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After settling a $78-million lawsuit with a St. Louis woman who was struck by one of its drivers, Domino's Pizza decided to eliminate its 30-minute delivery guarantee and transform its business model through innovations in the areas of technology, social architecture, and operations. The company provided consistency of experience for customers by introducing its Pizza Tracker - a web-based application that allowed customers to track their pizza at each stage of the process - standardizing the layout and processes used in each of its stores, and providing more transparency into employee performance. Students are asked to evaluate how Domino's used technology and innovation to improve efficiency, quality, customer relationship management (CRM), and employee relations as well as assess its change management process.

The case is about a city's water security and draws on the intense debate about the construction of a reservoir in a college town in Virginia in the wake of a record drought. The case highlights the role of public utilities in water provision, illustrates the different positions of various stakeholders, and raises the question of what the appropriate price for water is. It provides stylized facts of water use across sectors and rests on a basic analysis of present and future water demand as well as on an assessment of future water supply. This case is used in Darden's elective, "The Global Economics of Water." It would also work well in courses dealing with the environmental impacts of urban planning."

A new president has been hired to double or triple the size of Charles Chocolates, a high end chocolate producer and retailer in Portland, Maine. The case allows a comprehensive analysis of marketing, manufacturing, human resource, financial and strategic positioning issues in a small company with manufacturing, retailing, wholesaling and Internet operations.

Bettina Hein, founder-CEO of Pixability, is meeting with her board of directors to discuss her startup's fundraising prospects and the recent strategic pivot. Though Bettina loves the entrepreneurial exhilaration of "riding a rollercoaster every day," the company's current cash position gives them only a four-month runway. For Bettina, though they can at times be tense, board meetings and their preparation have become an exercise in reflection that gives her encouragement. In her prior startup, SVOX, Bettina learned a lot about managing a board of directors. While she can apply many of those lessons to her experience at Pixability, she's had to continue to develop new practices for portraying the company's progress, and for soliciting advice from her directors while projecting confidence. While preparing for the upcoming meeting, Bettina wonders: How should she structure and lead the meeting? How might her board react to her team's updates? What difficult questions might the board members pose and how should she answer them?

Blue River Technology begins with background on company co-founder Jorge Heraud and the founding story of the enterprise. Blue River was created by Heraud and co-founder Lee Redden, who were both graduate students at Stanford University when they began exploring commercial opportunities for autonomous vehicles employing computer vision technology. The co-founders decided to focus on agricultural applications, with lettuce thinning as an initial target service and larger global row crops as an aspirational goal. The case challenges students to first think through the possible business models that Blue River (BR) could use to serve its target marketplace(s). Then the case walks students through BR's early discussions with Khosla Ventures (KV), a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. KV has a divergent view on how BR should grow and tackle marketplace opportunities, and at the end of the case, Heraud and Redden face a series of decisions as to how they should engage KV and make optimal financing decisions for the business.

Describes sustainability efforts at Siemens since arrival of Chief Sustainability Officer, Barbara Kux, in 2008. Asks students to evaluate success of those efforts and outline what the company should do going forward.

After leading a management buy-out, Harold Mills transformed ZeroChaos into a global staffing enterprise. Poised to raise additional capital to fund the company's next phase of growth, he was also confronting the liquidity demands of his early-stage investors and relationships were becoming strained.

This case tells the story of Azza Al Qubaisi, a female Emirati role-model entrepreneur - how she successfully developed a novel business idea, established a business, and created a new market for jewellery design "Made in UAE".

Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank had experienced huge success before the 2008 financial crisis caused a spectacular downturn. Grasping the gravity of the situation, a new CEO engages in a successful turnaround. The case highlights the role of leadership, creating a culture of collaboration, and implementing new systems in accomplishing this.

In January 2012, Starbucks enters into a 50:50 joint venture with Tata Global Beverages Limited (TGBL), under which Starbucks will own and operate outlet stores in Mumbai. TGBL has a strong reputation and presence throughout the entire coffee production chain - growing, roasting and trading - that has helped Starbucks navigate its entry into the Indian market. But will this alliance be enough for Starbucks to overcome the political, economic, social and cultural challenges unique to the Indian market and establish its stamp? Would it even be possible to do so without a local partner?

For over 125 years, the Hong Kong Jockey Club (the Club) had been Hong Kong's only organizer of horse races. Although it had made horse race betting a popular game in Hong Kong, its customers were aging. To change this, the Club launched a project to make the game more enjoyable for its customers of the technology-savvy generation. Based on market research and the latest technological developments, the project team set out to develop the world's largest betting entertainment tables. The team aimed to design them in a way that matched the lifestyle of the young and tech-savvy customers, allowing them to enjoy horse race betting in a more intuitive and social way. But this meant major technical and organizational hurdles along the way. Two years after its conception, two tables were launched. The target customers were satisfied with the betting experience, but to what extent would these tables improve the Club's long-term outlook?

