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MRW is a courier firm based in Barcelona (Spain). In 2010, it was consolidating internationalization of its business. It is against this background that the case raises a highly sensitive, emotional issue: What to do about Sonia, a recently-hired manager (still in her probationary period) who suddenly reveals that she is pregnant. Moreover, her pregnancy is a high-risk one, likely requiring an early medical leave. The new manager's post involves setting up Information Technology (IT) systems, which are vital to the firm's business, internationalization and invoicing. 'The case explores two standpoints: (1) a company weathering the economic crisis, in which it is contrary to the firm's 'belt-tightening' measures to hire a replacement for an employee on leave; (2) the company's track record in the CSR field including its promotion of opportunities for women. The case aims to create a dilemma for students. Some will defend Sonia's right to a maternity leave and to continue working in MRW, especially in the light of her trials and tribulations with fertility treatment and the fact that the pregnancy is a risky one. Others will defend the company's interests, arguing that the situation in the firm is critical and that MRW's internationalization is vital for the company's business development. The latter group will focus on Sonia's role in launching the internationalization project. The question of what to do about Sonia's pregnancy is a critical one for both the Technology Department and for Sonia. Dealing with it requires great care.

In February 2005, Jesús Cepeda, Director of Grupo Santander's Management Control Area, reviews a Chilean pilot test of a new management information system, MIS America. Grupo Santander, a global financial institution, had grown rapidly through acquisitions in recent years, giving rise to a great need for reliable, timely information to help Santander managers compare performance across globally distributed units and make better strategic and operational decisions. Top executives had an urgent need for both consolidated and precisely disaggregated information.The pilot test in Chile had suffered numerous delays. Cepeda had to decide what to do next regarding MIS America. The original plan had specified that following the Chile pilot, the new system would be rolled out throughout Latin America, but Cepeda was not sure if he was ready to authorize the rollout. This case study highlights the information systems challenges associated with rapid growth via acquisition. The case also examines questions of centralized versus decentralized control in a corporate MIS that addresses different needs in different Latin American countries, while responding to Grupo Santander's own needs at the corporate level. The challenges presented by this large and complex project are applicable to many IT projects in other industries and geographic settings.

"PCDA" is the Spanish acronym for Pastillas Contra el Dolor Ajeno (Pills for Other People's Pain).The case outlines the methods employed by the Spanish branch of Médecins sans Frontières, hereafter MSF (Doctors Without Borders) to develop a physical product that could be used to raise funds for the organization's social initiatives. The case focus is set in mid-March 2011, a few weeks after Juan Ramón Axta's appointment as the new head of the PCDA project at a time when sales were plummeting. The PCDA was successfully launched in November 2010. This cutting edge idea and the campaign created to publicize it received wide media coverage. The PCDA was initially very successful with consumers. The initiative was seen as a unique innovation in Spain and around the world. During the first 20 days that followed the product launch, 1.5 million packets were sold. After three months, sales reached 3 million packets. Pharmacies complained of constant stock outs. The sales of the PCDAs surpassed all previous forecasts. Based on this initial success, MSF ordered an extra 3 million packets. However, at the end of February sales dropped by 400,000 packets (i.e., a 50% decline from the previous month). At that pace MSF feared sales in March would not exceed 100,000 packets. This sharp drop in sales created significant uncertainty about the campaign's future. Atxa had to decide whether MSF should continue with the project or cancel it. He wondered whether he should put an end to it and learn from the experience. He had only recently been placed in charge of it, so he felt compelled not to choose this option. However, what was the best thing to do?

In late spring 2009, Osvaldo Martínez, Finance Manager at Autopistas del Centro, a private company operating a toll road bypass in Madrid, was analysing with growing concern the financial impact of reduced traffic on its toll road. In 2008, overall freeway traffic in Spain fell by 12%, and the trend did not suggest any improvement in 2009. Mr. Martínez believed the situation to be basically unsustainable. The company's lenders wanted to renegotiate costs and deadlines, due to the increase in risk of the project. Due to the drop in revenues and operating earnings, the project would need an additional two million euros and the current shareholders refused to agree to all the refinancing of the project coming out of their pockets. Operational and financial improvements would be needed in order for the project to be viable and offer at least a minimal return. The case describes the progress of a project finance operation from its beginnings in 2004, and the situation of the project in 2009 in the face of a crisis and consequent failure to meet the initially expected cash flows. The case offers an excellent opportunity to discuss what to do when a Project Finance fails, analysing the alternative ways of ensuring the project's viability and profitability.

