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In October 2021, the founder and chief executive officer of Microsign Products Ltd. in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India, was planning to expand the company, but wanted to ensure consistency for employees with disabilities. The company was planning to increase its list of products and expand its market by partnering with foreign companies. Despite his expansion plans, the founder wanted to continue his company’s mission to “Able the disabled.” He had been committed to social responsibility since launching the company in 1987 by hiring individuals with disabilities. He was now wondering if he needed new employee policies to support his vision of hiring people with disabilities into mainstream workplace positions and promote career growth for his employees. How would his expansion plans affect the company’s work culture? How could he be sure to retain the “family” workplace model he had always promoted?

As Louise Bernard grew her entrepreneurial venture, Heeling Custom Athletic Shoes (Heeling), she wanted to ensure that she was managing her cash flow prudently to make sure the company was well positioned for future success and growth. Heeling’s business model was to manufacture and sell custom athletic shoes for a variety of sports that provided customers with the perfect fit as well as personalized style and exceptional performance.

MedfirstIndia Trading Private Limited was a privately owned e-commerce start-up in India. The firm’s goal was to establish a first-of-its-kind medical devices e-commerce platform catering to various underserved market segments, such as small hospitals and independent medical practices. The firm relied primarily on digital channels for branding and customer outreach. However, the founders did not have a structured data-driven decision-making strategy in place despite the wealth of data flowing in through web analytics. In 2018, after three years of operations, the firm closed its doors. The case highlights the challenges of strategizing and managing the digital marketing operations of an e-commerce start-up.

Rebel Foods (Rebel) was the world’s largest internet restaurant company, with 45 food brands and 450 kitchens in 10 countries. As Rebel scaled up, they were gradually venturing into the business-to-business (B2B) space by partnering with other food brands. Their transition to a B2B model, although necessary, had some challenges. As their reliance on third-party food delivery partners continued to drive up costs, Rebel considered how to better integrate their supply chain. However, their food delivery partners provided greater brand visibility. In Rebel’s one-kitchen many brands model, would they be able to leverage technology and automation to scale up and expand successfully?

In August 2018, JK Paper Ltd., a market leader in India’s paper manufacturing industry, acquired the ailing Sirpur Paper Mills Limited, an 80-year-old company that had been declared insolvent. By September 2022, Sirpur Paper Mills Limited was reporting profit margins that were on par with its parent company. The management team was requesting approval from the parent company to double capacity in the writing and printing paper segment, with a proposed investment of US$125–130 million. The company has overcome several key challenges and had achieved some considerable operational improvements. However, the proposed investment would be a long-term commitment in a cyclical industry. There were also some difficulties in attracting and retaining talent in the industry and establishing relationships with key external stakeholders. JK Paper Ltd. had to decide whether to approve a strategic plan to expand and double the capacities of its new business unit in India’s paper manufacturing industry.

<p align="justify">Established in 2002, Chengdu, China’s Four Inter Catering Group Co. Ltd. (Four Inter) was a company specializing in Sichuan cuisine and Sichuan culture dissemination. After 21 years of development, Four Inter formed a business model that emphasized both inheritance and innovation of Sichuan cuisine and provided a broader channel for its growth. In 2023, as COVID-19 came to an end, the food and beverage industry ushered in a new round of development. But Four Inter was caught in the predicament of a regional business model. At this juncture of development, Xiaohong Xu, chairperson and CEO of Four Inter, needed to make a decision about the company’s future direction. Should it deepen the awareness of existing brands (refine) or explore the unknown map (expand)?

Dalton Kreiss founded Maguey Melate in 2018 to bring authentic, traditionally crafted mezcal from small producers in Oaxaca, Mexico directly to consumers. In early 2024, he faced fierce competition from cheaper, mass-produced alternatives. Maguey Melate's mission-driven model, focusing on authenticity, sustainability, and social responsibility had garnered success but now confronted the need to either adjust to compete with rivals, maintain its ethos despite challenges, or cease operations.

The Wadhwani Research Centre for Bioengineering (WRCB) at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), established in 2014 with support from the Wadhwani Foundation, entered its transformative second phase after a successful initial five years. With over 40 professors from nine departments involved, WRCB’s phase one had yielded 316 publications and 38 patent applications and spawned two entrepreneurial ventures. Heading phase two were Debjani Paul, the professor in charge, and Abdur Rub, the chief executive officer, who were focused on propelling deep-tech research toward commercialization. As the disruptive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic subsided in late 2021, Paul and Rub looked toward the future with new hope and clear goal: to enable academic researchers to secure follow-on funding crucial for sustaining momentum beyond WRCB’s initial catalytic support. This initiative aimed to cement WRCB’s status as a global leader in bioengineering translational research, bridging academia and industry to overcome funding gaps and nurture innovation in a dynamic academic setting.

