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In 2022, Roblox had 58.8 million daily active users, including over half of all children and teens under the age of 16 in the United States. Roblox, a free-to-use "co-experience platform", allowed users to come together in immersive 3D experiences to socialize, work, play, learn, and purchase virtual and real goods. Brands saw Roblox as a major metaverse testing ground and experimented by offering a variety of branded items and experiences. In 2022, Roblox was grappling with how to maintain revenue growth and generate profits, considering two key decisions. First, how should Roblox expand its partnerships with brands, and should Roblox allow brands to offer immersive advertising within experiences? Roblox would have to tread carefully to not raise the ire of watchdog groups who were wary of advertising targeted at children. Second, should Roblox change its economic model which was free to publish, and adopt a "scarcity economy" whereby Roblox would allow creators to only publish items in limited quantities and charge an upfront fee for item creation, similar to a manufacturing fee? On one hand, scarcity could prevent excess supply from driving down prices, but culturally Roblox users and developers were accustomed to unlimited supply, low prices, and virtually no upfront fees.

Late afternoon on Friday, October 27th, 2022, Elon Musk was the center of attention at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters. The night before, Musk officially took the company private and became Twitter's majority shareholder, finally ending a months-long acquisition saga. He appointed himself CEO and brought in his own team to clean house. He now needed to decide on short-term actions and a long-term strategy to turnaround the company. In the immediate days and weeks, Musk needed to take decisive steps to succeed against the major opposition to his leadership from both inside and outside the company. Twitter employees circulated an open letter protesting expected layoffs, where they called him "reckless," "unfair," and "impulsive." Advertising agencies advised their clients to pause spending on Twitter, and some threatened to leave. EU officials considered a broader Twitter ban should Twitter not abide by their moderation policies.

This case traces the rise of Ronald Reagan from small town Illinois to two-term president of the United States. An unlikely candidate for the world's most powerful job, the case describes the different roles that Reagan filled over his life: radio announcer, Hollywood actor, labor leader, state governor, and, finally, president. As president, the case describes how Reagan revitalized the U.S. economy, negotiated nuclear arms reductions, and precipitated the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. Students will learn how Ronald Reagan navigated life's choices to leave a lasting impact on the world.

In 2022, Wang Jun was the chairperson of Ant Fortune, a comprehensive wealth management platform under Ant Group. China's economic growth since 1978 led to a significant increase in the number of people having sufficient money to invest. Ant Fortune aimed to provide inclusive wealth management services to such consumers. Since 2013, Ant Fortune capitalised on China's high internet penetration rate and the popularity of Alipay, and started helping consumers invest in its money market fund Yu'e Bao. The improvement in technology meant that investment barriers were lowered, and users could be easily reached online. Algorithms could help users allocate funds and rebalance their portfolios automatically. Ant Fortune built an open platform to connect users with mutual fund providers. It endeavoured to be user-centric and provided educational tools to help investors make investment decisions. Wang's goal was to make Ant Fortune the most trusted wealth-management platform that promoted investment education to benefit society and the most trustworthy partner for wealth management firms.

A Silicon Valley start-up executive must navigate tensions between its Ukrainian and Russian sub-contractors as war between the two countries rages. After war erupts between Ukraine and Russia, a team of subcontracted Ukrainian software developers threatens to cut ties with a venture-backed Silicon Valley startup if the company does not end its relationship with a team of subcontracted Russian developers. The start-up's VP of Product and Engineering works to smooth tensions and find a solution.

In July 2022, Celsius Network (Celsius), a cryptocurrency (crypto) network, filed for bankruptcy. Celsius was a "crypto bank" but often acted as a hedge fund. It was taking deposits in cryptos such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), promising a sizeable yield to the depositors and then lending these out to institutional investors, or more aggressively to decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols which were promising an even higher yield (but with a higher risk, of course). The case examines the DeFi ecosystem, its key players, and discusses key building blocks such as stablecoins and their role in it. The case can be taught in a course on financial institutions, capital markets, or fintech.

When IBM set about commercializing its artificial intelligence-driven Watson AI in the healthcare market, its early successes were widely publicized. Senior managers and the media claimed that its diagnostic features would soon surpass those of the sharpest doctors. The case describes the large gap between what was promised and what happened in practice, offering insider insights on why IBM's projects failed. As the corporate commitment to AI escalated in response to successful lab results, cognitive dissonance arose between managers' expectations and what they could actually deliver. How could that have happened? Three reasons for Watson's downfall are explored: 1) The tendency for societal expectations to exceed the actual technical capabilities, leading to a gap in perception between AI in the lab and AI in the field. 2) Overselling of the economic benefits of AI by the salesforce; 3) Failure to secure the cooperation of key stakeholders, notably doctors who were asked to improve the performance of AI but were undermined by claims that AI could outperform them.

