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Martha Rinaldi has been an assistant product manager at leading beverage company Potomac Waters since graduating from business school. Rinaldi is frustrated by her relationships with her boss and a close co-worker. Even though she works hard to please her manager, she has received a negative performance evaluation for her first four months. Should Rinaldi leave Potomac for a standing job offer at a company she previously interned with or try to improve her current situation?

De Kuyper Royal Distillers was a 300-year-old family firm in the Netherlands and produced the largest variety of liqueurs in the world. The firm had always been owned and controlled by the De Kuyper family. In 2009, Bob de Kuyper, the 10th generation to own and run the firm, retired from his position as managing director and an outsider was brought in as the interim managing director. In January 2010, Marc de Kuyper, the eldest son of Bob de Kuyper, worked for an outside firm in a marketing position. He had a strong desire to join the family firm and was trying to decide how to convince his father, and the family firm's supervisory board, that he had the capabilities to eventually take a leadership role in the family business. Was there a future for Marc at the family firm? What could he do, if anything, in the succession process?

This case invites students to grapple with the dilemmas faced by Laura Lopez, the new Executive Director of a Puerto Rican educational advocacy NGO called Sapientis. Six months ago, Sapientis gained national visibility when its national coalition for educational reform and excellence (CECE) achieved a breakthrough by gaining government support for major educational reform. But, in the ensuing months, a variety of events have raised questions about how serious that commitment will be in practice.

Salesforce.com recently implemented an innovative social enterprise business model whereby the Salesforce.com Foundation funds its operations and grant budget by selling discounted salesforce.com software licenses to nonprofits and education clients. The case recounts the development and initial stages of this project and the tradeoffs inherent in mixing social and business goals. Furthermore, as background the case also provides detail on Salesforce's 1-1-1 business model, whereby the company contributes one percent of product, one percent of equity, and one percent of employee hours back to the communities it serves.

The owner and CEO of Adaptive Engineering was facing an important decision: should he focus on rebuilding its core professional services business which had generated significant revenue and cash flow over the past several years, or should he focus on developing and marketing licensed software which had been under development for several years but had yet to become profitable.

In 2011, Haier, China's leading appliance manufacturer, had over $20 billion in worldwide sales and had just been named the leading refrigerator manufacturer worldwide. This case describes Haier's rise over three decades, from a defunct refrigerator factory in China's Shandong province to an international player with $5.5 billion in overseas sales. Haier had followed a nontraditional expansion strategy of entering the developed markets of Europe and the United States as a niche player before venturing into Middle Eastern and neighboring Asian markets. Looking ahead to the next decade, Haier CEO Zhang Ruimin saw opportunities for Haier to grow through product diversification and additional market penetration in both developed and emerging markets. He and his colleagues would depend on their experience of acquiring numerous companies, entering and retaining new markets, restructuring the organization, and managing hundreds of subsidiaries around the world. They would need to determine which of the lessons learned from Haier's international operations should be implemented in China and which skills learned at home could best be applied abroad.

Comprehensive health care insurance reform was a perennial goal of the Democratic Party. Although reform efforts had persistently ended in failure, proponents of reform saw a new window of opportunity after the 2008 Presidential election. Barack Obama had campaigned on the promise of reform and was elected by the largest margin of victory for any Democrat in decades. In Congress, Democrats held large majorities in the House (257 of 435 seats) and the Senate (58 of 100 seats, plus two independents who caucused with Democrats). Soon after his inauguration, President Obama held a forum assembling representatives from Congress, the health care industry, and unions to launch his pursuit of health care reform. This case reviews the public, legislative, and political battle that ensued. It follows the interest groups with a stake in health care policy, and the strategies that they, as well as politicians, used to promote their objectives within the context of U.S. policy making institutions.

This case covers the electric vehicle industry, starting with the history of the electric car and then moving on to the forces driving the twenty-first century automotive industry toward electrification. These include: Government incentives for buying electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, the economic and political problems related to oil dependency, the effect of oil prices on consumers' car buying habits, carbon dioxide emission and pollution awareness, and the effect of current and upcoming worldwide emissions regulations. The case then discusses the challenges to mass electric vehicle adoption including: the relatively higher price of certain electric vehicles; consumers' fear of "range anxiety" - the term for batteries running out of power in the middle of the road; and the narrow demographics of traditional hybrid buyers - which could be mirrored in the demographics of electric car buyers. Other challenges include: competition with internal combustion engines that were becoming more fuel efficient, time limits for government incentive programs, the new competitive market of small, more fuel efficient cars being produced and sold in China and India for less than $3,000, and the question of carbon footprint - the concept that coal is the major source of electricity production in the United States and China, and therefore electric vehicles may simply create a shift in carbon footprint from oil to coal. The case provides specific data about electric car and plug-hybrid brands, price, all-electric driving range and release dates. It also details government programs to promote electric vehicles, as well as current and future mandated miles per gallon for various countries. In addition, it provides data about worldwide and U.S. car sales, how far Americans drive and for what purpose, and psychographics of hybrid vehicle owners.

New York Fries' president and executive vice president were preparing for the next biannual meeting of domestic and international franchisees. They planned to provide an update on all aspect of corporate strategy and planning for the year ahead, but they only had a few days to formulate a new international growth strategy. The president and executive vice president were hesitant to expand into new territories partly due to poor experiences in Australia and South Korea, yet international franchisees had encouraged them to investigate promising areas of expansion into China and India. Complicating matters was the future development of the company's chain of premium hamburger restaurants. While New York Fries was a well-received brand in Canada, it had not yet decided if and how to internationalize the brand. How could the president and executive vice president pursue new opportunities while maintaining their premium brands of French fries and hamburgers?

