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In the first part of a two-part case, a strategic finance manager at Wells Fargo with experience installing solar panel systems on bank branches crunches the numbers for a similar project in the Los Angeles area given the uncertain future of a government rebate.

Russia and China are neighbors with complementary needs: Russia has an abundance of energy resources, which China needs to fuel its industry. The case analyzes the evolution of the China-Russia energy relations in the post-Cold War period, with an emphasis on the political factors, external and domestic, impeding and contributing to the full realization of the potential of energy ties between Russia and China.

In 2012, J Sainsbury Plc (Sainsbury's), the number three supermarket chain in the UK with £22.3 billion in sales, appeared to have put the troubles of the past behind it. For over 70 years, Sainsbury's had been the UK's largest grocer, but Tesco had overtaken it in 1995 and then Asda knocked it into third position in 2003. When Justin King took over as CEO in 2004, UK sales were flat and UK profits languished at 40% below their 1999 levels. He cut prices and restored sales growth, and from 2007 onwards, Sainsbury's had outperformed Tesco on same-store sales growth. What did King need to do to sustain Sainsbury's revival?

Infosys Limited was India's second largest exporter of IT services with annual revenues of $7 billion and a market capitalization of nearly $26 billion in 2012. The company, headquartered in Bangalore, India, had built its reputation as the Indian IT bellwether whose credo was to "under-promise and over-deliver." Throughout its 31-year history, Infosys and its iconic co-founder, N.R. Narayana Murthy, were admired and respected for delivering excellence while conducting business in a legal, transparent, and ethical manner. It was one of the few software companies that recognized the value of a strong brand in the business-to-business (B2B) market and chose to develop its brand not through expensive advertising but by building core values, client trust, and leveraging Murthy's personal integrity and principles. In 2011, the company introduced its new brand positioning, Infosys 3.0. A key component of the new brand positioning was the Products, Platforms, and Services (PPS) business, headed by Sanjay Purohit. This case focuses on the company's efforts to makeover its brand in the U.S. market amidst several challenges.

Describes Lake Nona, a 7,000-acre residential and research cluster in central Florida, and its process and innovation culture, and Lake Nona Institute, the organization behind the planning and governance of this new eco-friendly community. Emphasis is placed on the institutional collaboration and governance decisions behind Lake Nona's "Medical City" component. Five years after development began, the site boasts a research cluster that has succeeded in attracting scientific talent and residential interest, and has put in place a collaborative governance structure intended to encourage innovation, trust-building and communication. When the Institute's president is asked to decide who the next tenant in Medical City should be, he considers what kind of process would allow them to best grow going forward. Focuses on: 1) the nature of collaboration in the development of new ventures; 2) the managerial challenges of mediation between hierarchical organization processes and consensus-driven structure; 3) the product development process of a developer in a nascent industry.

This case describes the creation of Dr. Tim's Pet Food Company, a small company centred on providing superior nutrition for dogs used for athletic and competitive purposes. The company has developed a brand image of high quality and premium natural ingredients, and has gradually extended its product line while maintaining the quality of its original formula. Although the company has been very successful and has grown at an ever-increasing rate, its founder is concerned about the difficulties of expansion that Dr. Tim's Pet Food now faces. Located in an isolated area of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the company is not easily accessible to sales representatives or larger populations. Furthermore, the company's founder does not want the brand to lose its high quality or natural image, and is therefore resistant to the idea of distributing his company's products in large discount retail outlets. In addition, the founder of Dr. Tim's Pet Food Company runs a veterinary hospital and is therefore hoping to limit the physical expansion of his newest entrepreneurial project. While keeping all of these limitations in mind, the case presents four growth strategies open to Dr. Tim's Pet Food Company: penetration, product development, market development and diversification. Students are asked to consider which option would be best suited to the company's expansion based on the information provided.

On April 13, 2011, slightly more than three months before an annual conference of the Academy of International Business (AIB) was to be held in Nagoya, the program chair of the conference had to decide whether to go ahead with the conference as planned after a massive earthquake struck Japan on March 11, triggering a horrendous tsunami and subsequent radiation leak after damaging a nuclear plant. Each challenge posed a threat to the successful operation of the conference, and the interaction among them, combined with the element of time, rendered the program chair's decision-making process increasingly complex.

