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In 2009, Samuel Lim, Daniel Lim, and Benjamin Han, saw growth opportunities in the online accessible luxury fashion market and boldly set up Reebonz to pursue them. Their efforts over the years had expanded Reebonz to become a notable online marketplace for both new and pre-owned luxury products. Going forward, the founding trio knew that in order to stay ahead, they must continue to differentiate Reebonz from the traditional luxury players and new online competitors. Would the continuous push for accessible luxury dilute the luxury consumption experience? Where can Reebonz find its next growth trajectory?

It is July 2017, and Dr. Nteranya Sanginga, the director general of the Nigeria-based International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), is making progress toward two of his primary strategic objectives for the nonprofit research Institute: 1) to scale the impact and reach of some of the IITA's most commercially viable products and technologies by working with the private sector, and 2) to address Nigeria's massive youth unemployment problem by engaging young people in agribusiness. To achieve his first goal, Sanginga in 2013 established a business incubation platform (BIP), which was tasked with establishing pilot production facilities to illustrate that a select number of IITA products could be profitably manufactured and sold to an existing market. Sanginga hoped that the BIP would attract interest from private sector companies compelled by the business case for taking a particular technology to scale. To achieve his second goal, Sanginga had founded a youth "agripreneurs" program, which would train young university graduates on improved agricultural practices, food processing, and strategies for starting an agribusiness. Since its establishment in 2012, the program had enrolled four cohorts of young people in Ibadan (a total of 70 people), and expanded to four other states in Nigeria and five additional African countries. While both programs were making progress, challenges remained. Sanginga had originally hoped that the agripreneurs program would launch dozens of small businesses, but as of mid-2017, it had produced just four independent start-ups. Most of the program's agripreneurs in Ibadan (53 of the 70) remained affiliated with the IITA. Poor access to commercial loans, which carried interest rates up to 30%, was the primary issue preventing them from starting businesses. The BIP, too, faced challenges. Chief among them was a severe cash flow constraint that prevented Schreurs from properly forecasting and investing resources

Alltech was a Lexington, Kentucky-based producer of supplements for animal feed, with revenues of over $2 billion (projected to reach $3 billion in 2018), sales in 120 countries, 5,000 employees, and 100 manufacturing plants worldwide. For nearly four decades, Alltech had been defined by its focus on innovation and marketing as well as the entrepreneurial spirit and vision of its founder, Dr. Pearse Lyons, who remained intimately involved in company operations and in managing relationships with key customers. This case finds Alltech in the midst of a new growth strategy-downstream integration, specifically buying up feed companies-which marked a stark departure from the company's longtime emphasis on organic growth. The decision to buy feed companies had been controversial within Alltech: feed was a low-margin, rather traditional commodity business, while Alltech earned relatively high margins on products rooted in science and innovation. However, Lyons believed downstream integration would allow Alltech to better communicate with its end customers (farmers), increase sales of its supplements, and help protect the firm from industry dynamics such as consolidation and cost pressure. Was he right, or should Alltech take a different approach?

This case describes the business model and workplace philosophy of NatureSweet, a privately owned, vertically integrated greenhouse grower and marketer of fresh tomatoes with sales across the U.S. and $329 million in 2016 revenues. CEO Bryant Ambelang treated NatureSweet more like a consumer-packaged goods manufacturer than an agricultural producer, with a focus on consistency, branding, margin and price stability, and a frontline-worker-centric production model inspired by the Toyota Production System. Workers-who, because of NatureSweet's year-round greenhouse production model, were employed full time-were empowered with training and productivity incentives, allowing them to earn well above the minimum wage and advance their careers within the company. Indeed, improving the lives of workers was the explicit purpose of NatureSweet's operations. Through its financial incentives, personal and professional development initiatives, and worker-appreciation programs, NatureSweet had cultivated a truly unique, uplifting workplace culture in its Mexico operations. Ambelang aspired to replicate the model in the U.S. as a way of demonstrating the potential to "transform the lives of agricultural workers in North America." But in late 2017, the Arizona-based production operations that NatureSweet had acquired in 2014 were still struggling to attain the successes achieved in Mexico. This case describes NatureSweet's history, achievements in Mexico, and challenges in Arizona, inviting students to evaluate the keys to NatureSweet's success in Mexico and analyze their potential for replication in the U.S. Will Ambelang succeed in Arizona, and in doing so demonstrate that it is possible to transform the lives of agricultural workers in North America?

