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In April 2009, Perdigão was contemplating the acquisition of Sadia and a merger of the two companies. The intended share-swap transaction between two of Brazil's biggest food companies would allow Perdigão to dramatically grow its domestic and international market share, and become one of the world's largest players in the food production industry, while driving up profit margins by benefiting from synergies. However, Sadia had a huge short and long debt that it was unlikely to be able to service. Students must determine whether Perdigão should acquire Sadia, the basis of the proposed share exchange, and assess whether the resulting debt burden of the combined companies is manageable.

Goli Vada Pav Pvt. Limited (GVPPL) identified an opportunity to brand one of Mumbai's favourite fast foods - the vada pav. GVPPL's founders saw a huge opportunity in the Indian fast food industry, which was highly unorganized and largely serviced by small-time local vendors. There was a need in the market for a hygienic, branded product and Goli Vada Pav was created to fill this void. GVPPL broke the stereotype of unhygienic, manhandled vada pav. Its strategy for success was built on the four-point formula for a high-quality product, with value for money and efficient delivery to customers. The absence of a hygienic, branded product in the Indian fast food industry contributed to the initial success of GVPPL. This case series illustrates an entrepreneur's ability to identify and exploit a market opportunity. It details challenges faced by GVPPL in the competitive dynamics of the Indian fast food industry. These cases further question the viability of GVPPL's business model as one of the founders aspired to expand to the national and international markets. Would he be successful in strategizing GVPPL's future growth?

Nokia has dominated the mobile handset business for over 20 years. But as mobile technologies evolves and the consumer focus shiftsfrom handset design towards software and content platforms, it creates an opportunity for new players, such as RIM, Apple and Google, to enter the market and challenge Nokia's position. This case examines the competitive situation in the mobile ecosystem and Nokia's attempt to redefine itself as an 'internet company' in 2008.

In February 2011, David Blair, CEO of Catalyst Health Solutions, was considering another acquisition. Catalyst was already the fastest-growing pharmacy benefit management company in the United States, and Blair had his eye on a subsidiary of Walgreen Co., the second-largest retail drugstore chain in the country. Walgreen Co. was focusing its corporate strategy on the retail business and had just purchased 258 Duane Reade pharmacies in New York for over $1 billion. Walgreen Co.'s subsidiary, WHI, managed pharmacy benefits and was a relatively small part of the overall company, contributing less than 2% of its bottom line. Might Walgreen Co. be interested in selling WHI?

In August 2010, SKS Microfinance (SKS) had become India's (and South Asia's) first stock-market listed and publicly traded microfinance institution (MFI). A share in the company was offered at INR 985 and it commenced trading at INR 1,036, a small premium to start with but eventually reaching INR 1,404 within a month. Unfortunately, that was the extent of the good news as far as the company and its shareholders were concerned. Things then began to unravel rapidly. The initial public offer (IPO) of shares was seen as the initiation of a conflict between the interests of the company's shareholders and the poor rural borrowers it was expected to serve. Further, the company fired an arguably successful chief executive officer due to "inter-personal issues" within days from the end of the post-listing 40-day silent period. Matters were aggravated when 30 women who happened to be microfinance borrowers ended their lives within a span of 45 days, 13 of whom were reported to have been SKS members. The provincial government in the state of Andhra Pradesh, the hub of microfinance activity in the country, brought out an ordinance effectively curbing microfinance lending and recovery operations, and, by May 2011, the Reserve Bank of India, the country's banking regulator, had issued a notification placing caps on interest rates, margins and specifying minimum tenures for relatively larger loan sizes. Was this the end of the road for the microfinance movement in India?

Vegemite is an iconic Australian breakfast spread and is often seen as a quintessential Australian product. This case focuses on Kraft's decision to revitalize brand performance through the introduction of a brand extension. Drawing on extensive social media analysis of brand image, the brand team led by Simon Talbot identified a gap in the market for a line extension involving a blend of Vegemite and Kraft's other iconic brand, Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Following a high profile campaign involving a competition to name the new extension Talbot's team chose the name iSnack 2.0 for the new product. The case starts two days after the public unveiling of this name and subsequent nationwide backlash against it. Talbot needs to consider whether to continue with the brand name or change it in light of the public outcry.

