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In June 2009, the online gaming company Zynga launched the free social game Farmville on Facebook, which set a new record by reaching one million Daily Active Users four days after launch, skyrocketing to 30 million in six months. The case takes an inside look at how Zynga created FarmVille in just six weeks, including the important strategic and technical decisions Zynga made, the sometimes tense team dynamics, and the challenges Zynga's founder and CEO Mark Pincus faced within Zynga. The company's experienced game developers had strongly resisted his idea to develop a farm game because farm games performed poorly on traditional game consoles and were considered an inferior gaming category. But Pincus believed they afforded access to new audiences and wanted to seize the strategic opportunity offered by the convergence of advances in technology and the meteoric rise of Facebook. These combined well with Zynga's advanced data analytics capabilities, which allowed the company to aggressively advance a new business model "Games as a Service," in which developers continuously added features to make a social game consistently compelling. Post launch, FarmVille was continually evolving and adding new features. But after a few months, the quality of the code and the ideas for new features were getting worse, more bugs and quality assurance problems arose, and users were complaining that new features were late and the game was getting rote. This case is set in late December 2009 as user numbers started to drop, and Pincus and the FarmVille team tried to figure out how to turn this trend around. Zynga's leadership team had to figure out how to reinvigorate FarmVille so that it would continue to be the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Lieshout (NL), October 2015. Bavaria N.V., founded well before 1680 and based in Lieshout (Netherlands), was the second largest brewery in the Netherlands. It symbolized fierce independence and a high degree of entrepreneurship, always balancing legacy with innovation. Five cousins from the Swinkels family were at the helm of the operative business; the company's shared leadership model was one of its many ingredients for success, as was the family's unquenchable ambition for the company. But the path to global enjoyment was anything but smooth. Western beer markets had been stagnating for years, some even declining, and competition was fierce. To generate growth, brewers had to rely mostly on acquisitions. The challenge for the seventh generation of Swinkels' family owners had clearly been to leverage the company's exceptional brewing skills. To stay relevant and continue to thrive for the next generations, Bavaria needed to identify new growth niches and maintain excellence in product quality while optimizing its manufacturing and entire value chain. Should it continue to rely on technology to create new products and brands addressing ever finer niche markets? Should it reach out for new frontier markets where beer consumption was still on the uptrend? Could it really do both effectively with its original governance and management structure, keeping the family connection and values? Learning objectives: Family governance, culture, growth management, expansion strategy, sustainability, Ethiopia, affinity financing, emerging markets, product portfolio management, venturing, entrepreneurship.

Founded in 1983, China Nonferrous Metal Mining (Group) Co., Ltd. ("CNMC") is one of the earliest and largest global Chinese nonferrous metal industrial enterprises. It has investments and projects in 27 countries and trade networks in nearly 100 countries with a particular focus in Africa. CNMC has been exploiting mineral resources in Zambia since 1998, becoming one of the most important copper industry enterprises in the country. In 2013, CNMC was included in the Fortune Global 500 for the first time, ranking 482nd with operating revenues of 24 billion USD. In 2015, CNMC ranked 390th among the Fortune Global 500. CNMC has been actively committed to becoming a bellwether of "going global" among Chinese enterprises, making great contribution to Africa by promoting mutually beneficial cooperation. Confronted with intensifying competition in China and overseas, CNMC leaders look to the future and endeavor to further develop African businesses, to strengthen CNMC's overall competitiveness, and to fulfill sustainable development, on the basis of its international expansion strategy.

UFO Moviez is an Indian technology services provider that enables low-cost, digital delivery of films to cinemas. UFO's satellite-based technology enables a significantly wider release of films compared to traditional analog prints and standard, higher-resolution digital prints that must be transported physically. By 2015, 54% of all cinemas in India were using UFO's digital cinema system. UFO has achieved this without upsetting the industry's value chain of producer-traditional distributor-cinema-owner. The company earns revenue through three main streams: fees charged to the producer/distributor for converting films to digital format and distributing them over satellite, fees charged to the cinema owner for leasing the projection systems, and advertising revenue from ads shown during the screening of films. With cinemas in India mostly digitized, however, UFO faces challenges to continual growth. Should UFO focus on increasing its advertising revenue, leveraging UFO's core technology in other areas, or entering the business of film distribution?

