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After a successful inaugural year, Burunda Prince, the Managing Director of Comcast's startup business accelerator The Farm, was getting ready for an eventful 2019. Comcast was America's largest cable and internet service provider, having built a profitable business bundling television content and delivering it via cable networks to more than 20 million households. The business was changing rapidly with the rise of streaming services, and The Farm was an initiative spearheaded by Comcast's Central Division to introduce innovation into the Division's culture. The case describes Prince's approach in building The Farm from her arrival in August 2017, with discussions around how she chose participants for The Farm's programs, how she worked with Comcast and with her employer, Boomtown Accelerators, who was under contract to run The Farm for Comcast, and how she developed her Atlanta ecosystem of startups, investors, and mentors. Should the business accelerator maintain its position as a general business accelerator, or should it focus on areas specific to Comcast? Should it maintain the same curriculum structure for its accelerator programs? This case can be taught as a standalone case, or with its counterpart, "Bill Connors and The Farm, a Comcast NBCUniversal Innovation Hub (Powered by Boomtown)" which precedes this one and focuses on Comcast's rationale for launching a corporate startup accelerator.

In September 2014, the national logistics manager at Lajpal Tea Pvt. Limited (Lajpal Tea), a leading tea brand in Pakistan, received notice that one of his key logistics service providers would soon terminate his service contract for transportation services. This contractor had been associated with Lajpal Tea since the company originated; however, due to payment delays and non-responsive behaviour from the logistics team, he decided to terminate his services and provided three months' notice as per the terms and conditions of his contract. The transport company's business was strong: the owner had many local contacts, geopolitical influence, and a good understanding of the local market. However, his trucks were old fashioned and were not equipped with the latest technology, such as global positioning system tracking. Lajpal Tea, a leading organization with plans for expansion, had to decide what to do now. Should the logistics manager negotiate with the existing contractor or find an alternate transporter from among the other available options?

In 2016 (A case), the founder of Tokyo Smoke, a cannabis retailing enterprise based in Toronto, needed to attract investors. The former Google Inc. employee had taken advantage of public policy changes in Canada and was modelling his retail business on Starbucks Corporation, which had educated North American consumers about coffee and captured a huge share of the coffee market. He needed investment capital in order to build his brand and needed to determine an appropriate valuation as part of his pitch for investment capital. By 2018 (B case), he had to address new challenges in his role as chief retail officer of Canopy Growth Corporation (Canopy), the Canadian licensed producer of cannabis that had taken over the company he founded. How could he position Canopy as a world leader in retail cannabis?

In mid-2017, faced with declining viewership and the loss of the associated advertising and affiliate fees from the pay-TV bundle, The Walt Disney Company needed to consider alternative ways to reach and engage viewers. One option was to move away from bundles and go direct to the consumer. Another option was to acquire more content and make it accessible across multiple platforms. But would these strategies be enough to stem subscriber losses? How did the push by technology disruptors into original content influence these decisions? Were there other strategies worth considering in light of changing tastes, technology, and competition?

Even as Parachute oil is the clear brand leader in the branded regular coconut oil market, having rapidly taken away share from the loose oil market, there is a threat emerging. The fastest growing segment in this category is the Value Added Hair Oil (VAHO) market which is further divided into four sub-segments - perfumed, cooling, Coconut Oil + and non-coconut oil. In each of these four categories, Marico's offerings are laggards. Not only are their shares a lot lower than the individual brand leaders in these four categories, some of these brands are actually directly comparing themselves (in television advertisements) to the flagship Parachute coconut oil brand. Shome thus has to balance maintenance of the leading position in the coconut oil market, to minimise cannibalisation in promoting the various VAHO offerings of Marico, and to gain on the leaders in these other categories. At Kobe, Leong and her team provided end-to-end influencer marketing services for clients including consultation on marketing strategies for realising brand objectives, assisting clients in identifying KPIs, execution and monitoring of campaigns, analysis of campaign results and providing recommendations. In addition, Kobe's AI driven influencer platform allowed clients to choose the most suitable influencers from a database of over 5000 influencers. Millennials in Singapore were social media savvy and often-brought products based on recommendations of influencers they trusted. Targeting this customer segment through social media was therefore a viable option. However, the Jia Jia campaign had a few limitations including a small budget and a short timeframe. Another constraint was that herbal tea was not popular with millennials.

