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The case charts the success of Chinese hot pot restaurant chain, Haidilao, from humble beginnings to international expansion, with a focus on how an emotion-based culture is created and sustained to deliver high performance. Chinese hot pot - a blend of meat and vegetables - is boiled by customers in a broth and eaten with a variety of sauces. There was nothing special about the food, but what differentiated Haidilao was the service, which catapulted the company to the number 1 spot in its segment and had diners queueing for up to two hours. The secret sauce was the company's attention to the welfare of its employees, who were encouraged to work hard to progress fast. The culture - that competitors its could not emulate - is explored in the case, including the five-part HR system, welfare system, extended family aspects, and ability to adapt (while retaining key cultural markers). The case also looks at attention to product quality and Haidilao's national and international expansion, asking how far its approach is sustainable in the future.

On March 1, 2020, when news of the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, it meant an existential threat to the survival of businesses internationally. L'Abode Accommodations, a full-service property management company based in Sydney, Australia that specialized in mid- to high-end luxury vacation homes, was no exception. Virtually overnight, the company experienced an alarming number of contract cancellations. To make matters worse for an industry dependent on vacationers, Australia shut its borders to international travellers. How could L'Abode Accommodations adjust its operating model and strategic and tactical marketing efforts to stop the business from bleeding revenue and profit and to address the staff's fears of layoffs, as cancellations poured in?

In March 2021, the wine trade war between China and Australia was escalating, and the competitive landscape in China's wine market had changed dramatically in just three months. Asa Top, a Chinese import company that had represented certain Australian wineries for over a decade, had to rethink its marketing strategy. The general manager of Asa Top did not know when the recent trade friction between China Australia would end. After the Chinese government introduced its new tariff policy on Australian wine, other participants in the Chinese wine market had quickly reacted to claim Australian wine's market share in China. How should Asa Top deal with the impact of the duties, reduce the losses, and explore future co-operation with Australia's winemakers?

In February 2022, Daryl Lim, founder of Kuehchic Desserts, created his own recipes for kueh, bite-sized cakes local to Singapore, that are healthier and more appealing to modern tastes. Together with his friends, Sharon Tan and Shiva Kumar, he set up the business and worked out a strategy for the launch of Kuehchic. While the initial feedback on the food is positive, Lim wants to test his products with a wider tasting panel. The company also has to undertake various business development and website development tasks, which would be split among the team. After some discussion, Lim worked out a task schedule. He also estimated the time needed for each task and the sequence in which some of them had to be carried out. For reasons beyond their control, the team could only start work in July. Lim wondered if the steps he had listed out to manage the project were adequate, and if his entrepreneurship journey would be successful.

In December 2021, Unilever-one of the world's largest producers of consumer goods-was in the midst of a pilot project to digitize its manufacturing facilities and enable remote work for factory employees. This was possible because of an earlier project to retrofit a facility in Brazil with state-of-the art sensors on factory equipment to collect real-time data. The data was then analyzed using machine learning applications on the cloud so that key capabilities of the factory could be run remotely on a laptop in a technician's kitchen. The company hoped expanding this effort would improve efficiency and performance across its network of factories, and result in cost savings and decreased energy consumption for the entire organization. The company's next step was to explore the possibility of further digitizing factory operations with the creation of a global virtual operations room, where operators working remotely could ultimately oversee production at all of its 200 manufacturing sites around the world.

This general experience case tells the story of SearchLight Cures, a fictional biotechnology startup. Having discovered a new therapy for a rare disease, the company's co-founders find themselves at an impasse over a pricing disagreement.

In June 2019, Emeritus cofounders Ashwin Damera (HBS MBA 2005) and Chaitanya Kalipatnapu were thrilled with the rapid growth of Emeritus. Damera and Kalipatnapu believed that Emeritus, established in July 2015 to offer online executive education, was only in the early stage of an exciting journey. The opportunity for further growth and success was immense. Yet, the co-founders were conscious that "what got us here will not get us there." Among the strategic choices they faced was a decision on whether to grow its university-branded offerings aggressively or to promote the Emeritus brand more assiduously.

Kimball International, Inc. (KII), led by CEO Kristie Juster, and its board of directors, chaired by Kim Ryan, faced critical questions about KII's future in the spring of 2021. Two years earlier, the board had appointed Juster as the new CEO of KII, a publicly traded, small cap maker of commercial office furniture based in Jasper, Indiana. Juster had set in motion a major organizational transformation aimed at putting KII on a higher-growth trajectory. Under her leadership, the company had examined its purpose, adopted a new strategy, revised its compensation plan, and undergone a major restructuring. And then, COVID-19 hit. The company adapted quickly, but the pandemic had a significant impact on KII's profitability and stock price, and on executive pay which was significantly tied to both. As the pandemic dragged on, the board had to decide how to design an executive compensation plan that would be fair to employees, fair to shareholders, and meaningful to executives in a highly competitive labor market, while also aligning with KII's purpose and strategy, and driving its ongoing transformation.

During the early part of the 2021 Covid-19 pandemic, Hometown Foods, a large seller of flour-based products, thrived as consumers hoarded baked goods and took up baking to pass the time and find comfort. Then, amid growing shortages in commodities, a vaccine arrived, businesses began to re-open, and consumers benefited from federal relief aid. This perfect storm of high demand amid stock shortages generated the highest inflation in 13 years. Commodities accounting for a large percentage of its products, Hometown had to decide whether to increase prices, and if so by how much. Although the industry norm was to wait for the number #1 player in each product category to increase price first, with escalating ingredient costs significantly reducing Hometown's margin and profit, lack of action could result in serious financial distress. A decision to move first would entail several more decisions. Should Hometown price for cost or elasticity, employ component or blended pricing? Given pandemic-induced volatility, how should it prioritize quantitative pricing calculations relative to qualitative considerations? It would also need to anticipate reactions from competitors and stakeholders including its sales force, retailers, and consumers as well as investors and lenders.

