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In early summer 2012, Brookfield Residential Properties Inc. (Brookfield), a Calgary-based residential property developer with holdings throughout North America, had an opportunity to develop a vacant site in the inner-city community of Scarboro, in the southwest quadrant of Calgary. Brookfield did not own the site but was working with the landowner to request that the city of Calgary rezone the site from single family to Direct Control to allow a proposed 52-unit project. Brookfield’s proposed housing development project was planned by following the policies set out in Calgary’s Municipal Development Plan. The plan was focused on the densification of Calgary’s population, particularly in the inner city and along established public transportation routes. The question was, how could Brookfield proceed to get buy-in for its project from Scarboro and the surrounding communities?

In 2016, Bossard AG was a leading wholesaler and supply chain service provider for fasteners. Its business model aimed to improve the efficiency of clients’ manufacturing operations by applying Industry 4.0 technologies to integrate the delivery of the highest quality screws, nuts, and bolts with logistics solutions for supply chains, and technical solutions for product designs using fasteners. Bossard’s key selling point was its ability to enhance its clients’ consumable parts management, thus reducing their total costs of ownership. Bossard had been successful in Europe, but found the Chinese market difficult to penetrate. The company was looking for better ways to deliver value to Chinese industrial customers.

In February 2016, the owner of a wool and yarn products retail business in the Enterprise Arcade, a not-for-profit retail business incubator in Stockton-on-Tees, United Kingdom, needed to meet with the manager of the arcade. Based in a central and prominent position in a struggling Northeast England town, the Enterprise Arcade was opened by the local council as a part of a large renovation project. It was intended to regenerate the area and support enterprise and employment by providing small, indoor, market-sized retail spaces for self-employed retail start-ups to test their markets. After 14 months with the incubator, the owner of the wool and yarn business was expected to be ready to move out, but her business models were still unproven, and she wanted to stay longer. The manager had to balance the overall success of the Enterprise Arcade with the turnover and successful graduations of the businesses therein. How should the business owner organize her priorities and prepare to negotiate with the manager? What should the manager advise her to do?

In October 2016, the founder of Summer Swim Academy—a provider of swimming lessons and lifeguarding services to families in Burlington, Ontario—was reflecting on the organization’s second full season of operations. The founder had been providing services in Burlington for the past six years and had been operating the business formally under the Summer Swim Academy brand for the past two years. She wanted to evaluate the possibility of expanding her business, either geographically or to a year-round operation, in order to achieve a profit goal of $50,000. To determine whether this goal was attainable, she needed to assess geographic and service-delivery expansion options for Summer Swim Academy.

The Regina Auto Racing Club (RARC) had been operating the Kings Park Speedway since 1967. In 2016, the race track and facilities were beginning to show their age and were in need of costly upgrading. Unfortunately, the club had also been suffering from declining attendance over the past five years, and the associated decline in ticket revenue had led to a shrinking race schedule. At the end of the race season in 2016, the club managed to break even financially and had a modest bank account balance. Although RARC was a non-profit organization, the continued financial viability of the club was at risk, and action was required to increase revenue. The club needed to decide among four non-mutually exclusive business strategies. Should it repair and rebuild the facilities to renew the appeal of the venue and attract more spectators? Should it increase its advertising and promotion activities to improve awareness of the club and events? Should it increase the number of race classes and special racing events, or should it introduce non-racing events to the facility to take advantage of other revenue-generating opportunities?

Safe Boat Trip Private Limited (Safe Boat Trip) of Kerala, India, is planning to launch a hydrofoil ferry service connecting the Port of Kochi, India, with two other ports in the state of Kerala by August 2016, to benefit from the tourism potential of the season in Kerala. The managing director has asked the principal superintendent of Safe Boat Trip to prepare a project plan for the boats to be commissioned into service, following approval from the Indian Register of Shipping (IRS). The principal superintendent must also carry out a break-even analysis of the project investment. With these challenges before him, the superintendent must set out to devise a solid plan of action before the company’s next meeting.

