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Midtown Medical Centre, a family clinic operating two centres in the Indian state of Kerala, provided quality and convenient health care facilities to nearby communities. Founded in 2016 by six young entrepreneurs, the project had grown to two centres by the second year of operation, serving semi-urban and urban patients in the cities of Thrikkakkara and Aluva. In August 2018, the six entrepreneurs were considering expanding to a third centre, but they were unsure how to proceed. They were also unsure about the sustainability of the business model they had adopted for the clinic. They were aware of the importance of attracting new patients and having the appropriate space for the success of any health care clinic. Therefore, the six entrepreneurs were considering revisiting their marketing strategies to make them more effective.

In August 2016, Foxconn Technology Group (Foxconn) acquired a majority stake for US$3.8 billion in Sharp Corporation (Sharp), which was on the verge of bankruptcy. In addition to gaining more liquid crystal display (LCD) capacity, Foxconn was combining Sharp’s advanced technology and marketing resources with its own to expand and move up the value chain in both research and development and brand building. However, the post-acquisition integration to realize such value-creation potentials faced several challenges, including the probability that Sharp’s Japanese style of management might not assimilate well within Foxconn’s organization. Now in 2018, what should Foxconn do to seamlessly integrate the two entities? How could Foxconn achieve its efficiency, cost, and innovation goals while moving toward becoming the technology leader and successfully creating its own global brand?

Lonnie Bunch creates the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) with only half the federal support given to the first 17 Smithsonian historical or zoological institutions. Bunch, to borrow from the African American experience of creating "a way out of no way," raised more than the $250 million required in his capital campaign to trigger matching federal funds. In the face of traditional philanthropy that did not support "bricks and mortar" projects and despite racially-tinged patronization of his ideas to market the museum, Bunch, appointed as director of the museum in 2005, saw the museum open to international acclaim in 2016. It became the third most-visited museum in the Smithsonian system.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 817040.

At the end of 2017, the director of HY Capital, was facing an investment decision. Two years earlier, HY Capital had invested in Dalian New Vision Media Co. Ltd. (New Vision), a company working on augmented reality products for early childhood education. The investment provided New Vision with sufficient funds to enter the market. However, after a quick success, New Vision had saturated the market and could not make further significant progress. Thus, New Vision’s management team proposed to alter the company’s strategy to move into kindergarten to grade 12 after-school education. The strategic shift could be lucrative, but it was risky and would require more funds to support product development. The director was now wondering, should HY Capital support New Vision with further investments or just exit the investment?

In 2016, the founder and managing director of Smaart Home Furniture, a furniture manufacturer in southern India, faced a dilemma. Although the business remained profitable, it was facing stiff competition from local players, branded and non-branded players, and online retail stores. The founder and managing director was considering extending his manufacturing business by also offering sofa servicing, which would require changes in the company’s production, organization, and management. It would also require a rethinking of the firm’s approach and interaction with its consumers. Should he start offering services? If so, should sofa servicing be launched as a separate entity or as part of the offerings of the existing manufacturing unit?

In March 2018, Ontario Education Collaborative Marketplace (OECM) was an unlikely high-growth company. From its humble origins as a collaborative experiment to create efficiencies for the education sector—an experiment that had lost money and had to be financially supported by the government—the organization had adopted the culture of a high-growth start-up. OECM facilitated the procurement by universities, colleges, and school boards of everything from pencils to computers. By pooling orders, OECM was able to provide better prices from suppliers, thereby saving taxpayer dollars. OECM aimed to become “the Amazon of education sector” procurement. The total education sector procurement market in Ontario was CA$4 billion. OECM currently facilitated CA$255 million in transactions, but it was looking to control CA$2 billion of the market. Having become profitable under the leadership of a new chief executive officer, and newly independent of government support, OECM’s management was now challenged to continue to transform the organization’s public-sector culture in order to achieve high growth. What strategy should OECM use to achieve its aggressive growth targets? How should OECM scale up?

By the end of 2018, a recent business program graduate had found that his first social enterprise had been a success, and he wanted to start his next venture in the Kenyan agricultural market. He identified three challenges in this area—climate change, lack of market access, and ineffective education systems—and he wanted to try to address one of these with a new business. Case A explores how he needed to perform a market assessment to understand the opportunities and constraints of the Kenyan market, identify the resources and processes that would be available to him when starting the business, and form strategies for performing customer research.

With his primary research on the Kenyan agricultural market completed, the entrepreneur needed to analyze the new data using design-thinking frameworks, and then formulate a value proposition that used his resources and processes to address the large-scale improvements identified in Case A.

