The India-based company Baobab Clean Technologies was founded in September 2011 with a business model based on the premise of safety and sustainability for electronic waste. The company facilitated the disposal of computers and electronic products for consumer and trade channels. It refurbished and sold products with a bundle of services like point-to-point delivery, installation, warranty, and support. Sales had started improving during the COVID-19 .....more

In December 2019, the founder and chief executive officer of Nnergix, a struggling Barcelona-based renewable energy analytics provider, came home from work excited. He had just finished a very successful meeting with Holaluz Clidom SA about the potential of a new product idea: Sentinel Solar. Nnergix had been in business for almost seven years but had only recently become profitable. This new business idea could generate increasing recurrent revenues .....more

Agricola Himalaya was a family-owned Colombian company, the national leader in the tea industry, and the owner of the only tea plantation in the country, located in the middle of a mist forest. In Colombia, owing to the labour costs involved in tea production, importing tea was less expensive than producing it locally, but if Agricola Himalaya decided to import the tea, what would be the environmental and social impact of closing the plant and plantation? .....more

When it was founded in Hefei, China, in 2001, Jiujiu Xiyanghong Group (JX) started as a single private nursing home with fifty beds. Over its eighteen-year history, JX had maintained rapid growth; as of 2019 the company had 1,531 elderly people living in its facilities, and Xie Qiong estimated that elders residing at JX represented 36 per cent of all 4,205 people living in Hefei eldercare institutions. However, the Hefei eldercare market was witnessing .....more

In May 2021, the founder of Yardstick Educational Initiatives Private Limited, a provider of experiential learning programs in India and the United Arab Emirates, was facing various business challenges. The company was started in India in 2008 but had been increasingly focused on the more profitable Middle East market since 2012. Attempting to stay current with technology advancements in educational products, it made considerable investments to develop .....more

A recent master of business administration degree graduate, had discovered a problem with inventory management in her family’s business. Agrawal Kitchenware Distributors (Agrawal), a wholesaler and distributor of kitchenware items, appeared to be well-off according to its financials, but when she had toured the company’s warehouse, she discovered several problems with the inventory, and there was no management system that could identify, track, or .....more

A former software developer founded INK PPT in 2015 in Gurgaon, Haryana, India, after realizing that he enjoyed designing presentations. However, the market for developing corporate presentations was still in its nascent stage in India, and there was strong reluctance among organizations to outsource this work. The founder faced various hurdles growing his company, including the initial challenge of attracting customers. The situation became more .....more

In 2021, SunSource Energy was evaluating its growth strategy options. An entrepreneurial venture in the renewable energy sector, it was about to receive a second round of large funding. SunSource Energy had to decide whether it should exploit its expertise in India and other known locales, or whether it should explore new possibilities. It needed to apply organizational ambidexterity and a fresh approach to design thinking, especially during uncertain .....more

In June 2021, as Toronto-based Flashfood Inc. (Flashfood) continued to grow dramatically, its founder and chief executive officer was facing critical questions about how to manage both the firm’s mission and its business model. Flashfood partnered with grocery chains to sell near-expiry food to consumers via an app, and it had an expanding network of locations in Canada and the United States. The firm had a clear sustainability-driven objective: to .....more

The success of Antiga Confeitaria de Belem had been built around the uniqueness of its signature product. Many comparable custard cakes, known as pasteis de nata, were available, but the bakery had established its Pastel de Belem as a distinct product with the power to attract tourists from all over the world. The Pastel de Belem stood out because its recipe had been a well-kept secret for decades. The 2020 COVID-19 crisis propelled Antiga Confeitaria .....more