In November 2019, digital marketing firm Arcane was six months into the conversion of its London, Ontario, headquarters into an organization of "agile" squads (small, self-managed teams)-a radical departure from the discipline-based silos that had served the agency since its beginning in 2011. Chief executive officer Lindsay Schneider and chief operating officer David Bunce, the architects of the change, were preparing an update for Arcane's Ownership Group the following week on the status of the squad structure rollout. Schneider and Bunce were tasked with reviewing the introduction of the squad structure and assessing the success of its implementation.

Kiah Williams started SIRUM as a Stanford undergraduate alongside her classmates Adam Kircher and George Wang. Nearly two decades later, the medication donation nonprofit was now operating in five states across the country and had helped facilitate medication donations to reach 150,000 uninsured and underinsured patients. SIRUM's technology enabled donors with excess medication supply to donate unexpired, sealed, non-opioid medications to those who needed it most. SIRUM had been largely funded by philanthropic sources and had secured funding through 2025. Williams was now pondering different growth paths for the nonprofit. SIRUM could attempt to grow quickly by expanding into new states or offering a wider range of medications. It could pressure test its pricing model. Or it could build new lines of business related to data, reporting, and compliance. The growth path was unclear. Williams wanted to demonstrate that SIRUM could be a model for social enterprises to succeed and achieve both deep impact and long-term financial stability. How should she build SIRUM's growth strategy?

In July 2019, Graphic Packaging CEO Michael Doss was proposing a $600 million investment in a new machine to produce coated recycled board (CRB), a type of paper packaging used for consumer products (cups, cereal boxes, beverage boxes, etc.) that utilized recycled paper as an input. Graphic Packaging was an integrated producer of paperboard packaging for consumer products and the market leader in CRB. What made this decision difficult was that for the past 30 years, plastic packaging had been replacing paper packaging because of cost and ease of manufacturing. Yet a growing interest in environmental sustainability among paperboard manufacturers, consumer goods companies (immediate customers), and consumers (end users) was creating the possibility of a transition from plastics back to paper-based products. If these trends actually materialized, there would be greater demand for CRB mills that could use recycled inputs and create recyclable products. Was this the right time for a capacity neutral investment (GPK planned to shut older plants when the new one came online) particularly when the sustainability trends were still unclear. By closing older, less efficient mills in favor of a newer, larger, and more efficient machine, GPK could save $100 million per year in costs. In short, this decision had a clear economic benefit as long as sustainability trends continued, competitors did not add new or more efficient capacity, and GPK actually removed existing capacity once the new machine was operational.

Yup Kim, the Head of Investments, Private Equity at the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), reflected on the pension fund's private equity strategy. In July of 2022, the fund was in the midst of a multi-year turnaround strategy with the goal to "consistently deploy capital at scale in order to build a diversified, cost-efficient portfolio of high-conviction investments that outperform [its] PE policy benchmark." CalPERS had also recently increased the overall allocation to private equity from 8% to 13%, making it even more critical that Kim and the private equity team achieve their goals. Moreover, CalPERS faced a global economy seemingly headed into a recession and changes within the private equity industry as a whole. Kim needed to decide if they had the right strategy in place to achieve their long-term vision. This case also explores the U.S. public pension system and private equity co-investments.

Cara Nicoletti was an emerging food entrepreneur that had recently launched her first product, a sustainably sourced, vegetable-infused meat sausage. Brooklyn, New York City-based Seemore Meats & Veggies had seen promising signs of success in local markets and pockets of the west coast, such as Los Angeles, California. Customers overwhelmingly approved of the product, and bought them by the case. Nicoletti was ready to scale her operation. However, she encountered challenges meeting the mounting demand for her products nationwide. She had already managed to enter a crowded industry dominated by industry giants Tyson Foods, JBS USA, and many others. Faced with the challenge of costly delivery expenses in her direct-to-consumer business (DTC), Nicoletti needed to decide whether she should, remain a digital DTC brand or shift to a multi-channel sales strategy that could include any combination of options such as grocery store, private label, or food service partners. Shrinking cash reserves left from her Seed Round expansion made the problem more pressing. Nicoletti needed to prove to investors that she could effectively scale, which would allow her to campaign for the funds to expand her product offering and sales operation.

US-based lingerie retailer Victoria's Secret Stores Brand Management, LLC (Victoria's Secret) was started by a man who had been embarrassed to shop for lingerie for his wife and aimed to make the lingerie purchasing experience more comfortable for men. In 2020, after struggling to adapt to changing consumer habits and tastes and suffering from decreasing quality in its products and increasing competition from online retailers, the company faced a final blow from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Revenue streams were drying up, stores were closing, and the company was struggling with a tarnished image resulting from its links to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Its parent company's top management team and board of directors now faced a critical decision: Should they attempt to repair Victoria's Secret's brand image and fight to strengthen sales, sell the Victoria's Secret brand, or spin off the brand?

