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Dr. Mark Post and his team at Maastricht University were perfecting their tissue culture beef product-made entirely from muscle grown in his lab-to give it the same taste, texture and appearance of a traditional beef hamburger. A previous iteration of this product had been taste tested live, with good results, and Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, had provided Post with much of the funding to make the burgers. The next step was to form an independent company around this technology and take it to market. This innovative product could both radically disrupt the existing beef production and supply chain, and provide an animal welfare and environmentally-friendly food that had far less of an environmental impact than traditional beef products. Post faced several challenges in making this a commercially viable product though. He had to get price down, as it currently cost roughly $330,000 to make a single burger. He also had to find the right partner(s) to help him bring the product to market, but who should he work with: someone from the established beef production and supply system, a retailer, or someone entirely outside the traditional beef system? How could he expect established companies to react to this disruption of the status quo? Messaging around this product was critical: How should Post communicate with the public to convey that this was a natural product-the way muscle tissue grew in his lab was the same way it developed in cattle-and overcome public skepticism of overt scientific involvement in their food?

The case explores a public-private partnership initiative on environment education in India, highlighting the strategic, institutional, and reputational implications for corporate social responsibility in an emerging country context. Launched in 2010 with a target to reach 200,000 schools, "Paryavaran Mitra" (Friends of the Environment) was a multi-layered collaboration with three primary and more than 160 secondary partners. The case is positioned in 2013, when the senior manager of corporate responsibility for the firm that serves as the corporate sponsor of the project must make a decision about the future of the initiative.

The director of analytics and reporting at The Leading Hotels of the World and his team were to present their new idea to the company's executive team: the hotel engagement scorecard (HES). HES was received well and gained recognition from the executive team of 10 members, becoming one of four company goals for the year. HES was to be implemented across all of The Leading Hotels of the World's 25 global offices and more than 430 member hotels. As the founder of the idea, the director of analytics and reporting felt responsible and motivated to make HES as strong as possible before its implementation. He wondered how HES innovation could move forward and assist member hotels as much as possible.

This case has a twofold focus: first, to project a budget for pharmaceuticals based on morbidity patterns, required drug regimens, and unit costs, and to focus on ways the budget might be cut if necessary; second, to prepare a modified version of a breakeven analysis for the community pharmacies.

Amway Korea Ltd. faces both motivations and challenges as it pursues enhancement of the firm's social responsibility in a multi-level marketing industry. This case asks students to consider whether the firm's social participation can be an effective solution to gain legitimacy and enhance its reputation. Stakeholders and the general public have two different views about the firm's attempts at corporate social responsibility: the window-dressing view (that the firm is making a distrustful attempt to deceive stakeholders) and the value-enhancement view (that the firm is making a genuine investment to improve its responsibility and stakeholder value). Students are also introduced to the concept of creating shared value, which Amway Korea adopts as a strategic initiative in its role as a corporate citizen.

The case focuses on a European private equity form - Ardian - and the process it uses to sell one of its portfolio companies, and the decisions around that sale. Key issues include the choice of an auction or acceptance of a pre-emptive bid, and the role of the portfolio company's management in the process. The case explores the kinds of influence company management can, and should, have in the sale process. The case also explores issues at the PE firm level, including the fact that the firm has recently been spun off out of its large parent financial services firm, and how the GP entity was valued during that spin-out.

Tin Mining, Inc. was a company located in a developing country called Boldavia mainly dedicated to tin exploitation and production. During its initial thirty-three years of operation (1971-2004), it developed three organizational capabilities (technical, productive, and trust building). The case illustrates three typical characteristics of capabilities: effective solution to complex problems, regular and successful practice, and reliability and development over time. Additionally, it also illustrates the organizational capabilities paradox which emerges during the 2004-2008 period and three of its causes: path dependency (lock in), structural inertia, and the absence of a capability dynamization function. In 2009, Tin Mining, Inc. faced the need to reshape its organizational capabilities, and the arrival of a new president to the company was a propitious moment to analyze this option.

