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Sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 caught small- and medium-sized Chinese enterprises off guard, such as Ciyang Garment Factory (CY) in Zaozhuang City, Shandong Province. Many migrant workers could not come for work on time because of the outbreak, and Li Qiang-the founder and general manager of CY-felt uneasy about defaulting on orders and worried about future lawsuits. The experienced garment maker Liu Ning, who had been working in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, was also stranded at home in Zaozhuang because of the epidemic. After meeting with Li, the two reached a cooperation agreement. Liu Ning's arrival temporarily solved the urgent labour shortage of CY; however, the pay difference between the veteran senior workers in the factory and those who had worked in the south, such as Liu Ning, became the catalyst of the 'absenteeism incident'. Because of the human resource management problems caused by this incident, Li was once again caught in a dilemma. Will the absent workers be back in 3 days? How should Li solve the human resource crisis caused by absenteeism? To help the development of CY, does Li need to reform the human resource management system? How can he change it? This case examines Li, the director of the factory, and Liu Ning, a skilled technician, to demonstrate the difficulties faced by small- and medium-sized private manufacturing enterprises in China under the impact of COVID-19. With the conflict between the two salary systems as the background, this case discusses how Li deals with the crisis and the future development plan of CY.

Pai's Bakery was a 30-year-old family business based in Belagavi, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. The owner was working on a sales territory realignment plan in response to complaints from the company's sales team. Sales representatives claimed that their wages were not proportionate to their efforts and that productivity was hampered by poor territory planning and restrictive business policies. The Pai's Bakery owner wanted to address the sales representatives' concerns and improve the company's relationship with all retail outlets to achieve key business objectives. Based on these priorities, she prepared a realignment plan for the sales territories. However, she was surprised by the negative reaction by the sales representatives, who opposed the new plan. Pai's Bakery had to find a mutually beneficial path forward immediately to avoid serious damage to the company's business operations.

Ben Van Weelden, Manager of Scenic Floral, was considering providing direct-to-door delivery to Northern Ontario stores for its main customer, Metro Inc. Scenic was looking for ways to increase sales and profit, but also had its eye on providing coast-to-coast delivery of cut flowers in Canada, with the help of its partner-shareholder, Petals West. However, it would need to be advantageous for both Scenic and Metro to make this a viable option.

Danish Crown, one of the world's largest exporters of pork meat and one of Europe's top five producers of beef, faced increasing headwinds in 2021, making CEO Jais Valeur feel like the core of the meat business was under attack. As a cooperative and prominent player in Denmark's high-standard agriculture sector, the company had particular responsibilities and constraints including a high labor and production cost and strict regulatory environment. More recently growing concerns over climate change had led to increasing criticism of the environmental impacts of livestock production. Consumers in Denmark and worldwide were turning away from meat, for its climate impact but also for concerns about animal welfare and their own health. The case discusses these industry trends and describes Danish Crown's efforts to respond by transitioning to a more sustainable company, with several initiatives and investments underway to meet its ambitious carbon reduction targets. Valeur was convinced that sustainability leadership was the only way to keep its customers, add value to commodity parts of the business, and earn the "license" to keep operating in the future. However, the more the company publicized its efforts, the more it got under attack from environmental activists for alleged "greenwashing." Just like many of its peers, Danish Crown's management team needed to devise a strategy that would allow for its survival despite the growing adverse trends.

Pairwise discusses the strategic approach of a company aiming to "snackify" fruits and vegetables by using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to create nutritious, bite-sized foods that could compete with packaged snacks. The company is confronting a number of challenges, including distinguishing their approach from that of GMO foods, which had a mixed public reception.

In December 2020, White House Industries (White House), a manufacturer of aerosol aluminum cans for deodorants and other consumer products, including sanitizers and pain relief sprays, received customer order forecasts of 30 per cent more than its maximum production capacity. Unless White House invested in a third production line, which represented a significant capital investment and required almost a year's lead time, it would be unable to fulfil several customer orders with its existing manufacturing lines. Some customers had long-term relationships with White House, some were newly acquired, and some had a global-level tie-up with White House's parent company. In addition, the demand from some customers was already large, while others had immense future potential. White House's board and management team had different views regarding which customers the company should retain and which it should decline. This customer selection issue was a pressing and challenging problem that needed to be solved immediately. How should White House resolve its customer selection conundrum?

The case explores the journey of Marek Claassen, a German art lover who transformed a passion for building databases for local art galleries into a commercial venture that ranks artists worldwide. Artfacts seeks to rank all artists as transparently as the facts allow. Instead of focusing on transactions, which are often shrouded in secrecy, rankings are weighted according to the attention artists received from experts in the art world such as curators, art historians, art critics, gallery owners and collectors. Generated by an algorithm that is updated on a weekly basis, rankings capture the entire spectrum of art from the intellectual to the psychological, the spiritual to the aesthetic. Twenty years after starting Artfacts, Claassen hired a CEO, Jonas Almgren, and CMO Andrew Antoniades to launch an online mobile app. 'Limna' takes advantage of Artfact's world-class database to estimate the value of artwork coming onto the market. Buyers and gallery owners can use it to assess and negotiate the price of an artwork.