It was April 2014 and Reverend Canon Dr. Judy Rois (Rois), CEO and Executive Director of the Anglican Foundation of Canada (AFC), was preparing for the upcoming Board meeting in May. At that meeting Rois intended to present a strategic measurement framework to align with AFC's strategic priorities. AFC's Strategic Roadmap for 2012-2017 was approved on May 31, 2012 and it outlined five priorities including, branding, marketing, funding for impact, operational adjustments and fundraising. While much had been accomplished in the last two years, Rois felt they needed to be more intentional in assessing the implementation of the plan and determining how best to allocate people, money and time resources to achieve the strategic priorities. She wanted to develop a measurement framework that would provide direction in determining how to allocate resources among the five priorities and permit a systematic evaluation of AFC's success moving forward for the last three years of the Roadmap.

During the 2000s, in one of the largest commodity booms in history, Rio Tinto allowed itself to be swept up along with other mining companies in the mad rush for growth. Although the smart allocation of capital had traditionally been a strength at the 140-year-old company, Rio Tinto suffered multibillion-dollar write-downs of two of its boom-time acquisitions, and in 2012 it reported a net loss for the first time in 25 years. Early in 2013 the board of directors called on Walsh to take over as CEO. He knew that to succeed in such a turbulent environment, he would need to reconnect Rio Tinto with its core balance-sheet discipline and put it back on a path of measured, sustainable growth. He and the CFO decided to focus on three initiatives: tighten up investment decisions, allowing only the best projects to proceed; run the entire organization for cash; and drive efficiency throughout the company by cutting costs, exiting businesses, and rationalizing the workforce. But they also chose to pull best practices from other industries and fully harness the efficiency gains from new technology.

Strategy and entrepreneurship are often seen as polar opposites. Strategy means rigorously defining and pursuing one clear path, while entrepreneurship involves continually changing direction to take advantage of new opportunities. Yet the two desperately need each other: Strategy without entrepreneurship is central planning; entrepreneurship without strategy leads to chaos. There is a way to reconcile the two, through the "lean strategy process." It ensures that start-ups innovate in a disciplined fashion so that they make the most of their limited resources. Lean strategy helps company builders choose viable opportunities, stay focused, and align the entire organization. The process begins with setting the venture's vision, or ultimate purpose--perhaps the only aspect of strategy that should be permanent. To deliver on it, senior executives agree on a deliberate strategy, defining the firm's objective (the near-term goal that describes success), scope (what the firm will and will not do), and competitive advantage (how it will win). The deliberate strategy sets the bounds within which experiments will take place and guides daily decisions. But the results of those experiments and decisions lead to learning that reshapes the strategy. Though priorities evolve, at each point in time it's clear to everyone in the firm which ones take precedence.

Martin Winterkorn, CEO of Volkswagen Group, has just been notified that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resource Board will begin investigating claims that some of the company's diesel engine vehicles have violated emissions standards. It seems that workers installed defeat devices on the vehicles, allowing them to pass emissions tests and meet the tough standards of the U.S. market. The questions students will need to answer are: Who is responsible? And Does Volkswagen take sustainability seriously or has it just been green-washing all along?

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Boeing and Airbus, the leading manufacturers of large aircraft, were locked in a battle for market share that drove down prices for their new planes. At about the same time, the two industry heavyweights began developing new aircraft families to address the future market needs they each projected. Aircraft take many years to develop, so by the time the new planes made their inaugural flights, significant changes had occurred in the global environment. First, emerging economies in the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere were growing rapidly, spawning immediate and long-term demand for more aircraft. At the same time, changes to the market for air travel had created opportunities for new products. These opportunities had not gone unnoticed by potential new entrants, which were positioning themselves to compete against the market leaders. In October 2007, the Airbus superjumbo A380 made its first flight. The A380 carried more passengers than any other plane in history and had been touted as a solution to increased congestion at global mega-hub airports. Four years later the Boeing 787, a smaller long-range aircraft, was launched to service secondary cities in a point-to-point network. The case provides students with an opportunity to analyze the profit potential of the global aircraft manufacturing industry in 2002 and in 2011. Students can also identify the actions of participants that weakened or intensified the pressure on profits within the industry.

Jacob Madisson is wondering how General Mills will make it to its goal of sourcing 100% sustainable cocoa by 2020. Demand is increasing and some are wondering if the supply of the precious raw material will dry up. Prices will certainly increase, nevertheless. With only 10% of its African-based cocoa sourced sustainably, General Mills needs a new strategy. How will the company move forward?

