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The case describes a successful Singapore-based venture capital (VC) firm, Openspace Ventures, and its decision to incorporate elements of sustainable investing throughout its business. Similar to many early-stage investors, Openspace's early returns were driven by portfolio companies with a combination of large addressable markets, dedicated entrepreneurs, and a strong product offering aligned with the opportunity. Issues of sustainability or environmental, social, and (corporate) governance (ESG) were not initially part of their process, but after their initial success the founders are interested in "doing well by doing good"-and believe that it will not require sacrificing returns. This case illustrates how traditional early-stage investors such as Openspace can evaluate the trade-offs associated with adding a sustainability component to their investment process. In this brief case we introduce the protagonists, Shane Chesson, his co-founder Hian Goh, and the proposal they deliver to a room full of investors: to integrate sustainable investing principles throughout their successful, traditional VC business. Class discussion should lead to a decision on whether Openspace should proceed with Openhand, and if so, how to successfully manage the implementation.

The case, based on extensive interviews with top executives and two generations of Dachser family owners, documents the genesis and spectacular growth of the global logistics specialist, a group that now has close to 400 locations on all five continents and employs 30,000+ people. Despite its global footprint, Dachser stayed loyal to both its core business - intelligent logistics - and to Kempten, a picturesque town of 70,000+ inhabitants and the center of gravity for Dachser's operations and the place the Dachser family owners call home. Dachser received the IMD Global Family Business Award in 2019

The case describes the Brazilian company, VTEX's journey from its founding in 2000 as a textile software company to its unicorn status in 2021 and listing on NYSE. It traces the company's transformation to a global player in digital commerce as a provider of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) digital commerce platform for enterprise brands and retailers selling direct-to-consumer (D2C). Its platform is the operating system for the e-commerce ecosystem, that enables its customers to execute their commerce strategy by catering to complex networks of consumers, business partners, suppliers and fulfilment providers at different stages of the purchase journey across a variety of sales channels. The Brazilian company has built a strong, well-established and unique ecosystem, over its 20-year operating history which made it tricky for new players to enter Latin America. By 2021, the company's clients included major brands such as Sony, Walmart, Whirlpool, Coca-Cola, Stanley Black & Decker, AB InBev, Motorola, Carrefour and Nestlé, with 2,500 active online stores, the company was present in 32 countries.

This case explores a current but also enduring and widely relevant intersection of challenges facing managers who compete in rapidly evolving technology markets. In the landmark US$9 billion Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. case, Google LLC (Google) leads development of the now-ubiquitous Android mobile operating system, used by billions of people globally. However, many of the laws governing development were unclear, having been written before the technologies being developed were even imagined. Thus, Google must balance competitive risks with other risks, such as legal uncertainty.

In January 2020, Paddy Padmanathan, president and CEO of ACWA Power, was reflecting on the company's sixteen-year record of success and thinking about its future growth plans. Founded in 2004, ACWA Power was a Saudi Arabian developer, owner, and operator of power and water desalination plants, was thinking about the company's future. Over the past 16 years, ACWA Power had grown its footprint with 56 assets across 11 countries, with a combined value of over $45 billion. ACWA Power had been studying the prospects of a non-carbon fuel, green hydrogen. To date, no large-scale green hydrogen plant had been attempted, predominantly because it was too costly to produce. However, with green hydrogen production costs declining and increasing commitment from countries and companies to decarbonization, projections for the hydrogen market were optimistic though highly varied. Padmanathan believed that ACWA Power with its low-cost business model and track record would be able to deliver green hydrogen at a competitive price and was keen to embark on the world's first large-scale green hydrogen project. He saw several challenges, including ACWA Power's lack of experience working with industrial gases and finding an attractive project site. The project would require partners with complementary expertise, and ACWA Power would need to determine how to structure the relationships. Padmanathan was excited about the possibilities, but was the timing right? Would being a first mover outweigh the pioneering costs? If so, what would be the best way forward?

In March 2021, the weather company Tomorrow.io announced a new project to develop satellites equipped with radar for weather monitoring and launch them into Earth's orbit. Company leadership considers execution strategies.

Hello Heart, a hypertension management app debated whether to go deep and cover other heart conditions, or to expand its solution to other chronic conditions.

In October 2021, Facebook changed the parent corporation name to Meta and announced plans to build a metaverse, a 3D virtual world for work and fun. This case explores whether Meta's metaverse is likely to be a blue ocean utopia for people and society at large or some form of dystopia. It is designed to create a lively classroom discussion and dives into issues ranging from the difference between value innovation and technology innovation to the potential danger of Meta, already one of the most powerful companies in the world, expanding its unfettered influence and control even further across its already three billion users. The case challenges students to explore the social, economic, and environmental implications of Meta's proposed metaverse along with potential business models. The theory and tools of Blue Ocean Strategy are used in the analysis.

