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In August 2019, Fair Trade Jewellery Co., a mid-size jewellery retailer based in Toronto, Canada, was wondering how to ensure that its customers received responsibly sourced gold and diamond jewellery. The company had already devoted considerable amounts of time, energy, and expense to develop a responsible supply chain. Its activities toward that goal had included various initiatives beyond jewellery retail, such as providing inventory financing for artisanal miners in the Democratic of Congo. After discovering that a key US partner along the supply chain may have not been following a clear chain-of-custody system in its refinery, the company was unsure how to proceed. Responsibly sourced gold was potentially being contaminated by other gold at the refinery, which led Fair Trade Jewellery Co. to consider opening its own local small-scale refinery. However, that initiative could mean considerable strategic risk and financial burden for the company. It could also have potential effects on its employees, who relied on the company for their livelihood. Did the company's ethical mission require vertically integrating to such a considerable extent?

Harry Miller, the new CEO of a large and growing multinational transportation and logistics company, has asked Allison Freeman, his CHRO, to brief him on the impact that their off-site custom executive education program has had. In turn, the CHRO has enlisted Jack Drake, the program's faculty leader, to collaborate with her in responding to the CEO's request. Students are asked to step into the role of the faculty leader, who has formulated a general framework to do so, and must fill the framework with as many potential ideas regarding the impact as possible.

This case introduces students to the large Brazilian mobile conglomerate, Movile, and its mobile food delivery subsidiary, iFood. It focuses on the experiences of these companies learning business lessons from Silicon Valley and China. In particular, the case discusses how the executive teams developed relationships with important companies and leaders in these markets to set up an open exchange of information.

This case introduces students to Sandy Kurtzig, the founder and CEO of the ASK software company, and the first woman to take a Silicon Valley tech company public. It gives a brief background of the protagonist and then presents students with 4 different dilemmas from Kurtzig's experiences as an entrepreneur and investor.

Founded in 2012, Skillz offered a platform for mobile app developers to monetize skill-based games via prized tournaments. Skillz had over 20,000 registered developers that had created thousands of Skillz-powered games played by over 30 million registered users (gamers). A successful gamer could make hundreds of thousands of dollars playing competitive games of skill. The company had a gross marketplace volume of almost $1 billion in 2019 and over 250 employees primarily in San Francisco, California and Portland, Oregon. CEO Andrew Paradise challenged his leadership team to explore options for accelerating growth.

In February 2020, the board of directors of the French energy utility company, Engie SA (Engie), terminated the services of the company's chief executive officer (CEO). Before her departure, this CEO was the only female CEO among the Cotation Assistée en Continu (CAC) 40 benchmark stock market index of firms. After becoming CEO in May 2016, she divested billions of dollars' worth of fossil-fuel assets and reinvested the proceeds in renewable and energy efficiency services. Her goal was to restructure the loss-making energy company, but the board of directors was not satisfied with her performance. Despite an improvement in the company's financial performance during her tenure, Engie remained one of the lowest-valued energy utility companies on European stock exchanges. With a focus on renewable energy, Engie's relative performance continued to suffer. The chair of the company's board of directors had to determine the cause of the company's stock market performance and find ways to improve. He also had to consider what other factors, in addition to value creation for shareholders, should be used as a performance measure for the next CEO.

The release of Tesla Inc. (Tesla)'s financial results in early 2019 made it clear that significant challenges lay ahead for the firm. While Tesla remained the market leader for electric vehicles in the global automobile industry, sales had dropped dramatically, and Tesla was once again losing money. Its recent launch of the Model 3 held great promise and added a key vehicle to its growing product portfolio, but customer complaints about late delivery were on the rise. As a leader of electric vehicles in the global automobile industry, which capabilities are most important for Tesla to further develop, and how broadly should the firm stretch its supply chain and service network? Were changes to the firm's strategy required in order to advance its mission to accelerate the world's transition to clean energy?