<div style="font-size: 0.95em; line-height: 1.4;"><p align="justify">The (A) case outlines the process leading to the rebranding of the Tepper School of Business (the Tepper School) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Lynda Oliver, chief marketing and communications officer at the Tepper School hired Digital Pulp, a New York-based advertising agency, for this project. The case outlines the marketing research process and findings—including a competitive brand analysis and several in-depth interviews and focus groups—that led to a new messaging hierarchy for the Tepper School to represent the school’s new positioning. Oliver had to choose between five proposed new slogans for the Tepper School to communicate this new positioning to the public and present her choice to the dean for approval. The chosen slogan had to reflect the Tepper School’s new competitive positioning and serve as the unifying basis for all future marketing communications. The (B) case presents the chosen slogan as well as a brief description of the proposed implementation process. It also presents sample advertisements, asking students to develop additional ones following the same format.

Nihilent Limited (Nihilent), established in 2000, is an information technology (IT) services and consulting company based in Pune, India. Nihilent has been led by a charismatic and very creative leader who has been leading the go to market and client acquisition strategies through his design thinking workshops. Most work has been acquired based on his personal credibility. <br><br>How can the company sustain creative disruption through humanizing technology that the founder has so painstakingly built? Can the right leadership be found to carry the company vision forward? Can the government's policies and ecosystem help Nihilent gain competitive advantage?

This case focuses on a small family business, Mattera Motors, an auto repair shop operating in the challenging operating environment of a South African township. The founder, Marcello Mattera, started as a “necessity entrepreneur” (i.e., an individual pushed into launching their own business due to no other employment options). The business has nonetheless reached a level of stability over the past two decades and is successful by the standards of a township enterprise. However, the company faces dilemmas in the coming years relating to succession and growth. Specifically, should Mattera’s children inherit the business from him? Could the business survive if Mattera shared it between his two children? Or should the family expand the business to seize new opportunities?

The case is about Dhriiti–The Courage Within (Dhriiti), a non-governmental organization founded in 2004 in Assam, India, to help rural communities in northeastern India generate income by producing areca tableware. In 2009, Dhriiti established the for-profit social enterprise Tamul Plates Marketing Private Limited (Tamul) to manage the entire value chain of the tableware. As Tamul expanded, it decentralized its production model to better promote rural entrepreneurs and to supplement its existing centralized factory-based production unit. However, women’s participation in these decentralized units remained low. In response, Dhriiti established Project Pragati, which successfully empowered 29 rural women entrepreneurs and inspired many more. The case highlights the dilemma of the co-founders in December 2022. They can expand the capacity of Tamul’s existing centralized production unit to grow the enterprise, which will generate more direct employment for local women. Alternatively, they can invest in more decentralized production units to establish a longer-term, more empowering model of promoting rural entrepreneurs, which will both engage women and transform them into change agents in their communities.

The National Hockey League’s (NHL’s) Carolina Hurricanes (i.e., the Canes) were struggling on the ice in 2017–18. The team had not made the playoffs since 2008–09, attendance was at the bottom of the league, and rumours regarding the team relocating were circulating. At the time, the team was not very relevant across the hockey universe, and elements of the Hurricanes brand had been harshly critiqued. A change in ownership that became finalized early in 2018 opened up the possibility of using the long dormant logo and jersey of the Hartford Whalers, who had relocated to become the Hurricanes in 1997. While trends around alternate jerseys and the popularity of all things retro seemed to support embracing the Whalers identity, would any effort placed here be diverted from fixing the underlying issues with the Hurricanes brand? This teaching note guides leadership of a case discussion including themes of branding and secondary brand elements, organizational focus, customer experience and the importance of fun to an organization and its customers. An online assignment challenges students to use artificial intelligence to develop brand elements. Several multimedia resources are suggested to support instructors delivering this case.

In October 2022, Evan Ehlers, founder and executive director of Sharing Excess, a Philadelphia-based non-profit organization dedicated to food rescue, received an unexpected call to help rescue 630,000 avocados from Peru, which were days away from being dumped in the landfill. Ehlers soon understood that it would be a race against time, given the perishable nature of avocados. How could he and his team devise a distribution and marketing plan to match the avocados to people and organizations that could use them before they went bad? The challenge was daunting, and the clock was ticking. What could he do to save hundreds of thousands of avocados from being thrown out in a short time frame of 48 hours?

