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The use of entrepreneurship to deliver profound social impact is a much-needed but poorly understood concept. While social enterprises are generally well understood, there is a considerable need to have a more common approach to measuring the different ways they create social value for us as well as to reduce the difficulties of starting and growing them in the difficult conditions of developing countries. In the northeast of Nigeria, for example, the mammoth challenge of rebuilding communities in an unfavorable entrepreneurship environment makes the need for a solution even more urgent. This case study illustrates a model of promoting entrepreneurship that advances the conditions of sustainable development goals (SDGs) in local communities using a configuration of the key theories of social impact entrepreneurship (variants of entrepreneurship with blended value or mission orientation, including social entrepreneurship, sustainable entrepreneurship and institutional entrepreneurship). The extent to which ventures can adjust and improve the extent of their contributions to the SDGs are shown using examples of three entrepreneurs at different stages of growth. From this case study, students will be able to understand how entrepreneurs can identify and exploit social impact opportunities in the venture’s business model, within the network of primary stakeholders as well as in the wider institutional environment with the support of Impact+, a simple impact measurement praxis.

The case study envisions training students how to hardwire social impact focus in the venture’s business model (social entrepreneurship), how to run ventures with minimal harm to the environment and greatest benefit to stakeholders (sustainable entrepreneurship) and how to contribute to improving the institutional environment for social purpose entrepreneurship (institutional entrepreneurship).

At the end of learning this case study, students should be able to: 1. discover an effective model for a startup social venture; 2. explore options for managing a venture sustainably and helping stakeholders out of poverty; and 3. identify ways to contribute to improving the institutional environment for social impact entrepreneurs.

For students, this case will help in educating them on a pragmatic approach to designing social impact ventures – one that calibrates where they are on well-differentiated scales.

For business schools, entrepreneurial development institutions and policymakers, this case study can help them learn how to target entrepreneurial development for specific development outcomes.

The case study is preferably for early-stage postgraduate students (MSc or MBA).

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

Teaching objectives: to help students review entertainment service and its ecosystem; to discuss leadership anxiety during change management and organizational development; to understand organizational diagnosis while initiating change management exercise; and to compare various strategic alternatives and the implications of selecting an option.

This case narrates dilemma of Krishna Goenkar, a management consultant entrusted to revisit strategic orientations of Mahem Entertainment Society (MES). Mahem is a fictitious state in the west coast of India. MES had been created by the Government of Mahem as a regulatory body to promote the state as a world class destination for entertainment. Public interest guided the organization, as it was a government instituted body. Hence, Goenkar had twin challenges. Firstly, what strategic initiatives should he propose to scale up the operations in spite of the given organizational constraints? Secondly, how to scale up and diversify if required, with minimal resistance? The case would help students get familiarized with entertainment domain, service ecosystem and challenges of driving strategic change in public utilities, especially in Indian and emerging market context.

This case is suitable for graduate-level programme in marketing management.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The (A) case describes the evolution between 1999 and 2005 of an unusual innovation team within the office of the chief information officer at oil and gas giant BP. This team helped business units conceive, develop, and implement novel, value-added applications for emerging information technologies. The team leader, vice president and chief technology officer Phiroz Darukhanavala (“Daru”), eschewed a large group and venture budget in favor of a small, lean team intimately engaged with BP's business units. The case describes several mechanisms created by the CTO office during its early evolution: “Blue Chalk” events that expanded executives' appreciation of emerging technology capabilities, a network of relationships through which emerging technologies were scouted and vetted, a structured technology transfer process, and annual “game-changer” projects.

The (B) case describes how the CTO office team members in 2011 again solicited advice from their ecosystem of thought leaders and held workshops to significantly enhance their impact. As a result, they began developing solutions for broader, more fundamental business problems that came to be known as Grand Challenges: extremely difficult business problems whose solutions could potentially create hundreds of millions—or billions—of dollars in business value.

After reading and analyzing the case, students will be able to:

• Understand the management challenges associated with realizing the business value of new technologies

• Explore how innovation management evolves as an innovation team learns from its successes and failures and, more importantly, builds a reputation within and outside the company

• Examine a prototypical “advocate” model of corporate entrepreneurial practice

• Explore a leading example of a successful internal innovation program

Understand the management challenges associated with realizing the business value of new technologies

Explore how innovation management evolves as an innovation team learns from its successes and failures and, more importantly, builds a reputation within and outside the company

Examine a prototypical “advocate” model of corporate entrepreneurial practice

Explore a leading example of a successful internal innovation program

This case on “Corporate governance: a farce at Volkswagen (VW)” is set in September of 2015. The precipitating events, which started with the Emissions scandal and tampering of the technology, unfold a history of threatening organizational culture, deliberate cheating, and failure of good governance. The case presents that though the outgoing CEO took the responsibility for the event but said that he was shocked by the event and stunned that the misconduct of such a scale could occur in the VW Group. Given the roles and responsibilities of board of management and the supervisory board, how could the scandal of such magnitude go unnoticed? Were robust corporate governance practices being not followed at VW?