In July 2015, the founder of YourStory Media Private Limited (YourStory) needed to make key strategic decisions to scale up her business. YourStory was a top-ranked online media platform that focused on developing the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India by publishing news stories about entrepreneurs and start-ups and by organizing entrepreneurial conferences and events. Since its inception in 2008, the company had grown slowly and steadily using its own funds. However, it needed to expand rapidly in order to attract venture capital funding. YourStory’s founder knew that potential investors would translate their initial interest into actual investments only if she was able to demonstrate that YourStory had a coherent, comprehensive, and consistent story of its own. She had identified various strategic growth alternatives: given the evolving online media marketplace, which should she pursue to meet her expansion goal?

In early 2015, the chief executive officer and the management team of Groupon India, a subsidiary of U.S.-based Groupon Inc., faced a management buyout decision. Buoyed by a high growth rate and huge market potential in India, they wanted more India-specific product positioning and greater control over technology. They explored growth options available to the company, but faced the constraints of being part of a global conglomerate. The management team had narrowed its options to either starting a new venture or acquiring ownership of the subsidiary through a management buyout. How could they ensure they made the right decision?

In 2014, TELUS Communications (TELUS) acquired Public Mobile Holdings Inc., a small, money-losing, wireless carrier that operated in the lower, price-sensitive tier of the market. TELUS had not previously competed in the lower tier of the market, which had a history of low revenues per customer and low customer retention. The director of Mobility Marketing at TELUS faced the decision of what to do with this newly acquired brand. He was considering the market positioning options, brand portfolio implications, and financial impact of his decision. The options included migrating the new customers to one of the company’s existing brands, continuing to operate the firm as an independent brand, or repositioning the brand to improve profitability.

In November 2014, a senior administrative service officer at Madhya Pradesh State Civil Supplies Corporation Limited was faced with the problem of determining how to best allocate food grain according to location demands. She needed to choose the best delivery routes and provide a cost-effective means of meeting demands for food grain from fair-price shops. How should she approach this problem? How should she manage any changes that she makes in the distribution plans?

In 2016, the owner of a cow-calf operation must decide what the appropriate weight for cows in their herd is. For decades, the national trend has been for cow weights to increase because they produce larger calves, but evidence indicates that cow weights may have reached the point where the cost of maintaining a larger cow has become greater than the return from producing a larger calf. Analyzing this issue introduces marginal principles from economics. Formerly Old Mule Farms, product no. 9B10B004.

Founded in 2008 in Singapore and China, ActSocial was a social marketing company that initially provided brands with word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing services. The firm then adjusted its model to focus on providing online social media and digital content marketing services. After significant success from 2013 to 2015, ActSocial was fully acquired by Linkfluence, a leading global social media monitoring and research company. As part of this larger company, the new leadership team at Linkfluence Asia now needed to decide how to proceed and wondered if they would have influence over the direction of their product, hiring decisions, team-building, and growth plans.

OrganiGram Holdings Inc. (OrganiGram), a New Brunswick-based company, was a licensed producer of medical cannabis in Canada. On April 20, 2016, the Canadian government announced that legislation to legalize recreational cannabis would be introduced in the spring of 2017 with the intention of having it become law in the spring of 2018. The announcement triggered expansion activities at all of Canada’s largest licensed producers of cannabis. However, there were many unknowns in terms of how the legalization of recreational cannabis would happen. What would the timeline be? Who would be allowed to grow cannabis? In anticipation of regulatory changes, OrganiGram needed to analyze the Canadian cannabis industry and engage in a scenario-planning exercise. How could OrganiGram move through this time of uncertainty, while both creating a strategy for the anticipated recreational cannabis market and continuing to work on its medical cannabis sales?

