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Launched in September 2018, e-retail startup DealShare has created a tech-enabled model for the Indian mass market that allows customers to buy together, save money on good quality goods, and at the same time have fun. It targets customers who are still getting used to the Internet for commerce and for whom big e-commerce players are not an ideal option. As DealShare transitions from a regional to a national company, the founders are at a crossroads. Until now, they have prioritized profitability at the unit economics level over growth. Now that they are confident that the DealShare concept can be profitable, should they relax their commitment to profitability and expand rapidly to preempt competition? Will the investments required and added complexity derail the company's success?

Environmental racism describes the unequal burden of environmental hazards placed on disadvantaged communities through systems, policies, and practices. In such a situation, these people disproportionately live close to sources of toxic waste-what are referred to as Locally Unwanted Land Uses (LULUs) such as sewage works, mines, landfills, power stations, major roads, and other emitters of airborne, earth, and water pollution-and suffer from greater rates of health problems, as a result. More than a quarter of Marathon Petroleum's 13 refineries are located in minority-majority communities. Marathon Petroleum's Detroit refinery is located in the ZIP code 48217, where around 80% of residents are Black, 12% are Hispanic, and over 40% are considered to be in poverty. These residents also have higher rates of asthma, heart diseases, and lung cancer than in most other ZIP codes in Michigan. This case places students in the role of fictional character Riley Novak, Marathon Petroleum's chief environmental officer, to examine the company's history with environmental racism, especially in Detroit, and the proposed solution-the Property Purchase Program.

In September of 2017, CavinKare Private Limited was faced with a tough decision about how to continue its growth in the personal care products industry. The company had been successful in the hair colour market in India, particularly in the southern regions of the country. CavinKare's success was largely due to their focus on research and development and innovation. The hair colour market showed room for growth, and CavinKare wanted to make sure that they capitalized on its potential. There were three options before the company: stay with their existing products and markets, expand their existing products into new markets, or create innovative new products. To make the decision, CavinKare had to consider many factors, including consumer behaviour, new product development, marketing strategies, and trade partnerships. Only by considering all of these things together would the company have an answer to its question: what was the best option for growth?

As Singapore's national garden and tourist attraction, Gardens by the Bay (GB) had succeeded in developing the necessary physical infrastructure to showcase innovative sustainability initiatives to visitors. As it embarked on the next phase of its sustainability journey, GB sought to enhance its sustainability DNA. It recognised that every new and existing employee has an important role to play, and now faces the challenge of how to further engage staff and get them on board this journey through effective induction training. This case examines the challenges of integrating Singapore's new Green Plan into GB's sustainability agenda with special reference to its induction training approach. The United Nations Sustainability Development Goals and the environmental, social and governance parameters can serve as a guide for integrating relevant sustainability content into the induction curriculum. Like other for-profit and non-profit organisations combating climate change, GB must determine how best to impart respective competencies to its internal stakeholders. Through the case, students will learn to appreciate sustainability-related challenges and develop induction training solutions that can be applied by GB's human resource team in support of the overall mission and vision of the organisation. The case can be used in both undergraduate- and graduate-level courses on sustainability management, business management, environmental management and human resource management.

Set in May 2021, this case describes the journey of transformation Hai Sia Seafood (Hai Sia), a Singapore-based seafood company, embarked upon five years earlier. Hai Sia, a family business established forty-five years earlier, supplied high quality, fresh, and processed seafood at competitive prices for domestic consumption in Singapore. However, the seafood processing industry in the city-state, including the port, was woefully backward. Hai Sia operated a manual processing plant that was twenty years old, and relied completely on labour intensive work processes, even though digitisation was on the rise in the country and consumers were increasingly migrating online in their buying behaviour. The company faced many challenges such as quota constraints on the number of foreign workers it could hire, inconsistency in quality due to human error, low productivity, and more importantly, the changing profile of its customer base. Hai Sia undertook many steps to transform its operations, including plant renovation and automation, digitisation of work processes, expansion into e-commerce, launch of a consumer brand, and product development for the retail market. The results were promising and the business grew from 1800 tons in 2015 to 2500 tons in 2020. However, the considerable corresponding investments to support these initiatives had adversely impacted the company's profitability. Ang Junting, the deputy director, knew that if he were to spend more time and resources in modernising the business, the senior management would need to be convinced about the returns that these investments would eventually bring. Moreover, he wondered if going forward, a similar business model that centred on automation, upskilling, training, and consumer retail could be successfully replicated in the neighbouring Southeast Asian economies.

Farmer Lee Farms was a family-owned farm 70 kilometres from Johannesburg, South Africa. The farm was founded in 2005 by Jimmy Botha, a sixty-year-old, first-generation Black commercial farmer. From 2005 to 2017, the farm had experienced steady growth and was recognized as a Black business success story in post-apartheid South Africa. During this period, the farm had a clear target market of high-end food packaging houses and food retailers and specialized in the supply of high-quality, high-value fresh produce. However, a severe hailstorm in 2017 destroyed important infrastructure on the farm that was crucial for growing the farm's temperature-sensitive products. The capital required to repair the infrastructure was not available. As a result, the farm lost key off-take agreements with high-end retail customers and Botha had to change his crops to hardier but lower-value cash crops. In November 2020, the farm urgently needed to re-evaluate its strategy to avoid bankruptcy, for which Botha was considering four options: continue growing cash crops and hope for a market turnaround, apply for a bank loan for funds to repair the damaged infrastructure, access the available government grants to carry out repairs to the infrastructure, or change his farming methods entirely and learn an alternative farming technique known as hydroponics.