The case is based on the material available in the public domain, records, press reports, published books, interviews published by key board members of Volkswagen and the company website.

This case can be used for undergraduate senior classes or graduate and executive education level courses in corporate governance and ethical practices. This case will sync best with the topics around Board Composition and size, Board Independence, fiduciary duties of supervisory board, board duality and leadership and its impact on organizational culture.

Social entrepreneurship, Social enterprise.

Masters Programme in Social Entrepreneurship, Social Work, Business Administration; Management Development Programme for Social Entreprenuers.

Organisation for Social Change, Awareness and Responsibility (OSCAR) Foundation is a non-profit organisation registered in 2010 under the Bombay Public Trust Act, 1950. Born and raised in the slum colony of Ambedkar Nagar, Cuffe Parade, Ashok, the founder, grew up seeing his friends becoming a victim to many socially inappropriate behaviours due to dropping out of school. Inspired by the thought of breaking this vicious cycle, Ashok used football as a mechanism to instil essential life skills among children and youth and encouraged them to continue their education. The success of his pilot motivated him to set up OSCAR. Presently, through its various programmes, the organisation has reached out to more than 3,000 marginalised children and 500 youths and aims to reach out to 20,000 children by 2020. The case highlights the struggles of Ashok’s entrepreneurial journey and maps the new challenges in scaling up his enterprise.

The expected learning outcomes are as follows: to identify the characteristics of a social entrepreneur and ascertain the leadership skills required by a social entrepreneur; to scrutinise the life cycle of a social enterprise and develop insights to examine the unique risks and challenges faced at the start-up phase of the social enterprise; and to enhance the understanding of interrelationship between passion, mission focus and challenges to attain financial sustainability for a social venture.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The case study is based on field data including semi-structured interviews with the main protagonist and related stakeholders of Karan Handicraft, a leather craft artisan enterprise. After informed consent, the interviews with the craft artisan entrepreneurs of Karan Handicraft were conducted, transcribed and analysed verbatim in the respondents’ native language, Kutchi Gujarati. The authors also used archival data given by the company. In addition, secondary data from industry reports and business magazines was used to create the case.

The case investigates the impact of digital technologies on the small handicraft artisan entrepreneurs by focusing on a family-run business of a leather craft. It traces the evolution of Karan Handicraft, based in Kutch district of Gujarat, India from the year 2007 to 2023. The third-generation artisan entrepreneur Karan Marvada attempted exploring the new-age social media platforms to showcase the products, modified his product designs to attract a new customer-base and adapted to digital marketing. However, in the wake of the crowding in the handicraft cluster, the central business problem that Karan was grappling with was, if he should scale up his artisanal entrepreneurial stint using electronic commerce (e-commerce) as a medium. Another allied issue is in such a scale-up, should he use e-commerce, i.e. as a medium of communication only or as a medium of both communication and delivery. While the latter may lead to scale, it may raise the challenge of not being able to preserve the traditional values of his ancestral business.

This case involves various issues that arise in entrepreneurship management, such as decisions related to growth strategy (remain small and unique vs become large and mass scale), to maintain a physical presence vs digital presence and the form of digital presence, are dwelt upon. The case is aimed at graduate students in an entrepreneurship or family business course. It could also be taught in other courses that focus on innovation and social entrepreneurship.

The learning outcomes are to understand the definition of public value and the strategic drivers behind public value creation, understand the nature of social innovation in the public sector, identify the critical opportunities and challenges involved in sustaining innovation in the public sector and identify the role that non-profit organizations can play in supporting and sustaining social innovation.

This case puts participants in the shoes of a global health innovator’s leadership team as the organization approaches a funding crisis. The organization, VillageReach, is on a quest to expand across the public health system of Mozambique and experiences a funding dilemma. The case reveals the challenges of working with governments to achieve large-scale, systemic change. It explores the conundrum of using international donor funding to embed new practices in government service delivery. Ultimately, it asks participants to choose between the pursuit of new, small-scale innovative projects and the large-scale rollout of a national programme.

