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An entrepreneur was contemplating leaving his job at Goldman Sachs to start Global Source Healthcare, a healthcare outsourcing company focused on international nurse recruitment. He had researched the healthcare staffing market extensively, written a business plan and raised some funding. While this appeared to be an excellent opportunity, there were some very real risks that had to be considered. His greatest concern was the limited amount of funding at his disposal. Since international recruitment required a considerable amount of working capital, the lack of funding brought the long-term feasibility of the business into question. Students will learn about screening the business venture in terms of the entrepreneur, the resources and the opportunity; determining the strategic direction of the company and balancing the long-term vision with short-term cash flow needs; assessing different business models to determine which is the best fit for the company; and the importance of executing the business plan and selected strategy.

Representatives of the technology transfer office are preparing a commercialization strategy of a new peptide. The function of the technology transfer office at the University of Western Ontario is to prospect for suitable technologies for commercialization, to manage the patent protection for such inventions, and to identify ways to develop such inventions. Two licensing opportunities are being considered, both of which entail creation of a startup company. The representatives must evaluate options to determine which offers the best potential for the commercialization of the invention for everyone involved.

With the hope of changing the way Canadians think about purchasing flowers, the owner of Bloom the Flower Company recognized the importance of the Wow! factor and the European florist model in her design of Bloom. Opened in 2002, the Toronto-based florist was continually stocked with a unique array of exotic, cut flowers for everyday purchase or individual or corporate events. Bloom's service delivery was based upon a friendly, welcoming and laid-back approach that focused on providing meaningful solutions to an individual's floral needs. Bloom's success had not gone unnoticed as several additional younger and hipper floral shops had been started in the area since Bloom opened. A number of business and service management issues have to be addressed in order for Bloom to grow.

PepsiCo is a large international soft drink manufacturer. The company has decided to split its worldwide bottling company from its concentrate business and is pursuing the initial public offering of the Pepsi Bottling Group. The president of PepsiCo Inc will become the chief executive officer of the newly formed bottling division and must create a system of corporate governance, and decide how to structure the new board of directors for the Pepsi Bottling Group.

Digital Economy was founded in 1994 as a private think tank focused on researching the effects of emerging technologies on competitive strategies and high performance organizations. By the late 1990s, clients demanded consulting services to compliment previously purchased research services. The company's business model and offerings flourished in the technology boom. In the first quarter of 2001, the technology boom began to deflate. Digital Economy's decision makers were confident that the changes in the environment would be short lived and that the company's business model and offerings were infallible. Unfortunately, this assessment and subsequent decisions lead to substantial losses in the next two years. The parent firm pressured Digital Economy to realize a profit by the following fiscal year or be completely shut down or consolidated. Digital Economy was in a state of crisis yet the management team did not see the need for change. This case illustrates how biased environmental analysis and personal beliefs can affect decision making and lead to and sustain organizational crisis.

Sun Life Financial is a large insurance conglomerate with $14.7 billion in annual revenues. The vice-president for China must formulate an approach for his company's entrance into China. Sun Life has achieved two important milestones: the right to apply for license and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for Joint Venture with China Everbright, a local securities company. The financial vice-president must consider strategic options for entry and choose a city in which to focus his efforts in getting a license. In doing so, he needs to consider Sun Life's overall priorities, strategic direction and how he will sell the concept to senior management in Canada. Intended for use in an introduction to international business course, the case includes assessing internal capabilities against an environmental scan, formulating strategy and making operational decisions relating to city selection. It also introduces the idea of joint venture management and government relations.

An entrepreneur has invented a device to make it easier for men's retailers to measure customers for made-to-measure suits, avoiding error and thereby improving the profit chain for the retailer. The entrepreneur is looking at ways to promote the device to middle- and upper-end men's retailers.

The chief executive officer of Amtelecom Group Inc. must make a recommendation to the board of directors regarding the best way to sell its Amtelecom Communications subsidiary. AGI owns and operates ICS Courier, a national fixed-route courier business and Amtelecom Communications, a regional telecommunications, cable television and Internet business. Amtelecom Communication's capital requirements are not being satisfied because cash is being diverted to ICS Courier to cover its losses. As well, AGI's stock has been performing poorly. In order to alleviate these problems, the board has decided to sell off Amtelecom Communications. The three sales alternatives being considered are: selling to a strategic buyer, IPO via a common share offering and IPO via an income trust offering. This case can be used to teach students about valuation in a strategic setting, and provides an opportunity to apply sum of parts valuation to value a diversified firm, apply discounted cash flow, conduct a transactions analysis to determine the standalone value of a firms, and gain a basic understanding of income trusts.

<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER - Oikos Sustainability Case Writing Competition</strong></p><br>Icelandic New Energy Company, a research and development consortium based in Reykjavik, Iceland, is considering what future direction to take. The two-person team has met their first major goal - the installation of the world's first commercial hydrogen filling station and the coordination of a public transport test project involving the operation of three hydrogen fuelled city buses. The company was founded with the overall objective of investigating the potential for eventually replacing the use of fossil fuels in Iceland with hydrogen-based fuels and creating the first hydrogen society in the world. Working towards the goal of self-sufficiency from fossil fuels, Icelandic New Energy Co was set up in 1999 by the consortium Vistorka and three major partners each contributing a part to the testing - Royal Dutch Shell (the refueling station), Norsk Hydro (the electrolysis technology to make the hydrogen) and DaimlerChrysler (fuel cell vehicles using hydrogen fuel). The shareholder agreement was established with the company's start in 1999 and is set to expire in 2005. With all of the major activities being outsourced and contracted, the team wondered how they could keep the company as a going concern and contribute to Iceland's transition to a hydrogen economy - a feat that could take more than 15 years.

