mini case study on entrepreneurship

• Program on Entrepreneurship
• Case Studies

Entrepreneurship Case Studies

Fieldfresh foods.

Mukesh Pandey, K Sudhir, Raman Ahuja, and Deepali Tewari Customer/Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Operations

By 2010, the FieldFresh team had been able to create an efficient supply chain for baby corn across Punjab and Maharashtra at all levels. But success brought with it the expectation of growth. Should FieldFresh grow opportunistically into different foreign markets as retailers and wholesalers demanded different products for their respective markets? Should FieldFresh continue to focus on baby corn, whose supply chain-market linkages it had perfected, or should the company expand the range of products it would supply? Should FieldFresh continue to maintain its primary export focus, or shift relative emphasis to the growing domestic market?

DonorsChoose.org

Anna Blanding, Jennifer Stredler, Kim Su, Ivy Washington, Sharon Oster, Jaan Elias and Andrea R. Nagy

Customer/Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Operations, Social Enterprise

After an auspicious start, Charles Best (Yale College ’98) and DonorsChoose.org set their sights on growing beyond New York City. Supported by a $14 million grant from Silicon Valley executives in 2005, DonorsChoose.org scaled up its organization and began a step-by-step expansion into various locales.  By 2009, the organization had made great strides toward completing its expansion. However, observers wondered whether DonorsChoose.org could reach its goal of providing $100 million per year in gifts to classrooms and whether it would have an impact on the fundamental inequities within the educational system.

James Baron and Jaan Elias

Employee/HR, Entrepreneurship, Ethics & Religion

AgBiome co-founders, Scott Uknes and Eric Ward,  were admirers of self-managed organizations and commitment culture, approaches to organizational structure and process that encouraged openness and collaboration. Accordingly, they built AgBiome to operate without supervisory relationships, job titles, formal performance evaluations, and individual performance bonuses. Instead, AgBiome relied on a committee structure that encouraged people with the greatest expertise to make decisions on matters within their ambit.  By 2017, AgBiome employed 80 people and was projecting further expansion. But observers wondered, could a company, which worked on the basis of commitment and without a hierarchy, scale?

The Alibaba Group

Yi guo,yao jing, charles liu, michelle wang, jaan elias, and zhiwu chen.

Competitor/Strategy, Entrepreneurship, Investor/Finance, Law & Contracts

By July of 2011, Yun “Jack” Ma had achieved his goal of creating one of the world’s leading e-commerce companies. Ma founded the Alibaba Group and took advantage of growing internet usage in China to launch the leading B2B, C2C and B2C sites in the country and capture a huge market. Despite his success, Ma had a troubled relationship with Yahoo!, the largest investor in the Alibaba Group. Ma’s decision in January of 2011 to transfer Alipay (the Alibaba Group’s online payment unit) from the Alibaba Group to a company under his personal control was just making matters worse.

What is Next? Search Fund Entrepreneurs Reflect on Life After Exit

A.j. wasserstein.

Entrepreneurship, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork

During his time at the Yale School of Management, Matt Dittrich (Yale SOM ‘18) became interested in how recent MBA students gathered search funds, structured small acquisitions, propelled themselves into being a CEO, and then participated in a liquidity event only a few years after acquisition and graduation.  He appreciated the case studies about entrepreneurs facing acquisition, strategy, and financing issues.  But what did entrepreneurs do after their exits?  At the urging of his teacher, A.J. Wasserstein, he interviewed former search fund entrepreneurs who had experienced an exit to learn what exactly they chose to do, and why. Overcome by curiosity, Dittrich was excited to begin his informational interviews (summaries included here). 

Advanced Leadership 2016

Jaan elias, james quinn and james baron.

Employee/HR, Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Design, Leadership & Teamwork, Social Enterprise

Biographies of the following seven leaders are provided:

• Rodney O’Neal, Delphi,
• Neal Keny-Guyer, Mercy Corps,
• David Cote, Honeywell,
• Linda Mason, Bright Horizons,
• General Stanley McChrystal, United States Military,
• Donna Dubinsky, Numenta, and (7) Laszlo Bock, Google. 

