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Qihoo 360 Technology Company was a leading Internet platform company in China, the number one provider of Internet and mobile security products as measured by user base. The company entered China's fiercely competitive Internet market relatively late and adopted the "freemium" model as the basis of its business. "In the beginning," said Qihoo founder Zhou Hongyi, "Forget how to make money - focus on how to create a valuable service for every consumer." Qihoo sought to monetize through continuous product-side innovation and product-design that puts users first.

This real case about cms electronics, a European electronic manufacturing services (EMS) provider, presents a decision situation in which the company's CEO must determine the best way to expand activities in the Asian market. A "follow the customer" strategy seems to be called for, as the company's customers, mainly in the automotive sector, are shifting their focus from Europe to Asia. Setting up a local factory, however, would involve a high level of risk and investment for this relatively small company. The case can be used to discuss how geographic shifts in the centre of gravity of a global industry can affect the global supply chain management and internationalization strategies of a relatively small industry player.

In April 2013, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Forus Health Private Limited sat in his office in Bangalore, India contemplating the future direction of his company. He was under pressure by his venture capital partner to rapidly penetrate the market for 3nethra - an innovative, multi-functional and low-cost ophthalmology device - before imitators stepped in. Given its features and advantages over expensive imported specialized tools, 3nethra could help address the huge challenge of preventable blindness in India, but after three years since inception, only 100 devices had been sold. Although the market opportunity was large, acceptance by the ophthalmology profession was key to gaining momentum. He had two choices: to maximize sales numbers through the scattergun tactic of going all out and all over the market or to build a sufficient base of positive word of mouth to gain the momentum necessary to pole-vault from the early to the mainstream market. How should he direct his sales team to take the company forward?

In 2011, Sudarshan Chemical Industries Limited, a global pigment company with sales in over 40 countries, was poised to become one of the top four pigment producers in the world. The vice-chairman was about to meet with an external consultant whom he had hired when he assumed leadership of the family business in 2003 following the demise of both the founders - his father and eldest uncle. The agenda of the meeting was to discuss the various initiatives that had been undertaken at Sudarshan since 2003 to systematically professionalize the group. The vice-chairman could not help wondering whether the company was heading in the right direction. Should a family member always be the head of the business? What if the family member being prepared for the leadership role did not gain the acceptance of the family and non-family professionals to lead the business?

In August 2013, an intern at Slatestone Group, an Arizona-based boutique investment bank, was working on a targeted sell-side deal. Paterson Publishing, a Fortune 200 company, had expressed interest in acquiring Slatestone's client Bluntly Media Holdings, a private direct marketing agency. The intern was assigned to help prepare the deal marketing material and assist with the valuation assessment of Bluntly Media. He needed to use a variety of valuation methods and propose a strategy that could assist Bluntly Media in attaining a higher price.

It is February 2011 and Brian France, CEO of NASCAR (the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing), is facing a crisis. In the last five years, attendance at weekend NASCAR races has fallen 22 percent and television viewership has declined 30 percent. Key marketing sponsors have recently left the sport. At the same time, the U.S. economy has only begun to recover from an economic recession that has had an adverse impact on the sport of auto racing as a whole. Some leaders within NASCAR counseled Brian that these trends in attendance, viewership, and sponsorship stemmed from the recession and that NASCAR should continue with business as usual. But Brian sensed that the industry needed fundamental change and that he, as CEO of NASCAR, was the one that must lead this change. With Brian at the helm, NASCAR embarked on an unprecedented amount of qualitative and quantitative research to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the entire industry. At the center of this research was the NASCAR consumer. Highly engaged, enthusiastic consumers were at the heart of an industry business model that had been successful for decades. But in 2011, marketing within all of NASCAR needed to transform, as it was clear that consumers were disengaging with the sport. As the consumer research results unfold, Brian and leaders within NASCAR must make tough choices and set priorities. The case focuses on four key areas in which decisions need to be made by NASCAR leadership: digital marketing and social media, targeting the next-generation NASCAR consumer, enhancing the star power of NASCAR drivers, and enhancing the consumer experience at NASCAR events. Focus group videos offer students a customer-centric deep-dive into these challenges. At its heart, this is a case about great leadership and transforming marketing throughout an entire industry. A wrap-up video from CEO Brian France summarizes how NASCAR executives tackled the difficult questions posed in the case.

BASIX, headquartered in Hyderabad, was the brand name of a group of entities with 6,000 outlets offering financial and livelihood promotion services throughout rural India. Despite its impressive progress in poverty alleviation, raising funds to continue such work was increasingly challenging, as BASIX found when it sought to raise Rs 2.5 billion in capital from private equity investors in late 2010. Not only did the diffuse nature of its work make valuation complex (the standard method would have been to take the sum of its parts and add a premium for the synergies between the entities using the discounted cash flow method ), but investors preferred simpler business models where the service/goods sold broadly met the same set of needs. One that met such diverse needs and spread across so many sectors was harder to figure out, as well as harder to scale up, making investment less attractive. Without scale it was hard to get capital; without capital it was hard to scale up. The question that BASIX is grappling with is how best to position itself going forward.

Costly Train Journey (A) tells the story of an MBA student who on graduation started an investment banking job in the City. He was successful in his first few years but commuting into London he continued to dodge the train fare until he was caught by ticket inspectors. He was asked to pay £43,000 in avoided fares or face prosecution. Costly Train Journey (B) reveals that the (A) case is based loosely on the experience of Jonathan Burrows a Managing Director at Blackrock Asset Management. Investigated by the Financial Conduct Authority, Burrows was judged to have failed its "fit and proper" test and banned from working in financial services.