This case uses the experience of a professor at a prominent business school who is involved in a grade dispute with a number of students as an opportunity to introduce core business ethics concepts. After receiving low grades in a course, a number of students appeal their grades. Unbeknownst to the professor, the students' appeals are processed and their grades are adjusted without the professor being given an opportunity to defend her rationale for the original grades. Unhappy with the result, she unsuccessfully raises this issue internally both within her business school as well as with her parent university. Eventually, the professor even considers pursuing a legal remedy. Through the case, core ethical principles related to fairness, justice, and process can be explored by looking at the scenario from the students', instructor's, and the university's perspective. Additionally, there is an opportunity to reflect on what the professor should do next. Should she continue to speak-up and act based on her principles? This is an ideal case to use at the beginning of a semester because the university context will be familiar to all participants. Through the case, foundational ethical concepts can be introduced that will set the stage for the remainder of any course that contains an ethics component.

This four-part case series examines the numerous, often subtle ways in which international and interpersonal relations intersect. When an American MBA student types a controversial comment about China into the virtual chat box of an online class on emerging economies, he ignites a firestorm. Many Chinese students see the comment as racist; many American students see it as an example of free speech. From the Chinese students' perspective, the comment is one more in a long series of hurtful anti-Chinese statements made in the era of the US-China trade war, COVID-19, and a hostile US government. From the American students' perspective, the comment is little more than an isolated, passing incident-insensitive, perhaps, but hardly inflammatory. What actions-if any-should be taken in the comment's aftermath? Should the author of the comment be reprimanded? Should the Chinese students let go of their grievances? What can the class's professor do to mitigate the fallout from the comment and prevent future such problems from occurring? How should the dean and administration respond to the incident, and how can they assuage the hurt feelings of Chinese students and alumni? Taking the perspectives of a Chinese student; the Chinese-American professor in whose class the comment was made; and the dean of the business school, the four cases expose the complex web of stakeholders, motivations, cultural norms, diverse perceptions, and geopolitics present in today's international classrooms and work settings.

In January 2012, the government of India faced significant challenges to achieving three key objectives of high growth, inclusive development, and improved governance. The economy was experiencing a growth slowdown, persistently high inflation, and infrastructure and energy deficits. Policy reforms were hampered by several recent corruption scandals, widespread citizen protests against corruption, and disagreements with coalition partners. Could India make the right decisions needed to lift hundreds of millions of citizens out of poverty?

This case describes the founding of Chinese coffee chain Luckin Coffee in 2017 and its path to surpassing Starbucks as the largest coffee chain in China (by number of stores) in 2019. Unlike Starbucks stores, which were designed to be welcoming "third places" for customers to gather away from their homes or offices, most of Luckin's stores were small and bare, reflecting its mission to provide convenient takeout or delivery coffee to busy customers. With its app-based ordering, cashierless stores, and "smart," cloud-connected kitchen equipment, Luckin positioned itself as a technology company, rather than just a coffee shop, and attracted a number of big-name investors.<br/> However, Luckin used deep discounts on its products to attract new customers, and as of 2019, it had yet to be profitable on a company level. The case asks whether Luckin's business model could be sustainable, even in the absence of these promotional prices, and whether Luckin's focus on takeout and delivery (soon to be expanded through a network of vending machines and express coffee machines) was enough to differentiate it from competitors.

Commonwealth Shakespeare Company (CSC) is a performing arts non-profit organization founded in 1996. It has a strong and presumably loyal following for its annual outdoor production of Shakespeare, called Free Shakespeare on the Common. However, it has limited data to prove this and to cross-promote its other for-fee services. The data it has is held in various databases. Further its analytics and marketing resources are limited. Meanwhile, pressure on the live performing arts industry continues to mount as digital entertainment options grow. Recognizing the disruption that is underway, CSC begins to explore virtual reality's potential and influence on the performing arts. In 2017, while consulting for a team at Google, CSC's founder and a team at Google determined it would be valuable for all parties to produce and release a virtual reality version of Hamlet. With the support of Google and a few major donors, the Hamlet 360: Thy Father's Spirit project was released in January 2019. The case centers on CSC's struggle to meet immediate responsibilities while exploring new digital models and their potential value to and influence on the performing arts. The case is designed for classroom discussion but is also well-suited to student projects related to digital transformation, mobile app design, and more.

