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Dr. Richard Hofstetter was wondering what was to become of his acoustic disruption technology (ADT), a technology that used sounds to change behavior patterns of several species of wood boring beetles. Initial lab tests indicated that customized sounds would change the behavior of pine bark beetles in a way that would make the insects less likely to attack a tree and generally less likely to survive and reproduce. While the technology was not designed to protect large areas of forest, it represented an environmentally-friendly way to protect individual trees on private property or high-value trees within national forests, parks, or other public areas. Unfortunately, the technology languished in a university research lab, attracting some interest from potential customers but little financial support for the needed field-testing and development. Dr. Hofstetter was eager to begin field-testing and to gain support for the commercialization of an ADT device. However, future decisions hinged on some key questions: Was this target market large enough to attract funding from external parties? If so, was a focus on public, agricultural or private-land-owners the best bet for obtaining the cash needed to jump-start the project? What sort of proposal would be most attractive to potential investors?

The Virginia Lottery offered scratcher games for which consumers could instantly win an array of prizes. In the summer of 2007, finance professor Scott Hoover determined that the lottery's website had provided false information about the number of prizes outstanding for some scratcher games. After a ten-month investigation, Hoover and a team of attorneys had gathered evidence to support a specific allegation of fraud. The lottery was selling scratcher tickets for which no grand prizes were possible, yet, its website posted information indicating that grand prizes were, in fact, still outstanding. Hoover and his attorneys worked behind the scenes to seek reform and remedies from the lottery, but those efforts were unsuccessful. He wonders whether he should go public with his allegations and file a lawsuit against the lottery. Several important ethics-related questions are posed. Does Hoover have a moral obligation to inform consumers of the apparent fraud? Should Hoover demand a return of the lottery's alleged illegal gains when those gains have purportedly benefited Virginia's educational system? Are there other approaches that do not involve Hoover going public that might motivate the lottery officials to correct the information?

Despite L&R Pallet having become the largest pallet manufacturer in the Rocky Mountain region, it was facing dire staffing and financial difficulties in 2013. James Ruder, the 44-year-old president of L&R Pallet, was convinced it was just a matter of time before the company closed its doors. However, after taking a mission trip to Peru and hearing God's message to "love on" his employees, Ruder decided to hire seven refugees from Burma in a desperate attempt to find an alternative source of labor. Within a week, the Burmese employees were outperforming his other workers. Thinking he had found the solution to his employee problems, Ruder hired an additional 18 refugees. Within several weeks, though, he found that he had a real mess on his hands with the refugees getting injured, some of his Mexican workers calling him a "Mexican hater," and the rest of his staff resenting the attention he was showering on the refugees. Ruder needed to determine how to handle the growing tension within his company's culture as well as find the necessary human capital to run his business.

This case illustrates the challenges, particularly cash flow, experienced by a team of entrepreneurs as they deal with startup issues in a coworking social enterprise, Common Ground Coworking (CGC). CGC is located in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador and was created to fill an important gap in the province's startup ecosystem by providing a flexible, affordable workspace for early-stage startups and independent professionals to build their businesses amongst the ideas, inspiration, and support of fellow like-minded professionals. As a social enterprise, CGC was structured similarly to a for-profit business, but its mission was social. Instead of paying dividends to owners/shareholders, profits would be reinvested to support better services/amenities for members. The case is set in August 2014 just four months after CGC's opening, as Executive Director, Jennifer Smith seeks to deal with financial issues that threaten CGS's future. She had to decide what solutions were best to address the immediate and long-term financial issues faced by the organization.

In 2016, Xavier Lopez Ancona, president and co-founder of KidZania-a Mexican company with international success in developing and operating theme parks where children could play as grown-ups and pretend to be adults assuming the role of countless professions-needed to decide how to continue to differentiate the brand and grow revenue in the very competitive and dynamic entertainment market. Around the world, the revolutionary and innovative edu-tainment concept developed by KidZania was the most copied. Despite the growth, KidZania corporate revenues began to stagnate in 2012 because of the depreciation of the Mexican currency. Four alternatives were being considered: Growth in number of current parks to continue building scale as a defensive strategy, developing smaller park formats to target cities where the current format was not sustainable, developing an interactive platform that could bring together the growing digital market and the role-playing experiential learning, or transforming the company into a content development enterprise. Xavier's team needed to recommend the best alternative to pursue to the Board of Directors.

