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How can business analytics be used to evaluate the potential risks of developing and marketing a "unique" product that has been proven to be sustainable, but public opinion about the product may be hindering its acceptance? The unique product is a clothing line made from industrial hemp. Hemp lacks the effects of Tetrahydrocannabinol (cannabis), but it is an extremely versatile, natural, and sustainable product. The case is about a company that consistently and successfully promotes unique products, like apparel made from hemp. It is also about the use of analytical techniques for financial risk assessment. If you are an entrepreneur with an idea for developing a unique product, this case will inform you about enterprise sustainability, enlighten you about hemp products, and provide you with an analytical tool designed for evaluating the financial risks involved with such a venture.

This case focuses on the challenges of keeping a collective impact program-the Tackling Youth Substance Abuse (TYSA) program on Staten Island-focused and effective over time, a problem faced by many collaborative community-based efforts. The TYSA program was founded in 2012 as a cross-sector collaborative response to the alarming rates of substance abuse on Staten Island, using a collective impact framework. In the four years since its founding, TYSA had accomplished a great deal. But by October 2016, when the case opens, many of the original members of TYSA's steering committee-most of whom had been high-level decision-makers in their organizations-were delegating their spots to mid-level staff who were not empowered to make organizational decisions. In addition, TYSA's early successes against prescription drug abuse were increasingly overshadowed by a growing opioid problem on the Island and by a continuing culture of alcohol abuse by underage teens. A subtler challenge was that, in the Staten Island community, TYSA was over-identified with Adrienne Abbate, TYSA's Project Director, herself; how could TYSA shift the community's perception to demonstrate the program's value beyond its leader? Project Director Adrienne Abbate decided to pull TYSA's executive leadership and staff together to discuss strategies to reinvigorate the program and to sustain the momentum they had fought so hard to create.

This case presents the startup and growth of Preserve, a sustainability-driven business and B Corp, in the circular economy. The company has grown over the years as a housewares and personal care consumer goods company in the retail industry with a closed loop business model on #5 plastics. With this operational model, Preserve managed to create social and commercial value by attaining strategic growth while meeting its social mission. To serve dual purpose (social and commercial), Preserve helped its partners achieve sustainability goals, but these investments did not necessarily add to the financial bottom line and short-term growth of the company. The case focuses on the meaning of "growth" as the strategic intent for a sustainability-driven business. It explores to what extent a purpose-driven business like Preserve could meet the challenge of simultaneously being a social value leading business and keeping financial sustainability with the current business model. The case examines Preserve's founding mission and organizational values, and it discusses the tradeoff between social mission and economic goals any growth-driven sustainable company would face. It puts into perspective the importance of stakeholder collaboration and communication for sustainability and growth. The case introduces the framework of SEERS - Social, Environmental, Economic Responsibility and Sustainability - for evaluating Preserve's sustainability strategy. The SEERS framework contains four elements: (1) identifying purpose and strategic intent, (2) engaging stakeholders, (3) developing metrics, and (4) implementing cascading innovations. It provides opportunities for considering strategic decision-making with respect to economic and social value generation and social responsibility.

In 2015 Root Capital, a pioneer in the impact investing space, began to explore how to more systematically integrate impact and financial management. After much deliberation, Root Capital landed on ex-ante rating system for any potential investment which produced a proprietary expected impact. With this tool in place, Root Capital had an integrated picture of impact and financial performance for a loan, and across its portfolio. The next question Root capital faced was how to use this tool to optimize impact and financial performance going forward. This case was designed to be taught alongside Root Capital's Efficient Impact Frontier Simulation exercise.

Urban Health was emerging new priority in the healthcare sector in India owing to unprecedented migration of people to urban areas and the rapid growth of urban population increasing the vulnerability of urban poor, and lack of infrastructure for primary care. New health challenges of non-communicable diseases, vector-borne disease, malnutrition and unhygienic conditions in water-borne diseases in slum areas made it essential for governments to ensure preventive, promotive, curative and rehabilitative services in urban slums. Yet, densely populated slums left no space to create health facilities. To address the challenge, Government of Punjab had set up Health Kiosks (HKs). HKs ensured limited medical services to slum dwellers and the poor population at their doorstep.

