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Environmental stewardship was part of REI's culture since the company was founded, and integral to its corporate purpose. In 2005, REI began carefully measuring its environmental impact, establishing aggressive sustainability goals, and implementing programs to achieve these goals. The corporate social responsibility group, which oversaw the environmental sustainability program, took the approach that social and financial objectives should not be viewed as tradeoffs. For instance, growth objectives (increasing the number of stores and sales per store) should not come at the expense of energy consumption objectives for flat or decreasing corporate energy usage. Insisting that both objectives be met would lead to creating thinking and innovative solutions. The case describes the environmental stewardship program at REI, its objectives, and philosophy of implementation.

This case depicts China Merchants Bank's second strategic transformation. In the 90's, China Merchants bank creatively introduced an all-in-one-card and an all-in-one-net based on IT systems and network, enabling itself to expand nationwide. By successfully entering the emerging credit card industry, the bank confirmed its retail banking strategy in 2004, followed by its great success in occupying 1/3 credit card market share. The market share-driven strategy didn't last forever. Recognizing business environment changes, the company changed its strategy focus to profit-driven in 2009. It's the second time that information technology enables business success.

Jamie Bailey, owner and president of C.R. Plastics, has successfully grown his business every year since 1994 when he began producing recycled plastic outdoor furniture. This rapid growth has provided its own challenges in terms of constrained financing and by summer 2010, Bailey was desperate for a new source of cash. He subsequently auditioned to be on Dragon's Den, a television show where entrepreneurs can pitch their business to a group of venture capitalists, who may then choose to invest their own cash in exchange for a share of the business. With a week remaining before he has to present his final pitch, Bailey has to make a difficult prediction: How much money will he need to meet the growing demand into 2011? Complicating his analysis are competing proposals to fundamentally change how production is managed. In addition to reconfiguring labour allocation, one method requires significant investment in equipment while the other increases inventory during the off-season. Which alternative will allow the company to retain a greater share of the equity when he pitches his business to the Dragon's Den panel?

Unilever's Lipton Tea had been successful with the first phase of its certification partnership with Rainforest Alliance. Now the company faced challenges in how to push forward with the transformation of more difficult parts of the supply chain and how to market sustainable tea in developing markets like India.

Describes the background and career of Lakhdar Brahimi in numerous roles ranging from Algeria's ambassador to Indonesia and the Arab League, to serving as that country's foreign minister, and to his many years at the United Nations, with special emphasis on his actions as a mediator in Lebanese and Afghan conflicts.

Doug Rauch, the former president of grocery store chain Trader Joe's, had long been troubled by the amount of food, especially fresh and healthy produce, which was wasted in the food system. Simultaneously, he was frustrated by the paradox he saw in the U.S. food system: rising food insecurity, broadly defined as a lack of access to enough food to fully meet basic needs at all times, concurrent with an obesity epidemic, suggesting that low-income communities lacked access not just to food in general, but to healthy foods in particular. Rauch believed he could build a non-profit grocery store model that took advantage of grocery stores' built-in waste and channeled that wasted food to be resold at a significant discount. Rauch faced significant challenges in the implementation and execution of his plan, notably legal hurdles related to selling products past their expiration date, marketing challenges, and convincing grocers to partner with him to combat waste. He had to carefully select a partner from a number of interested parties. Finally, he would need to change shopping, eating, and cooking behaviors of a community. In doing so, he hoped to leave a lasting positive health impact and a scalable model for change across the United States.

Founder Group's Chairman of the Board, Wei Xin, made adjustments to the company portfolio in 2010. Established in the mid-1980s, Founder is the industry leader for Chinese laser typesetting systems and was once the second largest PC manufacturer in China. It is also the largest university-based enterprise in China. After twenty years of development, Founder has achieved annual revenue of 47.5 billion RMB, with business in IT hardware and software, pharmaceuticals, medical care, finance, real estate, steel, trade, education, mining, fine chemicals, storage, etc. It has undergone highly unrelated diversification. Chair of the Board, Wei Xin, wants to ensure Founder's sustained growth. To this end, he must consider Founder's portfolio structure for the future.