Hong Kong Tramways (HKT), established in 1904, is the world's largest double-decker tram fleet in operation today. Having witnessed the development of Hong Kong for over 100 years, HKT is an icon of Hong Kong. This case describes how Hong Kong Tramways changed its brand image from just a heritage brand to a lifestyle brand, using its heritage as the brand's top attribute / value. HKT's revenue traditionally came from the tram ridership and advertisements. With the declining tram ridership, HKT decided to rejuvenate its brand to make it appealing to the younger generation. By doing that, they were also investing in their advertising business model, because more advertisers would be interested in using a younger, more engaging, and up-to-date advertising platform. HKT started a rebranding process in 2017 from a heritage brand and HK's icon of the greenest, most affordable, and most joyful transport mode to a lifestyle brand featured as "old age, young heart." Due to a restrictive budget, HKT decided to run the rebranding through a brand extension/brand collaboration strategy by carefully curating partner brands and looking for local brands that shared the same brand values and resonated with their target Hong Kong consumers. The rebranding has helped HKT to stay relevant for the younger generation, and yet is consistent with its brand history and business model.

Mastercard, the global payments company, is known as a leader in privacy by design; senior leaders promote data responsibility and employees follow strict ethical guidelines and robust frameworks to manage and protect data. The company views AI as a significant part of its strategy going forward, using it to fight fraud, improve the consumer payment experience, increase efficiencies and decrease costs in back-end systems. When Mastercard created its AI Garage in 2018, its vision was to become an AI powerhouse. Realizing the special attention AI development efforts need, several leaders in the organization co-created the AI Governance Council and a framework to structure the company's approach to governing AI. The application of this framework led to several significant decisions, including walking away from two acquisitions. Mastercard believes that the combination of a solid Privacy by Design process and additional governance specific to AI - "the AI governance framework" - is the right approach for the long term to maintain consumer trust. Yet, while being a trusted guardian of data with this robust AI governance framework, Mastercard also faces the costs of its high accountability stance - forcing it to make appropriate organizational and managerial choices as well as ensuring that AI governance does not result in a reduction in innovation. The speed of AI integration and need for ethics in data practices will only increase. What does this mean for Mastercard's business model, profitability and innovation capabilities in the future?

NorLand Limited (NorLand) was a construction company based in British Columbia, Canada, with operations in Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec, and the United States. Having grown primarily by acquisition, the company was moving toward an ambitious goal: to achieve CA$500 million in revenues and CA$50 million in net operating income (NOI) by 2025-the 500-50-25 goal. The main questions facing Dave Reynolds, NorLand's chief executive officer (CEO), and his leadership team revolved around not only expanding the business to achieve this target but doing so sustainably, while giving NorLand's business units the latitude and freedom that had drawn them to join NorLand in the first place.

Based in southern Germany, Richard Henkel GmbH was a manufacturing firm focused on its triple-bottom line rather than on its sales turnover. Driven by its sustainability ethos in both its products and its manufacturing processes, it saw itself as a champion of a post-growth, sustainable economy. The case pivots on co-managing director Susanne Henkel's decision concerning a lucrative sales order: the order would place significant stress on its existing steady-state manufacturing operations and potentially compromise its sustainability performance. In deciding whether to accept the order, Henkel had to confront a pivotal question: How much growth was necessary and sustainable, and how much was too much?

This case focuses on the challenges of incentivizing innovation within Moog, an engineering company based in New York state that designs and builds guidance systems for space, air, and land-based travel. The case enables students to grapple with the challenges of using compensation to motivate and incentivize employees to create commercially successful innovations. Thick culture motivates employees to innovate in unique ways that money cannot. Students analyze the ways in which Moog's unique culture and current incentive systems successfully, and unsuccessfully, drive innovation, considering Moog's specific challenge of commercializing and scaling innovations. Throughout the discussion, students will understand the ways in which incentivizing innovation is a structurally challenging problem within large companies. Incentivizing innovation differs from incentivizing other types of performance, and students should realize that money alone cannot drive innovation because of the challenges of measuring performance, especially given the long time horizons and the fact that innovation necessarily involves risk and uncertainty.

Amit Kasliwal was a participant of the Post Graduate Program for Executives at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in 2013 when he came up with an idea of a tea-brewing machine. Kasliwal conducted a survey to understand the tea-brewing machine industry and needs of the market and subsequently started working on prototypes for the same. He formally set up his company in 2015 and started developing a Minimum Viable Prototype (MVP). Joined by co-founders Harvinder Rajput and Saurabh Borah, he branded his prototypes as MyT Brewer. In December 2016, the start-up ran out of resources. The dilemma for Kasliwal and his team was whether to continue working on an improved prototype or enter the market.

Bail funds, organizations that collect money to post bail for community members who are eligible for cash bail to stay out of jail until the time of their trial, have grown throughout US history, buoyed by major civil rights events such as the Red Scares, Civil Rights movements, Vietnam War Protests, among others. Given the volume of potential community members who would benefit from bail fund assistance and the plethora of defendant information required to process the bail payments, such funds like the Springfield Bail Fund face a logistical and management challenge.

The case explores the rise and popularity of the Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Nicole Blank has bootstrapped her functional beverage company, Sunomi Switchel, to contracts with leading grocery retailers. She is now faced with a series of choices for if and how to continue to grow the business.

LooksRare launched a decentralized and anonymous organization to compete against NFT marketplace leader OpenSea. By launching its own cryptocurrency, LooksRare attempted to lure users with a digital rewards program. The nature of the organization and its business model, however, brought challenges that are unique to the blockchain industry.