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After studying this case, the students/participants would be able to: discuss important personality traits of an entrepreneur; understand specific challenges faced by a venture as it moves toward higher growth stage; discuss the importance of strategic planning and managerial style as the ventures move from establishment stage to growth stage.

The case is about MotivPrints, a two years old venture, offering custom designing and commercial printing to businesses in Gujarat, India. MotivPrints was established by Himanshu Dhadnekar in 2016 and had 85 SME clients and 35 vendors by 2019. Himanshu, a young entrepreneur had been involved in entrepreneurial activities since his school days and was also involved in a couple of business ventures during his MBA. However, he had been flip-flopping as an employee and entrepreneur, as then. At MotivPrints, he handled key responsibilities of developing client networks, generating business, marketing and managing relationship with vendors. With limited support of a team of freelancer associates, no permanent staff for assistance and lack of funds made it imperative for Himanshu to plan for scaling up his venture for survival and growth. Could he envision MotivPrints as a larger entity? If yes, what changes, mandated by growth, were needed to be made in both – the entrepreneur and the organization?

The case can be discussed in the class of entrepreneurship at the master’s level. It can also be used in the entrepreneurship specialization course in the second year of post-graduation. The case can be also be used for young entrepreneurs in an executive development program focusing on new ventures.

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CSS: 3 Entrepreneurship.

Jim Reynolds Jr. founded Loop Capital in 1997 as an investment bank specializing in bond sales for municipalities. Ten years later, with thirteen offices and almost 100 employees, Loop Capital was a national company and had brokered more than $800 billion of underwritings in equity, tax-exempt, and taxable fixed income markets. In the process of building its municipal finance and equity trading businesses, Loop Capital had developed close relationships with a number of government officials, large institutional money managers, and corporate executives. These customers began asking Loop Capital for help with other financial services, leading the firm to build corporate finance, tax-exempt, and taxable fixed-income platforms so it could offer a wider array of investment services. Municipal and corporate finance as well as equity, taxable, and tax-exempt trading were generating positive cash flow. In a field where failures were frequent, Loop Capital was thriving, and Reynolds saw great but untapped potential in the company's future. Over the past several years, Loop Capital had served as financial advisor to several municipalities that wanted to lease or sell public assets such as airports, toll roads, and seaports. Now he confronted several intriguing questions: Should he launch a $700 million infrastructure fund to invest in the types of deals the firm had helped structure? Did it make sense to invest in order to staff, market, and support the start-up of this new fund? If the fund was launched, should Loop Capital commit to the 1% investment likely to be required as the fund's general partner?

Learn how to start a new financial services firm/investment bank venture Learn how an investment banking firm becomes successful at doing a few things well Assess risks of expanding into a new line of business with a different business model Examine differences between investment banking and fund management, and between high-growth entrepreneurship and lifestyle entrepreneurship Examine the significance, if any, of being a minority entrepreneur

Sara Lee Corporation's acquisition binge in the 1980s and 1990s left the company with a portfolio of vastly different businesses operating independently of one another. It had experienced rapid top-line growth, but at the same time cash flows had declined. Sara Lee ignored both internal and external warning signs until a major transformation plan became necessary. This case examines the company's multiple turnaround attempts. The learning objective of the case is to analyze “early stage” turnaround efforts by examining how the company found itself in decline, evaluating its attempts to improve its performance, and assessing the turnaround plan.

(1) Learn to identify a specific challenging moment when reading and analyzing a turnaround plan; (2) address the implementation problems of an early stage turnaround and discuss exit options; (3) evaluate when a change of long-held beliefs and decades-long strategy by a company is warranted; (4) evaluate Sara Lee's marketing strategies in light of the disappointed retail and wholesale customers; and (5) show the similarities in traits between turnaround managers and high-growth entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship.

MBA and masters in management.

Raizcorp Chief Executive Allon Raiz was faced each day with many applications to join his business incubation prosperator programme. He knew what to look for in an entrepreneur, but it was not always “cut and dried”. In September 2012, he and his panel were considering an applicant who had passed all the tests with flying colours, and they were unanimous in their belief that he had what it took to be successful. His business, however, left them in doubt. It was a struggling IT support company, which they felt had no differentiating factors in an already overtraded industry. Raizcorp believed in “backing the jockey but not the horse”, which often meant having to change the entrepreneur's mindset and helping them explore new ideas. Would they be successful in this case? And was it worth the investment of time and resources? It worried Raiz, because he knew if the individual was to embark on a new venture, it would take some time before Raizcorp would see any return on its investment.