This case explores the accounting treatment for the "rent concessions" offered by lessors to lessees during the Covid-19 pandemic. The protagonist company is Xiabuxiabu Catering Management (China) Holdings Co., Ltd. (Xiabuxiabu or the Group, HKEx: 520). Xiabuxiabu was one of the hot-pot restaurant chains with the highest relevant market share in mainland China. As the Group had been serving retail customers in its retail branches, the newly promulgated "Covid-19 Related Rent Concessions" had a significant impact on lease accounting for its branches. During the pandemic, many lessees had obtained rent concessions granted by lessors in numerous forms, such as a rent payment (lease payment) holiday, a reduction in rent payments for certain period of time, a deferral of rent payments, and a change to the lease term etc. In May 2020, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) issued "Covid-19-Related Rent Concessions" as a "practical expedient" to lessees. This expedient came as an "optional" relief to lessees from the mandatory application of IFRS 16. As such, lessees had the option of not accounting for rent concessions as "lease modifications". This greatly simplified lease accounting particularly during the pandemic. Xiabuxiabu had chosen to adopt such an expedient since the financial year 2020.

When the Covid pandemic struck in the spring of 2020, HBS pivoted to remote instruction while maintaining the interactive and engaged discussions which distinguished the case system pedagogy. In fall 2020 HBS adopted a hybrid approach, fitting out its classrooms with monitors and technology to enable some students being in-person and others remote, investing significant time and resources. The senior leadership of the school believed that this was a sound long-term investment with rewarding payoffs for several years to come. Dean Datar in 2022 now has to decide how best to leverage the hybrid classroom and whether remote learning for MBA students, Global alumni and Executive Education participants was feasible and financially viable. Study from Anywhere seemed possible, but was it the right thing for HBS to offer, and if so to whom, and how?

The case discusses the challenges faced by Rikin Gandhi, the chief executive officer (CEO) of a nonprofit organisation, Digital Green (DG), as he experimented with ideas that had vast commercial potential. DG produced videos of best farming practices and shared them with small and marginal farmers to help them increase their crop yield. As the organisation grew, it started a pilot project named LOOP. LOOP used technology to provide end-to-end shared logistic services to farmers. It aggregated farmer produce from a village, delivered that produce to the market, received payment from sales and transferred the payment to farmers. This entire chain of transactions could be tracked using a smartphone application at the farmer's end. As the LOOP project became successful and the various stakeholders came to terms with its tremendous financial potential, Rikin needed to decide on an organisational model to tap into the potential of LOOP and, at the same time, to not disrupt the work at DG. The case focuses on the organisational model options available to DG, as a nonprofit, to pursue and scale a project with commercial potential. Nonprofit organisations in India have various limitations regarding their engagement in commercial, revenue-generating activities. The main questions the case tries to focus on are as follows: What are the various options available to the CEO of DG to pursue a project with commercial potential such as LOOP? What are the limitations and challenges of each of these options that the leader needs to know while making their decision?

The case describes the international acquisition of the South African firm Beruc by an Indian, family-owned firm, Tega Industries Limited. Primarily a supplier of equipment to mining companies, Tega was a prominent player in the business of selling solutions to consumers in liners, mill liners, screening equipment and conveyors, apart from wear and flow equipment. Ten years after the acquisition, the benefits were not without problems. The issues facing the founder of Tega included declining financials of the subsidiary, labour-related problems, matters related to supply chain, concerns from clients in South Africa and sustained tensions between the local leadership and the corporate headquarters in India. With several changes in the leadership of the South African subsidiary (including Indian South African origin leaders), the ride was not smooth.

In December 2020, Daytoy Group, a leading global furniture and home furnishings retailer, asked the small Chinese candle supplier Dalian Talent Co. Ltd. to become its sole supplier of aromatic and unscented candles. Daytoy Group was offering the supplier a large amount of new production volume after terminating its relationship with its only other candle supplier in the Asia-Pacific region due to a corporate social responsibility issue. The supplier had to consider the cost of the additional supply chain management, manufacturing technique, and production capacity that would be needed to comply with the new request. The company already had enough orders from other reliable clients to fill its schedule until April 2022. Expanding production capacity and adding work teams to meet the request would take one to two years. How should the supplier respond to the request? What impact would the new arrangement have on its operations? How would it affect its long-time collaboration and future partnership with Daytoy Group?