In January 2017, the owner of Re-Matt Inc. (Re-Matt), a mattress recycling operation, was considering the way forward for the business he had developed in the city of Calgary, Alberta. Re-Matt was a unique enterprise in Alberta where municipalities, both urban and rural, had been categorizing mattresses as waste, and sending them to landfills for disposal, for decades. Re-Matt's business was diverting used mattresses from landfills and recycling them by routing their individual components back into the economic streams and recovering value. The company had reached an annual revenue of CA$500,000 in just two years. Its owner was now weighing his options with respect to scaling up Re-Matt's operations, as well as trying to identify ways of differentiating Re-Matt from its potential competition.

COLIN, a producer of garment care products headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, was working with a large U.S. retailer to produce the Bristol, an innovative garment steamer that the retailer wanted to launch for the 2017 U.S. Thanksgiving season. To meet that deadline, COLIN would have one month less than was typically needed to launch a new product. This launch date left COLIN with limited time for research and development, manufacturing, and marketing. Several managers at COLIN met to discuss the project, including how to choose the suppliers, whether to continue with an original equipment manufacturer model or move to an original design manufacturer model, how to ensure the product could be launched on time, and whether to use any of COLIN'S own core technologies. To make their decision, the managers needed to analyze several complicated issues.

In 2010, RBC Financial Group (RBC), a banking and insurance company headquartered in Toronto, Canada, had implemented a new loan program. The program targeted clients who were seeking loans for the installation of electricity-generating solar panels on their property under a new government-sponsored green power program, the Micro Feed-In Tariff Program (microFIT). For RBC, the loan program was an excellent fit with the company's strategy to support environmentally-focused initiatives. However, by October 2010, microFIT was encountering problems. Once the banking business unit at RBC had sold the loans to a client and the client had installed the solar panels, the insurance business unit at RBC was then cancelling the client's insurance policies due to the increased risk posed by the installations. Customers were confused and upset. How should RBC handle this difficult situation? How could the company prevent similar problems with future program implementations?

In the first two decades of the 21st century, Copenhagen has vaulted to international attention for its enthusiastic bicycle culture and infrastructure. While it's tempting to dismiss this accomplishment as inherently easy because it took place in a city and country known for socially liberal politics, this case-by summarizing the history of cycling politics and policy in Copenhagen since the 1970s-shows that the evolution of Copenhagen as a bike city was neither quick nor easy, and that the city wrestled (and continues to wrestle) with many of the same conflicts that have hampered efforts to promote biking in other cities around the world. In so doing, the case invites a more nuanced analysis and discussion of the actual keys to Copenhagen's success. Case number 2113.0

Dr. K. Anji Reddy founded Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd (DRL) in 1984. Since then, the company had grown to become one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in India. The company professionalized early on, and over the years, the family members defined and refined their roles for the efficient running of the company. Dr. Reddy passed away on March 15, 2013. His son-in-law, G. V. Prasad, had been with DRL for more than 25 years by then. Prasad acknowledged that a lot needed to be done to fulfill Dr. Reddy's dreams. He had been contemplating his own future role in the company and the need for a smooth succession. But who would succeed him? What would be the qualities of the person who would succeed Prasad, a passionate member of the founding family of DRL? Would a non-family CEO be a suitable replacement?

In January 2017, the leadership team of Bega Cheese-the Australian dairy company-was considering a bid for Mondelēz International's Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) grocery business, which included several leading consumer brands such as Vegemite, the iconic Australian spread. The team must decide whether to bid for the division and, if so, how much to offer and how to finance the all-cash bid. Making these decisions was difficult because this would be Bega's largest acquisition ever and it would extend the firm outside of its core dairy business. In addition to the valuation and financing issues, the leadership team must decide whether shifting from the firm's current B2B business model (manufacturing and processing dairy products) to a more B2C business model (a producer of branded consumer foods) made sense strategically.

