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Zameer Kassam Fine Jewelry (ZKFJ) designs custom engagement rings that tell the story of a couple's relationship. The case describes the company's process for engaging clients, which has historically been a relatively offline, high-touch experience. Obliged by social-distancing guidelines with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, Zameer Kassam and his team had been forced to take many facets of the business online. Although clients still seemed delighted by their rings, Kassam wondered what might be being lost for his clients and employees in this new virtual medium. On the other hand, perhaps there were aspects of the process that could be improved through online delivery? Such a transition could represent an opportunity to grow the business.

Since its founding, Getaway's service offering - tiny, modern cabins in the woods, located within a two-hour drive of major metropolitan areas - had been met with tremendous demand. Overworked and overconnected city dwellers reveled in the opportunity to take a break from their hectic lives, disconnecting in nature, and savoring meaningful moments with the people closest to them. What began with a fixed, nightly cabin rate of $99 a night had graduated over time to daily yield management, and a steady increase in prices to match rising demand. $159.. $179... $199.. With the onset of the global pandemic in March of 2020, the prospect of getting away to the woods, in rigorously-cleaned, socially-distanced cabins, became even more appealing to homebound consumers, and there was a step change in demand, and prices skyrocketed, crossing $369 in some markets. Should the company make as much money as quickly as possible to fund further growth, or does that risk that consumers will determine Getaway is too expensive and either never come, or never come more than once?

In 2015, Amit Bendov was struck by a realization about a new technology that might be able to transcribe musical notation in real-time, which eventually became known as Gong. Gong's business proposition was simple: provide software that automatically captures, understands, and analyzes written and spoken sales conversations (not music) to help sales teams sell more effectively. It was a compelling idea with the potential to create significant value for its users. There were, however, many questions. Could the technology live up to its promises? What could salespeople learn from their own conversations and from the best - and worst - salespeople among them? Could leveraging conversational insights make a measurable impact on a company's bottom line? And how could Gong defend against competitors, both now and in the future?

This case describes the history of Uber, its business model-including the ways it differed from that of the traditional taxi industry-and its competition with Lyft. The case is set in 2017, a year in which Uber was plagued by even more scandals than usual, though its behavior had frequently sparked controversy ever since its launch in 2010. By June 2017, Uber had a valuation of $70 billion, making it the most valuable venture-funded tech startup in the world, but a shadow hung over its reputation, due in part to recent revelations about its toxic and sexist corporate culture, and to its tendency to ignore local regulations when expanding into new markets. In June 2017, Uber's co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick resigned, and in August 2017, Dara Khosrowshahi, formerly the CEO of Expedia, was hired in his place. Meanwhile, Lyft, which presented itself as the "nice guy" alternative to Uber's bad-boy image, seemed to be gaining ground. The case asks what Khosrowshahi might do to fix Uber's broken culture and improve its public image, and how he could best ensure Uber's dominance in the years to come.

This case follows Summit Partners, a leading growth equity firm, as it evaluates an investment opportunity in IVC, a veterinary care group in the U.K. market. The case allows students to articulate and evaluate the investment thesis of this transaction. Additionally, it provides insight into the sourcing and due diligence process in the modern growth equity space, as well as details of the financial structure of the investment. In particular, the case provides students with an opportunity to recreate the valuation model, and understand the economics of the preferred equity. The case can be used as a platform to reflect on the value add of growth equity investors and what constitutes as a "propriety" investment in the mature growth equity industry.

This case describes the formation of Trista Engel and Jessica Markowitz's search fund. It begins by describing their process for deciding if they should pursue entrepreneurship through acquisition and, if so, if they should partner together. Upon deciding to raise a search fund, the duo work through the process of fundraising. Surprised by the positive response, they are faced with deciding who they should choose to have as investors.

This case describes the tumultuous experience Eduardo Ruiz had as CEO of Retail Services & Technologies. Ruiz had acquired Arizona-based RST at the end of his search process, but soon began to experience difficulties with the seller and former CEO. These difficulties strained Ruiz's relationships with his board, employees, and key customers. As the situation deteriorated, he faced the prospect of filing for bankruptcy.

Money laundering schemes disguise the criminal origins of an estimated 2% to 5% of the world's gross domestic product. Money laundering not only enables criminals to escape detection, but may also be used to finance further criminal operations including terrorism. This case introduces readers to money laundering and anti-money laundering (AML) techniques.

