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Tyler Smith, the founder and CEO of the enterprise software firm Puck.io, is facing a hard decision. Just three months earlier the company laid off 20% of its employees to reduce its burn rate amid growing economic uncertainty and a suddenly unattractive funding environment. The company's lead investor and its board think more cost cuts are necessary, and they're pushing Tyler to execute a second, 10% reduction in force. Worried about employee morale if they do back-to-back layoffs, Tyler and two other members of the C-suite are looking for alternatives.

Tyler Smith, the founder and CEO of the enterprise software firm Puck.io, is facing a hard decision. Just three months earlier the company laid off 20% of its employees to reduce its burn rate amid growing economic uncertainty and a suddenly unattractive funding environment. The company's lead investor and its board think more cost cuts are necessary, and they're pushing Tyler to execute a second, 10% reduction in force. Worried about employee morale if they do back-to-back layoffs, Tyler and two other members of the C-suite are looking for alternatives.

The case traces the genesis and growth of Ganga Hospital, a trauma care center in Coimbatore, which is an industrial hub in South India. The case presents a study in contrasts. In a landscape that is dotted with multi-specialty hospitals, Ganga has chosen to provide niche trauma care. The decision to differentiate in the prevailing circumstances of the day amounts to a disruption, and highlights important management and strategy issues. The case highlights the central role that family members of the Ganga founders have played in establishing, running, and growing the hospital in an ethical way. It describes the contingencies that drove decisions about expansion made by the Ganga founder and directors. The narrative illustrates issues confronting hospitals that choose to expand primarily in response to patient demand. This is in stark contrast with investor-funded ventures that have come to dominate the landscape of Indian healthcare.

The newly appointed Senior Vice President of Trendy needs to put its supply chain on a more sustainable footing for the future. Trendy is an imaginary fast fashion company with a market base in Europe and a global supply chain. Core themes and actions that improve both sustainability targets and/or operational performance are discussed in the case. For sustainability, these include waste reduction, sustainability accounting, and partnerships with suppliers and eco-labels. For operational improvements, these include changing the manufacturing footprint, digitalizing the supply chain, and reducing the product portfolio. The case examines improving sustainability on Scopes 1, 2, and 3. While the case setting is in the fast fashion industry, lessons provided by this case are applicable to many industries seeking to improve their operational sustainability. The case challenges students to bring together different elements of the supply chain course to meet the objective of having more sustainable practices and achieving better operational performance.

Vanessa Keitges stepped into the role of CEO at Columbia Green Technologies (CGT) in 2010, growing it to become the dominant green infrastructure and green roofing materials supplier on the West Coast. The Portland, Oregon-based company offered customizable green roofing systems that harnessed nature-based technologies to mitigate the damage caused by stormwater runoff. With 2500 roof garden installations under her belt Keitges wanted to scale her sales and marketing operation to capture the emerging opportunity across the North American market. The green roofing industry was projected to experience a CAGR of 16.2%, building to a $5.37 billion global opportunity by 2030. Working with her executive team, Keitges was preparing for a Q1 2023 Series C funding round to finance the major rollout of her business. The immediate question was where to locate CGT's expanded sales force and how to prioritize the targeted geographic markets. Compelling business rationale, as well as opportunity framing to mitigate the known gender bias in VC funding, would need to be reflected in the eventual funding pitch.

When Mel Mathers, the chief sustainability officer of a food cooperative, the Independent Food Retailers Consortium (IFRC), was flooded in October 2019 with emails from animal rights activists demanding the cooperative sell only cage-free eggs and make a pledge now to do so by 2025, he had to prepare a brief and recommendation so IFRC's board of directors could make a decision on whether to pledge selling only cage-free eggs in its grocery stores. Should the cooperative make a public commitment, as requested by the activists, to transition selling only cage-free eggs in its supply chain or continue to offer its customers a choice among the different egg production systems? Mathers examined the organization's mission statement, its corporate responsibility statement, and its policies on animal welfare. He studied IFRC's financial materiality chart and was unsettled by the current materiality chart as to pointing a clear direction for his direction. Mathers began researching egg production systems. Mathers' research is described in the case and students see the tradeoffs about which that Mathers is learning. Mathers wonders how he can navigate the seemingly contradictory tradeoffs with IFRC's policies, animal husbandry science, environmental impacts, and responsiveness to the many stakeholders in IFRC's operating environment.

