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Covalent Laboratories Private Ltd. is involved in the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients and bulk drugs in Hyderabad, India. In March 2012, the company added a new manufacturing plant and was in the process of obtaining regulatory approvals for its products from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Directorate of Quality of Medicines. Anticipating good growth, the company approached the Commercial Development Bank of India in June 2014 for sanction of a term loan of INR350 million over seven years towards expansion and modernization of its existing manufacturing facilities, including the construction of a captive power plant and effluent treatment plant. As the proposed financial assistance is long term in nature and the company is a new client with average financial strength, the head of the bank’s Corporate Banking Department faces a dilemma. He has asked a credit analyst to research the financial performance of the company and to assess the financial viability of and identify the risks in the proposal.

The U.S.-based executive vice-president (EVP) of Glenmark Generics Inc., the subsidiary of an Indian generic manufacturer, is weighing his options on whether or not to proceed with what is known as a Launch @ Risk in the U.S. market. Defined as a “risk taken by a generic company when it puts a product on the market before resolving outstanding patent lawsuits against it,” Launch @ Risk is a widely acknowledged route to gain an entry into the world's largest and most profitable pharmaceutical market. The focal product is the generic version of a hypertension drug whose patent is set to expire in 2015. Glenmark Generics has just secured approval from the U.S. Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) to launch a low-cost generic version of the patented drug but the FDA approval is being contested in a court of law by the patent holder. While awaiting the court’s ruling, the EVP must evaluate his company's options and decide whether to proceed, in the interim, with the product launch.

Two business partners were considering adding product lines to their international custom software business in Toronto, Canada. From 2009, Myplanet had grown ever more focused, in turn yielding an increase in average project size to US$1 million and a staff that grew from six to 100. Until they created RelayRobin, a system that was similar in capability to Skype, the two partners had achieved their remarkable growth almost exclusively through custom projects for large, well-known U.S. clients. In seeking the next major growth markets, they identified communication services – in particular, the telecommunications industry – as a prime opportunity. Targeting telecom carriers had produced disappointing results, so Myplanet instead opted to turn to original equipment manufacturers. The early results were encouraging.

TriCiclos, a recycling company in Chile, and the first B Corporation in Latin America, is innovating the way business is understood and conducted. The chief executive officer is excited about the financial future of the company, including expansion into new geographic markets in Latin America. Nevertheless, different geographic markets bring a new set of challenges for a sustainable business: foreign governments with different laws and regulations for recycling and partnering with clients and recyclers, the need to establish partnerships with local recycling plants and, more importantly, how these variables affect the company’s organizational mission and culture.

Alberta Ballet, composed of the Alberta Ballet professional dance company and The School of Alberta Ballet, had experienced remarkable success in North America and Europe. However, in 2014, it faced a set of unique problems. Demand for performances from the company had grown so significantly that it was no longer able to accommodate all requests, especially from smaller markets in Alberta. Coupled with increasing demand, operations were fragmented across many locations, including some very expensive leases that were set to expire in 2016. Building a brand-new facility that could house all of the Calgary operations was an option, but was it feasible with the current economic conditions? Furthermore, how could Alberta Ballet better serve secondary markets?

The director of CPVet in Gurgaon, India, was worried. The cost of running the veterinary clinics was mounting. Was customer behaviour in India with respect to pets changing? Unlike in many developed countries, Indian pet owners were not as willing to think of their pets as their own children and care for them accordingly. However, the industry seemed to be changing and trends showed that spending on pet care was steadily increasing. Were pet owners in India ready to invest more in their pets? Should CPVet expand beyond Gurgaon? Despite the fast growth rate of the industry and the company’s first-mover advantage, CPVet faced several challenges with respect to its goal of expanding to a national level.

The president of Vic Progressive Diamond Drilling, a Canadian enterprise based in Sussex, New Brunswick that provides products and services to mining companies, is reviewing the progress in the market launch of SkyTrack, a new product designed for use in difficult terrain exploration by large mining corporations. Feedback during field trials has been favourable; the innovation is, in fact, customer-led. There is also evidence that this multipurpose vehicle saves time and money in transporting mining equipment across rough terrain in remote areas. But the company has yet to make its first sale in two years because the user community is experiencing a difficult economic environment and is unwilling to make capital investments. How can product adoption be generated? What customer value proposition can be developed? Can SkyTrack be positioned as a means to improve cash flow for customers during difficult times, or should customers be primed to adopt it when the inevitable uptick in exploration occurs?