The case discusses the issues related to Zee Tele Films Limited's claims that the Board of Cricket Control of India was "state" and could act arbitrarily in the award of telecasting rights. The "state" as defined in Article 12 includes "other authorities", and these are subject to the constitutional limitations. The right to equality requires them to not act arbitrarily. A body which is an instrumentality or agency of the government is "other authority". The term has been subject to judicial interpretation. The Supreme Court, by a majority judgement, in the Zee Tele Films Case ruled that the Board is not "other authorities" within Article 12 of the Constitution.

In 1997, an investment advisor with a major brokerage firm gave investment suggestions and helped clients manage their portfolios. Some of her clients had Coca Cola stock in their portfolios and she wondered whether to recommend the stock to any of her new clients or clients that did not currently have Coca Cola in their portfolios. The case can be used to introduce the dividend discount model, capital asset pricing model, and price-earnings models.

Students tend to think they know what a business is - after all, they are avid consumers. This case helps them understand what they do know, and more importantly, what they do not know. The setting is 2009 and is not current, so students must consider whether retail from a process point of view has truly changed, or whether using technology-based interfaces in retail makes it seem to have changed. It also allows students to consider what advances in their retail experiences are the result of technology. This introductory case presents Uncle Joe's bicycle shop, Deals on Wheels. Mike and Mary have relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina, and are thinking of opening a bike shop there. On the way to their college reunion, they stop by Uncle Joe's house to visit and learn about his bicycle shop. Over dinner, the couple learns about how Uncle Joe acquired his business, the basic operations, what products were offered, and how customers' needs have changed over time. Some issues that Uncle Joe brings up in regard to expanding the business are possible advertising methods to produce additional sales, Internet-based parts sales that require more inventory on hand, and the need for more highly skilled workers. The story also mentions how Uncle Joe values human relations through his bike donations. The case may be used for class discussion of the following topics: Foundations of entrepreneurship; What is a business? Creating financial statements - transactions for one month are included as an exhibit to the case. Two follow-on cases offer more practice on these skills; Analyzing financial statements - three years of financials are included as an exhibit in the case. Students are asked to do a horizontal analysis and a vertical analysis of the data; Information systems in a business.

Describes TelePizza, is Spain's leading chain of pizza restaurants and delivery services. TelePizza has experienced rapid growth to 500 stores since its creation in 1987. The company went public on the Spanish stock market in late 1996. Franchising has played an important role in the firm's expansion to date. For further growth, the founder and CEO is contemplating three strategies: further expansion in Spain, international expansion, or the creation of new restaurant concepts. Abridged version of case 899080.

Clover Network's founders didn't see the curveball coming at the end of 2012. The two-year-old start-up had just nine employees. It had dumped its first business idea, pivoted from its second, and was working hard on a new product: a tablet-based cash register with built-in credit card processing. Large credit card payment processing companies had started noticing Clover and one had just agreed to pre-order $2 million of Clover hardware. It was Clover's first such deal. But around Thanksgiving, Clover learned that First Data-the card processing industry's 800-pound gorilla-also was interested in Clover's technology. If it could bring First Data on as a customer, Clover would have a pipeline to a huge number of retailers. In early December, one of Clover's founders received a 2½-page letter from First Data. He had expected a proposal to buy and distribute Clover equipment, maybe with a small equity investment. Instead, First Data said it wanted to acquire "no less than 75 percent" of Clover, and close the deal by December 31. Was it time to sell Clover? The case highlights how a start-up decides to respond to an unexpected buyout offer and how it proposes to structure the deal.