In May 2021 Ranjit Dodiya, owner of Dodiya Farms in Gujarat India, realizes crop farming brings many risks. Much of the 2018 harvest was ruined due to heavy rain, the 2019 harvest was hurt by a drought, and a 2020a locust attack caused further losses. Seeking a reliable second income stream, he considers whether to launch an egg-laying business. Is this a good idea? How much time will it take to recoup his initial investment? What if sales are not as high as he hopes? What if chicken feed or other operating costs are higher than planned? If he takes out loans, will the business be sufficiently profitable to service them? How likely is it that he will be able to set aside some profits from this business to insure against future floods, droughts, and other crop calamities? The case gives students an opportunity to analyze a current agribusiness operation and a proposed new operation (a Go/No-Go decision). Based on financial and operational analysis, including consideration of foreseeable adverse events that threaten crops and other foreseeable adverse events that threaten egg-laying, how attractive is this proposition? The case gives students an opportunity to analyze the case through both quantitative and qualitative technique, debate the business implications of their analyses, and offer recommendations.

The case features Tyrone Wilson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President of iCreate Limited, a creative training institute aimed at offering skills training and work experience to young creatives and talented university students. Since its inception in 2018, iCreate raised equity through listing on the Jamaica Junior Stock Market and had also borrowed funds to finance its operations. It since accumulated huge losses which led its auditors to raise significant doubt on the company's ability to continue as a going concern. In response Wilson proposed a turnaround strategy in which a rights issue would be offered to shareholders to raise additional funds. The proceeds would be used to acquire an outdoor advertising company to improve the iCreate's bottom line. The plan also included restructuring the company into five divisions: Training, Advertising, Media & Entertainment, Tech & E-Commerce and Real Estate. How should Wilson go about convincing the Board to accept the turnaround strategy. Wilson proposed a turnaround strategy centered on restructuring and diversification through acquisition. The acquisition of Visual Vibe.com, a company offering high impact video board advertising in Jamaica, which would be funded by way of a rights issue to iCreate's existing ordinary stockholders. How is he going to convince the Board to accept his proposed turnaround strategy since some were skeptical that the rights issue would not solve the company's problems? Should Wilson convince the board, would he next need to convince shareholders to subscribe to the rights issue?

In January 2021, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey knew he would be asked to testify before Congress about Twitter's role in propagating false news and misinformation. Dorsey described Twitter as a "digital public square" and was a vocal supporter of the U.S. Constitution's first amendment (which protected freedom of speech). Central to his testimony was a controversy involving Internet neutrality: Was the Twitter social media service a neutral platform? If so, each user was responsible for his or her content; Twitter could not be held accountable for slanderous, hateful, or untrue information that users propagated. Was Twitter a publisher? If so, Twitter, akin to news organizations, was responsible for content its users propagated. Section 230, an amendment to the Communications Decency Act, further complicated matters, permitting platform hosts to restrict offensive content while shielding them from user-generated content liability. Given this ambiguity, how should Dorsey prepare for the next hearing?

Dr. Wehrheim Winery, a family business located in the Palatinate region of Germany faced a critical decision. While the business was controlled by the third-generation owner, Karl-Heinz, his son, Franz, had come up with a plan of launching a secondary line of wines exclusively for the retail channel. Because of the winery's limited supply of grapes from its vineyard, Franz wanted to source grapes from the market for the proposed new line. While Karl-Heinz was reluctant to support the idea because of the risks involved, Franz saw this as the opportunity to showcase his leadership skills as a prelude to becoming the fourth-generation owner of the business. Franz had a month to come up with a sound rationale to get his father's support for the secondary line.

