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The purpose of this case is to introduce data visualization, advanced regression techniques, and supervised learning. Students are asked to visualize data geographically and in scatterplots. They will use stepwise regression and regression trees to select a predictive model for forecasting data in a holdout sample. In a forecasting competition, they will submit their models to be tested for accuracy. Supervised learning techniques-such as training, validation, and testing-are introduced. Regression trees serve as both predictive and graphical tools for communicating insights from data analysis to a decision maker.

Café Coffee Day (CCD) is contemplating how to respond to the entry of Starbucks into the Indian coffee chain market. The case study describes the emergence of CCD as the leading coffee chain in India, with over 1,400 cafes in India. In early 2013, Starbucks, the world's leading coffee chain company, opened its first 11 outlets in India's metropolitan cities with local giant, Tata, and promises of a national roll out. CCD management debated whether there was plenty of room for both Starbucks and CCD in India's large growing market, or whether Starbucks' entry required CCD to respond more assertively.

The case explores the collateralization of intellectual property in a loan agreement between a highly leveraged apparel company and a large US bank. Leveraging intangibles in the credit market is a new practice that has significantly grown over the past few years. However, estimating their liquidation value is not directly intuitive, since intangibles are highly illiquid assets and have uncertain future cash flows. Can banks reliably secure corporate loans by intellectual property, and how can they alleviate the challenges in estimating a loan-to-value ratio for this collateral?

A retired Swiss banker has decided to bring primary healthcare to Africa by using a cooperative business model that brings together complementary firms. The model has proven successful in the United Arab Emirates, Zambia and Ghana. He now faces the decision of whether to expand into new African countries, and if so, which countries to enter, how to select partners and how to recruit country managers. The case also illustrates the challenges and misconceptions of doing business in Africa.

The managing director of a small- to medium-sized electrical firm faces a major challenge: he realizes that the firm he founded has grown so significantly that information management has become very difficult. For solving issues of data integrity, redundancy, incompleteness and backup, he obtains quotations for implementation of enterprise resource planning from different vendors. Meanwhile, he discusses the issue of implementing the new system with his management team, who respond in different tones, leaving him confused. He also has to ensure that the initiative does not put strain on the firm's finances. He ponders various options such as whether to adopt enterprise resource planning on premise or on cloud and whether to go with the safe but costly option of engaging a well-established firm or to risk dealing with a start-up.

Ben Kaufman founded Quirky in 2009 to enable anyone with a product idea to access an online network of people to help evaluate and improve the idea, and potentially bring it to market. By the end of 2012, Quirky was shipping 74 products, and had many more in development. Its products were sold in 35,000 stores worldwide. Each week, the company took three products into the research and development process, out of more than 1,000 submitted online. It paid 10 percent of third party sales, and 30 percent of direct sales, to its community members based on their participation in developing products-more than $2 million in 2012. Despite these signs of success, the company faced substantial challenges. Margins were low, and had to be dramatically improved before the company would become profitable. The product development model, using both online participants and internal staff, was stressed by the ever-increasing number of products being developed. The supply chain, relying on external manufacturing, had to adapt to a continual stream of new products. And retail partners were not well suited to the Quirky model-retailers focused on a few high-selling products. This case describes the business model used by Quirky, and challenges students to address the unique challenges facing the company.

This case describes Johnny Fernandes' new venture, a digital-based, lifestyle and entertainment magazine for the iPad, called iMag. Johnny had always been interested in becoming a player in the international arts scene and now he seems to have the chance thanks to the tablet platform. He has spent the last five months conceptualizing iMag and creating a team of technical specialists to help him develop iMag. While encountering different challenges, (i.e., no secure revenues, uncertainty about the evolution of rich media advertising, limited financial resources) the rapid expansion of the tablet market and its corresponding applications indicate that Johnny has a true business opportunity in front of him. First of all, students have to put themselves in Johnny's shoes and design a detailed action plan that ensures iMag's future in this up-and-coming industry. Secondly, students have to identify the threats and opportunities for iMag in competing globally at an early stage.