A publicly traded mining company has an opportunity to develop a mine containing gold, cobalt, and bismuth in Canada’s Northwest Territories and must determine the financial viability of doing so. In order to gauge the attractiveness of the project, the company needs to evaluate the net present value of the opportunity, given volatile and uncertain variables, such as commodity prices and foreign exchange rates. The company must also consider a number of qualitative considerations that may affect the project, such as relations with First Nations communities.

Lind Equipment failed to meet its loan covenants with its senior bank lender in the summer of 2008, just six months after it was acquired. While the senior bank debt comprised only 6% of the capital used in the acquisition and was fully secured, it exercised its right to stop payments to Lind's subordinated lender that funded about 40% of the acquisition, pushing that debt into default as well. These financial problems were the result of declining revenues and profits at Lind as exchange rates and the impact of the Great Recession took its toll on the firm. Without a quick solution, Lind could be pushed into bankruptcy.

The mission of the Global Business School Network (GBSN) is to strengthen business education for the developing world. The organization was transitioning out of its startup phase and wants to shift its focus from capacity building activities driven by the organization to empowering the network to carry out GBSN's mission. The case asks, what is the best way to accomplish this objective?

Late in 2010, Credit Suisse CEO Brady Dougan and his team closed in on the decision of whether or not to issue contingent capital, which Swiss regulators would require by 2019. There were a number of substantial issues facing Dougan and his team, including whether contingent capital would provide sufficient loss absorption when called upon, would there be sufficient demand for this new instrument, would it be cost effective capital, and what were the risks to Credit Suisse' reputation with clients and regulators if an issue did not go well? In addition, The Basel Committee, the body that recommended global bank capital standards, had decided that much of the existing bank "hybrid debt" would no longer count as capital for regulatory purposes, meaning banks would need to replace this portion of their equity accounts with some other form of capital. However, Basel had yet to decide whether contingent capital would be allowable in the new "Basel III" regulatory regime.

"In October 2005, PPG pioneered a new model for online apparel retailing in China. Targeting low-end men's apparel, PPG's new business model met with great initial success due to its responsive supply chain, lighter distribution channel, and the brand established by costly advertising. However, underlying limitations of PPG's business model led to its eventual failure. Followers learned from both PPG's success and failure. The best practices of VANCL provided a good example of the evolution of a business model, which made VANCL the new leader in the online retail industry. To show the evolving characteristics of the apparel retailing business model, this case describes a successive two-stage story, in which each company made improvements based on other forerunners."

This case focuses on Cisco Systems' innovative probe-and-learn approach to using social media to launch its ASR 1000 Series Edge Router. The company had decided to eschew traditional print and TV media in marketing the new product and had decided instead to focus its efforts entirely on digital marketing and social media to attract the attention of its target market. The case discusses Cisco's bold plan to launch the ASR 1000 Series "virtually, visually, and virally" and the digital tactics employed by the Cisco Systems marketing team to accomplish this ambitious goal. Business marketers normally adopt a more serious and traditional approach to marketing its products but in this case Cisco had decided to buck that trend by exploring digital tools and social gaming avenues which its target client - the technical community - were increasingly frequenting. Cisco's challenge lay in whether this new approach and resultant value proposition would resonate with its technical audience and give the ASR 1000 Router the kind of publicity it needed to have. The case is set at a time when social media was burgeoning as a promising way to engage consumers more deeply with brands and products, but marketers were still experimenting with the tools and tactics of social media for marketing.

A follow up for Ben & Jerry's Homemade (UVA-F-1364), this case is suitable for MBA, EMBA, and GEMBA programs, and could work as a stand-alone undergraduate introduction to corporate finance and M&A or an introductory strategy class on M&A or post-merger integration. Did the Unilever/Ben & Jerry's merger yield both firms' fundamental objectives? What did the market think? What did each get from the deal? What can students tell about where future value will lay? The case allows students to discuss post-merger integration issues and what makes for a successful merger. The case requires little or no calculations.

To retain competitive advantage in uncertain times, a leading investment bank aligns HR practices with its corporate values and mission through a new 360-degree assessment system. Rolled out among officer-level employees, the Performance Management System is put to the test at promotion time. This case supports the exploration of unconscious bias in decision making.

The case deals with analyzing the key drivers of foreign direct investment (FDI) of U.S., Japanese, and European multinational financial services and other service providers investing in the Middle East. In this case, the focus is on investing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. A sample of the foreign companies is interviewed to determine the key factors in their decision process, why they selected the form of operation they did, and what their business model is. The case is in three sections: the first shows how laws, requirements, and regulations have changed and become more receptive to foreign investment in recent years-this is done by comparing several business environmental characteristic indices and their change over time. The second section examines the exchange arrangements and framework for financial and capital transactions in the countries. The third section examines the experiences of several multinational companies in the financial services sector that have invested in the region.

The managing director at a major investment bank is preparing his team for a visit to Lululemon Athletica, a yoga-inspired athletic apparel company. The investment bank has been following Lululemon’s development over the past few years and is impressed by the company’s unique positioning and rapid growth. The bank believes that there is a window of opportunity for Lululemon’s founder and private equity investors to either undertake an initial public offering or raise debt to fund Lululemon’s U.S. expansion.

Denise Frazer and Paolo Canto, two HBS students, have decided to give each other feedback on their class participation. While Denise believes that she has provided concrete, actionable feedback to Paolo, she does not feel that Paolo is reciprocating. His feedback is general and superficial. Denise and Paolo have set a time to meet to discuss their latest class participation, and Denise has decided to use this time to address her issues with Paolo. This case should be used with its partner case: Denise Frazer and Paolo Canto: A Case Vignette on Feedback - Paolo Canto's Perspective.