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In an age when a tourist’s gaze is more involved in the daily lives of locals, it is evident that traditional food markets are being rediscovered as a space for recreation. Yet, the pressure of tourism development may result in retail gentrification to the point of losing the sense of local identity. Focusing on the “boutiquing” process at Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem, this paper aims to measure the physical change in the marketplace, to understand merchants’ attitudes towards tourism development, and to differentiate merchants based on their responses to these changes.

Two main research methods were used: comparative mapping of the business mix and in-depth interviews with merchants. The first method was used to characterize the physical change in the market, and the second method was used to examine merchants’ attitudes and responses to tourism development.

There has been a significant physical change in the business mix of the market, with displacing mainly of traditional uses. A strong link between the merchants’ responses to tourism development and their stall ownership status has found.

The limitations of the study lie in its nature as a qualitative study of a case study; there is difficulty in generalizing and drawing universal conclusions.

Add to existing knowledge regarding merchants’ responses in traditional food markets to tourism development in the context of retail gentrification.

This case features the challenges of a startup in the crowdfunding space in 2015 as its leadership assesses potential sources of growth for the company s future. Founded in Israel in 2012 by a renowned venture capitalist, OurCrowd was a venture capital crowdfunding platform that strove to connect high-growth startups raising capital with accredited private investors from around the world. Its value proposition was to democratize an inefficient market for private equity that had historically been dominated by a small number of highly connected venture capital firms (VCs). The case asks students to put themselves in the shoes of OurCrowd s head of investor community as he prepares for a meeting with the company s board of directors to discuss potential strategies for growth: Should the company partner with the incumbent VCs it initially sought to disrupt, emphasize marketing its Portfolio Reserve fund, strive to provide its investors and investees with higher value-added services, target a broader swath of investors by aggressively marketing the platform in international markets, or attempt to go up-market and pursue increasingly larger deals with later-stage companies? Through assessing these options and discussing this case, students will learn about incentive problems in two-sided markets as well as how different types of crowdfunding platforms create value for users.