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In 2011, Partners Group is nearing the end of a year-long quest for a new mandate from a European pension fund, Future Plan. The fund has struggled with its 6-year old PE programme, consistently falling short of its target allocation to the asset class and generating poor returns, seemingly always one step behind the opportunity in the market. Future Plan has built its PE programme by investing in closed-end funds of PE products managed by two executives, one focused on European markets, the other on global markets. But the fallout from the global economic crisis wreaked havoc with Future Plan's PE programme and something has to change. With an interest in expanding its PE activity to include secondary and direct investment strategies, Future Plan begins a manager search process with one goal in mind: to achieve the target return to the asset class by 2014. The case charts Partners Group's role in the selection process and how its expertise and services, along with a novel holding structure, offer a way to achieve Future Plan's goals. Please visit the dedicated case website http://cases.insead.edu/partners-group to access supplementary material.

CNS Worldwide has long been the market share leader in the IaaS cloud server market, yet it has remained unprofitable for years. Industry capacity utilization is low, and prices have declined over 70% over the last decade. CNS is considering withdrawing from the market if it cannot find a way to increase prices. As a large public bid is about to be held, CNS must decide whether to bid and, if so, at what price. This case is intended for use an introductory marketing management course that involves an in-depth analysis of pricing. It can also be used in courses on pricing, business-to-business (B2B) sales, or competitive strategy. The case introduces students to specialized pricing mechanisms, oligopolistic markets, the challenges of avoiding a price war, the concept of price leadership, and the possible effects of a firm taking this role, including what it needs to do to succeed. There is a direct analogy to the airline industry that can be discussed during the last part of the class.

After the contentious firing of an office manager, the leadership at Fresh to Table, a software-as-a-service provider for luxury hotels and restaurants, make an unpleasant discovery. While reviewing the office manager's internal electronic communications, company leaders discover that several key employees, including two that were recently promoted, had been spending substantial time on internal social media channels disparaging other employees, citing days when they skipped work, and referring to other instances of unprofessional behavior. This 5-page case explores issues related to electronic communications, termination and disciplinary procedures, and leadership, culture and values. It can be used in General Management, Organizational Behavior, Human Resource Management, Management Communication, Leadership, and Employee Relations courses. The case also allows students to consider how technology affects organizational interactions and culture.

This case examines the career of Raj Kapoor, the legendary Bollywood filmmaker of the postwar decades. It explores how Kapoor built RK studios after 1948 by releasing a series of movies that combined romance with social messages focused on the fate of the common man in a world of social injustice. The case discusses how women were depicted in Kapoor's films and enables a discussion of the role of cinema in propagating gender stereotypes and contributing to the challenges faced by women in rural India today. The case also explores the huge success of Kapoor's films in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in the Communist world. During the postwar decades there were two global worlds. In the Western world, Hollywood provided a stream of cinematic entertainment. In the Communist world, Bollywood provided the same service. They each provided alternative visions of the world.

Over 20 years as a public company, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has taken Amazon.com from an online bookstore to the largest online retailer and comparison-shopping site in the world. Bezos has followed the trend of integrating hardware and software, products and services, and online and brick-and-mortar stores. Amazon diversified into cloud computing (with Amazon Web Services, or AWS) and content delivery and original content creation. Still, Amazon continues to display low profitability, reflecting Jeff Bezos investment in Amazon and increased competition from Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Alibaba, and Walmart. Investors are expecting profits will come, but this is uncertain and something Jeff Bezos must manage.

Fuller traveled from a four-room tenement bordering Chicago's infamous Cabrini-Green Housing projects to speaking at conferences around the world and typically holding court wherever she went. As a teenager, she helped raise her siblings. As a Wall Street executive, she navigated the investment management world to generate attractive investment results for clients. And as the Chief Investment Officer of New York State Employees' Common Retirement Fund (CRF), she helped manage the third largest state pension fund in the United States. Fuller's 5'2" height understated her reputational stature, as audiences where she was featured anxiously awaited hearing her market outlook, innovative investment allocations and industry insights for effective state pension fund strategies.

In widely-circulated videos, United staff and Chicago security forcibly remove a passenger from his paid seat on an aircraft, injuring him severely. United leadership must decide how to respond to public outcry.

An investment analyst was tasked with determining the impact of political controversy on firm performance in the aftermath of the highly charged 2016 U.S. presidential election. After this election, U.S. firms such as New Balance, GrubHub, and PepsiCo faced boycotts from aggrieved activists. The analyst needed to better understand the downsides-and potential benefits-of firms' involvement in political controversy. To do so, she needed to graph the impact, if any, political events had on the companies' stock returns. But were markets truly efficient and rational-that is, could they reliably capture the impact of political controversy on firm performance?

