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In August 2004, Interbolsa's risk management committee had to decide upon a request to double the authorized quota for repurchase agreements (repos) on Interbolsa's own stock. Two months earlier, Jorge Arabia had joined Interbolsa, the largest stock brokerage firm in Colombia, as CFO. In this role, he had a seat in the risk management committee. Arabia had noticed that these repos carried large and diverse risks, not only for the firm but also for other stakeholders, that would lead to an eventual solvency crisis if they were not contained. And the repo business as conducted at Interbolsa entailed conflicts of interest, violated fiduciary duty to the firm's clients, and relied upon lax reporting practices to make transacted volumes meet limits imposed by regulation. However, this business was an important source of revenue for Interbolsa's majority shareholders, including the firm's CEO. The field-based A case asks students what they could do if they were in Arabia's role and wanted to stop the repo time-bomb. Students must create an action plan, based on information available in the case, aimed at preventing further increases in the repo quota. In the B case, the two faculty case authors reflect upon the problem and discuss what they think Arabia could have done to try to prevent the increase in repo operations.

In August 2004, Interbolsa's risk management committee had to decide upon a request to double the authorized quota for repurchase agreements (repos) on Interbolsa's own stock. Two months earlier, Jorge Arabia had joined Interbolsa, the largest stock brokerage firm in Colombia, as CFO. In this role, he had a seat in the risk management committee. Arabia had noticed that these repos carried large and diverse risks, not only for the firm but also for other stakeholders, that would lead to an eventual solvency crisis if they were not contained. And the repo business as conducted at Interbolsa entailed conflicts of interest, violated fiduciary duty to the firm's clients, and relied upon lax reporting practices to make transacted volumes meet limits imposed by regulation. However, this business was an important source of revenue for Interbolsa's majority shareholders, including the firm's CEO. The field-based A case asks students what they could do if they were in Arabia's role and wanted to stop the repo time-bomb. Students must create an action plan, based on information available in the case, aimed at preventing further increases in the repo quota. In this B case, the two faculty case authors reflect upon the problem and discuss what they think Arabia could have done to try to prevent the increase in repo operations.

In January 2020, Founders Factory (FF) Executive Chairman Brent Hoberman and CEO Henry Lane Fox were considering FF's expansion strategy. FF operated as a venture capital (VC) fund built around an accelerator and incubator, and organized around sectors within technology innovation-media, education, beauty, travel, finance, home & hygiene, AI & big data, and retail. FF sought a quasi-exclusive corporate partner to fund investments in each sector. By 2020, FF had 11 partners across 9 sectors; it had raised more than £280 million and launched nearly 100 startups. FF had three offices in addition to its London headquarters-in Johannesburg, Paris, and New York City. Each was set up as an independent operating company with roughly the same ownership structure. Deploying a "franchising" model limited FF London's financial risk; it also enabled each satellite office to leverage FF's reputation and resources while operating with a fair degree of autonomy. Hoberman and Lane Fox were considering other approaches to adding their next international office. With those thoughts in mind, the pair were meeting with their leadership team to address a series of questions related to organizational design: should they maintain their current ownership and operating structure, and continue to establish each new office as its own operating company? Or should they pursue an expansion strategy with a centralized approach and scale by adopting a more traditional corporate structure?

This case traces the rise of James Conant from a working-class neighborhood in Boston to president of Harvard University. The case describes how Conant, as a young man interested in chemistry and physics, embarks on studies to build his academic credentials and the pathbreaking changes that he makes to admissions criteria and curriculums while president of Harvard. The case also describes his pivotal role in developing the atomic bomb that ended World War II. Students will learn how James Conant navigated life's choices to leave a lasting impact on the world.

The UK government's Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) needed to hire a new associate and were trying to increase the diversity of their job candidates. This decision was based on academic research showing that recruiters and managers often fell into common traps like "stereotype" and "affinity" bias, where they hired people who looked the part or who were similar in appearance or background as themselves. To overcome these biases, the team had spent hours using a permanent marker to redact the names and educational information from each candidate's CVs, one-by-one. This painstaking process inspired Kate Glazebrook to develop Applied-a technological solution to debias hiring. Applied was a recruitment and hiring platform that used technology to eliminate biased language in job ads and used task-based assessments to reduce favoritism, among other features. Years after founding the company, Glazebrook considered asking her clients to remove CVs altogether. Could Glazebrook convince her new and existing customers to use the platform, even after taking away CVs?