Papinotas is an app that allows schools to communicate with their students' parents through text messages. This social enterprise is supported by Socialab (a social innovation hub sponsored by the renowned NPO TECHO), and was created with the mission to improve Chilean and Latin American education by facilitating communication and involvement between families and educational institutions.

Social entrepreneurship (SE) has evolved from an initial period of explosive growth (SE 1.0), during which research focused on organizational and founder characteristics, to a stage that witnessed the rise of institutions facilitating SE formation and growth (SE 2.0). At present, while expansion in the number and scope of social enterprises continues, there is also a concerted effort underway to ascertain whether social enterprises are performing as expected (SE 3.0). A framework to assess the performance of SE, building on the type of metrics employed by business firms, is presented in this article. The framework-consisting of action-resources, predictors, outputs, outcomes, and impact-is intended to measure achievement along a timeline. Examples of how the framework would be used are provided for social enterprises with a range of social purposes, including one that involves an existing enterprise with the mission of reducing recidivism among incarcerated women. Brief comparisons with measures actually used help identify how the time-based approach laid out here would enhance assessment efforts and even serve as a basis for planning and decision making. The proposed framework could serve as a template to assess all social enterprises regardless of purpose, stakeholder mix, or scale of operations.

In the business environment surrounding the 2008 financial crisis, a new field within investing emerged to address the shortcomings of a "profit-only" mission of business. The nascent impact investing industry sought to create positive impact beyond financial returns. Putting this idyllic-sounding idea into practice demanded that institutions interested in this line of work consider what social impact means, how to assess it, how returns in impact investments would differ from traditional investments, and where to invest capital. Four students at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business realized the flawed structure of the financial system and wanted to see how they and their university could play a role in the impact investing industry. Collaborating with faculty and industry professionals, the students conceived the idea of a student-run venture capital fund that would invest in companies for both financial and social returns. Social Venture Fund was the first of any such organization on any campus. Before the students could even make an investment, however, they had to decide on the nature of their organization. The students wrestled with four questions at the same time as the overall impact investing industry was struggling with the identical questions: How would they define impact? What would their investment thesis be? How would they measure impact? In which sectors and geographies would they invest?

In late 2016, the executive director of Free Geek Toronto faced a challenge. Free Geek Toronto was a social enterprise based in Toronto, Ontario. It focused on recycling electronics waste and aimed to use its business profits to expand its scope of operations and deliver on its social mission of both reducing electronics waste going to landfill and employing at-risk and marginalized individuals. As a result, the executive director purposely hired individuals who had severe physical or mental disabilities, or both, and who had recently received, or were currently receiving, disability benefits, had poor health, or experienced general struggles with regular employment. The executive director's challenges included juggling the financial and social goals of running a work integration social enterprise. In view of the constraints he faced, the executive director began considering whether to call on the assistance of volunteers-people who, despite their well-meaning intentions, might unwittingly disrupt the operation of the enterprise. Should he move forward with recruiting volunteers? If so, how could he ensure that doing so would not adversely affect the organization's current culture or demoralize the current employees?

First Respond is a for-profit Chinese social enterprise focused on developing emergency services with the mission of making China a safer place. In China, there is a severe lack of first aid awareness and systems, and to fill this gap, First Respond delivers first aid training, products and services, and solutions to both businesses and individuals in the private and public sectors. They also provide in-race first aid service for marathons. Looking to the future, key challenges include how to most effectively communicate their social mission to stakeholders and how to best sell their products and services in China, a market with a number of institutional barriers to public safety. Case number 2103.0

