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Pahalwan's was a chain of four outlets that offered sweets, snack food and fast food in Jammu, India. It had a major presence in the state of Jammu and Kashmir and was delivering products to other parts of India, such as Delhi. However, local, national and international food retailers had entered the market, increasing the competition. Changing consumer preferences had also started affecting the company. Pahalwan's did not believe in advertising its products and focused little energy on branding activities. Thus, there was a need to plan for an innovative and cost-effective communication strategy to boost its sales. Pahalwan's also needed to think about new products and new markets to stay in business.

The SEALs are the elite special forces of the U.S. Navy. Their selection and training is exceptionally rigorous, with a heavy emphasis on physical condition, stamina, and mental toughness. However, the SEALs have a wide range of missions, many of which are highly sensitive. The case takes place in 2014, as the head of the command charged with SEAL selection and training considers whether some candidates who would make excellent SEALs are being excluded, and some that might be poor in the field are passing. The case examines the selection and training process, and suggests some changes that might be considered.

Sarah is a director of a Real Estate Investment Trust whose CEO has expressed his admiration of her intellect and drive for information, but board meetings have become tense recently, and the CEO has grown distant. In Sarah's opinion, the problem is obvious: Sid Yerby, the CFO. Despite Sarah's repeated requests for comprehensive financial statements, he continues to come to board meetings with a mere two pages of analysis that lack any explanation or footnotes. Increasingly, however, hers seems to be the minority view, and, as the only woman on the board, she is starting to feel isolated. The chairman has warned her that everyone is starting to think of her as "pushy." Should she quit the board? Expert commentary comes from Ilene S. Gordon, CEO and chairman, Ingredion, and Sue Decker, former president, Yahoo.

Sarah is a director of a Real Estate Investment Trust whose CEO has expressed his admiration of her intellect and drive for information, but board meetings have become tense recently, and the CEO has grown distant. In Sarah's opinion, the problem is obvious: Sid Yerby, the CFO. Despite Sarah's repeated requests for comprehensive financial statements, he continues to come to board meetings with a mere two pages of analysis that lack any explanation or footnotes. Increasingly, however, hers seems to be the minority view, and, as the only woman on the board, she is starting to feel isolated. The chairman has warned her that everyone is starting to think of her as "pushy." Should she quit the board? Expert commentary comes from Ilene S. Gordon, CEO and chairman, Ingredion, and Sue Decker, former president, Yahoo.

Sarah is a director of a Real Estate Investment Trust whose CEO has expressed his admiration of her intellect and drive for information, but board meetings have become tense recently, and the CEO has grown distant. In Sarah's opinion, the problem is obvious: Sid Yerby, the CFO. Despite Sarah's repeated requests for comprehensive financial statements, he continues to come to board meetings with a mere two pages of analysis that lack any explanation or footnotes. Increasingly, however, hers seems to be the minority view, and, as the only woman on the board, she is starting to feel isolated. The chairman has warned her that everyone is starting to think of her as "pushy." Should she quit the board? Expert commentary comes from Ilene S. Gordon, CEO and chairman, Ingredion, and Sue Decker, former president, Yahoo.

Nefertiti Nelson, a senior official at the Columbia Department of Public Health (CDPH) in the fictitious U.S. state of Columbia, has been asked by the governor's office to examine the cost-effectiveness of administering BMI and eating disorders screenings in schools. To carry out the project, Nefertiti and her team of CDPH colleagues join forces with the consulting firm, Datamon; yet, as the analysis begins questions quickly arise about the logistics and costliness of implementing the screenings, potential outcome measures, and the interests and concerns of respective stakeholders.

How does one learn to become an effective advocate? "Beauty and the Breast: Mobilizing Community Action to Take on the Beauty Industry" tells the story of protagonist Joe Wendell, known as Wendell, an emergency room nurse and widower raising a teenage daughter in Franklin, a largely working class town in the fictional US state of Columbia. One day his daughter announces she would like to have breast implants. The distressing news prompts Wendell into new, unforeseen directions as he learns all he can about implants and surgery, the "beauty culture" permeating society especially in his community, and the psychological development of teenagers. Though relieved to find out that as long as she is a minor she cannot legally obtain the surgery without his consent (and, no doubt, without his cash), Wendell starts to believe that greater protections for teen girls in Columbia are needed. In this effort he is guided by the confident figure of Anna Pinto, director of a community center in an East Franklin neighborhood with a vibrant Brazilian-American community where cosmetic surgery, especially for girls and young women, is something she perceives to be a particular problem and has some ideas about how to address.