David Bladow and Matthew Schwab, close friends and former college roommates, left their jobs and moved to San Francisco to start a new venture together. After exploring the gifting industry, they ultimately focused on floral delivery. They launched BloomThat, an on-demand service that made sending flowers as easy as sending a text message and gained initial traction over Valentine's Day in 2013. On the back of this success, the team was accepted into Y Combinator for the summer of 2013, raised $3.6 million of seed funding over the next year, and in December 2014, secured $4 million of Series A financing. Problems arose soon after BloomThat expanded to Los Angeles in early 2015, and by the summer, the company teetered on the brink of collapse. Aggressive restructuring saved BloomThat, and existing investors provided bridge financing in late 2015. In the end, however, the turnaround was not enough to attract new investors. When the case picks up in May 2017, Bladow and Schwab must decide what to do next. One option is to shut down BloomThat and move on. The other is to search to sell the start-up to one of the large companies in the industry, with the cofounders knowing that the process will take multiple months, would yield a low valuation and require them to go work for the incumbent for a meaningful period of time. Given their position in the capitalization table, the co-founders are unclear how the value from such a transaction will be divided with the venture capital and venture debt investors. With this uncertainty, the co-founders need to decide how to proceed.

This case focuses on Nimbus Therapeutics, a biotechnology startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as its leadership team tries to determine the company's long-term strategy. The startup's founders structured Nimbus as a limited liability company, which has given it more flexibility when it comes to funding and development partnerships. Does the operating structure still makes sense as Nimbus looks ahead to the future?

In its 2019 Partner Symposium, 2U, an online program management provider (OPM), showcased its new vision: "Career. Curriculum. Continuum. A construct for lifelong learning in the 21st century". 2U, founded in 2008, and went public in 2014, was looking to expand beyond their current degree offerings to include a wider range of programs, such as short courses, bootcamps, and professional certificates. Led by co-founder and CEO Chip Paucek, 2U believed that they were the strongest partner in the OPM market that could enable universities' digital transformation, allowing them to offer a variety of courses to a changing student profile. The universities, on the other hand, recognized that times were changing and that the appeal of a residential experience might be dwindling. Pressures of offering a more flexible learning format were mounting. Some schools were engaging in partnerships such as with 2U to get themselves online while others saw digital and online as the next evolution of instruction and that it was their responsibility to learn how to master it and own it. The case considers Paucek's challenge of leading a for-profit OPM. Was 2U growing in a way that risked alienating their most important stakeholders, the brand named universities themselves? Were the university leaders going to change their approach and start investing in the digital transformation themselves to avoid giving 2U a cut of their revenues?

Sundaram Multi Pap Ltd. (Sundaram), based in Maharashtra, India, was in the business of school and office stationery and e-learning. The company had been in the business successfully for more than two decades, backed by some innovative and cost-effective marketing strategies and excellent labour management. However, by 2017, the situation had changed. Losses had accrued in the core business in its subsidiary digital education business. The company had not announced any dividends since fiscal year 2014/15, after having an unbroken track record of profits and dividends over a decade. High interest cost, low sales, and high fixed expenses had caused mounting losses for the company. Changing market dynamics were also challenging, with a shortage of raw materials, low margins, and an increase in competition. In 2017, with the company's stock plunging in value, management had to decide how to revive this ailing company.

In 2018, founder and chief executive officer of Zarr Tech Canada Inc. (Zarr Tech), understood the need for his young business to continue along its impressive growth trajectory. However, he was unsure how this goal could best be achieved. Given the increasingly competitive information technology consulting sector, he questioned whether Zarr Tech was well positioned to take advantage of further industry growth, and he wondered how best to promote his business to achieve the growth it needed. He considered various options, such as attending trade shows; hiring a sales representative; using online advertising mediums, such as Google Ads or LinkedIn; and employing an email marketing campaign. Additionally, Zarrillo was considering expanding his operations to the Vancouver area but wondered if now was the right time to do so.

In December 2017, the managing director (MD) of Macmet Engineering Limited (Macmet), an engineering firm located in Kolkata, India, was preparing for an upcoming negotiation with a client a who had submitted a project proposal for the supply and installation of a water filtration system. The MD wanted to conduct an in-depth cost analysis to determine a competitive bid to win the project. Typically, pricing decisions were made using the full-cost method; however, the MD wanted to consider the current industry and competitive landscape in addition to an analysis of Macmet's corporate capabilities to see if direct costing made more sense for this project. He also wanted to calculate the project's absorption cost. Using the cost analysis alongside the qualitative analysis, the MD wanted to submit a bid in the next two weeks to win the project.

In January 2019, the low-cost brokerage house Zerodha emerged as India's largest broker by number of customers. From 2014 to 2018, Zerodha's client addition had grown by 200-300 per cent annually; however, the company now needed a strategy to maintain and defend its leadership position. It needed to tap India's retail broking segment for continued growth. And in a market swamped with nearly identical products, Zerodha needed a strategy to avoid being confused with similar firms and to consistently be consumers' first choice. Could it stay ahead of its rivals with product innovation?