The case has the following objectives: to demonstrate understanding of the key concepts of entrepreneurship, to discuss entrepreneurship as a process, to analyse human and social capital attributes relating to successful entrepreneurship, to identify entrepreneurial motivations/cognitions/behaviours, to appreciate the key factors of successful entrepreneurship practices, to assess the relevance of the practice of entrepreneurship to individuals and society, to illustrate key ideas of entrepreneurship with reference to empirical case studies on entrepreneurship, and to analyse rigorously the RAMP model in the case study.

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The area of focus is on internationalization strategies, specifically on developing suitable strategies to support an internationalization initiative of a new medical device company.

This case is designed for final year undergraduate and MBA students. It is suitable for courses of organizational management, organization theory and design, strategic management, and international business as well as international marketing.

GranuLab, a medical device company that produced the synthetic bone graft substitute GranuMaS, aspired to be a high-growth company. To achieve this aspiration the company had made plans for internationalization, which include penetrating the ASEAN, Middle East, Latin American, and African markets within the next five years. By December 2010, GranuLab had completed the construction of its new manufacturing facility in Shah Alam, about 30km from Malaysia's capital city of Kuala Lumpur. This manufacturing facility had the capability to produce high volumes to support the company's high growth plan. However, the company's internationalization processes had taken longer than expected and this has led to a low business volume. By mid-2012, the company was forced to make a quick decision as it had suffered a year and a half of operations losses. GranuLab had to formulate a strategy as to how to position GranuMaS and penetrate the targeted markets. Failure to internationalize would incur even greater losses and might hinder the achievement of its high growth aspiration by 2015.

This case is designed to stimulate case analysts' thinking into providing recommendations for the appropriate internationalization strategies to be adopted by the management team to ensure that the company could succeed in achieving its goals. The case will expose students to the concepts and theories of strategic management, international business, international entrepreneurship; and facilitate the development of students' abilities to apply those concepts in managerial situations.

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To understand the challenges of building a successful business in an emerging market like Yola, Nigeria. To understand the role of micro-finance banks in doing business in Yola, Nigeria. To comprehend strategies adopted in market segmentation and sales of products or services to the customer. To apprehend strategies adopted to sustain and compete in Nigeria – both rural and urban.

Standard Microfinance Bank Limited (SMFB) was a private micro-finance bank situated at Yola, Adamawa State of Nigeria. It initially started as a community bank in 1992 to provide loans to individuals and small business owners in Adamawa. It started with the services of payment service and savings account with a limited lending capacity. It had become a full-fledged retail bank and was grown to 13 branches across Nigeria. It planned for expansion such as market development, product development and diversification by the year 2020. It had a customer base of 60,000 till the end of December 2018. Vazheparambil Mani Francis was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the SMFB. The SMFB faced challenges such as operating the remote villages, lack of financial literacy among people, recovery of the loan amount, submission of false credentials and change of customer identity after loan by their customer. It was not going to be an easy task for him to operate the business of SMFB in Nigeria. However, in December 2018, Francis was facing a dilemma about the future success of SMFB business in Nigeria by looking into the challenges and complexities of business. Francis was determined to figure out the appropriate growth strategy for managing the challenges.

Undergraduate and graduate early-stage program.

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CSS 11: Strategy.

Entrepreneurship.

This case is suitable for graduate-level programmes in business management, as well as for executive education programmes.

Mabel Simpson, the sole proprietor of the award-winning mSimps fashion accessories house in Ghana, must choose from among three options for scaling up her business: an offer from a private investor for GHS 100,000 in exchange for 51 per cent stake in mSimps; or 30 per cent stake for half the amount; an offer from a fashion industry expert for GHS 10,000 in exchange for 30 per cent ownership; or a restructuring of her business model and value chain to enable her release cash to grow her business organically.

Students should be able to: understand the interplay of choice and trade-offs in business management and apply theory-driven frameworks in making optimal choices and analytically assess instances of tension between the art (e.g. passion, emotional stakes, psychological and other influences on business management philosophies) and science (e.g. the need for business skills, use of effective models and the quest for production efficiency) of business management.