This case raises a number of issues related to the exercise of managerial judgment in financial reporting. Specifically, the case requires students to estimate the warranty expense for a start-up company and requires the explicit consideration of the ethical issues that arise in the estimation process. Students are forced to consider the trade-offs that occur when estimating warranty expense: the impact on accounting earnings, materiality, income vs. cash flows, earnings management, ethical decision-making, and entrepreneurship. This case is excellent when used to introduce and discuss accrual accounting and the logic for estimating expenses. The case is used in the first year Financial Reporting course in the Babson MBA program after students have taken an on-line module in ethical decision-making. With the appendix, it is also used in the Babson undergraduate first-year course, Introduction to Financial Accounting. While an ethics-learning unit is not necessarily a pre-requisite for the case, students will need to have been exposed to the three philosophies of ethical thought referred to in the case (Duty, Consequences, and Character) and included as an appendix to the case.

In October 2013, Hasan Haider (28), CEO and co-founder of the Tenmou Angel Group in Bahrain, had doubled Tenmou's investment funds from Bahrain Dinar (BD) 1 million to BD2 million (to approximately $5.4 million). Since its founding in 2010, Tenmou had invested half of its capital-about .5 million BD-in 17 Bahraini startups. As of the time of the case, Haider and co-founder and Tenmou chairman Sami Jalal were anticipating the need for more capital in 2014. Haider was realizing that to have any long-term effect on Bahrain's entrepreneurship ecosystem and to position Bahrain as a magnet for the MENA's very best entrepreneurs, much more money would be needed. Haider was contemplating opening up a parallel effort to organize a $100 million fund, which would be the largest in the MENA region by far. He had given himself until the end of 2013 to decide. Notably, as currently structured, he would not receive any of the profits if Tenmou portfolio companies exited. The Tenmou case bridges two areas related to entrepreneurship. One is economic development policy. How can private investment initiatives be optimized for economic development goals, particularly in emerging economies? The second is entrepreneurial finance, in particular, programs and policies that encourage or discourage the flow of funds to entrepreneurial ventures. Thus, the Tenmou case may be used in graduate and undergraduate courses in public policy, entrepreneurial finance, economic development, social innovation, and the like. It may also be used in leadership training programs, such as the Harvard Kennedy School program, Innovation for Economic Development, MIT's Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program, or Babson's new program in "Driving Economic Growth through Entrepreneurship Ecosystems." The case can also be used in regional interventions in order to stimulate discussion about the role of family business in fostering entrepreneurship, as well as the limitations of government engagement.

In September 2014, Stephen Burke, chief executive officer at lmedia and entertainment company NBCUniversal, has to decide between possible priorities for the company's 'Project Symphony,' guaranteeing the winners a high level of visibility and support across the media conglomerate's broadcast and cable television, film, and theme park divisions. Past "Gold" priorities for Symphony, an initiative introduced shortly after Comcast made steps to acquire NBCUniversal in 2010, saw subsequent success in the marketplace. Symphony is so powerful, in fact, that competing conglomerates are keen to buy some of NBCUniversal's cross-promotional strength, as Disney did with its megahit Frozen in 2014. For 2015, the choice is between five films-Fast & Furious 7, Fifty Shades of Grey, Jurassic World, Minions, and Pitch Perfect 2-as well as two choices in television. Which are most deserving of Gold status?

In 2014, Arjun Dhawan (MBA 2004), president of HCC Concessions, is working toward the completion of his largest road development project yet. The route, a 250-km stretch leading from the critical eastern Indian port of Kolkata into the interior of the province of West Bengal, is a prime example of both the benefits and the drawbacks of public-private partnerships in the Indian transportation sector. Despite delays and political pressure, HCC Concessions has nearly finished building the road and now is receiving offers to purchase the project's equity.