In October 2021, Miles Arnone, CEO of Re:Build Manufacturing (Re:Build), was thinking about Re:Build's next acquisition. Arnone contemplated the pros and cons of each of three candidate companies as he prepared for a discussion with his colleagues. His associate had synthesized the results of a screening assessment for the three potential acquisitions, one element of Re:Build's acquisition decision-making process. Arnone and others had launched Re:Build in 2020 to help rejuvenate the US industrial base. The vision entailed acquiring and scaling manufacturing and engineering businesses into a tightly integrated portfolio to leverage technical capabilities across the enterprise. Adding a company to the Re:Build stable was no small decision, and getting it right would be another step forward in creating a "new" type of conglomerate-one where each company worked together to share technology, knowledge, and ideas. Which company (if any) offered the best fit with the overarching strategy? This partially disguised field-based case includes discussion of Re:Build's company structure, decision-making process, and acquisition criteria, as well as data about its current companies and the three under consideration for acquisition. This case is taught in "Operations Strategy," a Darden School of Business elective MBA course. It could also be used in other MBA courses and Executive Education programs that address entrepreneurship, private equity, and general strategy.

Dare2Compete was a global platform connecting students, professionals, educators, colleges, and companies through innovative challenges, events, and gamified hiring assessments. It catered to two markets-students and companies. For students, it provided information on competitions, and listed internships, scholarships, and hackathons. For companies, it was an employer branding consultant and recruitment service provider. Dare2Compete was one of the largest networks of college students in India. Prospective employers could discover, engage, and hire students through the platform, facilitated by competitions, quizzes, hackathons, business simulations, and case studies. In 2020, after five successful years of operations, Dare2Compete's founder, Ankit Aggarwal, believed it was time to grow and was deciding on a growth strategy to pursue for achieving his objective of doubled growth for Dare2Compete in the coming year. He was considering three directions for growth: penetrate further into the market, expand globally into new markets, or develop a new product for the existing market.

In early June 2020, the owner of BYKlyn, an exercise bike fitness studio in New York, was considering her response to the business disruption that the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had caused the health and fitness industry. BYKlyn had recorded consistent annual growth since its launch in 2014. The fitness studio owner had been confirming her business expansion plans by moving into a larger space in the city when the pandemic struck in early 2019. Consequently, she was forced to shut down the business in mid-March 2019, in compliance with COVID-19 regulations. After a two-month lockdown, the New York state government announced phased-in reopening plans, and the fitness studio owner was considering three options for restarting her business: reopen at the existing premises; move to a virtual environment with a new business model; or set up an outdoor fitness club, which would offer fitness club members a completely new workout format.

The Hill & Levene Schools of Business (HLSB) Paul J. Hill Business School at the University of Regina, were considering widely divergent strategic alternatives, in what was expected to be a new and permanently altered post Covid-19 competitive environment, for business schools and higher education learning. The case considers three alternatives: 1. a return to the classic business model, with a new state-of-the-art building; 2. specialize as a virtual business school, for maximum national and international student access; or 3. Take advantage of the learning during the Covid-19 crisis and excel as an adaptive hybrid business school. Each alternative has strategic, marketing, operational and financial implications.

In November 2016, the chief executive officer of CanniMed Therapeutics Inc. was considering the company's options for raising capital through an initial public offering. The decision was critical for the Saskatchewan-based medical cannabis company, which had been an early leader in this fast-growing sector and was seeking to take advantage of growth opportunities. The company's history in the space dated back to 2000, when it was awarded a sole source five-year contract from Health Canada to supply Canadians with medical marijuana. Since then, the demand for medical cannabis had grown exponentially, and policy liberalization had opened up prospects for the recreational market. CanniMed Therapeutics Inc. had positioned itself as a leader with extensive experience in research, development, and commercialization. The decision for it to go public was clouded by many burning issues and risks, which led to intense speculation among investors as to whether the firm should be going public at this time and, if so, at what price.

In May 2010, a year after becoming President and Managing Director for Southern Europe at Discovery Inc., Marinella Soldi faces a make-or-break meeting with Discovery's global Executive Committee. Her region is about to lose half of its revenues in a contract renegotiation with Sky Italia. Hired from outside the organization with a mandate to turn the region around, Soldi energizes the local team and proposes a new strategy that involves bypassing Sky's content distribution and broadcasting some channels through Digital Terrestrial Television. The move represents a radical change to Discovery's business model, from B2B to B2C, and means abandoning the partners with whom Discovery has grown into a global business. This implies not only a digital transformation but changing the corporate culture. This case illustrates the interplay between digital transformation, talent management, and efforts to encourage diversity and inclusion. The focus is on challenging the distinction between strategic and cultural change. To change business strategy often involves confronting cultural assumptions and biases that keep legacy strategies in place. External hires, up-and-coming talent and members of minority groups are seen as more able to do something different, because they are different and unencumbered by established traditions. Yet because they are different they are subjected to stronger scrutiny and push-back. Despite being hired to confront longstanding traditions, they are pressured to conform to them.