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CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

The Namaste case is a story of how Kellogg alumni couple Gary and Denise Gardner grow their Namaste branded hair care line from production at the family's kitchen table into a formidable $80 million empire within a 14-year period. The Gardners come from a longtime hair-care business lineage, the Soft Sheen dynasty, started by Gary's father decades earlier. Soft Sheen was ultimately sold to hair care giant L'Oreal for over $100 million. The Gardners claim Namaste's growth occurred through listening to the needs and desires of customers for healing hair care products that reminded them of nourishing household remedies. The hair care line became a leader in its industry but faced the dilemma of how to expand sales in new markets, especially international markets such as South Africa and Nigeria.

Students learn to develop new business opportunities including international expansion and tools of the internet to exploit the tools of vision, innovation and change resulting in new customer services and solutions. Students will focus on the basic fundamentals of sales and review the relationship of customer need identification and the reasons that make people buy. Students will assess the entrepreneurial strategies applied to fuel future growth based on an idea or product. Students will focus on the sales fundamentals that can be applied to entrepreneurial environments.

There are two theoretical concepts that can be taught in this case.The new approach to teaching entrepreneurship is termed “lean start-up” and “hypothesis-driven entrepreneurship.” The business model canvas is a core tool of this approach. This framework defines nine key components of a successful business strategy. These components include defining value propositions; identifying customer segments; identifying channels; maintaining customer relationships; defining key activities, key resources and key partners; understanding the revenue model of the business; and the organization’s cost structure. This is considered to be a rigorous approach to learning about and developing a new venture.The other theoretical approach that can be discussed through this case is the link between uncertainty and entrepreneurial growth. These theories associate the willingness of entrepreneurs to bear the perceived uncertainty associated with entrepreneurial acts as representative of the belief-desire model. There is a need for entrepreneurs to experiment and search for alternative paths forward in order to counter this uncertainty. Systematic search processes to discover relevant information will strengthen this process.

This case is based on primary data collected through interviews with company personnel. The company consented freely to the use of their data in the case. The authors have no connection with the company. The four student coauthors had previously pursued an internship with the company and had worked on the machine learning analysis part.The two faculty coauthors in the case contacted the company after the internship and discussed the opportunity to write the case on the company. One of the faculty then interviewed key personnel in the company, including one of the co-founders.

Xoxoday is a technology company that provides employee rewards and corporate gifting to its customers. The company was started by Sumit Khandelwal, Manoj Agarwal, Abhishek Kumar and Kushal Agarwal. In 2018, the company reinvented itself as an experiential gifting company.The company faced some challenges during the lockdowns imposed due to COVID-19. Khandelwal knew that they had to try something new to achieve higher growth in the future. He wondered if higher usage of technology was the solution. It was necessary for them to carve a new path in these times.

This case study can be used at the undergraduate level in courses relating to entrepreneurship strategy and business models for entrepreneurs.The case can be used to highlight the dilemmas faced by entrepreneurs due to unforeseen crises. This case is relevant for classes that will discuss growth crises and out-of-the-box solutions for unprecedented crisis situations.

In the fall of 2007 a senior director of product marketing at Qwest in Denver, Colorado, gets an offer to work for an entrepreneurial high-growth venture. The vision is for greater wealth, accelerated business opportunity, more thrill on the job, and faster path to leadership by pursuing a position with a start-up firm. Kiva Allgood has management responsibility in her current position (e.g., manages a high-budget portfolio), with compensation of $145,000 in salary and incentive bonuses up to 100% of base salary. She realizes that she is not prepared for the negotiation because she has only negotiated job offers within large firms. She needs to know what many of these entrepreneurial finance terms mean and to understand whether she is being offered terms and amounts commensurate with the value she feels she will bring to the entrepreneur. She also needs to understand her opportunity cost and the expected value of her options: staying with the current job, starting her own venture, or taking this offer at the entrepreneurial venture. She had no idea there were also so many additional, non-financial factors to take into consideration. With her future on the line, she needs to work through the numbers fast. The entrepreneur gave her five days to come back with a counter offer, which he considered a generous amount of time. In evaluating these questions, students will take Allgood's point of view. The case is based on a real job offer to a real person named Kiva Allgood. The entrepreneur and his firm are fictitious in order to heighten the issues in this situation.

Exposes customary negotiations between a prospective employee and an entrepreneur, taking into account the valuation of the entrepreneurial firm, salary, stock options, ownership percentage, etc.; Examines the difference between considering a position with an entrepreneurial venture and one at a stable corporate organization; Looks at typical compensation criteria for entrepreneurial venture capital-backed firms; Introduces method for assessing an entrepreneur as a prospective future employer.