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Twitter Inc. (Twitter), based in California, was a social media platform whose growth had stalled over the past few years. Once a promising tool for individuals looking to broadcast short messages to a network, Twitter had been eclipsed by other platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat, and LinkedIn. Unlike other social media platforms, Twitter limited its users' messages to 140 characters. This format served Twitter well in its early days, but users had turned to other more flexible platforms. In October 2016, Twitter's chief marketing officer faced two main challenges: how to advertise an already popular social media platform to non-users and how to encourage current users to stay with the platform.

In 2006, the regional director for Texas' Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) was on his way to a hearing about permits for new coal plants proposed by Texas electricity provider TXU when he received a call from private equity firm Texas Pacific Group, concerning TXU's plans to build 11 new coal-fired power plants. How could he negotiate with the private equity firm as it pursued the largest recorded leveraged buyout deal? The private equity firm was opposed to acquiring a firm embroiled in a pitched battle with environmentalists, and claimed to be willing to make substantial concessions. However, as an environmental non-government organization, EDF would face significant risks if it elected to work with TXU and private equity firms to facilitate this deal. Should EDF support the buyout, and what concessions should it ask for in return?

CompuSoluciones was a value-added distributor of information technology hardware, software, and services based in Guadalajara, Mexico. In 2016, the firm's chief executive officer was aware that the company faced the threat of disintermediation as some of its vendors looked to sell directly to end-users. The industry in which CompuSoluciones competed was known for its rapid technological changes, which affected the design, supply, and price of products, and even the structure of the industry. As an intermediary in the business, CompuSoluciones was threatened by disintermediation, which was enabled by two new technologies: cloud computing and software as a service. If software vendors could interact directly with end-users, they would not need to pay intermediaries (resellers or wholesalers such as CompuSoluciones) to distribute their products. CompuSoluciones's chief executive officer needed to consider what the company could do in the next few months to prevent or slow the process of disintermediation or to participate in the industry in a different way. The decision would have significant implications for the firm's business model.

Strength Pharma was an Indian health care company that focused on developing, manufacturing, and marketing products that catered to the sports nutrition market in India. The senior director of marketing was responsible in March 2016 for managing the upcoming launch of the company's newest whey protein supplement, Muscle-RDX. This new product would be the first protein supplement for high-endurance athletes ever to be approved by the Food Safety and Standard Authority of India, and its chances for success in the Indian market looked quite promising. With the upcoming new-product launch just a few months away, the marketing director needed to develop a product-positioning strategy and a marketing communication plan for Muscle-RDX. To find the best plan, he had several questions to answer: Who would be the ideal target customer? How should the key stakeholders be reached? What was an appropriate message for each of the fitness coaches and athletes? What role would the mobile application play in the marketing communication roll out?

Atlassian: Sales examines the company's unique, no-touch sales model for enterprise products that help teams track projects, collaborate, and build products. The case explores how the company developed and sold its first product, JIRA, and how early lessons helped shape the company's no-touch sales model for all subsequent products. It then discusses the organizational effects of a low-price, volume-based model, and how the advocacy team and channel partners serve as keys to success for the approach.

CompuSoluciones, based in Guadalajara, Mexico, was a value-added distributor of information technology hardware, software, and services that grew from its origins as a reseller for Hewlett-Packard to become the second-largest distributor in Mexico. The company was best described as a collection of team-based businesses. It had 18 independent business units-each of which managed its own supply chain and produced its own profit-and-loss statements-and over 415 employees spread out over three offices. It was also governed by multiple consultative and representative boards. The company relied on the advice, insights, and experiences of these key advisory groups to improve the quality of its decision making and inform strategic decisions. At the same time, it had a policy to achieve consensus on major strategic decisions. In January 2017, the chairman of CompuSoluciones was reviewing his company's corporate governance policies and practices. Given the independent nature of the individual business units, he wondered whether a consensus-based model of management was still the best way to lead the firm forward and whether the current corporate governance structure was optimal for managing this particular business.