The fictitious Lynn Garcia case examines several managerial challenges faced by first-time CEO Lynn Garcia. After graduating from Stanford's GSB, Garcia founded eChange, a self-service coin-counting company that enabled users to convert coins into other forms of currency. As Garcia grew the company, she encountered a variety of difficult situations. Each of the five vignettes highlighted in the case can be solved through a variety of approaches and decisions, with no clear "right" decision. The first vignette examines the many sources of advice available to Garcia, from classmates to friends to professors to professional associations. With so many potential sources of counsel, Garcia must determine the best strategy for seeking guidance. In the second vignette, Garcia must determine how to navigate a tricky telephone conversation with a notoriously tough advisor named Gene Mathews. After proving eChange's concept through an initial set of machines, Garcia began the process of raising capital to scale eChange across the United States. After accepting an offer from Valley Partners, Garcia was thrilled to turn eChange into a national brand. However, during the due diligence process, it became clear that Valley Partners and Garcia were not on the same page, and Garcia must determine what to do. In the final two vignettes, Garcia must determine how to respond to two challenging phone calls. The first is from Zachary Jones at the Federal Reserve, who wanted to better understand eChange's business and its potential to negatively impact the Federal Reserve. The second was from WSCM News reporter Amy Watson, who planned to run a televised story "exposing" eChange machines' inaccuracies, even though her accusations were off base.

A stock market analyst was reviewing one of his fund's holdings, Alliance Grain Traders Inc. (AGT). One of the world's largest traders of pulse crops, AGT was in the midst of entering a new line of business and expanding its non-core operations. On one hand, AGT would have been able to use its dominance in pulse trading as an advantage in expanding up the value chain. On the other hand, it was moving into sectors that were already mature and highly competitive. The key question for the analyst was whether he should continue to hold AGT stock given its stated objectives.

On July 16, 2014, the finance manager of the Powertrain Department in the Whitby, Ontario branch of Astra Automotive, a global automotive parts manufacturer, was summoned to a meeting. He had been with the company for 11 years, steadily rising through the ranks because of his analytical capabilities, grasp of business complexities and intense work ethic. He was ambitious and driven to succeed; as a result, he was sometimes perceived as unnecessarily harsh and somewhat disrespectful toward colleagues and those under him when mistakes were made. He had been in his present role for just over a year, and though the company was pleased with his results, they were insistent that he enrol in training to help him better lead his department and staff. Overcome with preparing for a major presentation, he neglected to do so. As a result, he was suspended with pay for one week for allegedly not treating a colleague with respect. Now, his director, the Canadian president of operations and the human resources manager were waiting to give him the bad news: he was being fired.

Madhymam was a Malayalam-language newspaper headquartered in Kerala, India. Launched by a conservative Islamic trust, much of the newspaper's coverage and content were dictated by the trust's conservative values. Though the high quality of Madhymam's content was widely appreciated, this did not translate into the anticipated sales revenues. At least part of this shortfall was because of Madhymam's public image as a pro-Muslim newspaper - an image that the newspaper's management team had been making efforts to shed. Driven by its vision of becoming the largest newspaper in India, the management of Madhymam had been exploring various options to stimulate readership and sales. The task was made more difficult by the trust's exclusionary policies on advertising, stiff competition from major local players, the entry of national players and the proliferation of regional news channels. In light of such challenges, how should Madhymam move forward?

Faced with diminished resources and a need to provide enhanced employee email services, the City of Pittsburgh's Chief Information Officer (CIO) had to navigate a stubborn bureaucracy to achieve his objectives. Using an IT-business alignment strategic approach to decide on a suitable IT solution, the City was able to select and deploy a cloud-based system in an objective and uncontested way. The City employed an Analytic Hierarchy Process prioritization methodology, which used various criteria obtained from the stakeholders to develop a decision-making framework to select the most suitable cloud solution. The case allows a review of best practices in the cloud solution selection process, using theoretical lenses from the fields of IT alignment, decision-making, and stakeholder management. This case study is particularly useful for learning how strategic decisions to adopt IT are made in public organizations.

Oasys Water had developed a proprietary water treatment technology based on an innovative forward osmosis process that could remove dissolved solids from water more effectively and efficiently than existing technologies. As Oasys looked to scale, it was exploring partnerships with various incumbent firms-the most serious were with a set of international oil and gas production companies (IOCs); a global oil and gas (O&G) services provider called National Oilwell Varco (NOV); and Woteer, a Chinese EPC company specializing in industrial water and wastewater systems. Woteer had expressed an interest in gaining exclusive access to Oasys' forward osmosis technology for water treatment applications in China in exchange for an equity investment. Jim Matheson, President and CEO, did not have the luxury of choosing a partner solely on the merits of its strategic value to Oasys. He was forced to evaluate the strategic benefit alongside the likelihood of actually closing a deal, the specific terms of each deal, and especially the speed with which a deal could be closed, given Oasys' pressing financing needs. Should he do a deal with Woteer, and if so, on what terms?

