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This case tells the story of SMU Group, the third-largest supermarket operator in Chile. Having implemented a second restructuring plan (CIMA) between 2017 and 2019, the company was facing the challenge of having to implement a new corporate restructuring plan from 2020. SMU was created through successive acquisitions made between 2007 and 2013. This inorganic growth had led to a financial crisis, and the CIMA restructuring plan was implemented between 2014 and 2016, with the objective of improving operational efficiency, increasing revenues and reducing debt. Although SMU did achieve operational and commercial improvements, its debt burden remained high and the board of directors decided to continue the restructuring between 2017 and 2019. In an interview on November 24th 2019, Pilar Dañobeitía, president of the board and the decision maker in this case, highlighted that plan CIMA had positioned SMU as a solid company organizationally, financially, operationally and commercially. However, the credit ratings agencies International Credit Rating (ICR) and Humphreys had concerns about whether the operational and financial improvements at SMU represented a structural improvement. The following day, Pilar was due to announce the new corporate restructuring plan 2020-2022 to shareholders, but she wondered whether the new plan should include a direct response to the criticisms made by the ratings agencies, or just state that the current plan was addressing their concerns. In other words, Pilar asked herself whether the new CIMA plan should incorporate the criticisms made by the ratings agencies, or limit itself to continuing the current plan.

Constellation Pharmaceuticals was a company focused on epigenetic therapies for cancer patients. Despite a promising start and an early deal with a leading biopharma company, the company weathered twin setbacks in the end of a major research collaboration and the decision by the same company to let an option to acquire the company lapse. In a difficult capital market, the company had begun a reboot, but needed to figure out how to weave together key corporate development threads. New CEO and returning Constellation team member Jigar Raythatha wondered if Constellation could capitalize on the current portfolio and make the run to be a fully-integrated biopharmaceutical company selling its own products in the United States. He realized it would take a combination of clear goal setting, capital markets, and potentially partnering to balance this goal and returns for longtime shareholders. His background and training provide a playbook that might not apply-Constellation might not be able to secure another big pharma partnership and might instead need to put together a series of deals to secure needed capital and capabilities without trading away too much of the company's future.

After taking over from their parents, Sebastian Maxwell and Alexandra Ito, CEO and COO of Minnesota-based outdoor adventure brand Tenkara, must decide how they want to resource and grow this formerly family-run business. After outdoor activities exploded during the COVID pandemic, Tenkara boasted a growth curve that could put them on a VC-backed path. But is that the right choice for these founders and this business? And if so, which of two Series A term sheets should they accept?

As co-founder and CEO of Simprints-a social enterprise with the mission to "transform the way the world fights poverty"-Toby Norman was at a crossroads. His organization had developed ground-breaking technology used to verify aid delivery, reached more than 2.5 million people in 17 different countries, and received widespread accolades in the global health community. Having initially exclusively focused on partnerships with like-minded NGOs, Simprints attracted highly passionate employees willing to make sacrifices in service of the organization's mission. To scale its impact, Norman had recently decided that Simprints begin working with governments, a move many employees disagreed with, leading nearly half of the organization's workforce to quit. Despite initial success with its new strategic path, Norman wondered how central passion should be to the future direction of the organization. Should Simprints cast passion aside entirely and focus on bringing its technology to as many people as possible, including in areas beyond international development? Should Norman find a way to re-center passion, perhaps by making its technology open-source in an effort to sidestep discussions of who Simprints should be used by? How else could Simprints keep its employees motivated to fulfill its mission?

The case introduces a due diligence approach that prompts students to identify red flags and suspicious transactions through a fictitious case based on real-life examples. Students take on the role of an investment team manager of a hedge fund in Hong Kong focusing on investing in both private and publicly traded companies with significant growth potential. When the COVID-19 pandemic heavily affected industries across most sectors, most industries went through a major reshuffling leaving surviving industry performers that would have a great potential to become leaders over time. As such, the Company had been actively seeking new potential investments and meeting with their management since the end of 2022, and identified a potential company (Genuine) in the emission testing equipment industry. Through this case, students gain foundational knowledge of due diligence and learn to identify red flags for suspicious transactions or situations. They apply their learning by creating a due diligence plan and evaluating the available information on Genuine and its market. This analysis allows students to further advance their understanding and ultimately come to an investment decision. As an intermediate- to advanced-level case, students are required to actively compare data from different sources and perform relevant calculations. This will enable them to process and derive further information essential for making informed investment decisions.