Spotify Technology S.A. (Spotify) was facing significant problems with public relations due to artists' claims of poor treatment. They had accused Spotify of underpaying artists, obscuring its business practices, and being overly litigious. The objections reached a critical point with a union of creatives, the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW), submitting a petition to Spotify and on March 15, 2021, protesting at its global offices. Spotify management must decide how to navigate this issue.

On March 17, 2018, the founder and owner of Memon Lubricants, a Shell Pakistan Limited distributor located in Sukkur, Pakistan, was trying to find the best recruitment process to hire a new sales team. Memon Lubricants had just opened a second location in Khairpur, approximately 30 kilometres south of Sukkur. Several constraints that affected the process included a tight budget, limited availability of skilled and qualified candidates, and pressure to complete the recruitment quickly, Therefore, the founder wanted to adopt a more efficient recruitment process than the one he had used to hire a sales force at his first branch in Sukkur. He first had to identify the required knowledge, skills, and attitudes of ideal sales representatives. He then had to encourage appropriate candidates to apply for the positions. Generally, he had to improve the current recruitment process.

On the morning of June 30, 2019, the Orlando Magic had only a few hours to make a major decision, before the National Basketball Association free agency period was set to begin at 6 p.m. The management team needed a recommendation regarding whether to offer a new contract to the team's current player, Terrence Ross, or pursue a free agent replacement, such as Rudy Gay. With extensive analytical data available, a thorough analysis was needed to predict which player was most likely to contribute to the Orlando Magic's future success.

Honor Home Care, founded as an on-demand home care company, evolved into the leading home care technology and operations platforms for home care agencies across the U.S. In the last quarter of 2020, the Honor leadership team raised $140 million in Series D funding to accelerate the company's geographic expansion. Seth Sternberg, CEO of Honor Home Care, must decide between two options- acquiring one large home care franchise or buying several smaller home care agencies. In this case, students are encouraged to explore the advantages and disadvantages of different partnership and acquisition opportunities to scale technology companies in the home care market. The case highlights the complexity of customer acquisition and employee recruiting, management and retention in the industry, and lays out how Honor sought to tackle these challenges, as well as the strategic decisions they faced along the way. The case also chronicles the evolution of the home care industry in the United States, highlighting the market structures that impacted the company's growth.

In January 2022, Microsoft announced its $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a leading producer in the gaming sector, which has grown quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. Activision was a main player in mobile gaming as well as cloud gaming, an emerging technology that allowed individuals to stream videogames via Internet-connected devices. In this case, students will learn about Microsoft's organic and acquisitive growth in gaming as well as discuss the strategic acquisition of Activision.

2021 was a banner year for Elon Musk. CEO of the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, the aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, and a few smaller startups, Musk became the richest person on Earth after Tesla reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion and SpaceX a private valuation of $100 billion. Both companies made bet big on risky technologies. Now that they were leaders in booming industries, the task was to retain their lead. Musk had proposed a round of big new bets for each company: Tesla was to work with partners to rapidly expand battery production with a focus on lithium-iron phosphate batteries, and SpaceX was to launch thousands more of its Starlink satellites aboard Starship, the largest launch system ever devised. Meanwhile, Tesla faced litigation related to SEC complaints and safety concerns about its Autopilot driver-assistance system, and SpaceX's growing Starlink constellation similarly raised safety concerns. For Musk, the question was: should he consolidate gains and fix the operational, legal, and political problems before launching new initiatives, or should he proceed full speed ahead?

In February 2021, the Indian government announced new regulations to increase the accountability of social media companies for misusing their platforms in spreading fabricated news, misinformation, and obscene material. The new rules were not welcomed by some prominent social media companies, including Twitter. The giant microblogging network claimed that the new rules were designed to suppress freedom of speech among the citizens of India, one of the largest democracies of the world. However, Indian regulators argued that the new rules were required to prevent abuse on open social media networks. Twitter contended that it was self-regulated and argued that its users' voices should not be regulated because it would clearly amount to suppression of the right to free expression. In a changing political and legal environment, how could Twitter meet increasing demands from regulators to moderate content, while remaining aligned with its mission, vision, and ethical standards? Were the self-regulatory mechanisms of social media companies adequately effective without interference from external forces?

This case follows a fictional hedge fund manager as she works to finalize an investment thesis on Comerica Incorporated to present to her manager, who is undecided as to whether the fund should buy (go long) or sell (short) the stock. Assessing Comerica's value and outlook is complex. She needs to have a view on Comerica's future earnings, which are clearly linked to the gravity and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resiliency of the banking sector as a whole. This case is taught at Darden in a course on "Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work"; it would also be well suited for in-person or online MBA courses in banking and financial markets, new technologies, or communication and crisis response.