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Social impact assessment has become increasingly valued by social investors or funders to capture the value their investments can generate. As such, traditional nonprofit organizations ("NPO"), social enterprises and even corporate social responsibilities ("CSR") initiatives have to be accountable for the funds they receive. This case puts forward a novel discussion on how the performance and social impacts of social sector organizations are assessed in Hong Kong.

Praesens Care, a start-up based in Belgium, has developed a mobile laboratory with the aim of safely testing people for a wide range of killer diseases. Its mobile laboratories enable monitoring of infectious diseases and improve diagnostic capabilities in remote areas in Africa. The case tells the story from its origins to the difficulties encountered in the public health sector, with three questions at the core: what and who are its targets, how to align its operations to achieve them, and how to finance its operations.

Wirecard was a German fintech company, member of the DAX30, that provided payment processing and related services. Wirecard had enjoyed large growth rates over the years and most investors and analysts were enthusiastic about the company's prospects. Wirecard's business model was not easy to understand for outsiders, and the company's financials often lacked the necessary details to fully comprehend the company's dealings. Throughout the years, Wirecard had been subject to allegations of fraud, including money-laundering allegations and accounting-fraud allegations, among others. However, up until spring 2020, Wirecard was able to reject these claims. In June 2020, investors and the public learn the truth about Germany's digital darling: a major part of Wirecard's business was fraudulent, and a sum of €1.9 billion, supposedly held in trust accounts in the Philippines, is non-existent. James Freis, who had just been hired as a new member of the Management Board, finds himself interim CEO and is trying to understand how this seemingly massive fraud could have gone undetected for so long, and why it began in the first place.

As Google incorporated in 1998, in the midst of dot-com mania, it faced the need to raise growth capital after the 2000 dot-com crash, when VC investments and IPOs had considerably slowed. Yet despite the crash's lingering chill, which crushed thousands of new ventures, Google survived and ultimately prospered. This case reviews the early history of search engines and discusses the four key components of Google's success: strategy pivots to protect its search dominance; horizontal integration to expand information capture and revenue growth; vertical integration to extend digital-ad-industry penetration; and "moonshots" to exploit its technology and financial depth. In making the case for Google's industry leadership, the case also enumerates the key threats to Google's dominance in its field-including rivalry with major competitors Amazon, Facebook and Apple-while suggesting that the company's past successful strategic pivots bode well for its future nimbleness

Could AI-based X-ray scanning platform make flying safer? Airport security officers had just seconds to decide if someone's luggage contained a knife, gun, explosive, or other potential safety threat, and the human eye was not designed to focus for hours on a scanning screen. This case study describes the founding and early years of Synapse Technology, which aimed to improve airport security performance by leveraging advances in computer vision to detect these types of threats with far greater accuracy. The company set out to develop the AI solution they believed would work, building an AI model and then feeding it training data on which types of weapons and other items to flag as a threat, as passengers' luggage went through the screening process. The case study explores the technical as well as entrepreneurial challenges in this new AI frontier, including locating a real-world test venue, and then determining how to measure and explain the return on investment to potential clients.

This two-part case describes the circumstances surrounding a 1989 plane crash in central England. Part A describes what happened in the cockpit as determined by the analysis of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder (black boxes). Part B presents the same events, with added detail, in the form of a comic book depicting the people involved (pilots, passengers, and cabin crew), the physical space they occupied, and their actions and reactions to the unfolding disaster.

The rise of financial technology companies-"fintechs"-is changing the way money moves around the world, leading to greater financial inclusion and closing a credit gap that historically has hampered small businesses. According to the World Bank, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is the engine driving world economies, representing 90 percent of all businesses worldwide, providing 50 percent of all employment, and responsible for up to 40 percent of national income in developing economies. Even so, research has shown that 65 million businesses-or 40 percent of SMEs in developing economies-face an unmet financing need of $5.2 trillion per year. This gap translates to 19 percent of the gross domestic product of the 128 countries surveyed and attests to the vital role that SMEs play in the world economy as a driver of employment and overall economic health.

It was June 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Frances Edmonds, head of sustainable impact at HP Canada Co., the Canadian subsidiary of HP Inc. (HP), was continuing HP's decades-long pursuit of sustainable impact. HP was now committed to using 30 per cent post-consumer recycled plastic across its personal systems and printers by 2025. However, decreasing commodity prices during the COVID-19 pandemic, global supply challenges, and lowered global collection of recycled content could potentially undermine HP's recycling efforts and goals. Edmonds was considering possible strategic, tactical, and operational actions to cope with the situation and sustain HP's aspirations. Would HP's circular supply chain remain viable and competitive?

In 2020, the flagship location of Jamie's Market, a specialty supermarket retailer in California, struggled to hire enough temporary workers to meet the increased staffing demand resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The new assistant manager, who had been recently transferred to the company's flagship store, was tasked with figuring out what had gone wrong and recommending changes to ensure that the store would have enough qualified workers for the remainder of the pandemic (or until store sales returned to pre-pandemic levels, whichever occurred first). The assistant manager looked into the company's hiring and socialization processes, spoke with both temporary and permanent workers, and identified at least two reasons for the challenges in hiring temporary workers: insufficient advertising of the job listing for temporary workers, and little or no effort to socialize temporary workers once they were hired. Based on these conclusions, what changes should the assistant manager recommend when hiring the next group of temporary employees?

In July 2020, Ruben Flores-Martinez had launched a startup, CashDrop, which provided easy and cheap sales options for small businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic helped CashDrop quickly grow. Flores-Martinez, who had previously sought and been denied venture capital funding, suddenly found CashDrop being pursued by venture capital. The case discusses Flores-Martinez's background as an undocumented immigrant in the United States, his previous business ventures, and his concerns about the influence of venture capital on business. The case also discusses the American and global payment platform landscape.