Mike Erwin: An Accidental Social Entrepreneur

A. j. wasserstein.

Mike Erwin, a decorated army veteran from West Point, never envisioned himself as a social entrepreneur or activist. Yet in 2012, he found himself the CEO of an organization with 15,000 members and 34 chapters reaching from Syracuse, NY to Houston, TX. Though Erwin was proud of his organization’s growth and had excelled in leadership positions, he questioned whether he was the right person to scale Team Red, White and Blue. Would someone else with more experience be more appropriate? If he indeed moved on, how could he ensure the organization would continue to thrive amid a change in leadership and potential restructuring?

Searching for a Search Fund Structure: A Student Takes a Tour of Various Options

Employee/HR, Entrepreneurship

Before entering the Yale School of Management, James Guba (SOM’18) had thought about becoming an entrepreneur. He did not have a specific idea to build a business around, but he did aspire to take charge of an organization and grow it. At Yale, Guba discovered an entrepreneurial niche called “search funds” that would allow him to acquire and lead a company that he had not built from scratch. Inspired, Guba met with search fund entrepreneurs to learn about their different paths to building their funds.

Kalil Diaz: A DR-based search firm considers its first acquisition

Customer/Marketing, Entrepreneurship

After nearly two years of searching, Kalil Diaz (SOM '14) wondered if he had finally found the company for which he had been looking. The decision he was facing would have a big impact on his investors as well as his own life. He was somewhat confident he could access funds from his current investors to purchase the company despite several investors being slow in their response to commit. However, Diaz still wondered if making the investment was the right move. How would he transition from the search to being CEO and running a company? Would the acquisition provide suitable financial returns for his investors and himself?

Clorox, Inc

Elise rindfleisch and allison mitkowski.

Customer/Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Sustainability

In October 2007, Clorox announced that it would buy Burt’s Bees for $925 million – more than five times Burt’s Bees’ annual sales. Clorox’s move caught many in the industry by surprise - Burt’s Bees had a folksy image and natural appeal for customers. Could such a brand find a home within a company best known for a toxic cleanser? Would Clorox’s push into “green” cleaners satisfy Burt’s Bees’ faithful customers? Had Clorox paid too much for its acquisition? Or, were there potential synergies that justified the purchase? What was the future of this market?

Project Masiluleke: Texting and Testing to Fight HIV/AIDS in South Africa

Rodrigo canales, jean rosenthal, jaan elias, and william drenttel.

Entrepreneurship, Healthcare, Innovation & Design, Social Enterprise

The traditional Zulu greeting, "Sawubona," literally translates as "I see you." The major challenge faced by Project Masiluleke could be captured in this local greeting – could Project M see the lives of the individuals they hoped to help? Could they find ways to understand each other and the individuals threatened by HIV/AIDS well enough to design effective solutions to a major health crisis? PopTech, frog design, and the Praekelt Foundation joined with iTeach, an HIV/AIDS and TB prevention and treatment program, to look for new approaches to address South Africa's health issues. Access to this case has been made freely available to the public.

Project Samaan

Rodrigo canales, jean rosenthal, jaan elias, ashley pandya and samuel sturm.

Entrepreneurship, Healthcare, Innovation & Design, Social Enterprise, State & Society, Sustainability

In a unique partnership, governments, designers, architects, academics, and NGOs had come together to create new sanitation solutions for India's urban slums. Specifically, the group set about tackling one of the developing world's leading problems – open defecation in crowded urban settings. But by fall 2013, not a single community toilet had been approved. What had gone wrong? And what could this experience teach others about an overall solution to the problem?

San Miguel: Expanding the Amaranth Market

Jaan elias, mario alan gonzález hernández, carlos gil garcía, rodrigo canales, and kaveh khoshnood.

Competitor/Strategy, Customer/Marketing, Employee/HR, Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Design, Leadership & Teamwork, Operations, Social Enterprise

San Miguel, a small Amaranth processing company in Huixcazdhá, Mexico, was started as a development project to sustainably employ local residents.  Despite the plant’s rural location and unschooled workforce, the company pioneered the processing of amaranth into a number of unique products. Though the company yielded a small but steady profit, the plant was operating at only 20 percent of capacity and the organization lacked a coherent marketing strategy. What new markets could the company target and what communications strategy should it employ?