This case uses an array of carefully selected and excerpted revenue recognition related information contained in Salesforce.com's January 31, 2019, 10-K. Maria, the fictional protagonist, is seeking to understand those disclosures as part of her preparation for an upcoming job interview with the company. As such, she is relying on those disclosures to provide insights as to the company's main product/service lines, the events that signal when and how much revenue the company has earned (i.e., the essence of its business model), along with the related official generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) criteria pertinent to the valuing and timing of recorded revenues.

This case explores the considerations of an executive compensation analyst as he finalizes a report to the compensation and benefits committee of Charter Communications (Charter), a leading broadband and communications company, on the appropriate compensation structure for Charter's CEO, Thomas Rutledge. Charter's board clearly wanted to retain Rutledge, but in the world of executive compensation, it was not enough to have the biggest payment package. Proper incentives and moving performance targets were essential for companies that wanted their executives to strike the right balance between risky maneuvers and safe, consistent success. The analyst must be careful to cover all of his bases in his report, balancing outright monetary rewards with proper long-term incentives.

In August 2018, Glenwood Laboratories Canada Ltd. (Glenwood), an importer of medical devices from the United States, is caught in the crossfire of public policy. In June 2018, the United States imposed a 10 per cent tariff on the import of raw aluminum from Canada; in July 2018, Canada imposed a retaliatory tariff of 10 per cent on the import of processed aluminum from the United States. As an importer of aluminum oxygen cylinders from the United States for distribution to its Canadian customers, Glenwood is in the middle of a trade war between the two countries, whose aluminum supply chains have been integrated for over two decades. Glenwood's president and chief executive officer (CEO) must examine the options before him and find a way forward.

This case describes Saudi Telecom Co.'s (STC's) transition from a government-run entity to a business competing on the open market. Early in its transition phase, STC recognized it would need to transform its employee and company culture to succeed. Led by Dr. Khaled Biyari and his immediate predecessors, STC's cultural transformation was widely heralded as successful by 2018. But Biyari left the CEO role that year, leaving Nasser Bin Sulaiman Al Nasser to take over the position. The change at STC's helm represented a critical inflection point for a company that, as the incumbent provider of all telecommunications in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was seen as critical to the success of the country as a whole. The case is intended to show how a management change might be handled during a firm's critical years. Could Al Nasser continue the cultural improvements of his predecessor? And how would he go about building on the legacy of Biyari, whose personal vision and leadership presence was seen as essential to STC's achievements? Could Al Nasser push STC to become the modern, digital company it would need to be to attract talent in the highly competitive technology pool?

Brazilian Michelin-star chef Alex Atala managed four restaurants, a foundation advocating for the environment, and a seminar focused on food and sustainability. His new initiative was opening a hotel.

After the British government searched for a venture capital organization to create a new dementia fund, it selected SV Health, a UK- and US-based healthcare VC fund. The case follows Kate Bingham, a partner at SV Health, as she starts the fund, raises money, makes investments, and hires a fund CEO.

In 2000, The Gap, Inc. (Gap) was the world's largest player in specialty fashion retailing, and companies such as Inditex of Spain, H&M of Sweden, and Fast Retailing of Japan were less than a quarter of Gap's size. But after two decades of growth, Gap's progress stalled in the early 2000s, while these players continued to expand. Inditex overtook Gap in 2008, H&M in 2010, and Fast Retailing in 2016. Inditex continued to set the pace ten years later in 2019, and Gap appeared to be falling ever further behind. Since 2000, four Gap CEOs had struggled to turn around the company. While several temporary profit increases appeared to herald a recovery, a sustained rally remained elusive and the share price remained volatile. Mickey Drexler, who joined the firm in 1983 and became CEO in 1995, had been primarily responsible for Gap's rise to global prominence, but he was fired in 2002 after two years of double digit, same-store sales declines and a 75% drop in the stock price. His successor, Paul Pressler, appeared to have engineered a remarkable recovery, but was fired in 2007 after disappointing sales and another slump in profits, leaving Gap to be run by interim CEO Robert Fisher, son of founder Donald Fisher. Pressler's permanent replacement, Glenn Murphy, fresh from a successful turnaround at a Canadian drug-store chain, promised tighter price controls, lower administrative costs, and a leaner, more aggressive Gap. He cut costs and drove up earnings per share, but sales continued to decline in his first few years in office. A sales and profit revival in 2012 looked promising, driving the company's share price up 50%, but it proved short-lived, and Murphy announced in 2014 that he would step down, handing over to company veteran Art Peck (HBS '79). After four years under Peck's leadership, the company was still struggling to rediscover its old magic, while Inditex was going from strength to strength.