Realizing in early 2021 that their pending real estate investment fund would likely be oversubscribed, Drake Real Estate Partners co-founders Nicolás Ibáñez and David Cotterman were considering how best to continue to diversify their investor base and how to optimize operational efficiency as they deployed increasing amounts of capital. Although his family office had funded the company's first fund, Ibáñez added Latin American family investors and some institutions to subsequent funds while Cotterman focused on delivering 20+% returns. As they looked ahead to their fourth fund and beyond, the partners needed to decide how best to develop their firm and their offerings as they worked to attract capital without alienating either their smart-money family investors or their nascent institutional clientele.

In late 2018, the chief executive officer and president of Domino's Pizza Japan Inc. was convinced that a substantial expansion in the Japanese market was needed and feasible for continued growth. His company had already grown to nearly 550 stores across Japan, which was over double the number only five years earlier. The company had numerous opportunities to grow further, including opening new markets; opening stores closer to the company's customers; and building on customer insights, new menu offerings, and a new marketing approach. In particular, the chief executive officer wondered whether priority should be given to new markets in Japan that the company had not yet entered, or if priority should be given to greater penetration in Japanese locations where it already operated. What strategy was the best option for expansion in the Japanese market?

Zip Co Limited (Zip) was a market follower in the Australian buy now, pay later (BNPL) sector. In September 2020, PayPal Holdings Inc. entered the growing sector, which was expected to disrupt the credit card industry, with better incentives for retailers and consumers. Although investors were concerned, Zip's chief executive officer remained confident about the company's future growth. How could he combat competition against large players like PayPal in the United States? What competitive strategies could he opt for-and could Zip disrupt the credit card industry?

iQIYI Inc. (爱奇艺), which promoted itself as the "Netflix of China," was one of the three largest entertainment streaming platforms in mainland China. It was listed on the Nasdaq (NASDAQ: IQ) after being spun-off from Baidu Inc. (百度) (NASDAQ: BIDU). In April 2020, Wolfpack published a research report on iQIYI, accusing it of inflating revenue numbers, among other things. The report claimed iQIYI's revenue in FY2019 was overstated by 27% to 44%, equivalent to CNY8bn to 13bn. One of the accusations was that iQIYI recorded more than its own share in revenue, and included a large portion of its membership subscriptions bundled with services offered by its business partners.

Founded in 2000, with its headquarters in Singapore, BreadTalk Group Limited used a creative lifestyle concept to attract consumers who were accustomed to viewing bread as inexpensive, basic food. In 2003, the company founder and chairman achieved his goal of listing the company on the Singapore stock exchange to raise capital for scaling up operations. By mid-2018, the company had grown to become a regional, multi-brand food and beverages enterprise with 11 brands, almost 1,000 outlets across 18 territories, and a staff of over 7,500 people. In 2018, BreadTalk Group Limited opened a new restaurant in London, United Kingdom, representing its first entry into the Western market. However, the executive team had to engage the company's employees across continents and inspire them to innovate, especially through the use of technology. The first step was to choose the right management team for the new business unit in London and build a new talent pool in Europe.

In November 2020, the co-founders of DigiPlex study the future growth trajectory of their Nordic data center venture. A critical question was on the agenda: was now finally the right time to sell DigiPlex? Originally a $2.75 million investment in one small data center made in the wake of the dot-com bubble, the Norwegian-based firm had seen tremendous growth in the last two decades. DigiPlex was now worth over a billion dollars and comprised seven data centers across Scandinavia, offering high-speed connectivity powered by sustainable hydro-electric energy.

On September 10, 2001, after speaking at an industry conference at New York's World Trade Center, Hotwire co-founder Spencer Rascoff boarded a flight from Newark to San Francisco. After returning home, Rascoff awoke the next morning to a phone call informing him that the same numbered flight from Newark he had boarded the day before had been hijacked and crashed into one of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers. That same morning, Rascoff's co-founder and Hotwire CEO Karl Peterson was about to give the keynote speech at a travel conference in New Orleans. Peterson saw the second plane hit the towers on the hotel's lobby television. With all commercial flights in the U.S. and Canada grounded for three days after the attacks, 15,000 Hotwire customers were stranded away from home. In the weeks that followed, customers demanded refunds for cancelled flights, and new flight bookings plummeted as Americans lost faith in the safety of air travel. To make matters worse, Hotwire's founders learned from the FBI that some of the 9/11 hijackers had purchased their flights on Hotwire.com. While 9/11 took an emotional toll on all Americans, the travel industry faced the additional burden of intense financial pressure. Hotwire's leadership team needed to make immediate and hard decisions to stem cash outflow and determine where, when, and how to let employees go, while trying to maintain morale. The business required a new capital raise on terms that would be acceptable to existing investors. And, while facing trade-offs in the use of Hotwire's scarce resources, the team needed to position the business for future growth amid a field of well-funded competitors.

The case describes a capital budgeting dilema for a new the finance of a new product in a technology firm: Swimmer's headphones. By reviewing a series of emails and attachments, we learn that the protagonist, the recently hired Financial Manager responsible for presenting the decision to the board of directors must construct a capital budgeting valuation model that explicitly incorporates the project risk factors and then make a recommendation to the board.

This case traces the life of Ayn Rand from Russia to Hollywood to New York City. The case describes how Rand fled communist Russia and, in reaction to the deprivations she experienced under communism, developed a philosophy idealizing free will and personal achievement. The case describes how she published her philosophy in popular novels that have sold more than 30 million copies and made her one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Students will learn how Ayn Rand navigated life's choices to leave a lasting impact on the world.