CEO Tim Cook confronts multiple issues that each relate to identifying a source of longer-term growth at Apple, as it becomes increasingly dependent on iPhone revenues. Since Steve Jobs' death, Cook has successfully led Apple and made it the first company to be worth more than $800 billion. However, under Cook's leadership, Apple has largely released derivatives of existing products (e.g., iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, etc.). This has increased Apple's reliance on the iPhone (~70 percent of revenues), and Apple appears to be following a path to sell complementary products to the iPhone (Beats, Apple Pay, Apple Watch, Air Pods) at the same time that it is pursuing product development (Apple TV, Apple Car, Siri Speaker). The Apple Watch was the first new product category introduced under Tim Cook, and it has not been successful. As industry convergence continues, the case also looks at Apple's main competitors: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Microsoft, and Samsung, as well as emerging Chinese competitors. Apple's sales in China are also declining.

As the poster child of the sharing economy, Uber has disrupted the heavily protected taxi industry with an app that connects a distributed network of passengers and drivers at a simple click of a button. While its asset-light ridesharing business model is highly innovative and has been excitedly embraced by investors, the extent of its success is diminished by unhappy customers, irate taxi drivers, and frustrated regulators. This case explores key challenges Uber faces in its quest for legitimacy as a sharing economy disruptor, and the strategies it adopts to deal with these challenges.

In February 2015, technical staff reviewed the results from a jointly conducted study on malaria control. This study had major implications for malaria in Zambia-and elsewhere. The preliminary analysis strongly suggested that the study's Mass Drug Administration (MDA) strategy was reducing the incidence of malaria disease. In addition, MDA seemed to be driving down the infection reservoir among asymptomatic people in the study area of the Southern Province of Zambia. Further analysis with mathematical models indicated that if the intervention was sustained so current trends continued, then the MDA strategy would make it possible to eliminate malaria in the Southern Province. If malaria could be eliminated in one region of Zambia, that would provide new evidence and motivation to work towards elimination throughout the country, an ambitious goal. But it would not be easy to move from conducting one technical study in a single region to creating a national strategy for malaria elimination. The scientists realized that their new data and analyses-of malaria infections, mosquito populations, and community health worker activities-were not enough. A national malaria elimination effort would require mobilizing many partners, national and local leaders, and community members, and convincing them to get on board with this new approach.

By 2015, JSW Steel Limited had established itself as one of India's leading steel producers. Since 2002, it had increased its capacity from 1.6 million tons per annum (MTPA) to 18.0 MTPA at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18 per cent; increased production from 1.30 MTPA to 12.36 MTPA at a CAGR of 19 per cent; and increased market capitalization by 59 times, from US$79.26 million to US$4.676 billion. The company's innovative shared-value approach at its Vijayanagar plant contributed significantly to its success. The plant set an example of how to integrate social and environmental challenges into a business core and create an integrated value chain with many benefits. However, an adverse economic performance in financial year 2015-16 and a gloomy forecast for the steel industry in the next few years raised questions for top management about whether to continue with the shared-value and corporate social responsibility approaches.

Ricoh India Limited, a subsidiary of Ricoh Japan, failed to submit its quarterly results in September and December 2015, leading the Bombay Stock Exchange to move the company's shares from the B category (companies with small to mid-capitalization rates) to the Z category, which included companies that had failed to comply with listing requirements or had failed to resolve investor complaints. Although the company claimed that it had adhered to corporate governance standards and high ethical conduct, it admitted to having falsified its accounting records. Between March 2016 and May 2016, the company's shares lost 42.3 per cent in market value. What was the impact for the company's shareholders? After the falsification of the company's financial statements was made public, should an investor continue to hold the Ricoh India shares, or divest?

In 2007, when Tata Steel (Tata) bought the Anglo-Dutch steel maker, Corus Group plc (Corus), it was a moment of great promise for India's growing steel industry. At almost 10 times the size of Tata, Corus was a company of enormous scale. The importance of that scale was reflected in Tata's need to raise the price of its original offer by a premium of 34 per cent. Tata's aim was to become a formidable force in the world steel industry. It stood to gain global market exposure, research and development, and technology, while Corus stood to gain cheap raw materials and access to emerging economies. However, negative indicators and market concerns by analysts eventually proved true on March 30, 2016, when Tata announced its decision to sell some units of its U.K. operations. When Brexit occurred in June 2016, confusion grew and Tata's plans for a future sale of U.K. assets seemed in jeopardy. The removal of the chairman of Tata further added to the woes of Tata Steel Europe. How would the new leadership, after a major failure, bring about changes toward a better future?