This caselet can be utilized to enhance students' understanding and appreciation of data analytics for fraud detection in financial institutions. It requires a predictive analytic solution, in the form of a time series model, for combating money laundering at a regional bank. The nature of the assignment necessitates effective teamwork on data cleaning and preparation and on modeling/analysis of time series, as well as in presenting key findings. The caselet should be moderated as a small-scale consulting engagement, with the instructor assuming the role of the "client," meeting with the engagement team for regular status updates, and attending to questions the team may have. Ideally, the caselet should run anywhere from one week to a month, depending on how meticulously the instructor will plan to implement the assignment. The caselet comes with an accompanying dataset.

This caselet can be utilized to enhance students' understanding and appreciation of predictive analytics for improving the performance of a call center, using time series forecasting. The nature of the assignment necessitates effective teamwork on data cleaning and preparation, and modeling/analysis of time series, as well as presentation of key findings. The caselet should be moderated as a small-scale consulting engagement, with the instructor assuming the role of the "client," meeting with the engagement team for regular status updates, and attending to questions the team may have. Ideally, the caselet should run anywhere from one week to a month, depending on how meticulously the instructor will plan to implement the assignment. The caselet comes with an accompanying dataset.

This caselet can be utilized to enhance students' understanding and appreciation of data analytics for forecasting incoming medical examination volume by healthcare organizations. It requires a predictive analytic solution in the form of a time series model. The nature of the assignment necessitates effective teamwork on data cleaning, preparation and modeling/analysis of time series, as well as presentation of key findings. The caselet should be moderated as a small-scale consulting engagement, with the instructor assuming the role of the "client," meeting with the engagement team for regular status updates, and attending to questions the team may have. Ideally, the caselet should run anywhere from one week to a month, depending on how meticulously the instructor will plan to implement the assignment. The caselet comes with an accompanying dataset.

This teaching case examines the challenges of using Information Technology (IT) outsourcing, adopting new technologies, undertaking business transformation, and evolving the IT function's structure, governance arrangements and capabilities - all in a dynamic business context. The Commonwealth Bank Australia has over the last 20 years experienced similar IT management dilemmas as countless organizations across the globe. The case foregrounds six perennial issues in IT management. First, what form of outsourcing is suitable at different stages of an organization's development, and how can that outsourcing be managed? The case here covers the challenges of single and multi-supplier outsourcing. Part 2 will focus on sourcing issues with cloud computing. Second, what are the key IT capabilities that must be retained within a large corporation? Part 2 will ask whether these capabilities change with cloud computing. Third, what are the mechanisms for developing, nurturing, maintaining, and evolving retained capabilities? Fourth, how should IT be governed in the face of changing business needs, new technologies, and changing organization structures? Fifth, Parts 1 and 2 of the case question the roles of the CEO, CIO, and business managers in leveraging IT performance for business value, the building of project and program management capabilities, and how to organize IT to support a business transformation program. Finally, the case raises the challenge for students of how an organization with its history and legacy in technology and sourcing partners can then move into even newer technologies - in this scenario cloud computing - the primary focus of Part 2 of the case. Overall, the two cases raise the fundamental challenge - what perennial management practices are effective, over time, in dealing with the challenges raised by changing technologies, and what new practices may be required, in contemporary dynamic business contexts.

This teaching case explores the business and ethics of prison sourcing, the practice of training and hiring prisoners to perform work for the private or public sectors. Although most prison employment programs train and hire workers for manual labor, such as furniture building or textiles, some prison employment programs now train and hire inmates to perform low-level Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services like call center work, data entry, and document preparation. Prison sourcing is highly controversial. Besides the usual concerns about security and quality of work performed by prisoners, the ethical aspects of prison sourcing are hotly debated. Proponents argue prison sourcing is ethical because it defrays the costs of corrections, helps individuals successfully complete their confinement and prepares them to reintegrate into society, benefitting the individuals, their families, communities, and ultimately tax payers. Opponents argue that prison sourcing is a form of slavery, hurts small businesses, and steals jobs from law-abiding citizens. The authors developed this teaching case to allow students to explore these issues. The case is a dramatized version of an actual case study of prisoners performing BPO work for a private sector company.