Provides an overview of the U.S. home improvement sector in 2020, reviewing sources of growth in the decade ending in 2020, with special attention to the impact of COVID-19 on market leaders Home Depot and Lowe's and the spike in online revenues for both. Also noted are ongoing supply chain and efficiency improvements at Home Depot, and ongoing turnaround efforts by African American CEO Marv Ellison at Lowe's.

The Pay As You Go solar power company in East Africa had sales of $71 million in 2019. It wished to grow to $300 million by 2025. M-KOPA, founded by three entrepreneurs in 2011, had grown nicely in Kenya and Uganda to reach nearly 750,000 households with an innovative direct sales force model. Jesse Moore, the founder, wished to scale the company through organic growth as well as geographical expansion into Nigeria. The strategy called for decisions on product/service offerings and go-to-market options. On the product side the company had increasingly migrated to larger in-home connected electronic and electrical devices. It had to decide how much further to go. On the go-to-market side its innovative Direct Service Representative network was hard to create and manage, and it had to think if there were viable alternatives.

Dasra, a pioneer in the Indian Strategic Philanthropy space founded by a husband and wife team, had grown and evolved with the fast changing philanthropy scene in India. By 2017 it had managed to raise nearly $100 million of new capital for NGOs and Nonprofits in India. At the same time, the rapid growth demanded internal changes that stretched the organization and raised questions regarding structures, systems and capabilities.

In February 2018, Nayana Mawilmada (Nayana), investment head for the Sri Lankan government's ambitious $40 billion Megapolis project, must weigh an attractive job offer to move from the public sector to the private sector. A massive government project aimed at improving the lives of 5.8 million people living in and around Colombo, the Megapolis was stalled for many years until Nayana took on a leadership role. The case documents what he has learned to do to move things forward across a complex web of stakeholders (vying government agencies, politicians, funding institutions, academic experts, the press, users, and the general public). Just as the project gains official approval and is set to move to actual implementation, Nayana faces a career choice. Alongside that choice, students must determine whether Nayana has been successful or not.

In this fictional case, a customer experience manager is torn between loyalty to her family and to her employer after she gets inside information from her cousin suggesting that one of the company's suppliers might not be able to make good on its contractual obligations. If she shares what she's learned with her manager, her company might elect not to renew its contract with the supplier. But passing along the information would mean betraying a promise to her cousin and might put her cousin's job at risk. This fictional case study by Joseph L. Badaracco features expert commentary by Stacey Peck and Mita Mallick.

In this fictional case, a customer experience manager is torn between loyalty to her family and to her employer after she gets inside information from her cousin suggesting that one of the company's suppliers might not be able to make good on its contractual obligations. If she shares what she's learned with her manager, her company might elect not to renew its contract with the supplier. But passing along the information would mean betraying a promise to her cousin and might put her cousin's job at risk. This fictional case study by Joseph L. Badaracco features expert commentary by Stacey Peck and Mita Mallick.

In this fictional case, a customer experience manager is torn between loyalty to her family and to her employer after she gets inside information from her cousin suggesting that one of the company's suppliers might not be able to make good on its contractual obligations. If she shares what she's learned with her manager, her company might elect not to renew its contract with the supplier. But passing along the information would mean betraying a promise to her cousin and might put her cousin's job at risk. This fictional case study by Joseph L. Badaracco features expert commentary by Stacey Peck and Mita Mallick.

This case is set in November 2020. Despite COVID-19, Ray of Hope (ROH), a crowdfunding charity in Singapore had grown crowdfunded donations for their clients (individuals requiring financial assistance) six-fold from S$500,000 (US$400,000) in 2019 to S$3 million (US$2.2 million) in the period April to September 2020, without an increase in headcount. The nationwide circuit breaker - Singapore's version of a lockdown, further hampered the work at ROH as no face-to-face meetings could be held with its clients in the two-month period from 7 April 2020 to 1 June 2020. Tan En, ROH's General Manager, was quick to pivot ROH's strategy from focusing on fundraising campaigns that helped individual clients directly (individual campaigns) to serving as the intermediary that raised and administered public donations for the volunteer groups (group campaigns). What were the reasons why ROH could pivot so quickly?