AWARD WINNING CASE - Laurier School of Business and Economics Best Case Award 2013. The owner of Sawchyn Guitars makes fine handmade acoustic guitars and mandolins. After 40 years of operating from a two-storey backyard garage, he contemplates a shift from a solely custom-order business to a storefront location. Although his custom-order business is still strong, the owner sees the opportunity to realize his dream of providing a full-service musical instrument haven for the local music community through a proper storefront. After opening a new retail location, public reception to the new store is overwhelmingly positive, but the success in new business lines restricts the capacity to build new instruments. Despite the enthusiastic response to the store, the business is experiencing unanticipated growing pains related to managing small-business growth.

In November 2012, Prudential Financial and General Motors closed on a $25.1B pension risk transfer (PRT) transaction, the largest of its kind to date by an order of magnitude both in the U.S. market and globally. In exchange for an in-kind transfer of $25.1B in assets, Prudential Financial agreed to irrevocably guarantee the full payment of pension benefits to approximately 110,000 participants of General Motors Retirement Program for Salaried Employees and assume all risks related to investment, interest rate, and longevity as well as all operational and administrative requirements to make those payments for as long as necessary. As they gear to close another significant PRT transaction with Verizon, Dylan Tyson and Phil Waldeck, senior managers of the Pension & Structured Solutions group at Prudential, consider the strategic importance of these deals for Prudential business strategy and the potential growth of the PRT business in light of trends in interest rates and longevity, the regulatory and reporting landscape for defined-benefit pension plans, and the appetite for pension funding risk of plan sponsors. The case examines the pension fund industry, drivers of pension funding risk including investment risk, interest rate risk, and rising participant longevity, the regulatory and reporting landscape for pension funds, and the strategies available to pension funds to de-risk their plans. It then examines insurance companies and specifically Prudential Financial's competitive advantage in managing pension risk and implementing de-risking strategies for pension funds in the context of Prudential Financial's decision to commit resources to expand its PRT group that resulted in the pension liability buy-out deal with General Motors. Finally, the case examines the development and implementation of a PRT deal of this size and complexity, and explores the implications of such deals for the future of the asset management industry.

A small-scale school bus company was founded five years ago to facilitate the home-to-school transportation of high school and middle school students who were enrolled in specialized programs. The company was owned by a husband-and-wife team who worked full time to arrange private bus transportation to four schools within their neighbourhood school district. The company was operating below break-even, and the owners wondered how they might increase ridership or revenues.

This case follows Aditya Challa, a craft beer aficionado whose passion for good beer led him on an international quest to study the art of brewing in Scotland and eventually to Singapore, where he started a microbrewery business with his friends in 2011. By October 2012, sales of his craft beer have been increasing 20% per month, bringing up his production to about one-third operating capacity. However, future growth remains uncertain - with specific challenges in distribution and branding. Craft beer is still a relatively unknown concept in the city-state, and consumers remain skeptical of premium priced local beer. Moreover, big breweries in the Singapore market have already locked down most retailers with exclusive draft contracts. Challa has to review his business model and growth strategy in terms of how and where he can sell his beer while continuing to build the Jungle Beer brand.

The business of surrogacy, a boutique practice with client costs upwards of $100,000, allowed couples and individuals from a variety of backgrounds, ages, and sexual orientations to build families. This case examines Circle Surrogacy (CS), one of the premier surrogacy agencies in the world, as its president and founder, John Weltman, was about to share an executive presentation with his core management team where he would recommend an option to outsource its surrogacy services. While the changing cultural and regulatory environment had made surrogacy possible for more people, it remained cost-prohibitive for the majority of its eligible audience. Weltman's proposal, if enacted, would create a new opportunity for CS, increasingly faced with competition from other agencies, to offer lower cost surrogacies to intended parents. However, the launch of an outsourced surrogacy service would threaten the company's core value proposition and challenge its prevailing high-touch, premium strategy. How should Weltman and CS best proceed?

Ron Laufer is the new Senior Managing Director of MedImmune Ventures', the corporate venture capital arm of AstraZeneca, a leading pharmaceuticals firm. Laufer has to decide whether to pursue a high-potential, but very risky, early-stage investment. The decision Laufer will make will reflect his vision for MedImmune Ventures and more broadly the incentives he faces as a corporate venture capitalist.