Haiti Mangoes

Andrea nagy smith and douglas rae.

Entrepreneurship, Operations, Social Enterprise, State & Society

JMB S.A. had been in the mango processing business since 1998, and CEO Jean-Maurice Buteau had built up a profitable business that exported around 2,000 tons of mangoes per year.  The January 2010 earthquake devastated Haiti, but JMB appeared to survive intact, and the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF) was eager to move forward. In spring 2010 SEDF proceeded with a $1.3 million loan and a $1 million equity investment in JMB. But by spring 2012, after pouring $2.55 million into JMB, SEDF realized that it had to make a decision: invest another $2 million and reorganize the company under new management; sell the company, or shut down JMB S.A. altogether.

Allison Mitkowski, Alexandra Barton-Sweeney, Tony Sheldon, Arthur Janik, and Jaan Elias

Customer/Marketing, Innovation & Design, Social Enterprise, State & Society, Sustainability

In 2009, SELCO was considering its plans for how the company might expand. The company decided to institutionalize its design process by building an innovation center. SELCO also added products that provided energy solutions beyond solar. Some within the company were hoping the company would go “deeper” and look at designing solutions for even poorer members of the Indian population. Others were hoping that the company would go “wider” and expand beyond its current geographical areas in Karnataka and Gujarat. Whatever its direction, the strategic choices the company made at this point in its evolution would be crucial to determining its continued success.

360 State Street: Real Options

Andrea nagy smith and mathew spiegel.

Asset Management, Investor/Finance, Metrics & Data, Sourcing/Managing Funds

In 2010 developer Bruce Becker completed 360 State Street, a major new construction project in downtown New Haven. The building was a 32-story high-rise with 500 apartments, a parking garage, and a grocery store on the street level. In the summer of 2013, Becker had a number of alternatives to consider in regards to the open lot adjacent to his recent construction. He also had no obligation to build. He could bide his time. But Becker also worried about losing out on rents should he wait too long. Under what set of circumstances and at what time would it be most advantageous to proceed?

Achievement First

Fawzia ahmed, jaan elias, and sharon oster.

Social Enterprise, State & Society

On the edges of a warehouse district in New Haven, Connecticut, an intrepid group of educational pioneers were turning conventional theory on its head. Amistad Academy, a charter school founded by two Yale Law School graduates, was not only getting students on par with their grade levels in reading and math, but was pushing them to perform as well as the best suburban school districts too.  Five years after opening Amistad, McCurry and Toll opened an additional school in New Haven and four schools in Brooklyn, New York – all of which showed the same promise as Amistad. They dubbed their network of schools Achievement First (AF), and garnered national attention and funding from “venture philanthropists” interested in educational reform. However, in the summer of 2006, AF was facing critical questions about its future direction.

Ravi Dhar and Andrea Nagy Smith

Competitor/Strategy, Customer/Marketing, Investor/Finance, Operations

At the time of its IPO filing, Groupon held the lead among group buying sites, a 52-percent market share of revenue generated, according to the group-buying site aggregator Yipit. But many questions remained about its future. Would Groupon’s labor-intensive business model prove profitable? Would customers and merchants be loyal to Groupon? Would other companies take its business? In summer 2011 it was far from sure that the young company could maintain its lead.

Carry Trade ETF

K. geert rouwenhorst, jean w. rosenthal, and jaan elias.

Innovation & Design, Investor/Finance, Macroeconomics, Sourcing/Managing Funds

In 2006 Deutsche Bank (DB) brought a new product to market – an exchange traded fund (ETF) based on the carry trade, a strategy of buying and selling currency futures. The offering received the William F. Sharpe Indexing Achievement Award for “Most Innovative Index Fund or ETF” at the 2006 Sharpe Awards. These awards are presented annually by IndexUniverse.com and Information Management Network for innovative advances in the indexing industry. The carry trade ETF shared the award with another DB/PowerShares offering, a Commodity Index Tracking Fund. Jim Wiandt, publisher of IndexUniverse.com, said, "These innovators are shaping the course of the index industry, creating new tools and providing new insights for the benefit of all investors." What was it that made this financial innovation successful?

