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In March 2016, eEquity, a small firm providing online training and software to corporate human resource professionals, faced a dilemma. A year after new ownership and management took over, the channel sales strategy that was expected to support the growth of the promising Software as a Service division failed, and cash was running out. Management had devised a new sales and marketing strategy that it believed would be successful, but lacked the funds to implement the strategy. This same management team identified four options to acquire the necessary funds, each of which had inherent strengths and weaknesses. The firm's success depended on making a good choice under conditions of incomplete information and a short time frame.

SmoothPay, a 14-people start-up in Canada that offered mobile payment and loyalty solutions, enjoyed initial achievements after its launch in 2014. In less than two years, through industry partnerships and community engagement, SmoothPay grew to have over 100 merchants in its system, with over 5,000 users. However, the future was full of risks and uncertainty: businesses and consumers in Canada were both slow in adopting mobile payments, and, as a small firm, SmoothPay had not yet established brand awareness. SmoothPay's management needed to address several key challenges. How could SmoothPay differentiate itself from its many competitors? What strategic direction should the company take? What market should SmoothPay target to enable sustainable growth?

Faced with the imminent loss of 40% of its revenues due to patent expirations, pharma giant Eli Lilly sets out on a dramatic transformation process in 2009. The case considers how Lilly restructured the organization into business areas to aid better decision making, faster innovation and clearer customer insight; the forward guidance and minimum performance guarantees that Lilly provided to the market during the transformation; the difficult HR adjustments that were required; and how the top leadership encountered and overcame market skepticism towards the innovation-focused plan.

In December 2004, Chinese computer manufacturer Lenovo announced its purchase of IBM's PC division. At the time, few industry observers were optimistic about the merger of these entities with seemingly opposite company cultures. How should the two entities plan to integrate?

QuintilesIMS was a leading healthcare consulting firm best known for its data and information offerings, as well as its market research and management consulting services for life science companies. By 2015, the company was expanding beyond the biopharmaceutical industry, offering analytical services to healthcare systems, like the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom (UK). In June, 2015, QuintilesIMS published a study highlighting inconsistencies in the care of RA patients in England. In particular, the company considered the current use of biologic medications to treat RA in England, as well how the introduction of biosimilar medications might affect costs to the NHS and medication access for patients. Students must use epidemiology, cost, and market share information given in the case to estimate potential cost savings one year after the introduction of biosimilars. The case also explores qualitative questions around the appropriate communication with patients and the role of QuintilesIMS.

In the summer of 2016, PepsiCo Beverages Canada faced a choice: whether to launch its new product, organic Gatorade, in Canada. Only a few months previously, PepsiCo North America Beverages' chief executive officer had announced a company-wide initiative that was designed to offer consumers a greater variety of healthier products. Would such a product ultimately make PepsiCo more competitive in the Canadian market in light of recent trends that emphasized healthy options? Did Canadian consumers want organic Gatorade? PepsiCo also had to keep in mind its long-standing competition with The Coca-Cola Company, and decide how that would affect its strategic choices.

Thaddeus Fulford-Jones and Eric Weiss, founders of healthcare technology startup Radial Analytics, have been busy developing a software program designed to save hospitals money and improve patient outcomes by producing customized care plans for patients leaving the hospital. Having piloted the program at an urban hospital in Massachusetts, they're ready to disseminate the software to other accountable care organizations and bundled-payment hospitals. The case explores the issues the two entrepreneurs consider as they pursue the funding, clients, and business strategy that will allow them to scale their company and cut waste in Medicare spending.

In November 2015, Square, Inc. launched its initial public offering (IPO). The IPO had an offering price of $9 per share, lower than the $11 to $13 estimate that had been outlined in the preliminary prospectus and 42% below the $15.50 share price in its most recent financing less than a year before. The lower than anticipated pricing of Square's IPO, and the implied valuation, had left investors and market observers wondering if this was an indication of a valuation bubble, or a shift in the market. The case provides an overview of the IPO process, and examines U.S. IPO trends from the 1980s to mid-2010s. It explores the rationales behind an increasing number of $billion + private valuations, known as 'unicorns', and explores who the winners and losers are when such firms go public at lower valuations.