Managers, policymakers, and leaders are often presented with data and evaluation techniques, then tasked with deciding whether to go ahead with the strategy or policy. This fictional case aims to build a basic framework to understand how one can determine whether a particular business strategy or economic policy "works." It offers an overview of commonly used evaluation strategies and their associated pitfalls, through the lens of Ramesh Sharma, the CEO of a large nongovernmental organization, who has to decide how to evaluate the effectiveness of a training program to female entrepreneurs. The case is used at Darden in a second-year elective on "India in the Global Economy." It is taught in the second week of the course with the aim of introducing students to basic methods for rigorously evaluating their business and policy decisions. While directly pertinent to the course on India, this case builds a general framework on evaluation techniques that can be easily extended to other contexts and decisions. Therefore, it can also be taught in courses in marketing, business strategy, management, operations, policy evaluation, and ethics.

In 2022, Abdulaziz B. Al Loughani, CEO and co-founder of Floward, an online flower and gifting company established in Kuwait in 2017, contemplated the firm's growth trajectory. Floward, an e-commerce enterprise that offered fresh-cut flowers sourced directly from global growers and had control over the entire delivery chain, had expanded its footprint to 32 cities across nine MENA countries and had ventured into the UK. Witnessing a remarkable CAGR of over 160% between 2020 and 2022, Floward was valued at $152.5 million during its Series B investment round in 2021. Having served over 400,000 customers and recently diversifying into the broader gifting sector, Al Loughani faced pivotal decisions: Should Floward pursue further global expansion or solidify its gifting vertical in the Gulf? And, considering its aggressive growth aspirations, should the company opt for an IPO, and if so, which stock exchange should they target?

During a challenging fundraising environment, the DexAI founders received two term sheets with nearly identical economic terms but very different legal ones. The entrepreneurs had to navigate: representations and warranties (their personal guarantees that the company's intellectual property was free and clear and that its financial statements were accurate), investor control terms (protective provisions, Board of Directors composition, and matters that required investor approval), and how their founders' stock was treated (a buyback right that effectively vested their stock and how that might change upon a company sale/merger/IPO, the termination of a founder, or a founder's resignation for "good reason"). The case also explores a possible intellectual property violation with one founder's prior employer.

This case illustrated the business ecosystem of WeChat from two perspectives. From an external perspective, the WeChat ecosystem was part of Tencent's overall ecosystem. Using this perspective, the case examined the external relationships between the WeChat ecosystem and the external environment. Looking closely, the various parties collaborating on the WeChat platform formed an ecosystem. From an internal perspective, the case examined the internal relationships within the WeChat ecosystem. The platform was not a closed, impenetrable ecosystem. Expertise, resources, and value could flow in and out, enabling sharing and exchanges. However, it was not entirely open. Certain boundaries protected the independence and distinctiveness of the WeChat ecosystem. As a result, participants better suited to the nature of the WeChat ecosystem would thrive. Externally, WeChat was born with the mission of delivering Tencent's new strategy to encourage openness and sharing, representing Tencent's determination to change after its former core product, QQ, was accused of monopolistic behavior. Apart from serving the more extensive "Tencent ecosystem," WeChat was also developing its own ecosystem. The two systems supported and empowered each other. Internally, WeChat helped various types of participants find their most appropriate roles within WeChat. Through product and function design, capacity empowerment, resource channeling, and rulemaking, WeChat ensured there was room for key enterprises, users, distributors, suppliers, and even competitors. All parties would find their proper places. In this newly established value network, WeChat would help capital, information, and traffic flow in an orderly manner. Different parties could seek monetization and exchange value to sustain their survival, co-exist with others, and contribute to a symbiotic environment.

Sarah Reynolds, a Partner at the global Kensington Partners strategy consulting firm, has headed the firm's Telecommunications Group for a few years. Thanks to her stellar track record with clients, she has brought the group, and herself, a range of accolades and recognition. Amid this success, she faces a handful of challenges: a new hybrid work paradigm within client services, mentoring the Vice Presidents and Associates within her group, integrating and utilizing new technical staffs into her existing practice, and more, all while maintaining the same level of results that brought her such responsibilities in the first place. With seemingly not enough hours in the day to tackle everything, Reynolds faces difficult tradeoffs for what to prioritize moving forward.

Peter Schneider, the President of T.G.S. Transportation, Inc., faced a choice. His company operated drayage trucks that moved containerized cargo between the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland to customers across the State of California, with a focus on the Central Valley. California's new Advanced Clean Fleets Regulation (ACF) issued by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in 2023, had specific requirements for drayage trucks that moved cargo from the state's intermodal seaports and railyards. Internal combustion engine (ICE) trucks placed in service by yearend 2023 would be allowed to continue to serve the ports and terminals, but beginning January 1, 2024, newly purchased trucks would have to be zero-emission. That meant that drayage operators like TGS could make a last-time buy of ICE trucks in 2023, but they had to decide what to switch to starting in 2024. The only viable choices were battery electric or hydrogen fuel cell.