Meli Marine, a container shipping company, is facing an important strategic decision after an interesting acquisition opportunity presents itself. Founded in 1974 by the Chang Family, the Singapore-based company has carved out a niche in the intra-Asia transport market. After years of success, eroding business conditions caused a financial crisis and a new CEO, David Tian, was brought in. Tian created a successful strategic change effort that resulted in a more stable but slower-growth company. More than ten years later, Meli Marine has a rare and affordable opportunity to acquire the larger shipping vessels it needs to move into a global market. Tian and his board must decide to whether to expand the franchise into Asian-North American shipping lanes, as key competitors have done, or continue with its current conservative business model.

The Harvard Business Review (HBR) Group was an early adopter of social media, boasting a robust presence on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Now the company is seeking to evolve the Group's efforts from social media to social strategy - and start moving both revenue generation and strategy integration into HBR's core. To that end the company created two parallel projects, each tasked with developing two concrete new offerings that leveraged social dynamics on social platforms, while at the same time creating revenues or slashing costs for HBR. Now it has to choose between four different projects.

The degradation of the environment has led many governments and customers to pressure businesses to make their operations more nature friendly. The case illustrates an effective example of corporate social responsibility. Specifically, it demonstrates how a small increase in a supply chain budget can drastically reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emission in the transportation of LCD TVs from their manufacturing bases to a distribution centre.

A stock analyst is preparing a recommendation on what his firm, a large U.S. investment house, should do with its stake in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, was trying to recover from a series of missteps that had seen competitors such as Dollar Stores and Amazon.com close the performance gap. Competitors had copied many aspects of Wal-Mart's distribution system, from cross-docking product to eliminate storage time in warehouses, positioning stores around distribution centres, and widespread adoption of electronic data interchange (EDI), to manage ordering and shipping from suppliers.

Miguel Haro, director of Control Systems in Casturn's Transmission Division, had returned to his desk after witnessing an online reverse auction for O-rings. Although supplier training for the event had been rushed, Haro's Global Commodity Manager Mary Konchesky was confident that the event would yield significant cost savings. One bid stuck out from the rest: the incumbent supplier placed a bid that was 70% less than the current price they were charging for Casturn O-rings. Haro knew this seemed too good to be true. A few hours later, Haro's phone rang. It was Konchesky, calling to tell him that she had just finished a call with the incumbent. Haro's suspicions had turned out to be justified. Haro asked himself, "Would auctions ever work at Casturn?"

In August 2008, Magic Technology ("Magic") launched an initiative to implement the balanced scorecard in its organisation. Alan Lo, the chief executive officer, oversaw the implementation of the balanced scorecard at the company's headquarters. Lo encountered both strategic and execution difficulties during implementation, such as too many strategic objectives, too many strategic performance indicators and a diverse focus of strategic action plans. Yet, such difficulties hinted at a more fundamental issue of too many formulated strategic directions in the first place. In late 2009, Lo was in the middle of the execution phase to push the implementation of the balanced scorecard towards the department level. How would the difficulties encountered influence the initiative of the implementation of the balanced scorecard at the department level?

Recounts the history of People Express Airlines, which grew rapidly after its inception in 1980 then failed spectacularly in 1986. Profiles People's aggressive strategy and its distinctive approach to human resource management, which emphasized job rotation and minimal hierarchy.

Nike, which first started experimenting with social media and networking in 2004, has been consistently reducing its spending on traditional advertising. Yet, Nike has not pulled back on its overall marketing budget, instead opting to focus on "nontraditional" advertising through new mediums. In doing so, the team hoped to build online communities to foster a closer relationship with its consumers. By 2012 Nike had committed to a social strategy that linked product with experience. Soon the company will discover if this strategic jump will be reflected on the bottom line.