Catalina in the Digital Age considers how a company with a dominant market position should evolve its established product lines given the rise of novel digital technologies. Since its founding in 1983, Catalina had enjoyed a distinct position in the world of consumer promotions. Serving both retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) firms, the company's core business was distributing "cents off" coupons to shoppers via proprietary printers at checkout registers. This position allowed them to offer coupons that were "personalized" to the purchases that had just been made in the current transaction. The advent of shopper loyalty cards in the 1990s allowed them to expand that targeting to take shopper's history of purchase into account as well. In many ways, they were a successful "big data" firm well before the term became an industry buzzword.

This case concerns the negotiations of a deal by HgCapital, a UK-based private equity firm, to buy Visma, ASA, a Norwegian software company. Visma has received an offer from Sage Group, a strategic acquirer. HgCapital must determine if it wants to bid and how to outbid a potential strategic acquirer. The case concerns bidding and negotiations strategies as well as deal structuring issues. In particular, the cross border nature of the investment, a UK firm investing in Norway, leads to a number of financing issues related to raising the debt for the LBO. The case provides an opportunity to role play both the PE fund perspective and the potential target.

Andrea Torres, director of new product development at a high-end chocolate confectionery company, leads her team through a carefully sequenced program of market research to support the development and launch of a new product, healthy dark chocolate with fruit. This is the first time Montreaux USA, an offshoot of a Swiss confectioner, has created a product specifically for U.S. chocolate consumers. The case explains the steps Torres and her NPD team have completed and describes the decisions that lie ahead, a few months in advance of the anticipated launch. A challenging situation is intensified by a competitor also having tested a dark-chocolate-with-fruit product that was likely to be introduced into the U.S. marketplace in the near future. Students must perform a quantitative analysis as part of their work.

Jackson Automotive Systems produces automotive parts for advanced heating and air conditioning systems, engine cooling systems, fuel injection and transfer systems, and various other engine parts, and it supplies them to the automotive industry primarily in Michigan. Like many OEM suppliers for the automotive industry, Jackson cut back production following the financial crisis in 2008. By 2013, the firm is back to operating at capacity. The company experiences a bottleneck in production of some key electronic components and, as a result, is unable to repay its outstanding debt to the bank. In addition, the firm delayed replacing equipment during the downturn and now must replace aging equipment to avoid future production delays. The president approaches the bank for an extension to repay a loan and for an additional loan to cover the new equipment purchase. Before meeting with the loan committee, the president must prepare a presentation on the firm's financial position.

The Philippines, for long a laggard in Asia, is now growing fast in 2012, with a positive current account balance. While it still exports services, it is increasing its assembly of manufactured products and trying to increase mining. For these activities, however, it needs more foreign direct investment. And for that, it needs domestic tranquility and better infrastructure.

By providing free and open-access online courses at a large scale, Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms seek to innovate the business models of the traditional higher education industry. In a little over a year, Coursera had grown at a rapid rate to emerge as a leader of the MOOCs in terms of the number of student enrollments, courses, and partners. The case examines two aspects of these developments in the industry: (1) What choices did Coursera make that enabled it to grow so quickly? (2) In what ways did Coursera's success impact the success of its competitors, Udacity and edX? Would one player naturally come to dominate the industry, and if so, what choices should Coursera make to retain its market positioning?

Cargill Inc., a U.S.-based multinational company, is known for its skills in business-to-business (B2B) marketing. It processes food products and markets them in bulk to large institutional buyers with whom it has a strong customer orientation. However, the head of the refined edible oils business at Cargill India, the company's fully owned subsidiary, is facing a problem with the parent company's value proposition around B2B. While developing the annual marketing plans for the next financial year, he finds that the volatility of commodity price movements has made the task of revenue forecasts at Cargill India difficult. This volatility is compounded by frequent changes introduced by the federal government to official regulations governing the edible oil business in India. In order to gain control over the two variables, he is examining the prospect of moving into the business-to-consumer (B2C) space in India. This is a new strategic direction not only for the Indian subsidiary but also for Cargill Inc. Can he achieve buy-in not only from the parent company but also from his own managers? Will he be able to attract marketing professionals who can promote his new brands successfully to the Indian consumer?