An established rental car company acquires a car-sharing start-up and must decide whether to fully integrate it, to leave it as an independent unit, or to take a course somewhere in the middle. This fictional case study is written by Susan Fournier, Giana M. Eckhardt, and Fleura Bardhi, featuring expert commentary by Marc McCabe and Andre Haddad.

An established rental car company acquires a car-sharing start-up and must decide whether to fully integrate it, to leave it as an independent unit, or to take a course somewhere in the middle. This fictional case study is written by Susan Fournier, Giana M. Eckhardt, and Fleura Bardhi, featuring expert commentary by Marc McCabe and Andre Haddad.

An established rental car company acquires a car-sharing start-up and must decide whether to fully integrate it, to leave it as an independent unit, or to take a course somewhere in the middle. This fictional case study is written by Susan Fournier, Giana M. Eckhardt, and Fleura Bardhi, featuring expert commentary by Marc McCabe and Andre Haddad.

This note introduces calculation and interpretation of basic financial analysis, including common size income statements and financial ratios. It emphasizes linkages between financial results and operating strategy. It uses financial results for Starbucks Corporation for fiscal 2010 through 2012 to provide context for financial analysis interpretation. Starbucks' global presence and widely familiar business model make it a particularly helpful vehicle for illustrating interpretation of financial analysis. In addition to profitability ratios, asset management ratios, and financial leverage ratios, DuPont analysis of return on equity (ROE) is introduced to illustrate how profitability, asset utilization, and financial leverage come together to measure ability to generate return to shareholders. This note does not draw definitive conclusions about whether Starbucks is effectively managed, but it illustrates how Starbucks' operating strategy is reflected in its financial results. It demonstrates that financial results tell an intuitive story about a firm's business model and operating strategy. This note assumes a working knowledge of income statements and balance sheets. Its intended audience is non-financial managers in an executive program wishing to understand how their operating decisions affect corporate-level financial performance. It also is useful for MBA students in a core finance or accounting course.

This case series profiles the leadership transition of a rising executive at global corporation. In the A case Deborah DiSanzo is asked to take on a new assignment within Philips Medical Systems as general manager of the patient monitoring business, a highly profitable but low growth unit, and to leave behind the high growth cardiac resuscitation business where she has been an entrepreneurial leader. The challenge for DiSanzo in her new role is to create a vision for growth in an organization that has seen high turnover, has an entrenched senior team, and has already tasted high success. The case chronicles the ways in which DiSanzo re-aligns the organization around a new shared vision, provides insights into how to effectively navigate as a new leader, and how to drive organizational change and renewal. The brief B case shows the business unit is successfully growing, and in the process creating greater complexity. DiSanzo is faced anew with the challenge of mobilizing her larger team and keeping the excitement of her hard-earned vision tangible. Courses in which this case can be used include Strategy Implementation, Change Management, and Organizational Behavior and the case is suitable for use in both graduate and executive education contexts.

As the world's largest producer of industrial enzymes, Novozymes had invested heavily for many years to bio-engineer enzymes that could break down cellulose into fermentable sugar. In 2010, the company had launched what it thought would become a breakthrough product for the conversion of crop residues from corn into fermentable sugars for the production of motor fuels. But the problem was that the company only controlled one piece of the value chain. To succeed in this nascent sector, should the company insert itself into an existing ecosystem? If so, how much coordination effort would be required to integrate the many pieces, including equipment and yeast suppliers? Or should Novozymes build its own ecosystem? And if so, how much control should it retain at each level of the value chain? The case seeks to expose students to the challenges of putting together value chain participation strategies in a setting where they can also learn about industrial biotechnology, including some cutting edge methods in directed evolution.