At Investor Day 2022, Block announced a new vision for its businesses: creating an ecosystem of ecosystems. Outside the norm for many public growth companies, Block had recently acquired a variety of new business streams in the creator economy and Bitcoin despite a volatile macroeconomic outlook. At the same time Wall Street was growing concerned about slowing payment volume growth in Block's core business streams and the new initiatives' added expenses. Would an 'ecosystem of ecosystems' strategy again build upon the company's strong track record and enhance its business model as promised? How could the company balance reluctant investors and Wall Street skeptics while investing in its new initiatives?

The leadership team at QNB Alahli, Egypt's second biggest private bank, looked back on their efforts to create a brand-new, fully digital banking platform since 2019. A digital-only banking service was unprecedented in Egypt, a country where over 90% of financial transactions still involved cash. If successful, QNB Alahli would enjoy the first-mover advantage and help improve the level of financial inclusion in the Egyptian society. The bank had developed comprehensive financial projections for the new platform, and its confidence was bolstered by the successful launch of a similar platform by its sister bank in Turkey. Before the proposal could be approved by the central bank, QNB Alahli needed to carefully consider various strategies for this venture, as the decisions made could significantly impact the bank's profitability, marketing efforts, and internal competition.

In 2022, the U.S. Congress examined the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act, the latest in a long series of campaign finance reforms. According to its authors, the law would be the "most consequential overhaul of federal campaign finance" in 20 years. In addition to prohibiting campaign spending by foreign nationals, the reform would require organizations to disclose their major political donors in order to curtail the rise of "dark money" following the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. FEC. The emergence of new online conduits also spurred an increase in small campaign contributions, which some hoped might counterbalance the influence of large donors. Overall, significantly more money entered politics in the U.S. than in any other democracy: $17.20 per capita in 2020 (case p. 5). Beyond changes in campaign finance, electoral campaigns have undergone dramatic changes in the last two decades, from the revival of campaign strategies focusing on the mobilization of non-voters to the increasing reliance on social media, such as the unprecedented use of Twitter by Donald Trump in 2016. While campaign activities had long been determined by culture and habit, modern campaigns were informed by the latest advances in social science. They used rich individual-level data to choose which voters to target with outreach efforts. Campaigns have made dramatic gains in efficiency. However, scandals such as the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data breach led observers, regulators, and many concerned citizens to wonder whether candidates were abusing the vast resources available to them to manipulate the electorate. As they were discussing DISCLOSE, members of Congress debated whether 1) business involvement in campaigns had been a force for good; 2) campaign contributions should be encouraged or curtailed; and 3) regulations of other dimensions of electoral campaigns should be reformed.

In March 2020, the Philippines government announced the first month-long lockdown in Manila and its surrounding regions to curb COVID-19 transmission. The lockdown measures, including the closure of non-essential businesses and stay-home orders, were sudden and drastic, leading to the urban poor's loss of employment and income. Putting food on the table would become a challenge in a city with millions living below the poverty threshold. But while their hunger would not wait, a new relief law needed time to take effect. That was when the private sector took immediate action. Responding to the hunger crisis was Project Ugnayan, a consortium including Ayala Corporation, one of the earliest conglomerates in the Philippines, together with some of the largest private companies and non-profit organisations such as The Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF) and Caritas Manila of the Catholic Church. In a record time of a few days, the private sector-led initiative raised over PhP 1.7 billion (US$33 million) that went into sponsoring a feeding programme for 2.8 million impoverished families (equivalent to some 14 million individuals). Over four weeks, Caritas Manila mobilised over 1,000 parish priests and 10,000 volunteers who went door-to-door distributing grocery vouchers, food packs, and in-kind donations in the Greater Manila Area. As Project Ugnayan ended, the team reflected on the meaningful and impactful contribution the initiative had made to the lives of the vulnerable poor during the tumultuous times of the pandemic. What lessons could be drawn from this collaborative effort of the private sector that can be replicated for future initiatives?