As of 2016, Mathias Döpfner, chief executive officer (CEO) of Axel Springer SE, had successfully transitioned the German publishing house through a major digital transformation in the world of journalism. Given the massive disruption that had occurred over the previous two decades with how people consumed news, this was no small feat. During this time, many newspapers, magazines, and journals failed to keep up with the rapidly changing industry. Historically, print advertising constituted the majority of revenue for large publishers. But the digital revolution in journalism meant that print advertising revenues dropped precipitously. This downward trend in print advertising revenues happened around the globe, with traditional publishers cutting thousands of jobs. Many publishers were forced to declare bankruptcy during this period. In spite of these industry headwinds, Axel Springer was thriving. Döpfner had transformed Axel Springer through a two-stage digital transformation strategy process. Starting in 2006, Axel Springer first focused on organic growth and late-stage digital acquisitions, which infused digitization into Axel Springer's corporate culture. In 2013, the second stage centered around Döpfner's mission to become "The Leading Digital Publisher"; Axel Springer would be defined not by its distribution channels, but by its (content) brands and services. Having successfully transformed Axel Springer from a print-only company to a thriving print and digital media conglomerate, Döpfner wanted to accelerate Axel Springer's growth even further. He believed that Axel Springer was well positioned to succeed not only in their core German market, but also more broadly on the world stage. Yet he knew this path to becoming a global media powerhouse would not be straightforward, especially given the rapid changes occurring within the media and publishing realm. In a world in which people were consuming content from a variety of sources-traditional print

The founders of Mark43, an early-stage startup that provides software for law enforcement agencies, must decide whether to bid on a request for proposals (RFP) from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). On the one hand, LAPD would be a second large and influential customer for a startup that has just successfully deployed software for its first customer, the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department. On the other hand, pursuing the LAPD RFP could consume most of Mark43's engineering resources for the coming year, pushing other business development opportunities off their roadmap, in particular, plans to target small and medium-sized police departments.

Psaltry International Limited was an agricultural processing company located in rural Nigeria. The company refined cassava into high-quality food-grade starch, which was used in many consumer products. As of 2016, Psaltry had 300 employees and operated two production lines. The company was growing rapidly, but its founder, Ms Yemisi Iranloye, faced key strategic decisions about whether to expand production, and how to source two water and electricity for the company's factory. These inputs were difficult to obtain because of the lack of government-supplied infrastructure in rural Nigeria. Indeed, although many outsiders considered the Nigerian business environment to be challenging due to problems like corruption and the threat of violence, from Ms. Iranloye's perspective the challenge of obtaining power and water was every bit as important. One possible solution was for Psaltry to increase its own power generation and water supply capacity. This approach would require substantial up-front investment. It also carried a risk, as local communities could not rely on government-operated infrastructure, and might expect Psaltry to provide them with power and water. Although Ms. Iranloye was proud of Psaltry's track record of promoting community development, she was acutely aware that Psaltry was not in a position to fully satisfy local communities' needs for power and water. For water, Ms Iranloye considered three main options: drilling deeper wells, building a dam, or building a supply pipe to source water from a government dam. For power, her three main options were to build a biogas plant, rely on costly diesel generators, or increase the company's use of government-supplied electricity.

When Walker Farms is hit with a surface-water allocation of zero for a third straight year because of the state's ongoing and extended drought, it must decide how to respond. Continue to let 6,000 of its 23,000 acres lie fallow? Drill more wells? Shift to higher-yielding organic crops? Or lease the land to a solar power company to find some revenue that isn't water dependent? With commentary by Kim Morison, of Blue Sky Water Partners, and Ken LaGrande, of Sun Valley Rice.

When Walker Farms is hit with a surface-water allocation of zero for a third straight year because of the state's ongoing and extended drought, it must decide how to respond. Continue to let 6,000 of its 23,000 acres lie fallow? Drill more wells? Shift to higher-yielding organic crops? Or lease the land to a solar power company to find some revenue that isn't water dependent? With commentary by Kim Morison, of Blue Sky Water Partners, and Ken LaGrande, of Sun Valley Rice.

When Walker Farms is hit with a surface-water allocation of zero for a third straight year because of the state's ongoing and extended drought, it must decide how to respond. Continue to let 6,000 of its 23,000 acres lie fallow? Drill more wells? Shift to higher-yielding organic crops? Or lease the land to a solar power company to find some revenue that isn't water dependent? With commentary by Kim Morison, of Blue Sky Water Partners, and Ken LaGrande, of Sun Valley Rice.