ITC's hotel division successfully implemented several structure and process-oriented drivers of sustainability by leveraging its dominant position among India's luxury hotels, financial might and overall group commitment to sustainability. These design restructuring efforts resulted in eight of ITC's luxury hotels being awarded LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum ratings, making the ITC Hotel chain the 'greenest luxury hotel chain in the world'. The case provides an overview of the process that ITC Hotels adopted for designing luxury responsibly. It also describes the various challenges and issues that contributed to the management's decision to retrofit eight existing properties and launch ITC Gardenia along LEED guidelines to attain Platinum ratings. The case is set against the backdrop of a meeting at which Nakul Anand, Executive Director, ITC Limited , and his top management team are discussing the possibility of retrofitting eight of ITC's existing luxury hotels along LEED Platinum rating parameters. In order to make ITC Hotels the world's greenest luxury hotel chain, they know that not only will they have to design their future properties along LEED guidelines to attain Platinum ratings, but will also have to remodel the structural design, systems and processes at their other luxury brand hotels in India. Since the 1980s, ITC Hotels had tailored their service and product offerings around environmental concerns such as water recycling, energy conservation and waste management. However, these efforts had to be significantly scaled up to meet the strict standards of LEED. This scale-up involved significant costs, operational redesign and revamping of the organizational culture. Given these challenges, Anand and his team are faced with the question: Should they or should they not retrofit the existing properties?

Microcredit made a dramatic entry into the banking lexicon when Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus ushered in a new era of social banking with his Grameen Bank. BASIX, the Indian replicator of the Nobel laureate's ideology, (albeit with a different methodology of livelihood promotion), had established itself as an effective microfinance institution (MFI) in India. It had successfully convinced the government of the need for, and feasibility of, setting up financial institutions such as "local banks" in rural areas to mobilize rural savings and provide meaningful livelihoods for the poor, especially women. KBSLAB, a local bank established by BASIX, had performed very well initially, but had reached a critical juncture in its journey in 2011. The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) guidelines were similar for the commercial banks and the Local Area Banks in many aspects like the statutory liquidity ratio and the cash reserve ratio requirements. But the geographical restrictions on the local area banks were making it difficult to expand and meet the compliance and monitoring mechanisms. The case looks at the journey of this unique microfinance banking institution over a decade of its existence and contemplates its future. It raises questions about what actually plagues local area banks in general and KBS in particular, the justifiability of the RBI guidelines and the viability of microcredit banks in the future.

The takeover of Bombay Suburban Electric Supply Ltd (BSES) in 2003 (eventually renamed Reliance Energy) marked the foray of Reliance Industries Ltd into the power transmission and distribution business. The power sector, plagued by bureaucratic controls and constraints on supply and demand, offered little managerial discretion to alter the traditional drivers of growth and profitability. The case illustrates how Reliance Energy leveraged technology to transform its strategy and operations in order to establish international standards of operational excellence and customer service in the Indian power sector. Students learn about the significant risks in technology-driven transformations and their critical success factors, such as complementary changes in firm structures and business processes. The case is set in 2008, when the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Reliance Energy is found dwelling over the digital transformation of the company that has led to the decision to spin off the information technology (IT) department into a third-party technology solutions provider for the infrastructure sector. Was the digital transformation of the company a success? What were the lessons learnt from this transformation?

The case deals with Gilead Sciences, a bio-pharmaceutical company with several FDA approved HIV/AIDS drugs. In 2006, the company launched the Gilead Access Program to enhance access to HIV/AIDS drugs in developing countries. In India, which also happened to be the largest producer of generic drugs, Gilead signed a voluntary licensing agreement for its drug, Viread, with 13 companies. By 2011, Mylan (previously known as Matrix Laboratories), one of the 13 Indian companies, had emerged as the leading supplier for Viread, with two-thirds of the global market. In order to accelerate its market reach, Gilead wanted to expand the scope of the agreement with four major Indian companies, including Mylan. Gregg Alton, Executive Vice President for Corporate and Medical Affairs, had to decide how he would convince his partners to come on board and how to execute the agreement.

The case traces the journey of an Indian pharmaceutical firm, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, which had traditionally focused on generic drugs, into the area of discovery research. After India entered the global product patent system with the signing of the WTO TRIPs agreement in 1994, a number of Indian companies sought to move into discovery research. Glenmark invested heavily in developing its capabilities to undertake high-risk pharmaceutical research, and within three years developed several promising molecules. The company signed out-licensing agreements for the molecules with international companies two agreements with U.S.-based Eli Lilly and Company and one each with U.S.-based Forest Laboratories and Germany-based Merck KGaA. The case takes students back to 2008, one of the most critical periods in the company's evolution. Three of Glenmark's four drug development projects have failed and the fourth is showing signs of failure. The company's stock price has plummeted and the management is under pressure from financial analysts to drop discovery research and focus on what they had always done best generics. The case puts participants in the chair of Glenmark's CEO Glenn Saldanha, who must, amid the building pressure and resource constraints on the company, develop a future plan of action for its R&D. To be or not to be the innovation company? That is the question before Saldanha and the class.