The chair of Aditya Birla Group (ABG)—an Indian conglomerate whose businesses ranged from cement production to textiles—stressed to the leadership team that sustainability in business was a holistic pursuit with a three-step agenda. This involved (a) managing business operations responsibly; (b) understanding material issues from all stakeholder perspectives; and (c) seeking ways to create and share value with each stakeholder group by active use of knowledge. The meet this sustainability vision, the leadership team established an independent Group Sustainability Cell, which was tasked with formalizing and integrating the principles and standards needed to develop and improve sustainability across ABG. The sustainability cell would support the development of governance structures, a sustainability framework, and clear road maps for the business to prepare for a more sustainable future. In 2015, Aditya Birla Fashion Retail Limited (ABFRL) emerged after a consolidation of ABG’s apparel businesses. Ashish Dikshit, appointed as ABFRL’s business head, was tasked with leading the company toward a Group-wide Sustainability 1.0 framework. One morning, Dikshit was pondering this new challenge on his way to work. On reaching the Bangalore office, he sat down with his team to decide the way forward: How could the organization’s structure be adapted to achieve this sustainability vision? What should be the governance structure? What was ABFRL’s sustainability road map? How could sustainability progress be monitored?

Phumlaphi Rita Zwane, founder of Busy Corner, a thriving Shisanyama (African barbeque) business in Thembisa, South Africa, faced a pivotal decision amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Motivated by aspirations for business expansion and the pursuit of new opportunities, Zwane established a company-owned restaurant in the Mall of Thembisa. However, insufficient consideration of crucial factors during the decision-making process led to an alarming debt of $825,971, as of February 18, 2023, posing a significant threat to the business's survival. At this juncture, Zwane grappled with the dilemma of whether to close, sell, or franchise the Thembisa Busy Corner location, underscoring the critical need for a strategic resolution to secure the future of her entrepreneurial venture.

In June 2021, Mumbai-based WhatKnot Wedding Photography faced a critical decision between pursuing high-value celebrity weddings or maintaining their focus on mid-size clients. A potential celebrity wedding contract posed a significant opportunity for both revenue and exposure. However, this venture required extensive senior management involvement, redirection of resources, and potential strain on existing client relationships. The company’s co-founders held opposing views: while one favoured consolidating their position in the mid-size market, prioritizing stability, and client relationships, the other advocated for pursuing high-value contracts to gain prominence and higher revenue. The dilemma highlighted the trade-off between pursuing high-value opportunities and maintaining existing business models. This decision would shape the company’s future direction and market positioning, with implications for both short-term gains and long-term sustainability.

The accounts manager at the Commercial Bank of Canada, was reviewing a loan application from Pasquale’s Pizzeria, located in Sarnia, Ontario. The business owner was ready to expand his family’s business to London, Ontario, having requested a $300,000 long-term loan to finance the renovations and equipment to begin operations in London. They also requested a $20,000 line of credit to help fund the day-to-day operations of the business. The restaurant had never requested a loan of such magnitude, nor had the business undergone an expansion in its lifetime. With COVID-19 changing the food delivery landscape, the accounts manager was confident in his ability assess whether or not Pasquale’s was ready to take on this expansion plan.

Sri Sabari Engimech Private Limited (SSEPL), a firm founded in 2001, provided contract-based staff for the operations and maintenance (O&M) of plant and machinery (P&M), mainly in the petrochemical sector. The founder reaped profits from the first month onward. In 2008, his son took over SSEPL as director of operations and expanded the company’s services and clientele to increase profits. In 2019, the company encountered loss for the first time because of, among other reasons, malpractice by its former CEO, the ex-CEO starting his own O&M outfit and taking with him some of SSEPL’s employees, the entry of new players into the market, and the 2019 novel coronavirus pandemic. However, SSEPL managed to bounce back with low profit margins the following year, leading the director of operations to contemplate the way forward for the company.

When they are posed with two intriguing offers on the fund-raising television show Shark Tank India, the co-founders of Menstrupedia Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Menstrupedia), Aditi Gupta and Tuhin Paul, are faced with a tough decision. Should they forgo the social brand they have built over several years to pursue the seemingly smart business decision of becoming a sanitary napkin producer, or should they scale up their comic business despite so many competitors in the menstrual awareness landscape, or should they do both? Menstrupedia Comic is an educational comic book about menstruation for adolescents created by Gupta and Paul in 2009. Its aim is to shatter deep-rooted, widespread menstruation myths. Although Menstrupedia has started out as a comic book producer, the company’s social impact has been enormous, with Gupta having been recognized for her social outreach efforts by organizations such as Forbes Media limited liability company and British Broadcasting Corporation. By 2022, the co-founders seek to grow their impact, and the need to scale up Menstrupedia propels them to appear on Shark Tank India. Two “Sharks” (members of a panel of potential investors) each offer them a different avenue for growth. The first Shark is in agreement with the co-founders’ vision of social change and growth, while the other suggests that they diversify their business by manufacturing and selling sanitary napkins, an immensely profitable endeavour, while using their comics as a complementary product.