Governors Island

Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Design, Social Enterprise, State & Society

The political players had changed since President Clinton and Senator Moynihan’s helicopter ride. Clinton was no longer President, his wife had taken Moynihan’s seat in the Senate and Michael Bloomberg had replaced Rudolph Giuliani as New York’s Mayor. What remained the same was that the city, state, and federal government had yet to reach a deal. The question of what to do with Governors Island and who should do it remained very much open. Indeed, there were those within the new Bush administration and the Congress who believed in scrapping Clinton and Moynihan’s deal and selling the island to the highest bidder be that the local government or a private developer.

Ant Financial: Flourishing Farmer Loans at MYbank

Jingyue xu, jean rosenthal, k. sudhir, hua song, xia zhang, yuanfang song, xiaoxi liu, and jaan elias.

Competitor/Strategy, Customer/Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Design, Investor/Finance, Leadership & Teamwork, Operations, State & Society

In 2015, Ant Financial’s MYbank (an offshoot of Jack Ma’s Alibaba company) was looking to extend services to rural areas in China through its Flourishing Farmer Loan program. MYbank relied on the internet to communicate with loan applicants and judge their credit worthiness. Initial tests of the program had proved promising, but could MYbank operate the program at scale? Would its big data and technical analysis provide an accurate measure of credit risk for loans to small customers? Could MYbank rely on its new credit-scoring system to reduce operating costs to make the program sustainable?

Case Questions

The National Association of Broadcasters launched its PILOT Innovation Challenge in 2016. The challenge is centered around a specific challenge question aimed at helping the association’s primary customers, broadcasters. The most recent challenge question was, “What is an unconventional way broadcasters and other local media could serve communities?” The PILOT organizers have contracted you to help them design their next challenge. Using your knowledge of innovation and customer-centric entrepreneurship processes, what would you advise? How would you go about determining the challenge question? What questions about innovation would you have regarding the Innovation Challenge?

The Guidewell Innovation Center at Lake Nona Medical Center on the outskirts of Orlando, Florida, is a 92,000-square-foot facility aimed at accelerating innovation within the healthcare industries. Guidewell, the parent company of Florida Blue, brings in outside companies to help with that innovation process. One of the features of the Innovation Center is its Collaborative Resource Ecosystem. Some of the center’s strategic areas of focus are next-generation consumer engagement, computational health, well-being and human performance, digital health, and remote management, among other areas. How could Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation and jobs-to-be-done theory help guide Guidewell’s mission? What are the prevalent business models in the strategic areas for incumbent businesses? What are opportunities for innovation for new companies?

As youth programs face severe budget cuts, many youth sports organizations respond by raising their fees, which shifts the costs to families. Good Sports was founded in 2003, to tackle this problem by providing new equipment, footwear, and apparel to those most in need. The organization’s addressable markets include children ages five to eighteen living in low-income households, as defined by poverty data, and participating in youth sports in top fifty metropolitan service areas. This Boston-based organization has plans to expand from its three existing markets in Dallas, Chicago, and Boston to seven total markets by 2023 with a goal to serve 600,000 kids by that target date.

• What would a customer empathy map look like for Good Sports’ target user? What about its target customer segment? Would it or should it differ in differing markets? Is the Boston area user any different from say, an Atlanta, user?
• Given its social mission, what are some impact measures Good Sports could use to gauge success and impact?

DoSomething.Org is a “global movement for good” among 6 million young people, transforming their communities across the United States and in 131 countries worldwide. This nonprofit organization constantly holds cause-based campaigns, ranging from receiving over 1 million pairs of donated jeans from teens to clothe homeless youth to cleaning up 3.7 million cigarette butts through its Get the Filter Out initiative. A past campaign, “Don’t Be a Sucker,” addressed the problem of Americans losing $5.8 billion annually and producing 8.7 billion pounds of carbon pollution by leaving unused devices plugged in. The campaign sought to slay those “energy vampires” not in use by having users unplug equipment and post a sticky note next to the outlet to remind others not to let them suck the energy dry. Further research the problem, solution and this campaign and answer the following:

• Identify what social impact(s) the campaign addressed.
• What impact measures could the campaign assess?
• Could a viable business be created around this problem?

