In January 2015, after several stints at the U.S. Department of State and a New York communications consultancy, Medora Brown packed her bags and moved to Kenya to pursue a passion for social enterprise. She had been accepted as a communications fellow at Sanergy, a company providing modern sanitati...

In 1998, Jill Medvedow was hired as the director of Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. Her mandate was to reinvent a museum that had no permanent collection, drew a mere 25,000 visitors a year, and had few members and almost no money. This case demonstrates how Medvedow was able to rebuild (lit...

In the June 7-8, 2014 weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal, an article entitled “Accounting Errors Hit Hertz Hard” caught auto industry analyst Abby Devins’s attention. Devins recalled that Hertz had hinted in March about the possibility of having to restate its 2011 financial statements, but ...

On May 15, 2017, Amazon.com celebrated the 20th anniversary of its initial public offering (IPO). The company’s first twenty years was a period of remarkable growth but with very little to show in terms of accounting earnings. This reflected Amazon’s strategy of investing in expansion and research a...

The 2007-09 Great Recession took a huge bite out of the U.S. restaurant industry as consumers ate out less often. Even during the subsequent economic recovery, ongoing financial concerns continued to depress the appetite for eating out. The casual dining sector, situated in the middle ground between...

In October 2000, with just a couple of weeks until the three-month-old car sharing startup closed on its first round of funding, Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase made an alarming discovery: the amount of revenue that Zipcars had generated for the month of September was half of what she estimated. After...

Resolute Marine Energy (RME) founder and CEO Bill Staby and COO Olivier Ceberio believed their company’s wave energy desalination system could provide safe and affordable drinking water to water-stressed communities. They set their sights on launching RME’s Wave2O system in Ugu, South Africa, popula...

The explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, 2010, resulted from a series of events and decisions involving employees of BP and its contractors. While there does not appear to be one clear culprit or reason that led to the disaster, the case explores issues of organization...

Over the seven years since its founding in 2010, Spartan Race grew to be the world’s most popular obstacle course race provider. Spartan’s CEO and founder was contemplating an initial public offering but was unsure how the new global revenue recognition standard that the company was in the process o...

Chris Peterson was assigned to lead a newly formed regional consulting team at DSS Consulting. She carefully selected the team members, built a cohesive group, and led the team in developing a new consulting service. Both Peterson and her team were satisfied with their accomplishments and ability to...