The case examines the role of IT in CEMEX, a giant Mexican building materials manufacturer in an industry categorized by low margins and high costs. In the early 1990s, CEMEX made significant investments in its IT systems, resulting in a data-based management operation that put it at the forefront of the industry. As the company grew through acquisitions, it integrated IT through "The CEMEX Way," a set of standardized processes, organizations, and systems implemented on a common IT platform. In 2007, when CEMEX acquired Rinker, a major Australian concrete company, aligning Rinker with CEMEX IT systems was critical to quickly streamline operations and realize efficiencies. The CIO of CEMEX had developed a new integration process called Processes & IT (P&IT) that he was considering using for the Rinker integration. However, P&IT required additional resources, including significant upfront fixed costs and investment in new personnel teams at a time when the company was already struggling with the integration of another acquisition. CEMEX could either align Rinker to The CEMEX Way or use the opportunity to invest significantly more in evolving to the new P&IT approach that focused on business process management.

One of the most profitable products for Tanner Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Tanner), a major U.S. pharmaceutical company, was a vaccine with the brand name Zorstat. Tanner was facing increased public scrutiny over the price of Zorstat. The company was being accused of "being greedy and raising prices in ways that victimized vulnerable people." In two days Jack Stevens, the lead independent board member for Tanner, would attend the annual meeting of independent directors. The Zorstat pricing controversy was on the agenda. Stevens would have to take and defend a position on Tanner's drug pricing strategy. Inevitably, there would be a heated discussion on Zorstat and whether management was effectively driving shareholder value with drug pricing decisions.

This is Case A in a three case series. In December 2015, the managing director and chief executive officer of Sunitha Nath Boutiques in Bengaluru, discovered that her most trusted employee had abandoned and deceived her. She had recruited the employee as an intern and mentored him during his growth within the organization, eventually promoting him to the post of studio manager with complete power to run the business in her absence. But the employee had quit his job without giving any notice; stolen confidential information, designs, and documents relating to the business; and started his own competing design firm in Bengaluru. One of Sunitha Nath Boutiques's important projects had been terminated by email a little while earlier, and the rumour was that her ex-employee was continuing to work on that project under his new design firm. In this case, the managing director's lawyer helped determine what had transpired, had taken steps to contain any further damage, and preserved relationships with clients and vendors. However, there were other matters to also consider. See Case B and Case C.

TalentCorp Malaysia runs the "Returning Expert Programme" (REP), a government program designed to encourage Malaysian professionals abroad to return home through use of various incentives. The REP is intended to combat the "brain drain," caused by highly educated professionals moving away to take advantage of better career opportunities by offering returnees benefits such as tax breaks and permanent residency for family members. In 2011, TalentCorp took over administration of the REP, and through adjustments to incentives and application requirements was able to dramatically increase the number of REP applicants and approvals. Now they are considering another set of changes and must demonstrate that their changes will increase "bang for the taxpayer buck," raising the number of applicants while maintaining the same level of quality.

Vox Capital was the first certified impact investing fund in Brazil. Founded in 2009, it provides early-stage capital for companies offering innovative and scalable solutions to enhance the lives of low-income Brazilians, while aiming to simultaneously generate attractive market-rate financial returns for investors. This case examines the evolution of Vox Capital, across understanding the landscape, launching, raising funds, selecting investees, structuring deals, building investee capacities, tracking performance, developing internal systems, and advancing the field of impact investing.

Private investment in public infrastructure can be encouraged when there are multiple avenues to capture and to share the value created by such a project. Gains in the market value of land adjacent to projects are not customarily channeled back into defraying the original capital cost of the project-but they can be. This case uses irrigation, agriculture, land values, and an arrangement between the local government in northern Peru and the privatizer firm to accomplish the irrigation of vast areas of land, leading to jobs and GDP growth in the state, based on a combination of fees for water, auction price for raw land, investment in enabling infrastructure, and market value increases for irrigated land. The mechanics of this three-component deal (land company, water distribution company, construction company) are tracked on a pro forma multi-year cash flow basis with the ability to make and test a variety of different assumptions. The choice of an agricultural setting with one possible use case (farming at ground level) leads in to more complex value capture analyses. Real estate, for example, can have more dimensions (more floors allowed) and more use cases (retail, housing, office) than does agriculture. The local government can accomplish hundreds of millions of dollars of construction without advancing any funds to do so.