The owner and chief executive officer of the India Holiday Bureau (IHB), was besieged by calls from irate travelers seeking an explanation for the poor customer service they had received. It was the peak of the tourist season in India, with international visitors pouring into the country to explore its temples, palaces, hills, beaches and wildlife reserves. IHB had accepted several online hotel-booking requests, but because the hotel did not have sufficient staff to follow through on these requests, several customers were left stranded at the airport without their promised airport transfers. Others had been forced to go without hotel rooms altogether. IHB knew that a lack of accurate forecasting and proper planning was at the root of this problem. How could the owner accurately predict the growth that would continue to overwhelm IHB unless the company prepared for it?

Cisco Systems, Inc., the dominant global supplier of the routers and switches that formed the backbone of the Internet, was considering entry into the cloud-based education market in China through the design and marketing of an in-classroom device, the Sunbird. The new vice-president and chief technology officer of Enterprise Networking Group, Cisco Greater China, had met with a Politburo member of the Communist Party of China and State Councilor with responsibilities including China’s science, technology and education policies. The vice-president had introduced Cisco’s global operations and the two women had discussed partnering, technology transfer, cross branding, joint product and service development, cooperation with Chinese companies, and the IT revolution and its effect on Chinese education. How could Cisco profitably join in the Chinese education IT revolution? Cisco had never entered the educational IT equipment space in any part of the world with its own dedicated product. Should it develop the Sunbird for the Chinese market?<br><br> A <a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa9uTc1JKDI>video is available for viewing online.

In early 2011, the founder of REfficient, an asset recovery service based in Hamilton, Ontario, was thinking about how she should manage the rapid growth that seemed just around the corner. Founded in 2010 to help cable firms generate value from their stock of surplus equipment, REfficient, with no direct competitors in the Ontario market, had grown rapidly and had a list of corporate customers, two warehouses and five employees. The company was positioned as the efficient way for customers to recover value from their surplus assets; it would collect and inventory them, provide an online list and track the environmental impact of selling or discarding them. The company was now looking to secure a pilot project with the Ontario provincial government. Innovative in the “green” sense because of its innovative reuse, recycle or resell model, as well as its integrated carbon footprint estimator, REfficient was a good match for the program. But how would it deal with an increasingly large variety of items, given its limited resources and space?

After several years of near steady state, the market share of Colgate Palmolive Canada Inc. in the toothpaste category has gathered momentum in 2012. In a bid to extend the gap between the company and its primary competitors in the category in 2013, the vice-president of customer development is discussing the options with his team at company headquarters in Toronto. Market share is an important performance metric at the company. One suggestion is to increase the marketing budget. There is a general consensus that marketing dollars should not be diffused across activities during the year, but there are differences of opinion about what to focus on — trade promotions, consumer promotions or advertising — in order to sustain the momentum in market share in 2013.

A homeowner and his family finally have an offer on their residence. The terms negotiated with the buyers require the homeowner to build a detached garage on the property before the closing date on August 30, 2013, which is in 16 weeks. The homeowner’s family has also made a conditional offer on another home, and the condition must be removed in two days if they would like to finalize that purchase. Although proficient at construction, the homeowner has encountered a major addition to his timeline on May 1. The city is requiring that he obtain a variance approval before the building department issues the building permit, thereby delaying the start of construction by between nine and ten weeks. The homeowner must decide whether to go ahead or cancel the sale of the residence and the purchase of a new home.

Kingfisher Airlines, a leading airline company in India, had incurred substantial losses and its net worth had been eroded. This news was widely covered by Indian and international press. Analysts and media were of the opinion that Kingfisher needed equity infusion to steer it through the distress. Because of its financial difficulties, the company’s stock was trading at near historic lows and its equity value was, in fact, negative. Yet company management was emphatic that Kingfisher was on the road to recovery although it was negotiating a second debt restructuring with banks. Would this restructuring prove more successful than the last? Could anything save Kingfisher from this dire financial situation?

