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The Airbnb case describes the very early days of this startup, beginning with the founders' original concept of renting out air beds and serving breakfast ("Airbed and Breakfast") in their apartment to conference attendees as an alternative to expensive hotel rooms. The founders grew the business by providing finding lodging options in people's homes for attendees of large events such as South by Southwest and the Democratic National Convention. Despite positive reviews and high spikes in activity associated with these events, the founders faced challenges achieving sustainable growth. In early 2009, they joined Y-Combinator and were forced to confront a series of decisions around how to improve the product such that it could grow into a profitable, long-term business.

In October 2009, Andrew Amphlett, a financial analyst at Southern Cross LLC, and a recent MBA graduate, was asked to prepare an analysis of Pre-Paid Legal Service's financial performance and its accounting methods. Pre-Paid Legal Services recruited associates to market its legal plans to consumers who paid about $21 per month for access to the network of independent legal firms who supplied legal services for a fixed fee. In effect, Pre-Paid Legal Services was a multilevel marketing organization, or what is often perjoratively called a "pyramid scheme." Southern Cross planned to consider adding the company to its shorts portfolio after Price Target Research maintained a hold rating and established a price target of $36 per share. The shorts fund included companies that Southern Cross thought were headed for substantial stock price declines based on fundamental analysis. By October 2009, Pre-Paid Legal's stock price was trading at $43 per share, significantly higher than Price Target Research's recently established target price of $36 per share. Southern Cross's portfolio manager had asked Amphlett to pay close attention to the company's accounting methods, and particularly to its policy of capitalizing and amortizing indirect outlays, instead of expensing them immediately. Pre-Paid Legal had experienced several disagreements with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) over its accounting policies. In 2002, it restated its financial statements at the request of the SEC, and Deloitte & Touche, its independent accounting firm, resigned from the account. In October 2009, the Division of Enforcement of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requested information from Pre-Paid Legal Services about its financial, business, and accounting policies.

In mid-January 2013, the owner of Lake Superior Lodge and its newly appointed manager were meeting to figure out a marketing plan to turn things around at the motel. The owner, who was born and raised in Duluth, Michigan, bought Lake Superior Lodge primarily because of its location. The property sat on the scenic North Shore of Lake Superior between Duluth and Two Harbors. Ten years later, however, the motel had yet to turn a profit. The manager was hired in late 2012 to operate the motel and to increase its profitability. If he could not make this happen, the owner would have no choice but to sell the property and move on.

In October 2010, the beating of a 30-year-old bonded laborer-his punishment for staying home sick from work-in India's northwestern state of Rajasthan triggered a movement to end the practice of bonded labor in the area. A holdover from feudal times, bonded labor was outlawed in India in 1976, but was still prevalent in some pockets of rural India. Entrenched power systems protected the practice, with the lower castes most affected. In this case, the bonded workers were members of an indigenous tribe called the Sahariyas. The case explores the negotiating strategy used by Sahariya village activist Gyarsi Bai and her allies to fight a powerful landowning community and a local government administration unresponsive to appeals from the poor. It describes how Bai built coalitions with larger activist groups and worked with them to gain media visibility and secure support at the state and national levels. These alliances pressured village authorities to make changes. Two years later, bonded labor continued to exist in the area, but a growing number of laborers had sought and received official freedom. In addition, a set of modest options-a local grain bank, village-run system of microcredit, and an expanded government work guarantee-gave bonded laborers viable alternatives to the debt trap of the past. The case also shows how larger activist groups were effective at finding strategies that enabled the Sahariyas to be agents for their own change.

This case describes the experiences of employees participating in a corporate mindfulness-training programme. The training programme takes place at the Risk Management Services group of If Insurance, a leading insurance company in the Nordic region. As defined for the training programme, "mindfulness is the 'attentional' skill of being able to focus one's full attention and awareness on one thing at a time, without distraction".

This case lends itself to courses covering the topic of rapid expansion of an enterprise. By 2012, Rick Berry, the founder and CEO of Demandforce (DF), and his team had built a company with annual revenue of approximately $70 million. DF provided small businesses with software tools used by more than 23,000 individual businesses and 50,000 business users to communicate with their customers. DF's business model was software as a service (SaaS) for a monthly fee. The company's value creation for its clients was evidenced by a high client renewal rate of 88%. But after DF was acquired by Intuit in April 2012, Berry knew that the game had changed dramatically. He was now confronted with a new challenge-one he had never faced: building a big company. He had to take his business and grow it into one with $750 million of revenue as quickly as possible.