A managing partner of Pacific Community Ventures, a San Francisco-based private equity fund, had until the end of the week to decide if he wanted to invest in Galaxy Desserts, a Bay Area manufacturer of premium baked goods. PCV was a private equity firm that took a "double-bottom-line" approach, a two-pronged objective of delivering both financial and social returns.

In 2006, European automotive supplier Interior Group and China-based China Textile established Interior JV, a joint venture in China to produce seat covers for automakers manufacturing in China. After a slow start, the joint venture began to secure orders and was moving towards a breakeven point. Nonetheless, it was still faced with teething problems, especially in product development time, internal quality and on-time delivery. Though Interior JV had adopted many processes that were used by its European mother company, operating in the foreign environment of an emerging market continued to pose challenges for the joint venture. Now Interior JV must address these problems in order to stay on top of the game.

The case narrates how A.P.V.N. Sarma, chairman and managing director (CMD) appointed in 1997, realized the pressing need for change to rescue Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) from impending bankruptcy. SCCL was declared "sick" (bankrupt) by the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) twice, in 1992 and 1996. It had accumulated losses of 12.19 billion rupees. As it provided direct and indirect employment to people residing in the region around SCCL, the well-being of the organization was critical not only for the mammoth workforce, but also for the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP). The power generation units of the state relied significantly on the coal supplied by SCCL. The case captures various initiatives undertaken by Sarma to bridge the trust deficit between management and blue-collared workers with low literacy and income levels. It discusses the novel communication strategies to connect with workers. The case describes how numerous strikes plaguing SCCL were curbed, and order was restored to allow productivity to rise. Under Sarma's leadership, SCCL achieved a net profit of 894.1 million rupees for the fourth consecutive year in 2001. Sarma had a fixed tenure of five years which ended in 2001. The task for the new leader was to build on the foundations laid by Sarma and take the performance of SCCL to new heights.

The features of zero emissions, light weight, high efficiency, low energy cost, and almost zero pollution contribute to the increasing popularity of electric motorcycles and a substantial growth potential for the worldwide electric motorcycle industry. However, Zero was facing competition from Brammo, which although positioning its products differently from Zero, adopted a similar international growth strategy. How could the chief executive officer of Zero position its products so that Zero would be able to offer a unique value proposition and establish clear dominance in the electric motorcycle industry?

The vice president in SouthBank's Corporate Banking Group was reviewing an opportunity for SouthBank (SB) to bid to become the agent bank in a $120 million revolving credit facility for Prime Micro Inc. (PMI). SB's competition for the agent's position would be Texas Trade Bank (TTB), which had been PMI's lead bank for many years. Despite SB's attempts to displace TTB over the past several years, this was SB's first real opportunity to gain agent status. As agent bank on this deal, SB would likely be viewed by PMI as its lead bank, which, due to PMI's considerable banking needs, would allow SB to realize significant fee income in the future. Although delighted with the prospect of getting PMI as a new client, the vice president was worried about PMI's creditworthiness.

Suitable for MBA, Executive MBA, GEMBA, and executive education programs, this case uses CEMEX, a global cement producer based in Mexico, to set the stage for unfolding an analysis of a growth through acquisition strategy. It offers a discussion about the firm's overall strategy to acquire on a global scale instead of growing organically and provides an opportunity to introduce basic financial, marketing, and operational terms that can be explored in following classes. The material includes a PMI process that further allows discussion on that technique. The case opens with a conference call and another barrage of questions for CEO Lorenzo Zambrano about his bid to buy Australia-based Rinker Group in October 2006. Until this point, CEMEX has had a long-standing habit of buying businesses in emerging markets; this acquisition would be a departure from that strategy. If the deal goes through, it would be the single largest acquisition in CEMEX's history, and it would be among its few forays into a developed market other than in the neighboring United States. The company has grown exponentially and successfully. Why would this effort be any different? Was the acquisition a good idea or not? And if it was, how would Zambrano and his leadership team convince Wall Street and others of that?

Samasource sought to use work, not aid, for economic development. The company secured contracts for digital services from large companies in the United States and Europe, divided the work up into small pieces (called microwork) and then sent it to delivery centers in developing regions of the world for completion through a web-based interface. Different from traditional business process outsourcing companies, Samasource relied on a marginalized population of workers to execute the work. The case explores how the company can grow its capability to help individuals around the globe through the provision of digital work. This case includes color exhibits.