Established in 1959, the Virginia Journal of International Law (VJIL) was a student-edited law review at the University of Virginia School of Law. It was among the world's most influential international law journals, and pieces published in the journal had been cited by the Supreme Court of the United States and the International Court of Justice, among many other highly prestigious courts. Despite this, it faced numerous operational challenges, including long publication lead times, missed publication dates, and financial uncertainty. The case allows students to practice problem solving through the A3 thinking process. Supplemental videos discuss aspects of the case in detail and support case discussion.

Denitsa Ikonomova is a champion professional dancer on Dancing with the Stars (France) who has become a desired social media influencer. She must now consider the business side of her profession and decide how to leverage her celebrity.

In 2015, Airbnb, Inc. began to explore entry into the Chinese market. In August of that year, it announced a partnership with two of its China-based investors to help it navigate the expansion. By January 2016, the company was facing a number of fundamental questions. First, how should it best position itself in China to ensure a successful expansion? Should it work with a local competitor and, if so, who? If it chose to instead continue expanding alone, should it replicate its established global formula or should it localize? If it pursued a localization strategy, what were the different ways it could localize its operations? And which of these should it prioritize?

By the second quarter of 2018, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the online video technology company Bitmovin Inc. (Bitmovin) had propelled the start-up along an aggressive growth path. After founding the company in Austria, he had relocated Bitmovin's headquarters to California's Silicon Valley, raised more than US$40 million in investments in two funding rounds, and was now in the process of building a global sales organization for the company's innovative online video infrastructure solutions. Within the next few years, the CEO wanted Bitmovin to achieve $100 million in revenues and initiate an initial public offering on the NASDAQ stock exchange in New York. However, Bitmovin's rapid international growth had resulted in a globally dispersed organization in which effective communication and alignment were difficult to achieve. The sales team was able to close deals with big-name customers in the media industry, but marketing and demand generation had been neglected and there were not enough potential customers in the sales pipeline. The company had recently failed to reach its growth goals for the first time, and the CEO wondered whether the company still had the right sales strategy and the right person as its sales leader.

This Case Study examines the key skills and factors of entrepreneurial success, and how educational courses pertaining to entrepreneurship can be designed to better contribute to the latter. These skills and factors are summarised in the BRiSK3 Mind model, which was crafted with insights gleaned from publications, media interviews, and personal interviews conducted with several entrepreneurs.

The UK daily newspaper the Guardian undertook turnaround initiatives between January 2016 and April 2019 under the leadership of Katherine Viner, the newspaper's editor-in-chief. Viner leveraged a new reader-funded contribution model to generate revenues, whereas newspapers such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal used paywalls and subscription-based models for revenue generation. Viner also undertook several cost-cutting initiatives, such as replacing the Berliner newspaper format with a tabloid format and outsourcing the printing of the Guardian. The impact of the contribution-based revenue model was substantial, leading the newspaper's digital revenues to surpass revenues from advertising. The newspaper's reach also increased substantially, with international subscribers, especially those in the United States and Australia, contributing more than Guardian readers in the United Kingdom. Although the Guardian reported its first profit in the past two decades in May 2019, several challenges remained for Viner, such as increasing the number of financial contributors to 2 million by 2022 and making the turnaround sustainable.

At a time when the wellness industry was experiencing a dynamic renaissance, Weight Watchers International Inc. was stuck with an aging demographic. In 2018, in an effort to stay relevant, the company rebranded itself as WW International Inc. (WW). The goal was to make wellness accessible to all, and to transform from a diet brand to a global wellness juggernaut. However, despite the rebrand and support from celebrity spokesperson Oprah Winfrey, WW's stock price declined sharply. The results led to a number of questions about the soundness of WW's marketing strategy. What should WW do to prevent a meltdown in brand equity, retain its loyal customers, and realize its ambitious goals in the wellness space?