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Dr. David Cechetto, a University of Western Ontario (UWO) medical professor, left Rwanda after a distressing week. Having seen first-hand the impact of the 1994 genocide and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Cechetto committed himself to accept the request from UWO and the Rector of the National University of Rwanda to direct a project to help rebuild Rwanda's health sector. As he was flying back to London, Ontario, he began to prepare a proposal for funding to be submitted within six months. His first decision was who his Rwandan partner or partners should be in this project.

The commercial eProducts Manager at Shell Canada has to determine how to improve the adoption and utilization of their eCommerce channel. eStore had been developed for the fuel and lubricants market as a pilot test of how Shell might communicate with its customers electronically, thus reducing costs. While eStore had been in place for a year, and many customers had signed up, utilization was low. A consulting firm has made recommendations about the technical issues that might be driving low utilization; the commercial eProducts Manager has to consider whether the problems are purely technical, and make a recommendation on how to proceed.

The new chief executive officer (CEO) of ING Insurance Asia/Pacific wants to improve the regional operation of the company. ING Group was a global financial services company of Dutch origin with more than 150 years of experience. As part of ING International, ING Insurance Asia/Pacific was responsible for life insurance and asset/wealth management activities throughout the region. The company was doing well, but the new CEO believed that there were still important strategic and operational improvements possible. This case can be used to discuss the local versus regional or global management issue and will yield best results if the class has already been introduced to different strategic and organizational alternatives in the international business context.

Over the past two years, ING Insurance Asia/Pacific had successfully implemented a new organizational and operational framework called Towards Performance Excellence (TPE), which was developed with inputs from functional heads, senior management and staff at the business unit level. TPE detailed and organized everything ING Asia/Pacific needed to execute its strategy effectively. TPE divided ING's business processes into six core categories: portfolio, marketing, organizational, operational, reputation and financial. Each category included aspects of execution known as drivers, which required managers to identify specific objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) for each driver or sub-driver. The case includes many original exhibits and is ideally taught as the follow up case of the ING Insurance Asia/Pacific, Ivey product #9B06M083 or as a standalone case, which illustrates a real example of regional versus local organizational management.

Faced with capacity constraints at the company's river fed facilities, the president and general manager of Piscifactorias de los Andes (Piscis), the largest trout farming company in Peru, is considering an option to create a trout farm on Lake Titicaca. Although Titicaca was the largest lake in South America and was in many ways ideally suited to trout farming, all previous attempts to commercialize the lake's fishery had failed. In addition, Piscis faced potential opposition from local fishers and environmentalists. Titicaca was also too distant from the company's existing fish plants. Therefore, if it were to establish operations on the lake, Piscis would need to build a processing plant at a cost of several million dollars. However, because of the region's history of political instability and violence, financial institutions were reluctant to offer loans.

The founders of Just Us! Coffee Cooperative (Just Us!) are involved in a strategic planning process. The growing demand and acceptance of fair trade products is good news for the industry and opens many opportunities for Just Us!, but there are also risks. Just Us! will likely face increased market competition from major U.S. retail coffee brands and Canadian supermarket brands, pressure on margins as more brands crowd the shelves, and more competition for access to top quality sources of supply. Just Us! will have to make strategic choices and will have to develop a clear and focused marketing plan.

The director of business development for Tangarine Concepts Corporations (Tangarine) must decide how to launch the company's newest product, a prepaid MasterCard called MyCard, as part of a six-month pilot project. Students are asked to: 1) outline Tangarine's goals and objectives for the launch of MasterCard MyCard; 2) decide the importance of a successful launch of MyCard to Tangarine; 3) perform a corporate size-up with specific attention to the company's ability to launch the product; 4) analyse political, economic, social and technological aspects of the launch of MyCard; 5) identify and assess the strengths and weaknesses of potential competitors; 6) perform a customer segment analysis and 7) develop a marketing plan including decisions regarding price, product, place and promotion of the MyCard product.

In 2006, Ruth's Chris Steak House was fresh off of a sizzling initial public offering and was now interested in growing their business internationally. With restaurants in just four countries outside the United States, a model to identify and rank new international markets was needed. This case provides a practical example for students to take quantitative and non-quantitative variables to create a short list of potential new markets.

A recent MBA graduate was about to return to the family business, Biomed Co., Ltd. as its general manager. Biomed's parent company, Thai Drugs Co., Ltd. has just revised Biomed's market strategy, a change that created the need to align the sales compensation system to fit with the new strategy. The new general manager was charged with this responsibility. Students will work through the path from strategy to a powerful sales compensation plan that will support the strategy and encourage to execute the role of the salesforce within this strategy.

The president and founder of the non-profit organization, Let's Talk Science, needs to ensure that the marketing plan provided by her staff for a new training package would meet the sales goal of 100 units each year. The package, called Science with Impact is intended to train scientists and engineers on educational techniques to use for delivering effective and age-appropriate presentations to children and the non-scientific community. This marketing case focuses on the development of a pricing and promotion strategy for a product in a non-profit environment.

The corporate manager of vehicle planning at Nissan Canada Inc. had been asked by the director of vehicle ordering for Nissan North America (NNA), to review the proposed vehicle ordering process as part of the new Integrated Customer Order Network (ICON). The ICON project would change Nissan's North American vehicle ordering process from a 'make-to-stock' into a 'make-to-order' environment which called for a significant process transformation for Nissan's operations in North America and Japan. The corporate manager of vehicle planning was hoping that the new process would be exactly what the dealers were seeking in an effort to closer align production with customer demand. However, he needed to evaluate the new process from the perspective of all stakeholders to ensure that Nissan's business objectives could be met.