The oil and gas industry is one of the largest, most complex, and most important global industries. The industry touches everyone's lives with products such as transportation, heating and electricity fuels, asphalt, lubricants, propane, and thousands of petrochemical products from carpets to eyeglasses to clothing. The industry impacts national security, elections, geo-politics, and international conflicts. The prices of crude oil and natural gas are probably the two most closely watched commodity prices in the global economy. In recent years, the industry has seen many tumultuous events, such as the growth in oil and gas production in the United States; sanctions on Russia and improved international relationships with Iran; continued technological advances in unconventional oil and gas; ongoing strife in Iraq, Libya, and various other oil-exporting nations; continued heated discussion about climate change and non-hydrocarbon sources of energy; and continued uncertainty in crude and gas prices. All of this comes amid predictions that the global demand for energy will increase by 30-40% by 2040.

BancoSol, a microfinance bank headquartered in La Paz, Bolivia, was forced to adjust its lending strategy and business model because of a regulatory change. 60% of the bank's lending portfolio would have to move to the productive sector of the Bolivian economy by 2018, and these loans would have a controlled interest rate of 11.5%. How would BancoSol meet these targets, fulfill its mission, and remain profitable?

Climate Corporation is a San Francisco-based data analytics company focused on agricultural applications. It was acquired by Monsanto in 2013. In 2015, Climate's decision support platform was used on 75 million acres of farmland in the U.S.; however, most of those acres were "free" acres. To build a viable business, Climate had to convince farmers to subscribe to and pay for premium offerings. The case describes Climate's technology approach, product offerings, marketing plans, and the competitive environment for "digital agriculture".

In crowdfunding, rewards can make or break success. Yet reward design, choice, and planning still occur based on availability rather than strategy. To address this challenge, this article provides an empirically derived crowdfunding reward toolbox offering guidance in strategically selecting rewards. Based on a large-scale analysis of successful and unsuccessful Kickstarter projects, this article classifies rewards that are currently offered along eight dimensions. It identifies emerging patterns and derives five strategic core tools and two add-on tools. Finally, it delivers exploratory insights into the relative effectiveness of different tools that can facilitate decision making and strategic planning for entrepreneurs and individuals who plan to launch a crowdfunding project and who seek ways to reward their supporters

The Pioneer Academies case looks at the founding and growing of a South African campus of private schools that offered preschool through secondary, and walks through the different considerations as the founder considers potential merger opportunities.

Science Fiction World (SFW) was set up in 1979 as a publishing unit of China's state-owned Science and Technology Organization to promote science and technology. For more than three decades, this leading science fiction publisher had survived China's tightly regulated publishing industry. However, with the accelerated technological and social changes sweeping across China, SFW faced new challenges and had to assess how the changes could impact the future sustainability of its print-based book and magazine publishing business.

Alvogen is a young Icelandic generic pharmaceutical company, whose CEO believes that his global strategy will give them an edge in this competitive industry. Robert Wessman, Alvogen's CEO, was also previously the CEO of Actavis, another Icelandic generics company, which he built from 90 people in 1999 to 11,000 people and €1.6 billion in revenues by 2007. Wessman has supreme confidence in his abilities to succeed, and a knack for convincing other people of the same and bringing them onboard his ventures. In 2009, after losing most of his net worth in the 2008 financial crisis, he used his last $2 million to found Alvogen, which he hoped to build into one of the top 5 generics companies in the world. Despite going up against the big players in the generics industry (where 50% of world sales is controlled by just 10 firms), Wessman believes that his plan for Alvogen, involving difficult-to-make drugs, biosimilar drugs, and strategies targeted to individual markets, will enable them to be competitive. He quickly recruited a team, with little more than a business plan written on a napkin, and began operations in 35 countries almost simultaneously. The company grew quickly, despite some close calls with funding, and by 2014 it has almost $650 million in sales. Currently, Wessman, top management, and some of Alvogen's investors are entertaining offers from two different groups. One option is to merge Alvogen into SuperPharm, a large, publicly-traded U.S. pharmaceutical company. The other is to be acquired by CVC, a U.K. private equity firm, and Temasek, a Singapore investment company, who are offering to buy out all Alvogen's shareholders. Or, Wessman and his team can reject both offers and continue on as an independent company.

Mattermark, a software-as-a-service company that sold software allowing companies to access financial information about privately-held companies and startups, was at a turning point. CEO Danielle Morrill had to allocate investment funding from a Series A round. She needed to build up sales and marketing; she also wanted to invest in her product, which was already popular in the VC market, but was increasingly gaining traction in other markets. Sales and marketing had struggled, meanwhile, after a failed hire of a head of sales from another company. Morrill had to clearly prioritize her financial and strategic decisions.