In its first three years, East Coast Lifestyle, a Nova Scotia-based apparel company and one of Canada's fastest-growing business ventures, sold more than 500,000 products and received plenty of publicity from celebrities who wore its gear. To continue its substantial growth, the company needed a market that offered room for expansion. In early 2017, the 25-year-old chief executive officer faced several options, including developing the company’s Canadian brand portfolio with West Coast Lifestyle; expanding its main brand, East Coast Lifestyle, into the United States; and licensing the brand abroad. The real question was which strategy to pursue, and more importantly, how to implement the chosen strategy and roll it out.

This case explains how Ming Yung got the highest B Corp. assessment score in Taiwan and was invited by the US President Obama to attend the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Silicon Valley. It also takes the reader through the process of how the founder Mr. Yang created something big from not only nothing but a huge debt.

Midea Group Co., Ltd. was a white goods empire built by its Chinese founder over several decades; consequently, the Midea brand led the home appliance industry in China. In August 2012, the 70-year-old founder and chairman retired as board chairman. The founder’s chosen successor was a 45-year-old professional manager and the former chairman and chief executive officer of one of Midea Group’s firms. This manager faced a grim situation as he took over the position: business performance was plummeting, Midea Group was urgently in need of a strategic transformation, senior management would likely resist taking orders from him, and, at a basic level, the organization was overstaffed and ineffective. In addition, many senior managers felt that the founder’s son would have been a better choice as successor to his father, following Chinese cultural traditions. The manager knew that changes would be necessary to help Midea Group thrive, but such changes were complicated by complex organizational structures and the countless subcultures caused by Midea Group’s former growth-oriented focus. How could the company successfully navigate this succession process?

In 2012, after the U.S. government passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, the founder of Hudson Integrated, a website development company, decided to launch StartupValley, an equity crowdfunding company focused on the Title III provisions of the JOBS Act. These provisions allowed companies to solicit equity investments directly from small investors by using an intermediary registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, consisting of either a broker–dealer or an approved funding portal. However, three years passed before all Title III regulations were finalized, and more than six months later, they came into effect. During that time, the market became crowded with both start-ups and established companies. In 2016, when the Title III provisions finally went into effect, the entrepreneur faced two key challenges. How should he position StartupValley for success in this new industry? And how should he balance his own time and resources between his existing web development business and the new venture?

Curana BVBA was a small family-owned company in Belgium. In the 1990s, it was producing mudguards and fenders as an original equipment manufacturer for the European bicycle industry. As Curana BVBA faced increasing competition in 2009, it needed to make a strategic turnaround. The company focused on the top segments of the market and introduced innovative and design-based bicycle accessories. The company didn't have the competency to develop these new products itself, so it built and relied on an open innovation strategy that included several partners who could develop and manufacture the original products. As the network matured, Curana derived new competencies from the partners, which ultimately allowed Curana to embark on a proactive innovation process, spawning entirely new product designs more rapidly than anyone else in the industry.

Bali Hai Cruises had grown from a start-up company in 1990 to become a thriving multimillion-dollar business in 2017 that employed 460 people on the Indonesian islands of Bali and Lembongan. This solid and consistent business development took place despite a business environment and government that had not always been friendly and positive toward foreign investors. What critical factors brought success to this tourism-based company in such a challenging market? What behaviours and strategies had Bali Hai Cruises followed to build trust, deliver on performance, and resolve challenges in developing this vertically integrated company? The company now faced new challenges in terms of an aging leadership and workforce, the continuing need to manage and maintain its working relationships with the Indonesian government and the harbour authorities, the rapidly developing information technology capacity of the marine tourism industry, and the potential of growing competition. What strategies could Bali Hai Cruises implement to continue its success and growth in 2018 and beyond?

Precia Pharma Private Limited was considered one of the fastest growing companies in the highly competitive Indian pharmaceutical industry. An email from the company’s star performing executive in March 2017, highlighting sales pressures and unethical practices in the industry, forced the managing director to face the reality of how the ills plaguing the pharmaceutical sector might affect his company. He wondered what he must do to maintain the company’s ethical code of conduct while striving for a healthy balance between ambitious targets and good selling practices. The case explores the strategies of the company for managing the different ethical issues in a pharmaceutical setting.