Westinghouse Electric Company (WEC) filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 29, 2017. The bankruptcy arose from billions of dollars of cost overruns on four nuclear power plants (NPPs) it was designing and building for two utilities in the United States. The cost overruns were a direct result of a completely new NPP design, the AP1000, and its innovative modular construction. Although WEC's core engineering intellectual content would live on (that was in part the objective of the chapter 11 process), many questioned whether WEC's failure didn't signal the end of nuclear energy for electrical power generation.

James McAllister was responsible for the construction of new production facilities for a rapidly growing global medical equipment manufacturer. A recent safety audit, triggered by an anonymous reporting system, revealed that a supervisor had discouraged reporting several significant "near-miss" events that could have led to serious injury or fatality. The same individual indicated several deviations from company safety policies and standards. The company's COO, Sarah Gupta, asked McAllister to extract lessons learned from BP's Macondo oil spill and NASA's Challenger disaster. Each of these incidents is summarized in the case.

This case describes a major food fraud scandal that resulted in a much-publicized product recall. The episode was dubbed "Horsegate" by the national and international press. In early 2013, a scandal broke out in Ireland and the UK when horsemeat was found in frozen prepared meals sold as containing 100% beef. Findus Nordic, the company involved in the scandal, sold the same products in France. The press launched an investigation, and there were numerous media reports. A French company, Picard Surgelés, was found to have two products tainted with horsemeat. Both companies had to recall their products. Politicians got involved and carefully followed the crisis. Organizations in the supply chain implicated in the scandal struggled to defend themselves and blamed each other. French consumers reacted, and sales of frozen meat products dropped sharply. Findus Nordic and Picard Surgelés's brands were the most heavily impacted in France. This case focuses on Picard Surgelés, an integrated food processor that sells its store brand (private label) products in a company-owned chain of retail stores. The company needs help, and brand managers and marketing communications specialists must assess the situation and make recommendations to address the aftermath of the food fraud/product recall.

The sport of soccer (more commonly known as "football" outside North America) has long been a predominantly men's game: men's clubs on every continent generate huge revenues and the FIFA World Cup is the most popular and profitable sporting event on the planet. Slowly but surely, however, women's soccer is starting to emerge from the long shadow cast by its male counterpart. In 2016, for example, 70,454 spectators gathered at Rio's Maracana stadium to watch a women's soccer semi-final between Sweden and Brazil. The previous year, 53,341 spectators attended the final of the 7th FIFA Women's World Cup at BC Place in Vancouver, Canada. And now, the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), founded in the United States in 2013, is attempting to prove that a national women's professional league can be profitable. In short, all the stars seem to be aligned for the professionalization of women's soccer, i.e., the organizational transformation familiar to the federations, clubs, national teams, and other organizations that make up the core of this truly global sport. The case examines the history, issues, and challenges faced by attempts on American soil to carve out a place for women at the highest levels of the world's most practised sport.

The case describes the emergence and business model of VivaColombia, a low-cost Colombian airline. The airline was established in 2008, although it did not begin operations until May 2012. Since its inception, VivaColombia has grown within both the domestic and international markets. It provides passenger transportation services to major and intermediate cities in Colombia and to major cities in international destinations. In 2015, VivaColombia had nine Airbus A320 aircraft serving 21 routes in Colombia and six international routes in North, Central, and South America. It had over 500 employees. In 2015, it carried over 2.9 million passengers on domestic and international flights, with sales of $US119.2 million and profits of more than $US971,000. Although VivaColombia's board of directors was satisfied with the results achieved to date, they disagreed about how to proceed. Some board members believed that VivaColombia should consolidate its domestic operations. They were concerned about the large number of customer service complaints that had accompanied its rapid growth. In addition, two low-cost international carriers were planning to enter the Colombian market, which the board feared would jeopardize VivaColombia's position in the domestic market. Other board members thought VivaColombia should take advantage of the opportunity to expand into Brazil, a major Latin American market, presented by Aerocivil, Colombia's civil aviation authority, which had authorized VivaColombia to operate the Bogotá, Colombia-Sao Paulo, Brazil route. Students must decide whether the company should expand into Brazil or consolidate operations in the domestic market.