In 2019, Board Chair and third-generation shareholder Helen Fullerton was preparing for a meeting to discuss Ohio-based Hayden Saw Company's (Hayden) future as a family business. As the company entered its fifth decade, the Hayden family was dealing with three distinct pressures. First was the question of how to represent shareholders equitably in a way that would enable the family to move past its history of friction and estrangement. The second question was how to ensure a talented pipeline of family members working at the company as the family dispersed across the U.S. Third and relatedly, was the question of how to ensure informed family representation on the company's board to support its independent directors. To address these pressures, Fullerton had commissioned a family business consultant to generate a series of proposals. The consultant had come back with comprehensive ideas for a shareholders' council, a family office, family employment tracks, and a shareholder director process. Now it was time for Fullerton to review the proposals and decide how to move forward.

In its 2017 annual report, the Dairy Farm Group had reported a decline in sales and profits for its Singapore Supermarket and Hypermarket business, with increasing competition cited as the key reason for the lacklustre performance. Peter Goh, an analyst at Singapore Management University's Institute of Service Excellence (ISE) has been tasked with preparing a business pitch to the Supermarkets and Hypermarkets division of the company's Singapore office to help it address some of the challenges it faces. To help raise the performance of the service sector in Singapore, ISE conducts and releases the results of the Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) to both the media and industry, as well as provides research and consulting services. The 2018 CSISG study had revealed "Ease of Getting to Stores" as one of the lowest-rated attributes for the supermarket industry, and Goh believes that rationalising store locations could be a possible answer to the challenges the Dairy Farm Group faced. In his opinion, a geospatial analysis of the company's customers' demographic profile relative to its current store locations would provide some key insights.

This case chronicles the rise of Meituan Dianping, the third largest company in China's hyper competitive e-commerce industry. Best known for its food delivery service, the company was changing the lives of hundreds of millions of consumers and millions of merchant through a suite of smartphone apps. To reach this point, the company had gone through several live or die competitive battles including the so called "Thousand Groupon War". Well positioned to ride the fast-growth wave of China's service e-commerce, there was no room for complacency. Competition was fierce and so was the pressure coming from merchants and consumers spoilt for choice. What strategies should the company implement to sustain long-term growth in the fast-evolving market?

In the first of three mini-cases on workplace mistreatment, "Casual Fridays Gone Wrong," the vice-president of compliance for a collections company faced the dilemma of how to deal with a complaint about a manager's racist comments. In the second mini-case, "Dial 911-Health Care in Distress," a nurses' union representative at a mid-sized urban hospital needed to respond to a patient's threat to take his complaints about negligence to the media; he planned to identify the individual nurses he claimed had provided negligent care, in part due to his race. In the third mini-case, "A Toxic Academic Environment," formal harassment actions have been taken against Professor Marybeth Gasman, holder of an endowed chair at the University of Pennsylvania.

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Singapore, Style Theory has successfully paired the sharing economy with the fashion industry by improvising its business model. With the ever-changing dynamics of the global world economies, the sharing economy is incrementally being adopted by different untouched commodities and industries. Finding the gap and offering fashion on rental, Style Theory's perfect timing in addressing the shifting consumer needs allowed its business model to effectively pair the sharing economy with the right industry. Style Theory's effective business model has helped the Company build a strong foundation towards success. With the gradual evolution of the business model components, such as key partners and expansion activities, customer relationships, sales channels and revenue streams, Style Theory stays ahead of the curve by continuously expanding and improving on their product and service offerings. This Case Study analyses how it was the right timing for Style Theory to enter into Singapore's fashion rental industry, studies the Style Theory's business model that successfully paired the sharing economy with the industry, and hints if it could be applied beyond the fashion industry in Singapore.

In the pre-dawn hours of August 2, 1990, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered his army to invade the neighboring, oil-rich state of Kuwait; within two days, Iraq had largely overcome organized military resistance and occupied its neighbor. A near-total financial and trade embargo imposed on Iraq failed to persuade it to leave Kuwait and in January 1991, U.S.-led coalition forces launched "Operation Desert Storm" with an air offensive against Iraq. On the night of January 18, Iraq fired ten Scud missiles at two of Israel's major cities-the first air attack on an Israeli city since 1948. Israel withheld from responding publicly but secretly began crafting and testing a plan to assassinate Saddam Hussein. This case details the planning process, the trial run, and the massive failure that led the assassination plan to be aborted.