Russian River Brewing Company's [RRBC] owners and founders, Vinnie and Natalie Cilurzo, grew their business into one of the largest craft breweries in Sonoma County, California, from 2003 to 2016. RRBC's success surpassed the Cilurzos' initial expectations, as they were able to increase production fourfold and RRBC became one of the top five craft beer producers in the region. RRBC won multiple awards for the quality of its beers, in particular for the seasonally produced and allocated cult brand, Pliny the Younger. By 2015, the Cilurzos had paid off all outstanding debt and purchased 100 percent of the firm's equity using internally generated cash flows. However, RRBC's production and consumer retail infrastructure were insufficient to meet spikes in consumer demand. For over a decade, the Cilurzos largely dismissed the idea of expanding, but in spring 2016, discussions between the couple about investing in a second brewpub to expand production got more serious. As the Cilurzos analyzed RRBC's internal and external environment, they searched for ways to find consensus regarding expansion.

Beginning in fiscal year 2018, a new and relatively unnoticed accounting rule took effect that had the potential for a major impact on the reported earnings of companies holding financial assets or owing financial liabilities. Dubbed the Financial Instruments-Overall: Recognition and Measurement of Financial Assets and Financial Liabilities, or Accounting Standards Update 2016-01 (ASU 2016-01), the updated rule sought to increase financial reporting transparency and relevancy by changing how companies accounted for equity. Specifically, the update required recognition of changes in fair value in net income and affected the presentation and disclosure requirements for financial instruments. Entities across a broad range of industries were significantly impacted-specifically; companies holding minority passive stakes in other entities that had to be valued quarterly, whether that value had increased or decreased. This inherent volatility then flowed through a company's income statement, causing fluctuations in earnings per share, and calling into question the relevance of reported net income. This case describes the updated standards for equity investments under FASB's ASU 2016-01 and IASB's IFRS 9 and their impact on Alphabet Inc. By providing viewpoints from preparers, investors, and standard setters, the case allows students to appreciate the trade-offs of the different accounting methods for asset valuation.

In July 2017, software and device giant Microsoft [NasdaqGS: MSFT] adopted a new accounting standard that market observers described as one of "the most historic accounting changes to hit the U.S. capital markets in decades." Twelve years in the making, the Financial Accounting Standards Board's (FASB) 2014-09 Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606) laid out new rules for making revenue recognition consistent across industries, both in the U.S. and internationally through its International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) equivalent, IFRS 15. While implementation of the standard; beginning in fiscal year 2018, would have an impact on many industries, perhaps the greatest effect would be felt by software companies, where "multiple-element arrangements" that bundled software licenses, upgrades, and post-contract customer support or services were ubiquitous. This case focuses on helping students understand the updated standards for revenue recognition, both in the U.S. through Financial Accounting Standards Board's (FASB) 2014-09 Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606); and internationally through the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) equivalent, IFRS 15.

This case describes how Feeding America, the third-largest nonprofit organization in the US, designed a marketplace for allocating donated food across its network of food banks. It considers the promises and pitfalls of using market-based allocation in the context of a centralized artificial currency market, and evaluates the importance of different design components in making the marketplace efficient and fair for all participants.

Over the fall of 2017, Filecoin, a blockchain-based cloud storage startup, raised more than US$233 million from more than 2,000 investors. It achieved this largely through the novel funding mechanism, initial coin offering (ICO) and in the absence of an actual product or service. This case chronicles the genesis and development of Filecoin, with a focus on the background and mechanics of its ICO. It also introduces students to the technical core of its storage protocol and how blockchain technology, through Filecoin tokens, could monetise that feature. The case also highlights the regulatory implications concerning ICOs. This case could be used as an illustration of the application of blockchain technology to an existing business (e.g., cloud storage) and its consequences. It may also be used to discuss the dynamics of a "token economy", (i.e., creating and developing a market based on tokens) and the issues confronting organisations that employ blockchain technology. The issues may also include, but are not limited to, those concerning ICOs, such as regulations, incentives, and disincentives. Instructors may also find this case useful to discuss the IT strategy and viability of a blockchain-based, file-sharing business.

The senior director of supply chain management for Colberts Inc. (Colberts) had made tremendous strides. She had been among a select few senior directors chosen to lead an initiative to integrate a new supply chain management system. Although a costly investment, the new information technology infrastructure had helped increase operational efficiency at the store level. While the initiative had initially not received support from everyone at Colberts, the director was now receiving congratulations as the benefits of the new system had become apparent. She was invited to meet with the chief operating officer to discuss a possible promotion to vice-president of Technology Operations. She thought things were going well until the system began to deteriorate that morning. She needed to address the short-term replenishment issue and the longer-term information system issues.

The global population is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, of which 70% will be living in cities. Over the past 40 years, however, 30% of the world's arable land has become unproductive. Given the scarcity of land and rising demand for food, there is an urgent need for solutions that require less land and labour yet produce higher yields. Vertical farming uses three-dimensional space to achieve more than a hundred-fold increase in crop production over traditional agriculture. However, such farms involve extremely high capital and operating costs. The case study reviews the the technologies on which vertical farms depend and the conditions under which they can become economically viable.