"Natural Gas and Its Role in the New Energy Dynamics" presents a comprehensive look at new natural gas extraction technology (hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" and horizontal drilling), as well as the economic and climate effects of the recent dramatic increase in unconventional natural gas production and consumption. It discusses the impact of the low natural gas prices in the U.S., as well as the lucrative arbitrage opportunities in transporting liquified natural gas (LNG) to Europe and Asia, where prices could be as much as five times higher than those in the U.S. The case also explores the new energy dynamics created by the natural gas boom, most notably the significant decrease in U.S. coal production and consumption due to low natural gas prices. It looks at other options for coal companies, such as exporting more coal to China, and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). The potential for natural gas to replace oil as a transportation fuel is also discussed The question presented to students by the case is whether the executive director of a fictional environmental group should support the use of natural gas, and if so, under what conditions. Reasons for supporting the use of natural gas include reducing the use of coal in the U.S., a key goal of many environmental groups. When burned, natural gas emits only half as much carbon dioxide as coal-so the substitution could positively impact climate change. However, data on the climate effects of LNG and compressed natural gas (CNG) in certain uses-such as in transportation fuel-are still incomplete. In addition, there is evidence that fracking may cause local environmental damage and that methane leakage must also be taken into account.

In early 2009, following the collapse of the housing market, Doug Brien and Colin Wiel began buying single family homes (SFH) to renovate and rent. SFH rental had previously been a mom-and-pop business due to scaling difficulties-buying and managing large properties such as apartment complexes was well suited to institutional investors, but no one had solved the problem of buying and managing large numbers of relatively inexpensive SFHs. Brien and Wiel raised a series of funds from high-net-worth individuals, and the success of their company, Waypoint Homes, eventually attracted institutional investors as well as competition from large private equity firms. The case discusses Waypoint's growth to the end of 2012, at which point it owned more than 3,000 homes. The case also describes the changing economic and competitive environment, and asks about how the company can adapt to these changes going forward.

In June 2012, Cheah Cheng-Hye and his colleagues at Value Partners, a Hong-Kong-based investment firm, received a copy of a short-seller report alleging that Evergrande, one of China's largest property developers, was using fraudulent accounting and paying bribes to secure business. Evergrande's stock plummeted, and Value Partners, which had a sizable holding of Evergrande stock, had to determine how to respond to the allegations. The case provides an opportunity to review Value Partners' research approach to investing in Chinese companies and to assess the merits of the Evergrande allegations.

This case examines the mindset of a father who faces a complex situation when his adult son, who works with him in the family business in India, begins pressuring him to make a will. The father's thought processes are revealed as he tries to understand the reasons behind his son's motivation. The case explores the issue from the father's point of view. It examines his hesitation to make a will and the points in favor of doing so.

A budding entrepreneur wants to start a mobile software company by developing a golf scoring and playing app called Golfgamez. He has assembled some raw data related to market size, as well as start-up and development costs, but is unsure how to proceed. He must evaluate the revenue and cost estimates for this business idea and prioritize the issues he faces. He must also consider the costs and benefits of available funding options, such as debt, equity or accelerator funding; crowdfunding; government grants; or sweat equity funding. Should he quit his successful career in banking to pursue his dream, should he try to do this part time and risk failure or should he give up altogether? Golfgamex (B): Funding a Digital Startup, 9B13M011, is the supplement to this case.

A Mexican appliance manufacturer, MABE, has evolved quickly after selling nearly half its stake to a large multinational company in the early 1990s. The manufacturer was then able to dominate the Mexican appliances market and venture into other Latin American countries. Just before the 2008 financial crisis, the manufacturer formed a joint venture with a Spanish company and entered the Russian market, but it was not successful. The manufacturer faced a dilemma: Should it leave the Russian joint venture with its Spanish partner and refocus on other emerging markets? Should it acquire a local manufacturer? Should it remain as it was?