The case guides students to resolve a number of questions when embracing a new technology, with a focus on Blockchain, a radical new technology that has attracted a lot of hype although the adoption rate remains low among firms. Consequently, there are few successful business applications and many challenges, uncertainties and risks to be overcome. The case emphasizes two aspects of Blockchain. How to adapt a business's involvement with the technology to (i) the pattern of its development over time, (ii) to the geographic concentration of investment and development, certain locations being at the hub of development. As a framework for these issues, the case considers a start-up entrepreneur based in Paris as a means to help students/executives consider their own context. Paris is not at the forefront of Blockchain development, but neither is it on the periphery - which should inform their views of whether and how to embrace the technology. The case prompts participants to think about non-crypto-currency-related applications, and how far their options re influenced by the uncertain path of technology development and their own location in the broader global and local network. The issues addressed in the case also apply more generally to executives in large firms considering investment in emerging technologies such as Blockchain.

In 2019, David Behrends, head of Trading and Managing Partner at Sucafina, founded and launched Farmer Connect, a blockchain-based end-to-end transparent solution for the coffee trading industry. Following its successful launch, the tool needs to scale, which means bringing the whole coffee 'ecosystem' on board, analyzing the future structure of Farmer Connect in relation to Sucafina, resolving issues of fundraising and partnerships, as well as incorporating key learnings from a 2020 pilot in Brazil. The case follows the intrapreneurial journey of David, Farmer Connect and Sucafina. It puts managers in the driving seat, asking them to reflect on what it means to create value through innovation, and to disrupt an industry using technology to create positive social impact.

In 2019, the pricing manager at the US manufacturing facility for Sparrow GmbH (Sparrow), a chemical manufacturer based in Germany, asked the project manager at Roland Berger, a global management consulting firm, to provide her opinion on the pricing for Sparrow's bid on a basic chemicals contract with Impendium Chemicals. The basic chemicals industry was a highly competitive and commoditized environment; as a result, pricing decisions with respect to formulating bids were very important. Although the company had traditionally relied on the estimates of salespersons for pricing, it needed to develop a more refined approach to its pricing strategy. The project manager had to decide which costing method was most appropriate for this contract and recommend a price for the bid.

Since the young age of 15, Andre Giraud, the owner-chef of Lux, a 1 Michelin-star French restaurant located in Hong Kong, had devoted his life to cooking. After 17 years of working for top chefs in Europe, he decided that it was time to bring his talent to Asia. Andre and his wife decided to invest their life savings to open Lux, a 35-seater at the heart of Hong Kong's central business district. Having never been involved in the business side of running a restaurant, Andre needed his business partner Brandon to evaluate and manage the restaurant's finance, marketing and operations. In 2017, Lux was awarded 2 Michelin stars. However, the following year, it suffered a demotion, resulting in a massive drop in restaurant reservations that left him with only three months of runway. Andre contemplated closing the doors to his restaurant, as he had no idea about what needed to be improved. However, the local food guides and his social media feeds seemed to indicate he was doing great things in the kitchen. He suffered from depression as a result of the unexplainable loss of the Michelin star, and decided to reach out to Pierre E., a long-time friend and a former Michelin inspector, to find out more about the criteria the guide adopts in reviewing an establishment.

Susan, a first-year analyst at a trading firm, is the only woman among a tight-knit group of 30 analysts, now that Paulette has just been promoted to associate from third-year analyst. She and the rest of the analysts are summoned to an HR meeting because one of the male analysts has been putting Post-It Notes with drawings of penises in Paulette's workspace. All the analysts know who the offender is, but no one, including Susan, identifies him. After the meeting, Susan realizes that what she had considered a joke is actually harassment that could be hurting Paulette. The B case follows Susan's decision and ensuing actions.

Ant Group (螞蟻集團) was on course to raise HKD273bn in a dual offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (SEHK) and the Shanghai Stock Exchange's (SSE) STAR Market. Pre-IPO, Ant's value as a fintech was estimated at HKD2.43tn. As investors were subscribing en masse, China's central bank and finance regulators published a new draft legislation to regulate "micro-lending business operated by internet." What would have been the largest IPO in history was cancelled just two days before its scheduled listing on 5 November 2020. Ant spun off from its parent, Alibaba. It owns Alipay, one of the two largest digital payment systems in China. Ant diversified into a fintech business that included lending, wealth management, and insurance business lines among others. Ant's lucrative lending business, explosive growth, and business model disrupted the Chinese traditional finance industry. After the new legislation came into effect, Ant's capital reserve ratio for its CreditTech business would have to increase from the current 2% to 30%. This was expected to impact the size and growth of its lending business and therefore its value.