By the end of 2019 the adidas Group was solidly the world's second largest multinational in the sportswear manufacturing industry. Following the successful implementation of a digital transformation initiated in 2015, the company enjoyed years of sustained growth and high profitability in the 2016-2019 period, strengthening its brand desirability and increasing sales volumes, especially in the online space. It ended fiscal year 2019 stronger than ever and its chief executive officer (CEO), Kasper Rørsted, was very optimistic about what the future would hold. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020 radically changed the business landscape. adidas was severely hit by the lockdowns imposed by governments. The new measures of social distancing were expected to have a lasting impact on consumer habits and consequently on the operations of companies such as adidas. Thus, unimaginable only few months before, the company's first earnings call of 2020 led by Rørsted focused on the negative results obtained in the preceding few months and the high degree of uncertainty looking forward. Aware of the many challenges facing the company, Rørsted had to decide which strategic initiatives he should prioritize to future-proof the company and keep it on a steady growth trajectory in a post-COVID-19 world.

The case describes a fictitious family office (FO), Merlion Investments, and the efforts of a junior family member, Leong Yew Kong, to convince his uncle and his grandfather to make an allocation to collectible assets. Similar to many family offices, Merlion Investments pursues a relatively conservative investment strategy; only 20% of its assets are allocated to riskier opportunities designed to grow the family's wealth. Yew Kong, who has worked diligently under his uncle's guidance for years, wants more responsibility. After doing his own research, Yew Kong believes he has identified an opportunity to carve out his own niche in the portfolio by investing in collectibles. The case is constructed to illustrate the real-world challenge of investing in non-traditional assets, in this instance, collectibles. Background information on five different collectible assets is provided in the case that students can use to discuss a) whether his uncle, Tan Chee Keong, and Merlion Investments should agree to Yew Kong's suggestion, b) which collectibles to invest in and through what vehicle, c) how much capital to allocate, and d) what kind of skills or expertise the team would need to successfully manage these investments.

In the summer of 2018, Drinkworks CEO Nathaniel Davis needed to make a number of go-to-market decisions ahead of his company's upcoming product launch. Formed through a joint venture between Keurig Dr. Pepper and Anheuser-Busch InBev, Drinkworks had developed an innovative home bar system that let consumers make single-serving cocktails or beer with the push of a button. Keurig and AB InBev provided valuable technological, supply chain, and regulatory expertise, but since the Drinkworks Home Bar was a novel product, there were no established market benchmarks for the Drinkworks team to follow as they prepared for the Home Bar's upcoming market launch. After conducting several market research experiments, they needed to interpret the results and make several decisions around customer segmentation, value proposition, product assortment, pricing, and distribution channels. Could Drinkworks be the next billion-dollar opportunity for Keurig and AB InBev?

This case describes how Laura Franklin and William Colt conducted their entrepreneurial acquisition process. After the duo honed their method for contacting potential sellers, they found a company they were excited to close a deal with. Over the course of many months of diligence, and overcoming a large mistake, the duo were prepared to acquire their ideal company - then COVID-19 hit, leading them to consider pausing the deal.

Licensed foreign telecom operators in Myanmar were required to also provide mobile financial services (MFS). Due to a lack of trust in the banking sector, the government believed the adoption of MFS would boost financial inclusion in the country by enabling seamless money transfers, bill payments, and more. As they entered the MFS market, foreign telecom operators Ooredoo and Telenor grappled with fundamental questions that would determine their launch and customer acquisition strategies.

After nearly five years in operation, Doctor Cynthia Bamdad, founder and CEO of Minerva Biotechnologies Corporation (Minerva), was reflecting on the company's next steps. In a few short years, she and her small team had managed to develop a nanoparticle process for testing new drugs that was orders of magnitude faster than traditional approaches. Using this process, they had discovered the mechanism that caused 96% of all breast cancers and identified families of small molecule therapeutics that were effective in blocking this mechanism in live cells in the laboratory. Moreover, Bamdad did not think it would be long before the company could offer an early warning diagnostic for breast cancer, which would allow less invasive treatment of the condition. The company had filed several families of patent applications in support of these claims, but the challenge was funding. To date, Bamdad had relied on Federal Government grants and angel investors to fund the research, but the next steps would require much larger investment. Should Minerva seek to commercialize its drug development technology to help fund the riskier steps of drug development? Should it focus on a diagnostic which would make current treatments more effective? Should it license its small molecule therapeutics to one of the many well-funded companies seeking cures for cancer? Or should Bamdad raise capital to support tests in mice in order to reach the Federal Drug Administration IND (Investigational New Drug) application stage of drug discovery? This would allow clinical trials in humans, which would require more capital, but an IND would increase the value of Minerva's intellectual capital substantially. What should Bamdad do?