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Greenlight Biosciences, a biotech company is in search of impact investment for its next round of financing.

In mid-2017, the regional head of Operations and Supply Chain at Sika AG, a Swiss specialty chemicals leader that developed solutions for building and automotive industries, faced a new challenge in the company's epoxy flooring supply chain. She was tasked with identifying a robust solution that would both satisfy a shortened lead time and provide spare capacity to accommodate future growth. How should she proceed with these tasks?

In mid-2015, the founders of what3words, a technology start-up in London, England, were eager to position their company for growth. After having financed their two-year entrepreneurial journey with the help of angel investors, they were preparing to meet with a strategic investor to finance the next level of growth. The strategic investor needed to know that the founders had a clear path to profitability and a strategy for continued growth in order to secure long-term business potential. How could the founders create an action plan to move the start-up from surviving to thriving?

AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. (AquaBounty) was a small, U.S. biotechnology company that focused on improving productivity in commercial aquaculture. In 2015, the company had received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to sell its genetically modified AquAdvantage salmon in the United States. Public reaction was mixed, with heavy criticism from some environmentalists. One year later, in May 2016, AquaBounty received approval from Health Canada to sell AquAdvantage salmon in Canada. The company's director of Corporate Communications needed to prepare for the announcement of Health Canada's approval, to be made public later that week. What should he include in the company's issues management plan to ensure that AquaBounty would receive balanced feedback from the Canadian public?

The case traces the development of the Under Armour (UA) brand, product, and market growth under CEO and founder Kevin Plank from its inception in 1996 through 2016. UA provides a cohesive case study of how to launch and sustain a consumer brand even in the face of its third-party manufacturing approach, which gives its apparel no patentable design or fabric technologies. The case uses UA's brand and advertising development as a backdrop for the current pivotal issue of how to target women to sustain growth. UA's stated goal is to build a $1.9 billion women's business by 2019. In laying out UA's growth and competitive moves, the case lets students analyze broadcast, social media, and other digital advertising campaigns in view of the company's brand development and strategic targeting. The case also highlights the importance of leveraging brand heritage and historical differentiation while respecting key nuances when extending into new markets (i.e., moving from a predominantly male-driven audience to female). It also allows an exploration of how to use consumer insight and broader cultural attitudes and trends to support extending a position into new markets.

In October 2012, the chief executive officer of Focus Brand Management (Focus), a consulting and advertising company based in mainland China, was preparing to meet with Jiangzhong Pharmaceuticals (Jiangzhong). Focus had been working with Jiangzhong on an annual analysis of brand tracking. Based on that analysis, executives at Jiangzhong believed that it was time to expand their business to the functional food industry. Their first product would be a line of biscuits featuring a core ingredient known as hou tou gu, an ingredient that was considered beneficial to stomach care according to traditional Chinese medicine. For her meeting, Focus's chief executive officer needed to resolve some key questions about the most appropriate branding, packaging design, advertising and promotion strategy, and the choice of a suitable brand ambassador for this product.

In 2013, musician Jack Conte realized that he could not make a living by posting videos on YouTube. Although part of the ad revenues generated by videos are shared with the artist, the videos can be viewed free of charge, and the artist is paid very little. This situation is explained in the "Jack the musician" section of the case. This section has been slightly fictionalized (without changing the basic facts) to interest students, but the story told is consistent with the information used to build the case study. The "Jack the entrepreneur" section discusses the issue of funding musicians from Jack's perspective. In 2013, Jack created a crowdfunding platform to address this problem. Called Patreon, it allows artists to solicit donations directly from their fan base. The concept is simple: fans agree to pay a set amount, automatically charged to their credit card, for each piece of content published by the creator. In return, the fan (or patron) receives rewards according to the amount paid. In this second section of the case, the Patreon concept is explained in detail. Students must figure out the reasons for the platform's success and recommend marketing strategies to promote this concept to a larger audience.

As a middle manager at a biotechnology company, Sandra Brown harnessed digital tools and social media to engage others and build campaigns for change in the company. This case follows her career at the company, and describes the challenges she faced as a change agent, working to promote gender equality within the company, and a new drug developed to fight cancer externally.

In 2018, City Year was a 30 year old nonprofit that recruited and organized teams of young-adult "volunteers" (corps teams) to provide a year of citizen service. It had 3,100 corps members serving in 327 schools located in 28 U.S. cities. In its early decades, City Year provided a variety of services to a variety of organizations in need. Over its most recent decade, City Year had pivoted to having all corps members serve in low-income public schools to keep students on track to graduation in an effort to reduce the nation's high school dropout rate. City Year also worked with partners to help schools transform themselves to better meet the needs of low-income students, and worked with policy makers and elected officials to promote the value of national citizen service. In 2012, City Year launched a Long Term Impact strategy (LTI) aimed at making a substantial improvement in high school graduation rates. The LTI required City Year to transform itself over time to create an organization capable of delivering its ambitious impact strategy. The case explores City Year's history and its efforts to align its organization with its strategy. In March 2018, City Year CEO Michael Brown must examine the state of his organization and its strategy to determine next steps to achieving its LTI goals.

After navigating the complex political landscape of the New York City Board of Education, the teacher's union, and the mayor's office, in 2006 the city is ready to launch a pilot program to incentivize teachers. This three-part case provides students with background on what has constituted successful teacher incentive programs in other school systems and the components of New York's pilot program...asking students to analyze the results of New York's program and consider the strengths and weaknesses of its design.