The director of logistics at Walmart Canada, was developing plans for a new distribution centre in Alberta. Senior management had presented her with a challenge: why not build the most sustainable distribution centre in the world? Yet, much remained unclear about how to translate this challenge into specific actions, while keeping in mind corporate goals for sustainability. Her team now was exploring three options that promised to be significantly greener: hydrogen fuel cells for forklift trucks, LED lighting and renewable energy generation from on-site wind turbines. Any investment in these sustainable technologies had to make business sense, and any decision could dramatically affect the distribution centre's operating performance.

"This field-based case gives supply-chain educators the ability to teach the newsvendor model with pricing under a capacity constraint using real-life decisions. This case won the prestigious INFORMS Case Competition during the 2013 annual conference. By 2005, Eastman Chemical Company, based in Tennessee, had created a new specialty plastic, Tritan, which demonstrated heat resistance and durability properties that might allow Eastman to compete in the lucrative polycarbonate plastics market. Development of this product was a major breakthrough for both Eastman and the broader chemical industry. The Eastman specialty plastics team had to contend with numerous challenges, however, before producing Tritan at full scale. First, Eastman had to commercialize a completely new material that only had been produced in the lab; second, the team had to develop a supply chain to manufacture a new component (monomer) and a new product (polymer) simultaneously; and finally, it had to analyze market entrance options given capacity constraints. Thus, the specialty plastics team faced several dilemmas: who should be the initial launch partners, given Eastman's limited manufacturing capacity, and how aggressively should Eastman price Tritan, given that price would drive demand in the launch markets and in new markets? "

A distiller increases whiskey production and income declines because of accounting methods in use. Questions are raised regarding the treatment of expenditures which can be classified as production, inventory, or period costs. The necessary aging process raises added questions about prior period restatements and needed financing. A rewritten version of an earlier case by R.F. Vancil and R.H. Deming.

Explores the decision faced by AIG's board on whether to join shareholder and ex-CEO Maurice Greenberg's lawsuit against the U.S. government. The suit, argued by super-lawyer David Boies (of Bush v. Gore and California gay marriage fame), claims that in September 2008 the U.S. arbitrarily set aside the rights of AIG's shareholders - violating the Fifth Amendment by taking private property without just compensation - while preserving shareholder rights in other troubled financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs whose ex-CEO was then Treasury Secretary. The U.S. government moves to dismiss the case arguing that it has wide discretion in times of crisis, but a federal judge allows the suit to proceed. The case raises two issues central to understanding capitalism: (1) the importance of and limits to property rights; and (2) the role of the state in choosing between varieties of capitalism, here between oligarchic and entrepreneurial capitalism.

""Cracking Oyster (A)" is the first part of a two part case set, "Cracking Oyster (A) and (B)," intended for a two-class sequence, but the (A) case may also be taught on its own. It is accompanied by a brief, two-part video companion piece with a total length of six-and-a-half minutes. The (A) case introduces Shashi Verma (MPP '97) in 2006, soon after he has received a plum appointment: Director of Fares and Ticketing for London's super agency, Transport for London. The centerpiece of the agency's ticketing operation was the "Oyster Card," developed and managed under the terms of a 1998-2015 PFI (Private Finance Initiative) contract called "Prestige." Thus, in pursuing his goals for TfL ticketing-a reduction of costs, expanded service, and adoption of convenient, lower cost technologies-he knows he will have to negotiate with the contractor, a consortium called TranSys, governed by its two leading partners, Cubic Transportation Systems, a San Diego based company specializing in automated fare collection equipment and service, and EDS, one of the world's largest information technology service providers. Though the Oyster system-reliable and popular-was widely regarded a smash success, Verma soon learns that within TfL, the Prestige Contract is the source of much frustration. The case details the perceived shortcomings of the contract: a cumbersome process for negotiating variations, excessive costs, inadequate performance requirements, and poor incentives for the contractor to collaborate with TfL on new innovations. While the contract does, technically, allow TfL the opportunity to opt out early, TfL appears to have little practical ability to do so, as intellectual property for the complex system resides with the contractors. "Cracking Oyster (A)" ends with Verma facing a broadly-framed dilemma: what to do about Prestige? Case Number 1984.0 "

The chief financial officer (CFO) and major shareholder of a small charter sport fishing company must prepare the company books for the fiscal year according to international financial reporting standards (IFRS) rules. The CFO must deal with both finance and operating leases.