It is a major global health challenge to get life-saving vaccines to children in hard-to-reach parts of Africa and Asia. These vaccines must stay cool during transport, yet it is not always possible to prevent heat exposure. Historically, health workers had no means of determining whether such heat exposure had damaged the vaccines and caused them to lose potency. But Vaccine Vial Monitors, or VVMs, changed that. A VVM is a small temperature monitor, no bigger than a dime, that adheres to a vaccine vial to indicate whether the vaccine has been rendered ineffective by excessive heat exposure. The benefits of using VVMs are two-fold: children only receive viable vaccines, and health workers do not discard viable vaccines because they are uncertain about heat exposure damage. VVMs were first developed in 1990, and by 2017, over 6.6 billion VVMs had been used. However, VVMs had a long and uncertain journey that spanned almost 30 years between 1979, when the World Health Organization (WHO) put out a call for such a technology to be invented, and 2007, when there was mass adoption by vaccine manufacturers. This case focuses on the efforts made, and challenges faced, by the many public, social, and private sector partners who collaborated to take this relatively simple social innovation to global scale. These partners included international governmental health bodies such as WHO and UNICEF; the non-governmental organization PATH, which spearheaded and guided the efforts; and TempTime, the private company that invented the technology. Though sometimes at odds with each other, the partners had to convince the many different vaccine manufacturers to buy and use the VVM product. This required continually adapting technology design, reshaping business partnerships, and rethinking cost/pricing models. VVMs had saved over 160,000 children's lives by 2012 alone, but success had in no way been a sure thing.

Founded in 1999, by Matthew Spacie to give poor children an opportunity to play, Magic Bus had evolved to a leading social enterprise engaged in sports for development, holistic childhood development, and livelihood training for youth between the ages of 6 to 18. By 2017, there were 400,000 children in its various programs. The organization had been through three phases of growth. The case poses the question what the fourth phase should look like.

Founders Vineet and Anupama Nayar had rapidly scaled their foundation to reach 3 million primary school children (grades 1 to 3) in two states with Math and English programs. Their goal was to reach 10 million children by 2025 and completely spend down the $100 million foundation corpus. A new opportunity presented itself in a third state with a potential to add another 4 million children. In grappling with this new opportunity they had to make certain strategic decisions on whether to go deeper (expand to grades 4 and 5) or go broader to more grade 1 to 3 children. They were wrestling with the question of which option would lead to more impact and leave their social innovation in a sustainable position after their exit.

Can benefit corporations be held accountable for delivering requisite public goods? An oft-cited criticism is that they cannot, but little empirical research exists to support that claim. Based on an in-depth case study of the oldest corporation to amend its governing documents as a public benefit corporation (PBC) under Delaware law, this article suggests that a company can be held accountable for delivering requisite public goods when external mechanisms are accompanied by an organization's internal commitment to self-awareness, learning, and measurement. In the case in question, the company established a three-pillar structure focused on professional engagement, community support, and charitable giving built on a six-year-old sustainability initiative, accompanied by an adaptive learning culture, and driven by top-down and bottom-up efforts. Current challenges include measuring impact and branding the PBC to grow the company's business.

In January 2016, Guillermo Jaime had just returned home to Mexico City after attending a Harvard Business School executive education program. Jaime was the founder and CEO of Mejoramiento Integral Asistido (MIA), a company providing affordable housing to low-income Mexicans living at the base of the pyramid (BOP), defined as those living on less than $10 per day. Since its launch in 2009, MIA had built nearly 25,000 homes-which provided safe shelter to more than 100,000 Mexicans-while generating an earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) margin of over 8%. At the executive education program, Jaime had learned that entrepreneurs could build on their unique attributes and capabilities to expand and grow their businesses. Should he continue to expand the services MIA offered to BOP customers? Could he leverage what made MIA unique-offering affordable homes for its BOP customers in Mexico-to fulfill other critical needs at the BOP for water, clean energy, and health care services? Jaime was an expert in housing, but could he translate that expertise to such diverse sectors? If so, how should he begin?

Guillermo Jaime was the founder and CEO of Mejoramiento Integral Asistido (MIA), a for-profit company providing affordable housing to low-income Mexicans living at the base of the pyramid (BOP). This case tells the story of Jaime and Endeavor, a non-profit dedicated to leading the high impact entrepreneurship movement as a tool for economic development in countries around the world. In 2010, Jaime was named an Endeavor Entrepreneur. This case can accompany HBS Case Study "MIA: Profit at the Base of the Pyramid," No. 817073.

This three-part case provides the opportunity to engage students in an examination of how cross-cultural considerations can affect managerial, legal, operational, and corporate social responsibility decision-making. The cases present two, non-profit organizations -- one in the U.S. and one in India. Both organizations are focused on food redistribution but each faces different challenges based on cultural, legal, and logistical issues. Cases A, B, and C are rolled out in a single class session. Students are given Cases A and B to read before class (including watching the video that accompanies Case B). Case C is handed out in class.