In April 2020, Katerra executives struggled with a series of decisions that would determine the fate of one of the best-funded construction startups in history. Katerra was founded in 2015 by technology-industry executive Michael Marks and commercial real estate developer Fritz Wolff to "redefine the construction industry." Over the next four years, Katerra raised $2.5B in venture capital investment and grew to 7,500 employees. Focused on creating a fully integrated commercial real estate development process, Katerra built and operated factories manufacturing building components ranging from pre-fabricated wood panels to windows, acquired architecture and general contracting firms globally, and developed a series of proprietary software systems to design and manage construction projects. Management touted a project pipeline filled with eager commercial real estate developers and multifamily housing projects, but actual revenue was lacking. Katerra would soon run out of money without additional investment. Customer complaints about Katerra's ability to deliver on promised time and cost savings, coupled with the departure of one of the company's co-founders, call into question the company's strategy and Marks' leadership. Investors must decide whether the company's vision is salvageable, and if so, what steps they should take to construct a pathway to profitability.

In 2021, Slack was acquired by Salesforce. While widely viewed as the best corporate collaboration and messaging software, Slack was being challenged by Microsoft, which was giving away its competitive product, Microsoft Teams, for free with a subscription to Microsoft's Office software suite. The purpose of this case is explore how to compete with "free." The case examines the advantages and disadvantages of bundling and how to build an enterprise software platform.

This fictional case introduces an M&A deal structuring exercise. Two strategy consulting companies, East Coast Strategy Consultants Inc. (EAST) and West Coast Strategic Management Advisory Corp. (WEST), are contemplating acquiring a company in the accounting and advisory services sector, either Ocean & Whistle Accounting (OW) or LeDosh (LD). Students, either individually or in groups, play one of the four companies (i.e., one of the acquirers or one of the sellers/targets). Students are presented with basic financials on each of the companies and other key considerations including potential synergies, valuation multiples, and financing options. As part of the exercise, they must decide which company to acquire (or to sell to) and at what price, identify the key risks involved, and develop a deal structure to mitigate these risks. Students negotiate with the two other respective parties and reach agreement on the terms of the acquisition.

As a leading short-video social and livestreaming app in China, Kuaishou Technology's Kuaishou application (app) was facing various challenges, including fierce competition from ByteDance Ltd.'s Douyin. In June 2018, to sustain its long-term growth, Kuaishou needed to evaluate the possibility of entering the livestreaming e-commerce market, as livestreaming was becoming one of the hottest ways to sell to Chinese consumers. The co-founder and chief executive officer of Kuaishou Technology needed to decide whether Kuaishou should launch a livestreaming e-commerce business. If so, should Kuaishou cooperate with an existing e-commerce platform or build its own e-commerce ecosystem? What potential challenges might Kuaishou face in its livestreaming e-commerce business expansion?

On February 1, 2020, Jessie Gaeta, the chief medical officer for Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP), received news that a student in Boston had tested positive for the novel coronavirus virus that causes COVID-19 disease. Since mid-January, Gaeta had been following reports of the mysterious virus that had been sickening people in China. Gaeta was concerned. Having worked for BHCHP for 18 years, she understood how vulnerable people experiencing homelessness were to infectious diseases. She knew that the nonprofit program, as the primary medical provider for Boston's homeless population, would have to lead the city's response for that marginalized community. She also knew that BHCHP, as the homeless community's key medical advocate, not only needed to alert local government, shelters, hospitals, and other partners in the city's homeless support network, but do so in a way that spurred action in time to prevent illness and death. The case study details how BHCHP's nine-person incident command team quickly reorganized the program and built a detailed response, including drastically reducing traditional primary care services, ramping up telehealth, and redeploying and managing staff. It describes how the team worked with partners and quickly designed, staffed, and made operational three small alternative sites for homeless patients, despite numerous challenges. The case then ends with an unwelcome discovery: BHCHP's first universal testing event at a large city shelter revealed that one-third of nearly 400 people there had contracted COVID-19, that most of the infected individuals did not report symptoms, and that other large city shelters were likely experiencing similar outbreaks. To understand how BHCHP and its partners subsequently popped up within a few days a 500-bed field hospital, which BHCHP managed and staffed for the next two months, see Boston Health Care for the Homeless (B): Disaster Medicine and the COVID-19 Pandemic.