The case traces the milestones of a 26-year history of a social entrepreneur creating a social enterprise, Madras Craft Foundation (MCF). The story leads up to a three-decade retrospective on the role social ventures play in our lives. Based on the entrepreneur's critical reflection, the case shows how the paths of the social entrepreneur and the social enterprise became closely interwoven. After MCF had been self-sufficient for three years, the success of the social venture precipitated a crisis as to who could succeed the founding social entrepreneur, whose love for South India's arts, crafts, and culture had become inseparable from MCF and its best-known offering, Dakshina Chitra. The case details MCF's revenue-generation model and shows the interdependence between the social entrepreneur and the social enterprise - their "co-becoming" over almost three decades. The analysis makes apparent links between the founder and her venture, and challenges the divide between social entrepreneur and social enterprise. It also provides an opportunity to discuss what is alike or different in social entrepreneurship and traditional entrepreneurship.

Sociable Labs was conceived as a start-up business attempting to use friend recommendations to curate and recommend purchase opportunities on the internet. Much as his Facebook social events app helped friends discover events based on their friends' events, founder Nisan Gabbay wanted to show users what their friends were buying or "liking," in the hope that such knowledge would help guide their purchases and even enable merchants to use Facebook to help grow their sales. How would he discover what his customers needed and what they were willing to pay for?

When HP established a branch of its corporate research lab in Singapore, the government played a key role through its Economic Development Board (EDB). Chris Whitney, the lab's director, sought to generate revenue from the lab's innovations, making it financially independent from corporate funding. The case explores HP's history in Singapore, and the role of the EDB in encouraging the growth of local R&D capabilities. The case poses questions on the sustainability of the funding model.

Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation (DNATF), a government agency, invests in public-private partnerships to stimulate commercialization of Danish scientific research within the country's industry. DNATF established a process for evaluating proposals, making project awards, and then actively managing those projects to try to improve the likelihood of success. DNATF has a small staff of project managers who act as single points of contact (SPOCs) for the projects. SPOCs are confronted with a broad range of projects rich in scientific complexity and technical issues, well beyond one individual's ability to maintain subject matter expertise. The case poses several questions: How does the organization manage and evaluate scientific and technical progress in circumstances when it is difficult to have subject matter expertise? How do managers know if they are pushing hard enough, or if they are taking too aggressive a stance?

The A case examines how CARE, a non-profit international development organization, begins to pursue a market-based approach to meeting its poverty-reduction mission. Specifically, a CARE project manager explores how previous work with low-income livestock herders in drought-prone eastern Kenya might offer an opportunity to work with value chain actors to improve access to markets and increase farmer incomes. With the Kenyan livestock project as the pilot for this new approach, Case A's main decision point concerns a strategic choice on what role CARE should play in the value chain to support low-income pastoralists. Options include 1) becoming directly involved in value chain transactions, buying and selling livestock and providing inputs to farmers or 2) acting as a value chain facilitator to provide the information and incentives to existing actors to make the value chain more efficient and inclusive for low-income producers. This strategic decision is part of a larger proposal that students are tasked to create for CARE's market-based livestock project. Case B describes the decisions CARE actually made in structuring the project and their choice to become directly involved in the value chain, buying cattle from farmers, negotiating a deal with a large farm to fatten the cattle and transporting the cattle to market. Case B is set three years into the project and begins to describe some of the serious challenges that their strategy is facing. Case B's decision point concerns developing options for how the project can be turned around, including that of CARE playing an indirect role as value chain facilitator and catalyst.

The case focuses on HTT, a small Canadian automotive manufacturer working in the highly specialized niche of supercars. HTT was only three months away from finishing the design stage of its vehicle, the Pléthore, and had to make decisions regarding the production stage. Among them, the company needed to decide how it would support its value chain processes with information technology (IT). However, a detailed set of requirements for an IT system could not be elicited until the company had successfully produced and distributed at least a few vehicles. In the meantime, the CEO, who was also a shareholder, wanted to develop a shortlist of potential IT products that would give him a better grasp of the available options.