In 2012, Griffiths Energy International Inc. had secured the land leases needed to begin drilling for oil in Chad and was preparing for an IPO. During the due diligence, the company’s lawyers found consulting contracts that appeared to be payments to a public official to gain a business advantage. While bribing officials was not uncommon in Chad, it was a criminal offence in Canada. The company’s senior executive team was new, and the founder and former chairman, who might have been able to explain the contracts, had died in a boating accident. The directors needed to decide what to do: continue with the IPO and deal with disclosure if the matter did surface at some point later or report the findings to the authorities now and bear the consequences.

Supplement for product 9B18C031.

ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok, the viral short video app, made headline news when its valuation jumped to $75 billion, surpassing Uber ($72 billion) to become the world's most valuable start-up. ByteDance leveraged capabilities in consumer-focused artificial intelligence (AI) to become one of the first Chinese Big Tech digital platforms to succeed outside China, notably in the US and India. The case focuses on the strategic value of predictive AI on the supply and demand sides of digital content, illustrating how AI-based tools enable the production of viral content and customized delivery and consumption. It compares the Chinese and US approach to AI, drawing a distinction between their implementation and innovative capabilities. Other issues include the internationalization of digital platforms, notably the management of inappropriate and illegal content in the respective institutional settings, and China's unique approach to content filtering that combines AI with human censors. Competition with China's other Big Tech companies - Tencent and Baidu - is also discussed. The case can also be used as a general introduction to artificial intelligence, including a brief history of AI (Section 2), categorization of AI applications (Section 3), and a comparison of AI in China and the US (Section 4).

In 2015, in Aalborg, Denmark, the two co-founders of Better World Fashion formed their company as a social enterprise, aiming to highlight all that was wrong with the fashion industry and offer a cleaner and more ethical solution. The business was designed to focus not only on profit but also on minimizing the environmental impact of the supply chain. The founders chose to specialize in garments made from re-purposed leather, as leather had a long lifespan, and could be reused repeatedly without its qualities diminishing. Leather was also the most resource-consuming garment material to produce, and therefore was both the most environmentally damaging material and the material that was most in need of recycling. The company’s business model aimed to gain a competitive advantage through its image as a sustainable brand and its premium-quality products, which incorporated an emotional connection through the use of unique serial numbers and storytelling. However, in 2018, the co-founders wondered whether the company should continue as it had been originally positioned or whether it should change its strategies for growth and competitive advantage in international marketing.

Alfie.fit (Alfie) was a Montreal-based consumer software technology start-up that offered a virtual fitness concierge service for time-strapped people who wanted to keep fit, no matter their busy schedule. The Alfie platform helped personal trainers and trainees connect and interact with each other and supported the management of the transaction between them. However, Alfie faced several challenges, including the common chicken-or-egg problem of value-added intermediaries in their entry phase. As Alfie celebrated its one-year anniversary of being officially available to the public, the founders needed to make strategic decisions regarding the platform’s design, scope, and future direction.

On a late evening in December 2014, three co-founders of Unicommerce eSolutions Pvt. Ltd. (Unicommerce) assembled for a meeting. A couple of months earlier, Unicommerce, an India-based software-as-a-service solution provider for order- and warehouse-management activities in the e-commerce industry, had received an offer of US$10 million in series-B funding from Tiger Global Management to fund their business growth. The offer seemed fair, and the three co-founders were inclined to pursue a deal with them. However, just a few days before, they had received an unexpected offer from Snapdeal, a leading e-commerce firm in India, to buy out Unicommerce. Over the past week, the co-founders had discussed and debated their options several times without converging. However, the time for deliberations was over. By 9:00 a.m. the next day, the Unicommerce team would have to call up Snapdeal to confirm their decision.

Chunyu Yisheng (Chunyu) was the largest mobile health (m-health) application in China. Since its creation in July 2011, the application had focused on providing online medical information and consultations with professional doctors. Chunyu's business model was based on free and premium online health care services. In the first three years, Chunyu gained more experience than profits. The primary concern for the founder and chief executive officer of Chunyu was to find a profitable and value-creating business model. Two potential solutions for Chunyu were to rebuild the current online consultancy-based model or move to an alternative profitable and long-term value-creation model. How should the founder and chief executive officer choose which option to pursue?

The founders of Strider Miles (Striders), a running club headquartered in Mumbai, India, faced a dilemma. Over 14 years, they had built a business based on their love for sport and their own entrepreneurial inclination. The growth of Striders was an outcome of both a growing interest in running for fitness as well as the promoters’ efforts. The founders had, thus far, made minimal investments in fixed assets and marketing and promotion. Going forward, however, they were not sure about how to grow the business nor the implications of their current business model.

This note was written primarily for black entrepreneurs, to help them raise capital. The second objective was to recognize the capital providers who are part of the solution to the problem. The note reviews the evidence that black entrepreneurs have less access to capital than do white entrepreneurs, examines the reasons for that disparity, reflects on the societal impact, and-uniquely-compiles a directory of entities that have funded black entrepreneurs.