In 2011, DaVita HealthCare Partners (DaVita)-a Fortune 500 healthcare services company specializing in kidney dialysis services-and the Denver Public Schools (DPS)-the largest school district in Colorado-forged a plan to incorporate greater intentional focus on culture and leadership within the district. A few months into the 2013-2014 school year, DaVita "Mayor" Kent Thiry, DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg, and members of their teams gather to review and assess the overall progress, impact, and challenges of their unique corporate-community partnership focused on leadership development and culture over the past two years. With the partnership showing great promise, Thiry and his team wonder how they might create new partnerships and grow their social impact as a company without detracting from DaVita's own growth and expansion and the needs of its own "teammates." The case gives students the opportunity to explore how a mission-driven Fortune 500 company can leverage its own resources and HR expertise to partner with non-corporate entities to create social value and support success in American public education.

In 2014, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia faced a freshwater shortage. Despite the global financial crisis, Saudi Arabia experienced modest economic expansion and increasing stress on its water infrastructure due to expanding agricultural production. The major investments in desalinization plants that the country expected to see had not yet materialized, furthering the strain on resources. This case, used in Darden's "Economics of Water" elective, examines what policy reforms should be explored in bringing Saudi Arabia's water use and agricultural production into balance.

When the Rio Tinto mining company decided to increase its output of iron ore by 25% in its Marandoo location, it had to deal with an unexpected problem: an excess of water in the deep reaches of the mine. Because freshwater is a scarce resource in this region of Australia, Rio Tinto's challenge was to come up with a comprehensive water strategy for the region. This case is used in Darden's "Economics of Water" course elective.

As Serena Shamash opened the doors to her newly renovated restaurant, the last thing she was expecting to see was two inches of water covering the floor of the bar. Yet, this was just another day in the life of an entrepreneur. She had overcome many obstacles over the emotionally charged three years it took to give birth to her business dream - Eat Me, The World on Small Plates®. Now that she had achieved this goal, what was next? Her main preoccupation recently was how to extract herself from the day-to-day operations of the restaurant in order to start the next phase of her business. Eat Me was expected to reach operating breakeven at the end of the year, a major milestone in its short life. Did Eat Me still require her full attention? Or was it time to move beyond the first unit and consider scaling up? What about launching a new concept? She had already started developing new ideas and was getting anxious not to get stuck in the daily grind of this industry. But how would she decide on which direction to pursue? Learning objectives: Entrepreneurial careers, starting a restaurant, affinity financing, managing growth in a service industry, managing relationships while starting a company, setting strategy, creating a value proposition in the restaurant industry, personnel management, key success factors in hospitality.

One of the biggest challenges for multinational corporations (MNCs) is to determine and consolidate their borders. In order to do so, MNCs increasingly strive to create value innovation, particularly within their internal capital market. Accordingly, their corporate treasury functions have witnessed three stages of major evolution in the 21st century.

Banco do Brasil, a leading Brazilian bank and one of its most established institutions, has a number of growth options. After a long but timid internationalization trajectory, it foresees various foreign expansion opportunities based on Brazil's accelerating economy and international visibility. These economic and social improvements also open up tempting domestic opportunities.

Perna Arts is a movie production company that has gradually branched into related businesses straddling distribution, exhibition, programming and education. The company was among the first to go public after the movie business attained industry status in India. It was also one of the first to recruit a professional manager as its chief executive officer to put in place processes, systems, performance metrics and procedures aligned to its strategic priorities. The company's aim was to make two to four movies a year - enough to create a rolling stock that could open up multiple revenue streams and offset losses with hits. However, Perna Arts was battling against temporary setbacks, such as failing to deliver hit movies. The company's management wondered whether it could adopt a more business-like approach to movie making, using sound management principles to wean Perna Arts away from its person-centric, intuitive process.

Google's plan to gear up its flight search service in India by allowing users to compare fares and book tickets made other domestic travel portals in India nervous. There were fears that this development might turn out to be discriminative as Google had the dominant share in Internet search service. Fearing a substantial reduction in their share of the search market, these domestic portals had the option of lodging a complaint against Google with the Competition Commission of India.<br><br>Google's business practices had been challenged and/or come under the scanner of anti-competitive law in many other countries as well. The public in India wondered why Google was involved in such controversies. Why did competing companies fear Google's business practices? What would be the Competition Commission of India's stand and how would it help consumers and society in general?