This teaching case is written for courses focused on social entrepreneurship, social innovation and social change. It can also be used in courses focused on non-profit management and public sector innovation. Specifically, the teaching case is suitable for two audiences: social enterprise and non-profit managers focused on strategy, development and operations (the case focuses on an enterprise that relies primarily on donor funding) and health-care managers and administrators. Generally, the case is suitable for undergraduates in their final year of study as well as graduate-level business and public administration courses, including MBA, MPH, MPA, EMBA and Executive Education courses.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The case concerns a real $25 million program consisting of nine concurrent projects to deliver and implement a custom-built in-store customer relationship management (CRM) system and a new point-of-sale system in 400 stores of a national retail chain. The name of the company has been disguised for confidentiality reasons. Once deployed, the new system should give Clothes ‘R’ Us a significant strategic advantage over competitors in the marketplace; it will increase in-store manager productivity, cut costs, and ultimately drive increased sales for the retail chain. The program is in crisis, however, because the product managers have just left to join a competitor. The explicit details of the program are given, including examples of best practice program governance and the real activity network diagram for the program. Detailed Excel spreadsheets are also provided with the actual earned value data for the program. Students analyze the spreadsheets and the data given in the case to diagnose the impact of the most recent risk event and past risk events that occurred in the program. Ultimately students must answer the essential executive questions: What is wrong with the program? How should it be fixed, and what is the impact in time and money to the program? In addition, qualitative warning signs are given throughout the case—these warning signs are red flags to executives for early proactive intervention in troubled projects.

The goal of the case is to teach complex program oversight. Students analyze actual earned value data for a real $25 million program consisting of nine concurrent programs and assess the impact of risk events as they occur in the program. A key takeaway of the case is that relatively simple tools (Excel spreadsheets and time tracking) combined with good project planning can be used to effectively control very complex projects. Students also learn the qualitative warning signs within programs that can serve as early indicators of problems.

This is a field-researched case about a nonprofit organization, the Accelerated Cure Project (ACP), dedicated to accelerating advances toward a cure for multiple sclerosis (MS). Inspired by the successful open source software development platform, ACP brings the strengths of that platform into the medical research and development environment. At the opening of the case, Robert McBurney, an Australian scientist with extensive experience in the biotech world, has been named CEO. McBurney and his team want to use ACP's bio-sample and data Repository to drive innovation in the search for the cure for MS by fostering collaborative research and development across research institutions, pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies. To encourage such collaboration ACP waives its rights to potentially lucrative Intellectual Property. This decision to foster collaboration at the expense of revenue sources appears problematic, since ACP does not have the staff or resources to undertake fundraising at the scale needed to fund current projects. ACP chooses to serve instead as an open access research accelerator making an impact on the field by functioning as an innovation driver rather than a profit maker. Is this an innovative recipe for success in finding a cure for MS or a recipe for financial disaster for ACP?

Interviews provided the primary source of data for this case. Four semi-structured interviews were conducted with the CEO of ACP, the Vice President of Scientific Operations, and a member of the organization's Board of Trustees, a collaborating university researcher, and the President of a bio-tech company working with ACP. Interview data was supplemented with additional information from ACP's web site, news reports, McBurney's comments at Suffolk University's Global Leadership in Innovation and Collaboration Award event, and follow-up conversations.

This case is intended for use in an undergraduate course examining strategic management issues midway through the term. The case discussion can center on issues relating to: first, the development of the business model; second, revenue resources and fundraising. Students are expected to spend two to three hours of outside preparation reviewing concepts of change leadership and the collaborative enterprise business model. They should read the case materials and brainstorm options for improved change leadership. The case can be taught in one two-hour class period.

The purpose of this case is to introduce students to the strategic management and funding challenges faced by an organization that is using a non-traditional business model in an increasingly complex environment. As a result of discussing this case, students should be able to: first, examine strategic organizational strengths, analyze opportunities created by business, market and environmental factors, and strategize to minimize weaknesses and to address threats identify an organization's strategic focus; recognize and recommend options at crucial decision making junctures in a business situation; second, assess an organization's revenue model; analyze how this model can be improved; third, analyze the functionality and sustainability of an organization's business model.

This is a case of a crisis project management which showcases the unpredictable nature of the project and the role of management in handling the crisis. It is the case of a very severe cyclonic storm hitting the city of Visakhapatnam plant during October, 2014. The whole city was devastated and so was the situation in the Steel plant as it was under zero power conditions for around 10 days. This case gives need for managing an integrated steel plant in case of very severe cyclonic storm and documents the sequence of events and managing unforeseen uncertainty using NTCP concepts.