Long before Spotify had become a household name, and when Netflix was still mailing off DVDs to customers' homes, Tien Tzuo had foreseen a major transformation in the business world: from one-off sales to subscription business models. He realized that no one was making billing software to serve the complex needs of such companies, so he founded Zuora in 2007 to automate billing, commerce, and finance operations for companies built on a recurring revenue model. Initially, Zuora catered mostly to start-ups, but the world rapidly evolved. By 2017 its customers included companies such as Box, the Financial Times, Ford, GM, GE, Caterpillar, and Zendesk. In 2016, Zuora had crossed a major threshold: $100 million in annual recurring revenue. In 2017, Tzuo could see that Zuora was positioned to hit $300 million, and before then, he believed he would take Zuora public. The company was growing rapidly, and Tzuo had begun that he needed to approach this next phase of scaling more deliberately than he had with Zuora's early growth. "A company that is going from $100 million to $300 million has to be different than a company going from $30 million to $100 million," said Tzuo. "That $30 million to $100 million was a sprint; making the transition from $30 million, we were not so thoughtful. I wanted to be more thoughtful this time." In 2014, Tzuo had identified four major areas in which the company needed to transform: sales, finance, products, and people. Tzuo knew the transformation plan meant he would have to make a wave of leadership changes, managing hirings and terminations. And he would have to change his own leadership style to match the company's increasing size. Meanwhile, he had to think strategically about how Zuora could fend off challenges both from software behemoths like Salesforce.com and Oracle, and nimble upstarts. To successfully IPO, and satisfy investors over the long term, Tzuo knew that Zuora had to deliver consistency and predictability.

It was early 2015 and executives in iShares' Factor Strategies Group were considering the launch of a new class of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) called smart beta funds. Specifically, the group was considering smart beta multifactor ETFs that would provide investors with simultaneous exposure to four fundamental factors that had shown themselves historically to be significant in driving stock returns: the stock market value of a firm, the relative value of a firm's financial position, the quality of a firm's financial position, and the momentum of a firm's stock price. The executives at iShares were unsure whether there would be demand in the marketplace for such multifactor ETFs, since their value added from an investor's portfolio perspective was unknown. Students will act as researchers for iShares' Factor Strategies Group and conduct detailed analysis of Fama and French's five-factor model and the momentum effect, smart beta ETFs including multifactor ETFs, and factor investing with smart beta ETFs to help iShares make its decision.

François Pugliese acquired Elite Beds in Etoy in a small buy-in in 2006 and then proceeded to re-invent completely its business, first by pivoting its business model and introducing Smart Leases and then by digitizing it, turning the mattress into a true technology platform, with dozens of innovative projects in the pipeline. As he proceeded to the conference room for the Board meeting in April 2017, François wondered whether it would help to prioritize the projects, and if so how? Did these projects effectively represent another pivot for the company again? Was it time to force change again? Learning objective: Managing growth, engineering a buy-in, financing deals, strategic pivots, business model changes, innovation management, digitalization of the mattress, technology platforms, growth management, innovation portfolio management.

Shaun Abrahamson and Stonly Baptiste aimed to invest in what they called "urbantech superheroes." At Urban Us, the seed-stage urban technology-focussed venture capital firm the two started in 2012, they looked for startups innovating around the future of cities. By 2017, they had assessed over 700 potential deals. Each one required a go/no-go decision, and four along the way were no different in that regrad. Of Remix, SeamlessDocs, Starcity, and One Concern, which ones to back? Setting aside the question for the moment of why urbantech startups needed superpowers, which of these possessed them?

Kate Moran, CEO and cofounder of Sagacity Tea, a small, Vermont-based ready-to-drink tea brand, is considering a consumer-product group (CPG) broker's proposal for the product's launch in several cities along the East Coast of the United States. The commitments in the proposal include various forms of trade promotion, including discounts, coupons, and slotting fees (SFs), the latter being upfront payments to retailers in the form of free goods in return for shelf space. Moran must decide whether to accept the proposal or to pursue another expansion options such as online sales and a pop-up store.

In April 2017, a third year student at Western University was contemplating launching a new business, Backyard Pub. The company would rent inflatable pubs and party supplies to individuals planning outdoor summer gatherings across Southwestern Ontario. This start-up enthusiast needed to evaluate his product offering and marketing strategy in addition to projecting the new venture's financial performance for the first three years of operations. Was there a market for this product? What target demographic would buy into this product? Where was the best place to market Backyard Pub?

This is not your typical family business case and that is what makes it such a rich teaching tool and learning experience. The Paul Newman story covers several family business topics and issues including Fair Process, philanthropy, social ventures, estate and succession planning, governance, next generation roles, entrepreneurship, family communication and relationships, and non-family executives. The sense of fairness is achieved with effective family communication and governance that builds trust to support long-term family commitment. The Newman case demonstrates the difficulty of making ownership, governance and leadership decisions that are effective and perceived as fair by the next generation.