At the end of 2017, Morgan Stanley's firm performance - the strongest since the financial crisis - is linked to the overall success of its corporate strategy set out in 2015. Following several years of development and integration of a sustainability strategy in sync with overall firm strategy, the case asks the question of what "version 2.0" of a sustainability strategy should look like for the firm. The question is posed by Audrey Choi (HBS MBA 2004), Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer, and CEO of the Morgan Stanley Institution for Sustainable Development. Since joining the firm in 2007, Choi worked with senior management and key individuals in each of the firm's business segments to transition sustainability from being a niche initiative to being part of the broad firm-wide strategy, embedded across Morgan Stanley's core businesses. The case recounts the process of integrating sustainability into each of the firm's three business units and examines the challenges, the product development, and the outcomes of the integration strategy in order to pose the question of what should Morgan Stanley do to further embed and grow its sustainability strategy.

Essence, the first magazine aimed at African-American women, was created by four, young, Black entrepreneurs in the aftermath of massive racial and political upheaval in the United States in 1968. The venture was a financial, branding and cultural success. By 2005, the company was sold to Time Warner, Inc, the largest magazine publisher in the world at that time, for the highest price ever paid for a single-title magazine company. However, there is still debate about whether the last remaining co-founder, Edward Lewis, jeopardized the iconic Black brand by selling it to a white-owned company.

Comparison of the U.S. Government response, using the $700 billion TARP fund, to downturns in the banking and auto industries during the global financial crisis.

In late 2013, Ryan Cohen, cofounder and CEO of the fast growing online pet food and pet products retailer Chewy.com, has to make a "bet the company decision"-whether to keep working with Chewy's third-party logistics (3PL) provider to fulfill customer orders, or whether to take this critical function in-house. Cohen worries that the company's 3PL will not be able to serve Chewy's customers as it continues to grow, and reaching scale is essential to making the company's business model work, and to hitting the aggressive growth target that he has set of becoming a $500 million revenue company by 2018. However, some board members are concerned, and have suggested that Cohen slow growth and leave order fulfillment to the 3PL, as Cohen and the executive team are not operations experts; they are customer service experts, and that should be their focus. Cohen sees four possible paths for Chewy: stick with its current 3PL and slow down growth; add another 3PL to the mix to support Chewy as it scales; stay with its current 3PL and build out a fulfillment center in a new market to "test it out"; or fully "insource" order fulfilment, and open a fulfilment center as quickly as possible. Which path should Cohen and Chewy's board choose?

The case looks at the enormous disruption affecting the entire automotive industry through the eyes of a recently hired CRM expert at the British premium car maker Jaguar Land Rover who keeps the marketing team grounded by taking a customer-centric approach. The case provides a clear sense of purpose about the typical customer journey and the touchpoints where the car maker can reach out to the customer with relevant and timely information. The case reveals the way in which JLR collects data and customer intelligence during the product lifecycle in clear and easy-to-understand terms. One of the highlights of the case is the use of ethnographic research to strengthen the relationship between the target customer and the brand. The case also examines the creative use of smart-data analytics for decision making and the innovative deployment of conjoint analysis for simulating output volumes against price points.

The case focuses on China's 'furious five' smartphone makers - Huawei, Xiaomi, Lenovo, and OPPO/Vivo, charting the history of the industry and the changing dynamics of the global market. It explains the emerging market context in which these companies operate, its distinctive features, opportunities and challenges, and the various ways they have triumphed over established global brands. The case provides a detailed introduction to the respective Chinese smartphone makers and their products. It discusses their current strategies and how they were influenced at the formative stage by the background and experience of the respective founders. It examines their development trajectories to shed light on their global strategies in the future. Given its dynamic growth and intense competition, China's smartphone market offers an ideal setting to analyse the competitive heterogeneity of firms in an emerging market context.

Plans for a $3.5 billion crude oil pipeline in 2014-17 from the Bakken formation of North Sakota and Canada to a transfer point near Chicago, linked to an existing pipeline to the major refining and export faculities on the US Gulf Coast, run into trouble when the developer, Energy Transfer Partners, encounters a "roadblock" on a section of federal land that is within a reservation of the Flat Rock Sioux tribe of Native Americans. The case charts how the conflict escalated from the local to the global level.

The case goes back in time to the 'golden age' of Absolut when contemporary artists like Andy Warhol and Keith Haring painted the unusual bottle to the amazement of the global arts community. The nearly accidental collaboration with artists in the glorious years turned the brand into a must-have aspirational drink to be consumed at chic bars and art fairs. Based on the vivid recollections of Vadim Grigorian (INSEAD MBA '00J), the case uncovers the awakening of new paradigm, the brand as acultural agent of contemporary art in consumer society. In his retelling of these events, hitherto unknown, the marketing executive recaptures the essence of Absolut during its hey day from the mid-1980s to 2011 in an exquisitely told and unusual account of cultural engagement.

The case explores the murky world of tax havens and hidden wealth. The so-called 'Panama Papers', 'Paradise Papers', 'Swiss Leaks' and 'LuxLeaks' are essentially digital dumps that exposed where the the ultra-rich had for decades stashed their billions to evade paying taxes. Academics such as Gabriel Zucman have mined these revelations for insights about global wealth inequality. Their research and that of investigative journalists have put public policymakers under pressure to make laws to "regain control over globalized financial capitalism" as economist Thomas Piketty calls it, arguing that the continued legality of tax havens puts at stake the basic social contract on which democracies are founded, and that the resulting shortfall in tax revenues deprives advanced economies of resources for nation building for future generations.