In recent years, the entrepreneurial educator and author Steve Blank began applying lean startup principles to various US governmental agencies. Through a Hacking for Diplomacy course, students at Stanford University began tackling problems for the Department of State. A former US ambassador to the United Nations, a State Department representative to Silicon Valley and senior advisor for technology and innovation, a retired US Army colonel, and other entrepreneurial educators joined Blank in applying lean startup methods to State Department issues. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry even visited the Stanford students and said he was looking forward to the solutions students develop during the ten weeks. One project that emerged was from a group calling themselves Team Space Evaders. The team was tasked with working on the problem of satellite collision. Members charted satellite positioning data and explored how information about potential collision was shared by commercial operators and governmental entities ranging from the Federal Aviation Administration to the Department of Defense.

• Apply the lean startup methodology to identify potential customer segments and problems and solutions that students such as yourself could identify for the State Department on the issue of satellite collision.
• What would a unique value proposition for a State Department solution to this issue be? How could a high-level concept pitch work when selling the concept within the State Department?

Incorporated in 2003, Tesla declared in its mission statement that its goal is “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transport,” 56 and it has proven itself a leader in green technology in the automotive sector. In its initial business plan, by co-founder Martin Eberhard , the electric sports car company promised to provide the value of a high-end sports car at a lower cost to the customer and a lower environmental cost to the planet. Electric vehicles were seen as inferior to standard vehicles prior to Tesla’s innovations in creating powerful cars that piqued consumer desire. The generic automotive manufacturing business model relies on collaborative manufacturing with industry partners and a distribution model dependent on third parties. Standard cars are aimed at people and businesses with individual transportation needs. This model is commercially viable because of custom-equipped add-on features to the per-vehicle prices.

• Tesla’s business model is different. Identify at least three ways in which the Tesla model differs from the traditional automotive business model.

In the mid-1990s, at least one newspaper company, the now-defunct Knight-Ridder chain, created the prototype for a tablet newspaper that very much resembles the present-day iPad. A 1994 video titled “The Tablet Newspaper: A Vision for the Future” shows off the design of a futuristic newspaper designed at the Knight Ridder Information Design Lab in Boulder, Colorado. The video went viral in 2011 after it was posted on YouTube and numerous websites and blogs. The person behind the tablet vision, Roger Fidler , had even published an essay describing a tablet future as far back as 1981. The Knight-Ridder lab shared a wall with its neighbor Apple, with executives swapping ideas and visitors. The newspaper company, focused on content creation and not the hardware side, decided to not patent its tablet design and scrapped the project because screens took too much energy, and it was too expensive.

• Using the components of a feasibility study, consider how the newspaper company would stack up on go-or-no-go decisions for each component of the feasibility study.
• How did the newspaper company in the 1990s fare in terms of management prowess, resource capabilities, financial viability, and market analysis?
• Do you think the newspaper made a wise decision to abandon the project when it did? Why or why not?

Founded in 2013 primarily as a coding boot camp, Tech Talent South offers both part-time and full-time courses on topics like Ruby on Rails and Big Data Analytics. Most of the camp’s programs are run out of cooperative working spaces and temporary locations throughout the cities it has a presence in. The primary focus of the Atlanta-founded and now North Carolina-based company as branded in the name was on coding in the South, but the company to date has expanded to eleven markets with plans to expand even more. The founder, Betsy Idilbi , jokes that she wouldn’t have named the company Tech Talent South if she had known its full potential and growth, including being plugged into the entrepreneurial ecosystem in places such as Columbus, Ohio. The company even has offices in the northeastern city of Hartford, Connecticut.

• Could a feasibility analysis have helped Betsy from the start?
• The company has expanded its business to offer corporate trainings at existing companies, rather than teaching classes directly to student enrollees. How would you identify a new potential market for Tech Talent South to enter?
• What could be done with its existing business?
• How would you advise the company on making go-or-no-go decisions for entering new markets?

You were introduced to The Cut Buddy , a plastic hair and beard grooming tool that began selling on Amazon in 2016, in The Business Plan . Following funding from the Shark Tank investor Daymond John , the company plans to expand into retail and extend its product line.