How does change happen at a company that by all accounts was doing well under successful leadership? In this case, the story of BASF North America (NA) is shared with all references relating to significant change in the regional organization. Adopting strategic change at the leadership level, cascading the change strategy to those executing it, and receiving full support from the top are almost textbook-worthy elements of the change effort that occurred at BASF NA. BASF NA had changed significantly since the creation of the North American 2020 Strategy. Now the management team found itself at a time of further reflection-where was the organization by 2014? And more important, how would the company continue to move forward to 2020 and beyond?

An in-house venture capital fund for affordable private schools at the base of the pyramid established by Pearson, the world's largest education company, PALF sought to invest in business models providing superior educational outcomes in emerging markets on a profitable and scalable basis. With Pearson's overall strategy shifting from the developed to the developing world and from a supplier of books to a host of other learning products and services, the company thought PALF's lessons might be applicable to Pearson's core businesses. By 2014, Katelyn Donnelly, the Managing Director of PALF, and her team had made seven investments in Africa and Asia and were close to fully committing the $15 million earmarked for the initiative. In the upcoming meeting of PALF's Investment Committee, Donnelly must present a recommendation: should Pearson allocate more internal money to the fund or should they open it up to third party investors?

Acme Inc, a large retailer, explores the use of Data warehouse for addressing their decision support infrastructure Challenges. Acme plans for a pilot study to assess the feasibility and evaluate the business benefits of using Data warehouse. The focus of this case is to ascertain the steps involved in design, development and implementation of a Data warehouse.

On a beautiful sunny afternoon in October 2013, Daniel Mazon (GMP 15), decided to take some time out of his busy schedule of the General Management Program (GMP) at the Harvard Business School to reflect on his company's situation. Mazon was the Vice President and General Manager of the Imaging Systems Division of Philips Healthcare in Latin America (Latam). For three consecutive years, Philips Ultrasound business was losing market share in Latam. Mazon was concerned that sales representatives, who were responsible for a large portfolio of imaging products, were not giving enough attention to Ultrasound. He was wondering if change in the size and compensation structure of the sales force would solve this problem or he would need to take a more radical approach of creating a dedicated sales force for Ultrasound. This choice was complicated by the matrix organization structure of Philips where regional general managers (GMs) had profit and loss (P&L) responsibility of the entire portfolio.

DMD Compresores was an Argentine SME specialized in industrial compressed air solutions. This case describes the company´s attempts to adapt to a new setting that hindered its path to sustained business and organizational growth. As DMD compressor sales became stagnant and profit margins were impaired by rising local costs, the company faced two new major challenges: 1) changing its culture based on using services to support sales to providing sustainable services, and 2) introducing and revising management systems to suit its new business model. What was his CEO missing as he looked for a way out of the crisis? How can they manage the key issues in order to align people and systems towards the execution of an adapted business model?

Alaska Airlines has recently recovered from a period of operational instability, yet its executives worry the airline is draining its reserves of customer loyalty and goodwill, due to losses over the past two years and variability in its statistics for on-time flights and mishandled baggage. After focusing many resources on operations in an effort to regain stability, the senior executives wonder whether the organization could endure if performance were to slip again. Is remaining status quo good enough, or should the airline's leadership take action to transform the performance culture?

The newly appointed innovation manager at Purolator, a market leader in the parcel delivery industry in Canada, is under pressure to deliver quick wins. The manager faces three dilemmas in his role, which is the first-of-its-kind in the company. How should he bring innovation to the attention of Purolator employees, particularly the senior managers? How should he develop the roadmap and set an agenda for unveiling innovation at Purolator? How should he ensure that innovation becomes a source of long-term competitive advantage at Purolator?

America's Budget Impasse draws on a series of recent government documents to explore America's economic performance through 2016, tax policy under President Bush, economic-policy decisions - especially the stimulus and the resulting performance under President Obama, the Senate and House budget proposals in 2016, and the new budget proposals of President Donald Trump in May of 2017. The case is designed to understand Republican ideology associated with tax cuts, to evaluate the effectiveness of tax cuts, to assess the stimulus and the effects of the fiscal and tax multipliers, and to assess President Trump's proposed budget cuts and tax cuts.

Comair Limited was South Africa's largest private airline and consisted of British Airways SA and the low-cost airline kulula.com. After acquiring more fuel-efficient aircraft, Comair decided to adopt Sabre, a reservation and scheduling technology platform. Initially, some Comair executives thought that the Sabre implementation was an IT project, but they soon realized that all employees were affected and that a culture change was required to successfully implement the new standardized way of working. An organizational transformation company was hired and "Operation Crossover" was created as a reference point for employees and metaphor for change in order to enable the change process, starting with a change readiness assessment and culture change roadmap. How could Comair's CEO capitalize on the positive changes from this project and maintain the profitability and growth of the last 68 years?

In September 2008, the CEO of Rainbow Group, a Chinese group of companies specializing in environmental protection services, was in Beijing, China, thinking about his experience that evening. A few hours ago, eight senior executives from Rainbow Group's subsidiary in Hangzhou had come to Beijing requesting that the CEO fire their general manager, who had been appointed by the CEO only six months ago. This manager had taken control of the Hangzhou subsidiary with ambitious efforts to implement lean management and better cost control, but had met resistance from the other managers. The CEO was reviewing this appointment and thinking hard. What was the problem? What should he do?