The Bonita Bay Marina, founded 20 years ago by the Bonita Bay Group, established a reputation of high quality service delivery. According to the marina's manager, customers' high regard for their services was due to the organization's adherence to well-defined customer service philosophy known as the E5 Customer Service Philosophy. The manager must decide whether the benefits of pursuing a Clean Marina certification program would bolster the level of service quality and ultimately the reputation of Bonita Bay Group in the marketplace. Further evaluation of the current customer service program must be conducted to determine whether the clean marina certification would complement the existing E5 Customer Service Philosophy and create synergies that would enhance customer perceptions of their services as well as contribute to profit margins for years to come.

Three friends start a business together upon graduation from an MBA program. Two start full-time jobs while the third, Deland Jessop, works on the business. One year later, Jessop must decide whether to continue trying to develop the business or take a salaried position. The outstanding issue of equity among the partners also needs resolution. Students have the opportunity to evaluate the business opportunity, while also evaluating the pros and cons of going into business with friends.

Necanko Inc. is a large international food manufacturer. A buyer-scheduler for the company must forecast sales demand to determine production planning, inventory management and distribution for the year. Sales were normally predictable and stable, but the company has just come back from a three month layoff due to slow sales and they are now experiencing a sales increase three times greater than usual. The buyer-scheduler is uncertain why the sales are spiking and must decide what action to take.

The vice-president of regulation at the Investment Funds Institute of Canada is reviewing the monthly statistics. It shows the continuance of three trends, prevalent during the last 12 months in the Canadian mutual funds industry. Net sales of mutual funds were declining, fund redemptions were rising and the rate of growth in mutual fund assets had been marginal. The vice-president must determine how the Investment Funds Institute, as the industry trade association for mutual funds, can influence these trends. He must decide on the message, who he should target with the message and the media through which he should reach his target audience, and present his plan at the next executive committee meeting.

The Walt Disney Internet Group Japan has recently launched an entirely new set of interactive mobile character/agents for the NTT DoCoMo iMode platform, called Dimo. Having built Japan's most successful mobile entertainment business using traditional Disney-branded characters and related content, these Dimo characters have been designed to go well beyond entertainment and become valuable guides, assistants and friends for users of the continuously evolving Mobile Internet and the increasingly complex tasks enabled by this platform. Although the Walt Disney Internet Group Japan team feels strongly that these types of character/agents will be the future of human-device interactions, subscription figures six months after Dimo's launch suggest that Japan's mobile consumers may not share this belief.

An undergraduate commerce student has just completed a group strategy project and is wondering what to do. She believed the group had done a good job but was disturbed by many things that had happened between her and her teammates during the project. She was unsure what she and her teammates could have done to stop the situation from escalating as far as it had and what action she should take now to let her teammates know how she felt and to prevent similar instances from occurring in the future.

The administration director at an assembly plant for optical communication products in a US-Chinese joint venture in Shenzhen is wondering what he should do about a recent situation with one of his peers. The director was responsible for all non-production staff and his peer was responsible for production-related staff, both working on a pilot project for the company. Shortly after the project started, the director noticed his peer was becoming more aggressive and making comments about firing staff inside and outside his department. Tension was increasing between them and among other members of the project. He decided to discuss the issue with his peer but was unprepared for the response. He must decide if he should bring this to the attention of senior officers or continue with his approach in resolving the situation.

An executive must estimate the demand for rolls of film in various countries based on demographic data about the counties. She must determine the process and develop a spreadsheet model that will provide the results based on data (GNP per capita, population, income distribution) from the various countries. The purposes of the case are to show the relation between national statistics and company decisions and to provide training in advanced spreadsheet skills, conceptualizing a problem and modelling.

An executive wonders if it is possible to increase profits by changing the mix of products at a shipyard. The yard currently operates below the breakeven point, so must achieve profitability or default on loan payments.

IIF (Institute of International Finance) was eight months into the customized development of a customer relationship management system (CRM) by a small software development firm, QuaTeams. IIF, a member organization, wants to replace their current CRM, an Access database, by integrating member information from different departments: economic research, membership, events and finance. In addition, they want to be able to handle the growing number of members and track the interactions between their staff and their membership. With two months to go before the scheduled launch, both sides must make decisions to overcome the remaining technical hurdles they have with the database and security. The IIF must also consider implementation issues and think of creative ways that the customer relationship management system can be used once the system is operational. The objective of the case is to introduce students to the development of a custom CRM and how the process of developing and implementing a CRM can change the way an organization deals with its customers.

The Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society's management team knew that they had conceived a very unique project, Elephant Walk Thru. The success of this innovative ecotourism project would hinge on their ability to balance the needs of a diverse group of stakeholders as well as various economic and political-legal forces faced by the organization. Their primary task in the ensuing months would be to identify salient external opportunities and threats posed by stakeholder groups. Equally important would be to evaluate the continually changing political-legal and economic environments prior to constructing the facilities.