J.M. Huber, one of the largest and oldest family-held companies in the US, had strategically repositioned itself several times since it was founded in 1883 as a dry-color business. Visionary family leaders and a committed senior management team had transformed the group into an international player with operations in more than 20 countries and about half of its 4,000 employees based outside North America. A portfolio management company (PMC), J.M. Huber became one of the key players in hydrocolloids, specialty chemicals and minerals, and engineered woods, and in 2017 it booked sales of US$2.3 billion. In 1993, Peter T. Francis, a fourth-generation family member, became chairman and CEO. For the fifth time in J.M. Huber's history, the family took complete leadership of the company. The years ahead were not always kind. In 2004 the firm had levered up its balance sheet to complete the largest acquisition in its history. Then, 2006 brought the collapse of the US housing market, and the economic crisis of 2007 hit many of J.M. Huber's key markets hard, putting the group under pressure. In the midst of the crisis, the company faced another significant milestone in its long history: Peter T. Francis had already announced in 2004 that he planned to retire in 2009. He was well aware that leadership succession was one of the most delicate moments for a family business, even in the best of times. How did the family and the board of directors support Peter T. Francis's decision to step down from his dual leadership function in the middle of the global recession? How was the succession engineered? What came first: CEO succession or chairman succession? Who was chosen for the CEO and the chairman positions: internal or external candidates, family or non-family members?

In 2020, Alejandro Simón, CEO of Sancor Seguros Group, a nearly 75-year-old cooperative that had become Argentina's insurance leader, had to decide about the Group's digital transformation strategy. The Group's values and history needed to be considered during the analysis, especially regarding its relationship with individual agents selling Sancor Seguros Group's products, who drove much of the Group's revenues. Sancor Seguros Group had always taken into consideration agents' input when making important decisions, which extended to the Group's recent efforts on its digital transformation. Yet, not all of them had adapted to new technologies. However, the use of digital channels to sell goods and services accelerated after almost two months of a mandatory quarantine that restricted out-of-home activities to buying essentials such as food and medicines. Would the momentum gained by these digital channels persist, serving as the platform for agents to catch up with the industry's newest global trends? Accordingly, how could Sancor Seguros Group help agents capture the value created by new technologies? How should the Group approach its presence on less personalized channels, like the ones offered by brokers or digital channels? The Group could also concentrate its efforts on long-term actions and focus on revamping its product offering.

In 2017, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, realized that the company needed a new talent development strategy to prepare its employees for the future of work, particularly a learning ecosystem that could support an enterprise-wide digital and talent transformation. The following year, Thirumala Arohi, Infosys's Senior Vice President and Head of Education, Training and Assessment, and his team developed Wingspan: a first-of-its-kind digital learning environment with internally developed content as well as content from Infosys's external alliance partners. Wingspan was initially tightly integrated with other Infosys systems, but eventually it became a full-fledged product offered to Infosys's corporate clients. In 2020, Wingspan's adoption got an unexpected boost due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Infosys staff migrated to online learning, by the end of the year nearly 220,000 employees had collectively chalked up over three million hours of learning time on Wingspan. By March 2021, more than one million client users relied on Wingspan through their own organisational learning platforms. The case study shows how Wingspan had managed to achieve scale while embodying Arohi's opinion that Infosys was a company where, "lifelong learning is the North Star for organisational progress and talent development." In early 2022, Arohi wondered what was next for Wingspan.

A commercial real estate expert contemplated the best use of his family-owned land parcel through hotel development. The venture- and capital-structures were put in place as a lender committed to the debt capital. After considering operations, financing and taxation cash flows, the project could have potentially met the equity holders' return expectations. But things did not go as expected, and the costs overshot to outlier levels.

Since its beginning in 2021, Stitchwheel LLC (Stitchwheel), a needlepoint canvas painting service, had seen immediate success. From the company's inception, the co-founder of Stitchwheel had been assessing the advantages and disadvantages of an expansion strategy and wondered what barriers she might encounter. She was also assessing the viability to expand beyond painted needlepoint canvases to achieve substantial growth. Within a short time frame, the company had enjoyed strong brand recognition and offered a meaningful unique selling proposition, but there were still many questions about the company's next steps, including which growth strategy would be most suitable. Did the company have the necessary resources and skilled management team to adequately monitor and support growth? What marketing and operational issues was the company likely to encounter with expansion?

In February 2020, Peter Maxwell received his share from the sale of the Australian property development company he had co-founded in 2002: US$115 million. He began organizing his reflections on four of the most significant company decisions that had occurred at the company in recent years and how they had impacted the business. They focused on installing effective board governance; rejecting a move into resort development; maintaining ownership and control; and considering the personal health of the senior executives. Having been invited to speak at his alma mater, Maxwell was planning to ask the students to rank these decisions in terms of importance.