In late November 2002, halfway through the vital Christmas selling season, William E. Aziz, hired to turn around White Rose Crafts and Nursery Sales Limited (White Rose), has to decide what to do. White Rose is under Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) protection, having breached its debt covenants. The company's upper and middle management is frustrated that their efforts since 1999 have not turned the firm around. The remaining employees blame the firms' situation on the change in strategy that occurred in 1999. The changes led many of White Rose's original employees to leave. At least partly due to an attempt to compete head-on with new U.S. entrants into the garden and crafts industry, the company endured three straight years of losses. In November 2002, White Rose launched a strategic review of its operations and asked its chief executive officer of three years, Dave Symons, to resign.

The founder and executive director of E+Co faces the challenge of ten-fold growth and reviews the core parts of the company's innovative business model, the changes in the energy markets around the world, and the rationale for local solutions to energy scarcity and inefficiency. Also presented is a set of entrepreneurial growth strategies that preserve the core of the model - i.e., simultaneously tackling energy poverty and energy waste, and bringing people up the energy ladder with locally suitable and affordable solutions. These strategies help consolidate and leverage E+Co's 12 years of experience and strong local presence through an innovative combination of complementary wedges.

The director and co-founder of Honey Care Africa (Honey Care) looks back over the six years of operations and describes the original business model and several sequential changes based on feedback from rural communities, partner organizations, and learning by doing through field operations. Increasing international recognition highlights the potential impact of the model on inspiring sustainable grassroots ventures in the agriculture sector in Kenya. For Tanzania and other developing countries, he ponders the potential opportunities and challenges in replicating the Honey Care model elsewhere. The case also tackles alternative routes for scaling up the model in East Africa. Students are presented with several specific challenges which illustrate the growing tension between Honey Care's original commitment to the farmers and its prospects for international take-off, and are asked to propose alternative model reconfigurations to resolve this tension.

Shopster.com is a Calgary-based e-business company whose business is to assist other individuals or companies in setting up their own retail transactional websites. Shopster differs significantly from ordinary website developers in that retailers are able to select from a huge inventory of saleable products, through Shopster's network of goods providers. Shopster also provides software tools, and expertise, to allow anyone wishing to create an online retail store to do so quickly and easily. Shopster's business has done well to date, but there are plenty of operational challenges ahead. As well, the principals would like to raise the bar substantially, to something they refer to as Shopster 2.0, the specifics of which are still at a formative stage. The Shopster case provides an interesting example of a small but rapidly growing Canadian company with an innovative business model and big dreams for the future.

The majority partner in the Hooplah Media Group (Hooplah) of Toronto, Ontario, was trying to decide what to do about one of Hooplah's website design contractors (contractor). The contractor had taken on a project directly with a key contact at JewelWorks Inc., one of Hooplah's largest clients, without going through Hooplah. As an independent contractor, he offered to design a website for JewelWorks Inc. for a lower price than Hooplah's rate. Apparently, the project was not going smoothly, and there was significant tension between the contractor and the contact at JewelWorks Inc. The majority partner at Hooplah was unsure how he should react to the contractors' involvement with JewelWorks Inc. and whether he should assist in the completion of the website.

Wayne Eisener has received two job offers. The first offer is an executive vice-president position at Richmond Hill Mortgages (RHM). The second offer is a junior lawyer position at Weiler and Simons LLP, Barristers and Solicitors. The mortgage company offers a small base salary but potentially large commissions in the long run. The law firm offers a higher base salary and the opportunity to be promoted to partner within five years. However, Eisener would need to update his knowledge of law substantially. As he reflects on the advantages and disadvantages of each job, Eisener must consider his past and how each job will help him accomplish the goals of providing for his family and creating a resurgence in his career.

In 2005, e-business was on the rise again, and one of the companies that was doing well was eBay, the most successful online auction website. In addition to generating revenue, transactions on eBay also produced a substantial amount of data about purchases, prices and products. The chief executive officer (CEO) of the 18-month-old company, Advanced Economic Research Systems, Inc. (AERS) analyzed this data for consumers and businesses interested in maximizing their return from eBay. Recently, AERS had earned the rights to license eBay data in North America. Now the CEO must decide how to capitalize on the data license agreement without cannibalizing his company's business of selling the results of analysis to large and small eBay sellers.

<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER - Dark Side Case Writing Competition</strong></p><br>This case examines how the Tanzania government intends to address a pressing deterioration in the infrastructure and services of Dar es Salaam's Water and Sewage Authority. The decision process unfolds in the spring of 2002, on the heels of the Cochabamba uprising in Bolivia and an increasing dispute over the involvement of the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank in other water development projects in Ghana, Mauritania and South Africa. At that time, the World Bank was already sponsoring similar projects in Angola, Benin, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Rwanda Sao Tome and Senegal, despite some vocal local opposition. This multi-part case series is ideally suited for core or elective courses in strategy and sustainability to illustrate the types of ongoing tensions and divergent decision angles that influence the formation and performance of public-private partnerships and managing in a global context. It also provides a rich and graphic account of the special threats and opportunities in the water sector - a wealth of complementary teaching resources can also stimulate larger debates by juxtaposing the case decision with a broader crisis of confidence in for-profit solutions to water and sewage provision in Africa and in Latin America.

A successful Canadian jewelry manufacturer and distributor contemplates entering the U.S. market and how best to do it. Students are required to: 1) identify costs relevant to the decision and categorize them as either investments, fixed costs or variable costs; 2) calculate unit contribution, contribution-margin ratio and weighted-average-contribution-margin rates; 3) perform a breakeven analysis and interpret its meaning using relevant parameters; 4) project profitability of a chosen distribution strategy; and 5) perform sensitivity analysis with respect to the expected sales level. Students are required to understand and analyse the opportunities and risks associated with entering a new geographic market and combine their qualitative and quantitative analysis when deciding which distribution strategy to pursue.