This case traces the rise of Albert Einstein from a small town in Germany to a towering intellectual leader who revolutionized the field of physics. The case describes his early education and his penchant for individual thinking and non-conformity. A committed pacifist, he changed his views during World War II and urged President Roosevelt to build an atomic bomb to defeat Nazi Germany. He then spent the rest of his life advocating nuclear arms control. Students will learn how Albert Einstein navigated life's choices to leave a lasting impact on the world.

Alzheimer's Disease is a devastating condition affecting millions of Americans. At this time, there is no cure. In 2021, Biogen's Aduhelm (aducanumab) received FDA approval under the accelerated approval pathway after a controversial approval process. This case explores Alzheimer's drug development, Aduhelm's clinical trials, FDA regulatory processes, the impact of the disease on payors and the broader healthcare system, the valuation of an Alzheimer's therapy, and the valuation of the company that produces it.

In 2023, Detroit-based Barton Malow completed the first high-rise building in the U.S. built from the top-down using LIFTbuild, a patented methodology that aimed to make construction safer and more efficient. By completing building work at ground level and then automatically lifting and locking floors into place, the new process eliminated many of the dangers and inefficiencies of constructing buildings at height. The century-old construction firm hoped its novel methodology would pave the way for a better way to build but found that innovating a well-established industry was challenging. CEO Ryan Maibach must determine how to grow the business and increase adoption of LIFTbuild.

The case illustrates Zhu Jing's entrepreneurial story from three stages: aspiration, action, and determination. The case presents the challenges that Zhu Jing faces as a female entrepreneur in the real estate industry and how she addressed them. At the beginning of 2022, Zhu convened key executives to recap on business operations of the past year. They needed to discuss and decide the rewards and punishment for executives. Zhu gave up a comfortable life out of a love for architecture and art and founded Sunkwan Group in Shanghai in 2010. The real estate industry is male-dominated. Resource acquisition is a huge challenge for female entrepreneurs as the sector is typically resource-driven. Enthusiasm and passion are the genuine motivation for Zhu to persist in the industry. With her keen business sense, she quickly identified business opportunities and made Yueshan project a successful case. The case laid an essential foundation for the expansion of the company nationwide. She always focuses on improving product capabilities to win fair returns from the market and simultaneously makes up for weak resources and capabilities with cooperation. Empathy, trust, empowerment, and other features of Zhu's leadership and the company's business philosophy give birth to a united executive team. China's real estate industry has experienced dramatic changes since June 2021. With shrinking market demand, increasingly stringent regulatory policies, blocked financing channels and sluggish property sales, and frequent outbreaks of epidemics across the country, many real estate companies spiraled into a crisis. In June 2021, Sunkwan re-designed a reward and punishment system for all executive members to overcome these challenges and motivate the team for better performance. The 2021 performance, however, fell short of expectations and Zhu hesitated on whether to punish executives according to the rules or administer a light punishment. The decision mirrors Zhu's traits and leadership

Fama Technologies is an online screening company that uses AI to analyze job applicants' publicly available online content for signs of risk and culture fit. The case opens with Ben Mones, founder and CEO, looking to secure funding from venture firms. He is running into resistance: public opinion of the product, and social media screening in general, is mixed, and HR technology in general is considered a tough sell to VCs. Could he prove the value of the tool on his next pitch?

Voestalpine, the Austria-based global leading steel manufacturing division of High Performance Metals, has made a bold commitment. It would achieve climate neutrality by 2050, with chief sustainability officer Philipp Horner leading the charge. Horner and his strategy team must review its entire manufacturing process to find opportunities for decarbonization, including learning about completely new methods for production and reevaluating its existing blast furnace technology. At a time when competitors are also vying for market share while evaluating their own sustainability efforts, it is critical that Horner and his team consider the downstream effects of any strategic change they make. In this case, students will learn about the steel / industrials sector and examine the critical operational points that affect a company's carbon output and efficiency.