In 2016, the owner of a small community bakery in Strathroy, Ontario, was planning the future of her business, since the lease on the store would expire soon. She was considering the financial feasibility of closing the bakery and focusing on only catering events. The bakery had not earned a profit as of late, and some local eateries were significant competitors. Running a bakery full time with two young children had been overwhelming at times, and she needed to consider a change to better manage her home and work life. She intended to continue withdrawing her annual salary of at least $40,000 under this catering-only option. She was concerned for the welfare of her four employees but also wanted to begin saving for her children's education. This owner had to decide which option would be most appropriate for her needs.

In 2016, the managing director of Eco Tasar Silk Private Ltd., an organization that sold handloom Tasar silk products created by low-income artisans in rural, underdeveloped areas of India, faced issues with his sales team. The managing director's dedication and perseverance, coupled with his past experience in a non-governmental organization in a similar field, had helped his company grow quickly over a short period of time. However, as the company scaled up operations, members of the sales team appeared to be either unconvinced of the company's business model or insufficiently competitive to ensure the business's sustainability. How could the managing director identify and recruit sales professionals who both understood and supported the business's unique value proposition and were sufficiently sales-oriented to ensure the business's longevity?

In December 2014, Guardian Lifecare Private Limited (Guardian), a pharmacy retail chain in India, was looking for ways to maintain its high growth in India's emerging market. Riding a surge of growth in organized retailing, Guardian had become the second-largest player in the Indian pharmaceutical retail market within a decade of its launch. This market had been plagued by several structural weaknesses such as widespread sales of spurious and substandard drugs, customers' lack of education, a poor overall customer experience, and low margins caused by the market's highly fragmented nature. Placing customer centricity at the core of its value proposition, Guardian had addressed these weaknesses to build a successful retail chain. Now, as it prepared to open more stores as part of its consolidation phase, it needed to address several long-term growth challenges such as poor penetration in rural areas and competition from e-commerce and small local pharmacies.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)-a massive free trade agreement between the United States, Japan and ten other Pacific nations-was a vital element of US President Barack Obama's trade policy. If completed, the TPP would be the largest regional trade agreement in history, accounting for 40 percent of the global economy, and nearly one-third of global trade. In 2015, after five years of negotiations the TPP countries were close to agreement. But one major obstacle remained. US President Barack Obama had not yet received Trade Promotion Authority (formerly known as fast track)-a legislative measure that gave the President the authority to present a finalized trade agreement for an up or down vote in the U.S. Congress. In the Spring of 2015, the White House had just a few short weeks to secure fast track, before the next scheduled round of TPP negotiations, and before the US Congress recessed for the summer. But if the past was any guide, Obama was about to face a bruising battle with Congress, where the TPP had already proved divisive. A large swath of Obama's own Democratic caucus was vociferously against the trade agreement. Most Republicans on the other hand, welcomed the TPP. Just as President Bill Clinton had done in the 1990s, Obama would have to forge an uncomfortable alliance with some of his fiercest opponents in the Republican Party to ensure the survival of his ambitious trade agenda. In doing so he would have to confront fellow Democrats, who were being lobbied heavily by labor unions and consumer groups to vote against Trade Promotion Authority. Case number 2095.0

Promontory, Inc. is a small, privately-owned firm in the promotional products (specialty advertising) industry. After starting the firm two years ago with the intention of pursuing a high-quality/high-price strategy, the CEO is seeking methods of increasing sales revenues and profitability. He is considering whether and how to increase the size of the sales force, redirect, or redeploy the company's current sales efforts, utilize alternative marketing vehicles, and maximize sales potential. To attain this goal, the firm has bought some customization equipment and attempted to find niches in which it can succeed, by doing the work usually done by suppliers and manufacturers. The case raises numerous general marketing and sales management issues and provides a profile of various approaches to personal selling. At its heart is the appropriate marketing organization for this company's strategy, and especially, the details of execution in the field. These multipronged challenges make the case suitable for courses in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Sales, Small Business Management, General Management, and Strategy.

An exercise that takes students through five stages of growth in an entrepreneurial start-up in the medical devices industry: 1) founding, 2) growth, 3) push to profitability, 4) relocation process, and 5) takeover by new management. At each stage, students must confront tensions in balancing profit, growth and control. Difficulties encountered in the business are due to management's attempts to design and use formal control systems to achieve profit and performance goals.