This case examines how a premium credit card company, American Express Canada (Amex Canada), is attempting to differentiate itself from its competition and to realize value for-and from-its cardholder members through a focus on providing apt quality services and servicing. In April 2011, the president and chief executive officer of Amex Canada is considering his options in sustaining the company's stance in the ultra-rich end of the premium payment cards segment in the face of competition from credit card companies that previously targeted the Canadian mass market. The situation is compounded by the after-effects of the economic downturn that began in the United States in 2008. Amex Canada has to develop a viable strategic and operational plan to realize its vision of becoming "the most respected service brand," an ambition that is founded upon what it calls the "Total Service Experience" it provides to its card members. The case looks at the history of the company, provides an overview of the Canadian payment card industry, and explores core service and servicing issues salient to the design and provision of the Total Service Experience that Amex Canada hopes will not only satisfy existing cardholders but will attract new card members across its array of payment card options.

This case concerns the bonus structure for a representative sales team. Pharma Talent, a contract sales company for pharmaceutical companies across Canada, promised its clients that its representatives would drive sales at a lower cost than what the client would incur if it had its own sales force. Historically, it had contracts with products that targeted physicians (e.g., prescription drugs or medical devices); however, a new contract in Ontario involved an over-the-counter (OTC) product. Pharma Talent currently had a pay-for-performance bonus structure that had already been revised three times. Nevertheless, due to the structure of the different territories in Ontario, many sales team members thought the bonus was unfair and very discouraging, while its pay-for-performance structure did not meet the clients' needs.

Slater & Gordon (S&G), a midsized Australian law firm with a high-growth consolidation strategy, had an initial public offering (IPO) scheduled for May 2007. Due to a series of regulatory changes in Australia in recent years, the IPO provided an opportunity for S&G to become the first publicly-traded law firm in the world. The firm and its underwriters had just issued a prospectus and were now in the process of lining up investors for the offering. Gloria Rosen, a portfolio manager at Freemantle Securities, was trying to decide whether to buy the stock for her small-cap growth fund. With only a few days left to place an order for the offering, she had to decide whether to invest and, if so, how much to invest. To make her investment decision, Rosen had to understand the value implications of the firm's business model and its growth strategy, as well as the relevant risks.

Carolina for Kibera (CFK) is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote youth leadership and gender and ethnic cooperation in Kibera, the largest unstructured settlement situated in the heart of Nairobi, Kenya. CFK's programs constructively leverage the power of the community, offering an exemplar of participatory development. CFK's affiliation with the University of North Carolina offers a new model of social enterprise. After eight years of success under the founding leadership of Salim Mohamed, Rye Barcott and Kim Chapman, CFK is at a critical juncture. Mohamed, Executive Director of all operations in Kibera, is leaving to go to graduate school. Barcott, Founder and President, has a new career and a growing family and can no longer play an active role in CFK's operations. Chapman, Chair of the U.S. Board of Directors, has accepted a full-time faculty position and must step down from her roles at CFK. These departures come at a time when the Gates Foundation has just awarded CFK a two-year, $1 million grant. The case ends as CFK begins to grapple with impending changes in organizational leadership and activities.

Whaling was a prominent global industry in the nineteenth century and the United States was dominant. By 1850 there were about 900 whaling ships in the world and 700 of these were American. Rates of return on capital were high compared to benchmark investments, at least in the early years of the nineteenth century. The whaling industry was one of the earliest to grapple with complex issues in relation to the provision of high-risk investment capital, syndication, organizational form, ownership structure, incentives, team building and principal-agent tradeoffs. It represents an important starting-point for exploring the origins of American entrepreneurship and venture financing.

Considers the decision faced by state pension fund manager Rod Calhoun as he decides whether to invest $200 million in Bain Capital's eleventh global buyout fund: Bain Capital Fund XI. For the fund, Bain was offering its limited partners a choice between three different fee structures: first, a "conventional" fee structure of a 1.5% management fee with 20% carried interest and a 7% preferred rate of return; second, a 1% management fee with 30% carried interest and a 7% preferred rate of return; or third, a 0.5% management fee, 30% carried interest, and a 0% preferred rate of return. Should Calhoun invest in Bain? If he should, which fee structure should Calhoun choose?

The management team at Predilytics, a healthcare analytics firm, must decide whether to accept a Series A venture capital financing deal. The company provided analytic services to healthcare plans, typically Medicare Advantage plans, in efforts to draw conclusions from massive amounts of patient data. The company still had enough funding from a seed round to operate on a low-key basis for a few more months, but the team hoped to move forward aggressively and scale its business. They also needed to make business choices about next steps.