A university instructor mulls over the idea of partnering with six of his students to start a new business that would provide all-in-one starter kits for first-year university or college students moving into residences across Canada. To help with his decision-making process, the instructor wants to evaluate the product and the group’s marketing strategy; he also wants to project the new venture’s financial performance for the first three years of operations.

For French watchmaker Pequignet, its return to the annual luxury watch and jewelry show, Baselworld, signaled a new page in the company’s 40-year history. As the only “haute horlogerie” manufacturer in France since the quartz crisis in the 1970s, Pequignet had caught the attention of both the media and the watch collector community, despite going through receivership and a change of ownership. In addition to showcasing its Calibre Royal collection, Pequignet presented a new line of entry-level watches. Should the company invest further in its manufacturing processes to make high-end mechanical watches, as it had in the past? Or should it focus on producing more affordable, accessible products, as with its most recent collection? As an independent atelier, Pequignet had to address these questions in order to succeed in the highly competitive global watch market.

On June 6, 2014, the deputy general manager of the human resources department of Xiamen Airlines, based in Xiamen, Fujian Province, China, discussed his company’s best practices at China's first national forum on aviation security. Since 2009, a significant reform in the company’s pilot compensation system had aimed to promote a stronger linkage between their pay and performance. Initial outcomes had been positive, with improved productivity and job satisfaction. Yet, there were ongoing challenges in recruiting and retaining pilots due to increasing shortages of qualified personnel in the domestic and global aviation labour market and greater competition from both state-owned and new private airline companies in China. How could Xiamen Airlines become an employer of choice? Was the high compensation sustainable if the industry became less profitable? What else could the company offer to retain talented pilots?

Entravision, a leading Spanish-language broadcasting company in the United States that targets Hispanic Americans, has just set up a digital analytics division called Luminar, which uses Big Data to focus a company’s marketing to a particular set of consumers. The idea of launching Luminar has been mooted by an outsider who is a friend and protegé of the company’s founding chairman. As the incumbent president of the new division, he is grappling with some major issues. How should he secure the buy-in of line and staff managers at Entravision? How should he find a structural fit between Entravision and Luminar? How should he leverage business opportunities beyond digital analytics? What kind of entry barriers can he build so that Luminar retains its first mover advantage?

Stack Brewing, a start-up craft brewery, has a capacity of approximately 5,600 litres per month based on twelve 117-litre batches per week. A government grant based on growth and job creation potential will help boost production capacity by five times, necessitating the development of additional distribution and marketing communication strategies. The owner cannot afford a listing in the Beer Store, the distribution monopoly owned by Labatt Breweries of Canada and Molson-Coors Canada Inc., and his budget for communications is small. While this case provides an opportunity for students to perform quantitative analysis based on revenues and market size, the focus of the case, however, is on an improved distribution and communication plan.

Sai Marine Exports Pvt. Ltd. (SMEPL) had been in business for 20 years and had established itself as one of the major Indian shrimp exporters, with the United States and European Union as its primary markets. Following unprecedented market conditions due to early mortality syndrome affecting the exports of leading Southeast Asian shrimp-exporting countries in 2009, Indian companies were at a competitive advantage. SMEPL’s revenues had increased significantly from 2010 to 2014. Its current markets, the United States and Europe, were lucrative, but SMEPL’s chairman feared the risks of concentration in only two markets. Should SMEPL penetrate deeper into the U.S. and E.U. markets or enter new international markets like Japan and China?

Following the board’s suspension of the chief executive officer (CEO) due to a corruption scandal, Cricket South Africa (CSA) appointed an acting CEO in March 2012. After successfully restoring the organization’s damaged reputation, re-establishing the confidence of existing sponsors and attracting new corporate partners within his first four months, the acting CEO submitted his letter of resignation. In it, he cited hostility from some members of the board and a lack of confidence in his judgment. However, after his resignation he was encouraged to reconsider his decision. Should he withdraw his resignation and continue the important turnaround task? If so, could he manage the challenges facing him and CSA in a different way? If not, what would the implications be for him, the management of cricket in South Africa and the multiple stakeholders, including sponsors?