This case follows an African-American entrepreneur through the process of sourcing a potential acquisition, valuing a company, and securing the funding to purchase the company. This entrepreneur must decide if he should close the deal and which financing term sheet to accept.

Carmichael Roberts, a rare African-American venture capitalist, considered leaving his general partnership in a private equity firm near Boston and setting up his own in 2015. He weighed whether the timing is right, with the economy still not fully recovered from the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Where to base such a firm was another factor in his decision-making. A member of the board of the National Venture Capital Association, Roberts knew the industry was gravitating to the San Francisco Bay area, to invest in the social media and software startups centered there. His specialty and passion was bringing to market new products made from advanced materials that help people solve problems in their daily lives. That investment focus on manufacturing would go against the private equity trend, another factor he considered. But he knew few, if any, general partners at major private equity firms were focused singularly on the kinds of businesses he wanted to invest in. Roberts also took into account the possible impact on his mutually respectful relations with his fellow partners. From a housing project in Brooklyn, New York, Roberts became a scientist who did advanced study at Duke and Harvard, capped off with an MBA from MIT. He had experience as a developer of technical products for Fortune 500 companies, an executive of cutting-edge startups, and a venture capitalist for eight years. This case study also reviews how private equity investment works, the private equity spectrum, the history of venture capital, stages of venture capital funds, and their location.

Shisong Cardiac Center in Kumbo, Cameroon, is a regional cardiac referral center in central Africa. As the continent transitions from communicable to non-communicable diseases, there is a critical shortage of surgical care required to treat these conditions. This case describes an innovation solution to the shortage of professional skills, an international collaboration between a hospital in Milan and a hospital in Cameroon. The case highlights the challenges of building and staffing the facility, and then discusses the ongoing operational and financial challenges of operating a heart center in Africa. Can this model be sustained? Can Cameroon develop their own capability to deliver advanced cardiac services domestically? These are critical questions to consider. In spite of these challenges, Co-Founder Sr. Alphonsa finds hope in her favorite African proverb, "Your heart can take you where your feet cannot."

Energy - both petroleum and electricity - had been terribly managed for decades in Mexico. The two national monopolies - PEMEX and CFE - were inefficient, overstaffed, corrupt, rife with subsidies, and losing money. Finally, in 2012, President Enrique Pena Nieto announced his intent to drastically reform both. Over the next two years, the Mexican constitution was amended, and a dozen implementing laws were passed, to break up the CFE, reorganize PEMEX, and impose competition between the pieces. By 2017, tracts of offshore oil were auctioned, renewable contracts were auctioned, and new regulators were trying to impose competition downstream in electricity.

Years before Harvard University Professor Howard Koh was appointed by President Barack Obama as the 14th U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health (2009-2014) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where he went on to address a vast portfolio of health challenges, he played a leading role in two highly impactful coalition-based public health campaigns focused on tobacco control and organ donation. The tobacco tax and organ donation campaigns illustrate how public health advocates can effectively build and rally coalitions of diverse groups around a results-focused health mission. They underscore the perseverance and other leadership traits that public health leaders like Koh harness to push through innovative strategies in the face of powerful entrenched groups committed to preserving the status quo. And while the campaigns also demonstrate the difficulties of sustaining public health initiatives due to changing political and economic circumstances, leaders like Koh must surmount disappointments to find new ways to continue the mission over the course of a long career.

Before re-entering the Southeast Asian market in 2015, the Hisense-Hitachi joint venture mainly used the well known Hitachi brand to explore overseas markets. After the JV had accumulated enough capacity to adopt a product differentiation strategy, they decided to treat the Hisense brand as the focal brand in Southeast Asia and adopted a series of distribution strategies that differed from what they had used to sell Hitachi branded products elsewhere. The (B) case provides a basis for discussing target market selection, and the establishment of varying distribution channels (exclusive vs non-exclusive agents) in different countries. This case can be used with Hisense-Hitachi Joint Venture (A): Expanding Internationally.