AllDrinksSoft (ADS), a US-based manufacturer and distributor of non-alcoholic beverages, began its journey into Business Analytics (BA) by developing two performance dashboards: one for its branches and one for its sales staff. By recounting the development and implementation of these two applications, and considering how improvements to them might be prioritized, this case explores ADS's journey into BA. In so doing, it highlights questions about the meaning of BA, the various ways in which analytics solutions can be designed and implemented, what the stages of BA maturity look like and how organizations might progress along this maturity trajectory.

This case describes the development of the HealthCare.gov website front-end, systems and databases supporting the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. In late October 2013, US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner appear before a Congressional subcommittee to apologize about system glitches. The case gives students an opportunity to consider project risks that affected this huge systems development effort, and to consider how to ensure that millions of uninsured or underinsured Americans would be able to sign up for affordable health insurance

Business Process Management (BPM) is a topic that has received immense attention in information systems research and practice. While its adoption has been increasing rapidly, many companies struggle to find BPM professionals with the appropriate skills, hence BPM education has been an area of increasing interest as well. One big challenge for BPM education is the lack of teaching resources. Appropriately written BPM teaching cases derived from real-life case scenarios has been recognised as a valuable means to address this gap. Yet, teaching cases that are rich in context dedicated to BPM are still scarce. This teaching case, specifically developed for business process improvement education purposes, is designed as a rich resource to address this gap. Teaching notes with an extensive set of multimedia ancillary material are also available to instructors upon request. This case study is based on a real-life patient-care process of a national Ayurvedic hospital in Sri Lanka. With its position as the leading national institute for Ayurvedic research and teaching, the hospital has the potential to make striding impacts with Ayurvedic innovations both nationally and globally. This narrative describes the current patient-care process in detail, challenging students to analyse the current process and derive justifiable high-impact creative/innovative recommendations that are feasible to the case's context and improve business processes at the hospital.

SolBridge, a young business school in South Korea, acquired an open-source learning management system (LMS) in early years of its operation. It switched to an on-premises proprietary LMS a few years later. However, before renewal of its annual license SolBridge was caught in a typical dilemma of information systems acquisition (IS acquisition), i.e., keeping the costs lowest while maximizing user and organizational benefits. The decision was made more complex by newly available cloud-hosting options. SolBridge CIO analyzed the total cost of ownership (TCO) and benefits of several options before recommending one of them to school management. This case provides senior undergraduate or graduate students with an opportunity to assume the role of SolBridge CIO and analyze TCO for its next LMS. Not only will they realize the managerial challenges involved in selection and acquisition of enterprise information systems but they will also learn about the economic feasibility of on-premises and cloudhosting options. It also becomes visible to them that organizations grapple with unceasing technological and organizational changes. Therefore, flexibility and scalability emerge as key elements of modern IT infrastructure.

The case presents the dilemma of Sita Sen, Assistant Marketing Director at the Tudor House hotel. A disgruntled customer had posted his experience regarding a mishap with the cake order he had placed with the hotel on a Facebook food group. Now there was heated discussion happening around it and the VP for hospitality at the Tudor House had also been tagged in the conversation. After a meeting of the executive team at the Tudor House, the responsibility of handling the grievance had been given to Sita. This might set a precedent for a series of similar complaints if posted on the Facebook group, so would it be better to do nothing? Or maybe an apology should be offered? Cash or coupons? Something in kind? To give or not to give, that was the question.

Faced with uncompetitive regulation, the founder of 3P Turbo, Jason Starks, was contemplating setting up a facility to manufacture automobile turbochargers in Brazil. At that time, Brazil was experiencing huge political turmoil, resulting from the Petrobras scandal that involved prominent business and political leaders, and the impeachment of the country's president, Dilma Rousseff. It was also hit with the worst recession in two decades, exacerbated by low commodity prices and the slow-down of the Chinese economy. Jason had engaged with a consultant to gather some revenue and cost projections for this cross border investment to see if it would create value and make financial sense. More importantly, he needed to access the economic and political risks of Brazil and its automobile industry, and determine if the timing was right to enter the Brazilian market.