare a traditional BMC for the for-profit company (Nespresso) and a Social Impact BMC for the social impact example (ConBody) using the tools outlined in the case.

In January 2017, the owner and founder of Storehouse Tea based in Cleveland, Ohio, was considering the company’s next move. Storehouse Tea focused on providing organic, fair trade certified teas, and the founder was committed to operating her business in a way that would have a positive impact in the world by providing work to local refugees. However, she wondered how she could scale this impact. Among her options, she could introduce product extensions, pursue geographic expansion, target larger accounts, or hire additional employees. But which avenue for growth would best allow Storehouse Tea to further its core mission?

Health Services Software (HSS) was a software company specializing in software for hospitals. Founded by a health care team with first-hand knowledge of the issues facing hospitals, HSS had first mover advantage. At the onset of HSS’s operations, hospitals had capital funding that allowed them to acquire the software with five-year licensing agreements. Five years later in 2016, as the licences were expiring, the hospitals no longer had the capital funding and could not afford a large cash outlay from their operating budgets for a new five-year licence. In light of the change in funding options for the hospitals, HSS was considering whether to move to an annual-subscription-based software. But before the team could establish the prices for the software, they needed to better understand the company’s cost structure. HSS hired a consultant to conduct the costing exercise.

CircleUp was founded in 2012 as a marketplace that matched accredited investors to emerging consumer packaged goods companies. A tool that the team developed early-on to reduce the friction involved in finding and evaluating new companies, Helio, gradually become very accurate in predicting the growth trajectory of early-stage companies. Ryan Caldbeck, co-founder and CEO of CircleUp, decided in 2018 to shut down the marketplace and focus the company on leveraging Helio's insights to directly provide equity and credit financing to CPG startups. This decision was followed by two difficult, significant discussions. First, Caldbeck met with the board of directors, where one investor reacted negatively and asked to sell his stake in the company. Second, Caldbeck presented the new direction to CircleUp employees, some of whom worried what would happen if the company became an investment firm instead of a tech company. By 2019, Caldbeck was on the precipice of another big change for CircleUp. The firm was raising a large fund to begin systematic investing, but finding investors for the disruptive offering was proving difficult. Additionally, as word spread about the power of Helio's insights CircleUp began receiving partnership offers from large, established companies. These offers caused Caldbeck to debate if CircleUp should further monetize Helio.

Erick Mueller was thrilled! The fledging company that he and two friends had started a few months earlier had been the widely acknowledged 'hit' of the 2007 IAAPA Attractions Expo, a trade show in Orlando, Florida that brought together more than 1,100 exhibitors and nearly 20,000 buyers from most of the world's amusement industry, from companies large and small. From Disney to Ripley's Believe-it-or-Not to Madame Tussauds, a who's-who of the industry had blessed Mueller and his small team with more than 100 leads. "That's the good news," thought Mueller, "but where should I start?"

In the summer of 2018, Richard Bbaale sat in a rural village in Uganda, looking over a banana plantation. He recalled the inspiration behind BanaPads as he contemplated what to do next. It had been 10 years since he had founded the non-governmental organisation (NGO) to help women and girls in rural settings overcome the challenges of menstruation - challenges that he had witnessed first as an older brother to his sister and then as a teacher at an all-girls' school.

Montreal Toheed Society (MTS), a community-based organization founded in 2012, has adopted various social media technologies to capture member interactions and to make the work of its board of directors more efficient and effective. The organization attempted to meet its needs by using JomSocial at first, followed later by Viber. MTS was partially successful in reaching its social media goals by implementing the Viber platform. The organization is now considering migrating to a new platform to overcome some limitations of the Viber technology. Two options for a new social media platform are Telegram and WhatsApp. In order to ensure a successful migration to a new platform, MTS must consider several questions: What should be the governing structure of the new social media platform? What would be the optimal balance of user freedom versus control? What sort of content should be allowed on the platform? Given its structure, how can MTS find the resources to manage a larger digital community?

In late 2016, HaoDF Online launched an Internet hospital in Yinchuan, China, which, in its first three months, served more than 31 million users and conducted online diagnosis and treatment for almost 1 million patients. The online health care services platform could collaborate with physicians to remotely monitor patient conditions and guide paramedical staff in the decision-making process. However, beyond diagnosis, consultation, and prescriptions, patients needed a physical hospital or clinic for the actual treatment, which led to the first of two major challenges that the company needed to address. The online health care platform could not achieve its full business value and become profitable without collaborating with existing traditional health care organizations, which were reluctant to embrace the online health care system as a medium for interaction with patients. How could HaoDF Online better attract traditional health care organizations for collaboration? Also, dozens of newcomers were entering the market, enticed by the readily available venture investment and funding, which raised a second challenge for HaoDF Online—What business strategies should the company develop to sustain its competitiveness and become profitable?

In 2015, three entrepreneurs in India decided to resurrect the 100-year-old iconic Keventers brand, which had stopped selling milkshakes in the 1970s. Although earlier generations had grown up enjoying Keventers' milkshakes, millennials had very little association with the brand. To connect with this new generation, the three entrepreneurs relied on both old and new brand associations. The three founders re-established the Keventers milkshakes brand; however, the milkshakes market became flooded with small and large competitors, and the company needed to find new ways to ensure the Keventers brand’s long-term sustainability. To sustain its growth momentum, the Keventers brand entered the subscription-based, premium-milk market in June 2018. As a result of increasing urbanization, rising incomes, and demographic changes, the consumption behaviour of Indian consumers was undergoing transformation. Demand for premium, organic, unadulterated milk was on the rise among affluent health-conscious consumers. Premium milk comprised less than 1 per cent of the dairy market in 2018, but it was expected to rise to 5 per cent by 2020. How could the three founders meet their goals of capturing 20 per cent of the premium-milk market and becoming a major competitor by mid-2019?