The Abraham Path Initiative board faces strategic and negotiating challenges in revitalizing a route of Middle East cultural tourism following Abraham's path 4000 years ago. The Path begins in the ancient ruins of Harran, in modern-day Turkey, where Abraham first heard the call to "go forth." It passes through some of the world's most revered cultural, historical, and holy sites, ending in the city of Hebron/AI-Khalil at the tomb of Abraham. With Abraham as a venerated patriarchal figure for Islam, Judaism, and Christianity-monotheistic religions whose adherents have so often clashed-the potential unifying power of this conception has attracted a remarkable range of supporters from around the world as well as considerable media interest. From a notion crystallized at Harvard in 2004, this idea has been carefully negotiated into a concrete reality with supporting country organizations in Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. With the endorsement of the U.N.'s Alliance of Civilizations, over 300 kilometers of the Path have now been opened to a growing number of travelers ranging from student study groups to international leaders all walking stretches of the Path. Yet, momentum has stalled in key areas, strategic and operational issues remain unresolved, and the financial future of the initiative is clouded. Soon the board will meet to debate and decide these issues.

French advertising company JCDecaux and the city of Paris jointly developed Vélib', a wildly popular bicycle sharing system. Despite Vélib's public appeal, vandalism and theft led to ballooning operating costs-costs borne by JCDecaux alone. The two parties opted to renegotiate their contract, which would impact prices, revenue sharing, cost allocation, and the operation of the system as a whole. Could the parties agree on a common strategy that would meet their objectives, while still delivering a first class bicycle sharing service to the city of Paris?

Recorded Future was a software company that aimed to aggregate the information on the Internet in a way that offered new and valuable insights. Funded by Google and In-Q-Tel, the venture-capital wing of the Central Intelligence Agency, Recorded Future gave people tools to not only extract meaning from the web, but also to make predictions about future events ranging from terrorist attacks to corporate product releases. The case presents the investment decision of a portfolio manager, Andrew Fisher of LXE Capital, who is considering investing based on insights drawn from Recorded Future's software interface. The case asks students to grapple with a new source of investment data, to evaluate the reliability of back-tested portfolio strategies, and to ponder how best to utilize data for the purposes of generating "alpha" (positive risk-adjusted returns) in investing.

Native Americans were subjected to a protracted and painful process of forced removal from their land. The case provides "first hand" evidence on the debate over Indian removal as it took place during the early nineteenth century. The first document is excerpted from Andrew Jackson's First Annual Message to Congress in 1829 and the second document from Jackson's Second Annual Message in 1830, the year the Indian Removal Act was passed. The third and fourth documents cover the Congressional debate over the relocation of Indians, which led to strong partisan splits and divisions between the North and the South. Document three is excerpted from Whig Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey's six-hour speech to Congress opposing Indian removal. Document four is excerpted from a speech by Senator John Forsyth, a Democrat and former Governor of Georgia who spoke in response to Senator Frelinghuysen's remarks. A final document presents the Cherokee perspective and the reasons for their opposition to removal as represented by a memorial letter, written to the United States Congress in 1829. A statistical portrait follows the documentary evidence.

A new CEO steps into the shoes of his long-serving predecessor who had created the U.S. telecommunications giant via a series of acquisitions and, before departing, had initiated the company's strategic repositioning. The new CEO reflects on Verizon's recent successes, some of which he led, and considered how to ensure the team would continue to rise to new challenges. He knew change was both energizing and difficult and that every victory had to be followed by the next play. He paused in his New York City office to think about how his team handled recent challenges and whether the culture was in place to continue Verizon's transformation from a traditional telecommunications provider to a global services and technology firm.

As owner and CEO, Wim Van der Borght had grown Bananas in 8 years from a 4.5 million euro company into a 40 million euro group of companies with a range of field marketing activities in Belgium and the Netherlands. The core of the group consisted of two companies - Bananas and Demonstrate - which were operationally completely independent and acted as competitors in the market. The two companies had different strengths and different cultures. In August 2008, Wim needed to decide on the right degree of interaction or integration of Bananas and Demonstrate. He also wanted to expand the companies' activities to a more comprehensive marketing offering and needed to consider international expansion opportunities.