Global Unichip Corporation (GUC) is a design services company that acts as a front-end to TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor foundry. In so doing, it masked the complexity of the latest process technologies and reduced the entry barriers for small firms to utilize the latest technology. In acting as an aggregator, it was also able to capture scale benefits. But it saw a change in the market coming as a major systems house customer came to GUC directly. Did this mean that it was enabling competition with TSMC's most important customers? Was it fostering disintermediation, and what did this portend for the future shape of the industry?

This case describes a Chinese software outsourcing vendor's struggle with its market choices, in response to the rippling effect of the global financial crisis. It also introduces Chinese software outsourcing vendors' capability development, market conditions, and idiosyncrasies. ChiITech is representative of Chinese software vendors, in terms of its development history, environment conditions, experience of the financial crisis, and countermeasures. Students can learn about the evolution and current status of the China-Japan software outsourcing industry through this case, and more specifically how vendors make market choices in a highly volatile market.

In a search for an optimized global business service operation, firms set up and relocate shared service centres around the globe. This teaching case examines the migration process of IBM procurement shared service centre from Budapest to Sofia. The teaching case describes the challenges that the teams in Budapest and Sofia faced and the migration methodology applied and later on adapted in order to meet the transition objectives. The teaching case concludes by challenging IBM's migration approach.

"With a global leadership and sustainability perspective, this case uses SNCF, a state-owned railway and public service company based in France, to set the stage for an analysis of change management in a large company. It also allows for an exploration of sustainable development within the context of a large company. Written from the field, it depicts the firm's overall strategy to adopt sustainable practices and provides an opportunity to introduce basic leadership, strategy, sustainability, and operational terms that can be explored in subsequent classes. The case opens with a summary of urgent issues that include an influential employee who resists new policies, a public scandal around a supplier that employed undocumented workers, and pressure to present the accounting department with financial metrics to evaluate the sustainable procurement efforts. In a big-picture view, Olivier Menuet, directeur délégué achats durable et solidaires, and his boss, Pierre Pelouzet, directeur des achats, want more visibility around sustainable development not only within the procurement function but throughout the organization. How might changes already made at SNCF be driven deeper into the company? "

DLF was the largest real estate player in India, possessing a strong home market in Delhi and Gurgaon (the National Capital Region, NCR). The Indian real estate market was growing rapidly, and DLF wanted to convert this growth opportunity into a country-wide presence by building significant land reserves. With huge debt on its balance sheet, the company decided to raise finance through equity. The stock markets were on a rise, and the timing was perfect to raise funds from an initial public offering (IPO). The company filed its draft red herring prospectus (DHRP) in May 2006, but soon afterwards the stock market scenario changed, and the company faced complaints from its minority shareholders. The global macroeconomic scenario had become a cause of concern too. DLF was forced to withdraw its DRHP and put its IPO plans on hold. This case is positioned in January 2007, when DLF had resolved its minority shareholders' issue and had added significant portions to its land reserves. At that juncture, DLF's management began the process of trying to gauge the circumstances before reintroducing its decision to go public.

In 2003, the FEMSA Corporation -a Mexican company- acquired 100% of the shares of the largest franchise of the Coca-Cola system in Latin America (PANAMCO), and placed itself at the lead of the sales of carbonated beverages and other soft drinks in different countries of South America, including Colombia, which had been struggling with armed groups since the 1970s. This case explores how Coca-Cola FEMSA included different initiatives in its sustainability strategy, aimed at supporting the process of peaceful demobilization that would be carried out by the Alta Consejeria para la Reintegracion (ACR, High-Council for Reintegration) of the Colombian Government. As part of this disarmament process, the ACR offered the demobilized combatants (former combatants that had decided to lay down their arms peacefully and turn themselves in to the proper authorities) different options for social reintegration, such as financing for starting new businesses and connections with companies that could provide jobs, among other things, which were also shared with the business sector to see how it could help support the process. By August 2011, Coca-Cola FEMSA had already been collaborating with the Colombian Government for a little over three years, and had diversified its initiatives to support not only the former combatants, but also the soldiers, victims and general public affected by the conflict. Despite these multiple efforts, however, the actual impact of the company's actions on the solution of the problem of reintegrating more than 50,000 demobilized combatants was still negligible. Therefore, the ACR requested greater commitment from the company in the form of a massive campaign to broadcast the initiatives, in an attempt to motivate and increase the number of participating companies.