Pear Therapeutics seemed off to a promising start as a young digital therapeutics (DTx) company, taking a focused approach to demonstrate the efficacy of new software therapies, generate value for prescribers and patients, and secure reimbursement from insurance companies. Investors were also excited about the potential for evidence-based, software-driven therapeutic interventions - instead of going to a pharmacy for a bottle of pills, patients would get a prescription to download a software app designed to help treat their disease. And new DTx companies like Pear Therapeutics saw great promise in packing the power of a pharmaceutical products into a software products. The case study provides background on the rapid growth and challenges in the new DTx field, and details of Pear's early successes with digital therapies designed to treat insomnia and substance use disorders. But for Pear, continuing investment in the development of a robust produce portfolio proved difficult, in light of the difficulties navigating the insurance reimbursement minefield, while managing investor expectations. Were Pear's troubles - and eventual failure - an ominous cloud over the future of the DTx sector?

As the leading e-commerce platform in Hong Kong, Hong Kong TV Shopping Network Company Limited (HKTVmall) faced an important challenge in early 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic had severely disrupted the global supply chain for personal protective equipment (PPE), and prices for masks and other products on its website had skyrocketed. While management had little knowledge or experience in sourcing or producing such products, they wondered whether they had a responsibility to act on this matter. Despite its meteoric growth, the company had yet to turn a profit, so the executives were unsure as to whether they should let the invisible hand of the market restore the equilibrium between supply and demand or take an extra step to guarantee a stable supply of PPE. If the platform intervened, was contracting with new local suppliers the right way to go, or should HKTVmall itself start producing PPE?

This case reviews the market risks resulting from issuing and managing autocallable equity-linked instruments by a bank in the Asian markets. A number of weaknesses in the risk management framework of the issuing organization ultimately led to significant losses that could have been avoided. The purpose of the case is to identify these potential weaknesses and suggest what could have been done to improve the risk management framework of the organization. The case illustrates the two possible generic explanations for the losses at the issuer. On the one hand, some people involved first blamed the deficiency of the risk model and the quantitative framework; others put more blame on the structural shortcomings in the risk management framework.

Lending firms like Partners for Growth (PFG) supplied growth capital to nascent companies, using debt instruments that did not dilute shareholders-contrary to traditional equity funding models. The customized approach allowed entrepreneurs to bring in additional capital without taking dilution in ownership. While instruments such as venture debt was becoming increasingly popular within the U.S. innovation ecosystem, venture debt and tech lending had yet to become widely available to entrepreneurial companies in the Middle East. PFG saw this as an opportunity to expand into the MENA region ahead of other organizations that were not as comfortable with the debt lending business model for start-up companies. The company's leaders had just finalized two term sheets and were discussing how PFG might support two different companies in the Middle East: Tabby, a fintech leader looking to expand "Buy Now Pay Later" financing; and Bayzat, a SaaS company that provided human resources solutions to small and medium-sized companies in the region.

The success or failure of Dicerna Pharmaceuticals (Dicerna) as an emerging pharmaceutical company would likely hinge on its lead drug candidate Nedosiran and the company's ability to see it successfully through clinical development. Ralf Rosskamp, Chief Medical Officer, had an ambitious clinical development plan that leveraged novel technology and a dynamic regulatory strategy to rapidly accelerate Nedosiran's development as a treatment for a rare disease. The case elaborates on Rosskamp's plan to design, operationalize and execute the clinical development plan, with a limited staff and an aggressive time line.

The case opens in March 2023, as Sten van der Ham and Jaap Maljers, CEO and co-founder of eBee, an electric bike (e-bike) company in Africa, are contemplating the different avenues for growth and path to profitability for the young and ambitious company. In 2023, the company had been gaining traction in Kenya under three business models and was also getting ready to raise a financing round of €8-10 million. eBee had the first mover advantage of having introduced e-bikes and van der Ham and Maljers needed to decide which levers to pull for to best grow eBee going forward. The case chronicles the founding of eBee, provides details on its bike designed for the terrain in Africa, and its unit economics. The case then lays the ground transportation Africa complete with challenges, opportunities, and the competitive outlook. The case then goes into detail about the three go-to-market channels that eBee picked to penetrate into the Kenyan market. The case goes into detail about the three different business models-vehicle as a service, fulfillment, and direct sales-that eBee is piloting in 2023 as well as providing an understanding of what each operate, their financial prospects, and growth outlooks, as eBee tries to grow its sales. While each business model presented its challenges and were yet to prove profitable at scale, van der Ham and Maljers firmly believed the in the immense opportunity to grow e-bikes in Africa and in eBee's first mover advantage. The duo was excited about geographical expansion. Others on the team and advisory board held that, obtaining proof of concept in Kenya first would be more helpful, while some suggested to eliminate some of the business models and focus more on others.