On August 18, 2011, Hewlett Packard, under the leadership of then-CEO Léo Apotheker, announced a friendly acquisition of U.K.-based Autonomy, a market leader in the management of structured and unstructured data for business management solutions, for $11.1 billion. This acquisition attracted tremendous media attention, due to both its size and price. The offer price paid to Autonomy was at £25.5 a share, a 64% premium over its previous day's stock price. Although a number of critics had argued that the price was excessive, many believed the change in HP's strategic direction was appropriate. On November 20, 2012, only one year later, HP made a shocking announcement that it was writing off $8.8 billion of the $11.1 billion purchase price, of which more than $5 billion was due to accounting improprieties and misrepresentations of Autonomy's financial results. How could this deal have gone so wrong? Did HP not carry out proper due diligence and valuation before the offer? Was this acquisition a strategic fit to HP? The case provides an opportunity for students to analyze the corporate strategy of HP, examine HP's financial performance overall and its various business segments, determine how and if Autonomy fits in with HP, and value the acquisition using discounted cash flow (DCF) and multiples analyses.

This is a role-play case, intended for use in a leadership development course for MBA students. The case has four roles, two each for students playing U.S.- and China-based managers. There are two versions of the case, one for students playing the role of U.S.-based managers (L-22US), and one for students playing the role of China-based managers (L-22CHN). Each version has a set of common facts, plus a set of facts known only to that side. The role-play objectives stated in the case can only be successfully accomplished if the players solicit information from the other side, and work together to reach an agreement. Students must reset post-merger expectations, address the different underlining interests and get the merger plan back on track. They have the opportunity to demonstrate active listening, inquiry, and feedback regarding post-merger expectations at HBT headquarters and at HBT Shanghai. Both pairs of students will go into the meeting with varying objectives and will need to manage the other side's expectations and perceptions in a manner that may be assertive, collaborative, or both.

This is a role-play case, intended for use in a leadership development course for MBA students. The case has four roles, two each for students playing U.S.- and China-based managers. There are two versions of the case, one for students playing the role of U.S.-based managers (L-22US), and one for students playing the role of China-based managers (L-22CHN). Each version has a set of common facts, plus a set of facts known only to that side. The role-play objectives stated in the case can only be successfully accomplished if the players solicit information from the other side, and work together to reach an agreement. Students must reset post-merger expectations, address the different underlining interests and get the merger plan back on track. They have the opportunity to demonstrate active listening, inquiry, and feedback regarding post-merger expectations at HBT headquarters and at HBT Shanghai. Both pairs of students will go into the meeting with varying objectives and will need to manage the other side's expectations and perceptions in a manner that may be assertive, collaborative, or both.

Educomp Solutions Ltd. was established in 1994 with the aim of providing for a customer's entire education lifecycle, from pre-school to higher education/vocational training, and appropriating value from the same customer multiple times. This strategy, over a period of 17 years, enabled Educomp to become the largest player in the education technology sector in India. Educomp took the organic route to growth, which it achieved largely through acquisitions and alliances. Its flagship brand, SmartClass, brought technology into the classroom with a vast repository of digital modules on every subject. However, in 2012 the government of India proposed changes in its education policy that - along with the country's economic uncertainty - threatened to erode the competitive advantage that ESL had gained over the years. The CEO of Educomp wondered how he could maintain his organization's leadership position. He was contemplating a three-pronged strategy that involved 1) expanding into the untapped Indian rural market segment with school learning solutions; 2) creating a virtual learning solution that included open-source content for students; and 3) investing further in research and development in order to develop innovative products to penetrate the Indian education market.

Each year, Orlando International Airport serviced more than 35 million passengers. Many were attracted to Orlando, Florida, for tourism, vacations and fun, as the area was home to some of the most popular theme parks in the United States. Others travelled to Orlando on business, as the area had attracted international companies, and domestic companies had a growing presence in other countries. The airport needed to continue to attract new airlines and to expand its services to new regions and countries. Local business people collected information on the growth of travel between Orlando and other regions, underserved markets, and time and cost savings. The challenge now was how to use the data to decide on which countries and industries to focus on to attract new business.

A multinational company's first senior female leader is assigned to the European headquarters. The assignment is a professional coup, and she is primed to meet the challenge. However, her new colleagues' predominant view is that she is a non-European woman who represents the corporate head office. She has the opportunity to fly high or fail.