The case describes the lead-up to the offer to acquire Baxalta Inc by Shire PLC in the summer of 2015, weeks after Baxalta was spun out of Baxter's BioScience business. The setting is the biopharmaceutical sector - the fastest-growing in the global pharmaceutical industry in 2014, when M&As reached a record $219.4 billion. Shire, a leader in the treatment of rare diseases whose share price had quadrupled since 2010, had sustained strong sales growth. Baxalta was specialised in haematology, immunology and oncology, with product sales of $6 billion in 2014. After a private proposal to Baxalta's management in July 2015 was rebuffed, Shire considered making a public tender offer at $45.23 per share in August, valuing Baxalta at $30.6 billion. It estimated annual cost synergies to be $500 million, with additional tax and revenue synergies. The case puts students in the shoes of Shire's senior management as they decide whether to pursue the acquisition on the terms envisaged. Instructors can obtain a discounted cash flow (DCF) Excel template (for an in-class valuation exercise) as well as the model solutions on request from [email protected]

In March 2020, Second Harvest Heartland, one of six Foodbanks serving Minnesota, was caught in the COVID-19 emergency with considerably more people exposed to hunger and food insecurity. Its management team led by CEO Allison O' Toole and COO Theirry Ibri alertly managed the crisis by improvising and implementing new programs. In August 2021, with signs of the crisis behind them, they had to decide which of the adaptations they should keep, and how to go back to addressing their original mission of ending hunger.

In early 2019, Anthony Campagna, the global director of fundamental research at ISS EVA, a unit of the proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), was preparing to release ISS's analyses of public company performance and CEO compensation ahead of Say on Pay (SOP) voting. ISS's reports helped institutions and other investors determine how to vote their shares at annual shareholder meetings. The report's assessment of CEO compensation for SOP relied on the degree of alignment between a CEO's industry-relative compensation and the firm's industry-relative performance. ISS had long used total shareholder return (TSR)-a measurement based on a company's stock price appreciation and dividend payouts-to measure company performance. In 2019, for the first time, ISS supplemented the TSR measure with economic value added (EVA)-a measurement based on accounting data that combined operating profit and a charge for capital-to measure performance. ISS believed that using EVA as a complement to TSR painted a more complete picture of company performance than TSR alone. EVA was, however, a far more complicated and not widely understood performance metric. Interpreting EVA for certain types of firms-young, high-growth, investment-intensive-could also be challenging. Campagna wondered how market participants would respond to ISS's use of EVA in its voting recommendations, particularly when TSR and EVA could make company performance look quite different. Did the benefits of EVA make managing its complexities worthwhile? Was EVA too complicated for investors to understand? Would EVA work equally well for young and high-growth firms as for mature firms? How might Campagna best promote the use of EVA?

LOGSTOR is a Danish company that is a global supplier of pre-insulated pipe systems. This case focuses on the leadership of Kim Christensen, a former board member who became CEO in 2017. The company was in the throes of a major crisis: it had shifted its focus away from its core business, and bankruptcy loomed. Kim's mandate was to turn LOGSTOR around, bring it back from the brink and restore performance and growth. As an "inside-outsider" CEO, Kim had to focus on the financial, strategic and operational aspects of the turnaround, implementing an initiative known as "back to black." The case describes some of the key actions that Kim took during this period and the drivers of the changes he made, particularly with respect to company culture and getting employees and managers involved in the turnaround process. After two years, the company was solvent. Kim was gearing up to move LOGSTOR into a phase of profitable growth when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The case explores some of Kim's initial actions. The pandemic-related crisis was very different from the company's previous crisis. The case closes in June 2020 and asks what type of leadership Kim will need to bring to address this crisis. During the case discussion, students will examine leadership, change management and organizational design issues.

The vice-president at Tencent LeXiang (LeXiang), the enterprise social networking platform of Tencent Holdings Limited (Tencent), had been overseeing the development of the platform from its inception. Since its official launch in 2017, LeXiang had been successfully adopted across a wide range of multinational corporations; it was also popular internally at Tencent, with many employees engaging with their fellow co-workers on the forums. The vice-president was preparing for a meeting with Tencent's leadership about the future of LeXiang and how the platform could bring value internally to the company. As part of her preparations, she received a data set that included many posts and replies within Tencent's own LeXiang platform. While she thought there was significant value in the insight the platform provided about Tencent's own employees, she was unsure how to organize the wide-ranging posts and demonstrate their potential value to Tencent's leadership.