• How would a business plan for the company’s ecommerce business differ from a retail distribution outlet?
• Discuss how changes to aspects of the original business plan affected the outcome of the success of The Cut Buddy.
• What do you think should be the key markets and strategies moving forward for the company?

Pretty Young Professional , discussed in The Business Plan , failed because of disagreements among its four founders that emerged shortly after launch.

• If you were to launch the venture today, outline what steps you would need to take in formulating a business plan.
• What do you think the total addressable market would be, which industry classification would it fall under, and who would be the primary competition?
• 56 In 2016, it was changed from “sustainable transport” to “sustainable energy.” https://www.tesla.com/about

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Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/1-introduction

• Authors: Michael Laverty, Chris Littel
• Publisher/website: OpenStax
• Book title: Entrepreneurship
• Publication date: Jan 16, 2020
• Location: Houston, Texas
• Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/1-introduction
• Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/11-case-questions

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The Ethical Leadership Collection: Mini Case Studies

Quick in-class exercises in leadership.

The mini case studies can fit on a PowerPoint slide or be given to students as one page to read. They were developed to be processed in-class, over the course of an hour. Use of the minis helps students identify the problem, pinpoint possible solutions, and create holistic action plans.

•  (PDF file)  Leadership among Friends  (opens in new window)  : Untangling Competing interests Keywords: employee relations, compensation management, situational leadership
•  (PDF file)  Facing the Challenge:  (opens in new window)  Caught Between HR and Difficult Workers Keywords: employee relations, industrial relations, mental illness
•  (PDF file)  Customer Disservice:  (opens in new window)  A Chronically Late Employee Causes Cascading Problems Keywords: employee relations, customer service, discipline, situational leadership
•  (PDF file)  Stepping Up to Your Own Truth:  (opens in new window)  The Consequences of Saying the Wrong Thing Keywords: employee relations, diversity, workplace anxiety, crisis management, organizational development, situational leadership
•  (PDF file)  Communicating Incentives to Others:  (opens in new window)  Controlling Competitive Co-Workers Keywords: employee relations, compensation, sales
•  (PDF file)  Going Head to Head:  (opens in new window)  Can You Trust Your Business Partner? Keywords: entrepreneurship, eco-tourism, accounting, integrity
•  (PDF file)  Repeat Offenders:  (opens in new window)  When Stopping Crime Goes Awry Keywords: employee relations, industrial relations, discipline, organizational culture
•  (PDF file)  To Produce Yoga Pants in India vs Not to Produce Yoga Pants in India:  (opens in new window)  Reconciling Social Responsibility with Corporate Reality Keywords: supply chain, global development, marketing, eco-business, B-corporation
•  (PDF file)  Who Do You Hire?  (opens in new window)  Ensure Your Decision Is the Right One Keywords: employee relations, recruitment, diversity, organizational development
•  (PDF file)  Religious Accommodation:  (opens in new window)  The Clash Between Faith and Workplace Needs Keywords: employee relations, organizational development, diversity
•  (PDF file)  Do Guests Always Call the Shots?  (opens in new window)  When Customers Oppose Your Diversity Policy Keywords: employee relations, customer service, crisis management, diversity
•  (PDF file)  Love Lost in an Island Paradise:  (opens in new window)  Avoiding a Disastrous Workplace Stoppage Keywords: industrial relations, social responsibility, compensation, global development
•  (PDF file)  What Did You Just See?  (opens in new window)  Diagnosing Harassment  Keywords: employee relations, harassment, software industry
•  (PDF file)  Start of Season:  (opens in new window)  Leadership Style Sets a Tone Keywords: employee relations, discipline
•  (PDF file)  Missing the Message:  (opens in new window)  Organizational Culture and Boundaries at Work Keywords: team relations, harassment, workplace culture
•  (PDF file)  “Their” People:  (opens in new window)  Competing with Racial Prejudice Keywords: racial discrimination, bystander, hiring process, corporate culture   (PDF file)  Version Français/ French version: <<Leur peuple>>
•  (PDF file)  Leadership with Style:  (opens in new window)    Keywords: employee relations, situational leadership
•  (PDF file)  Leading in the Face of Skepticism:  (opens in new window)  Managing Older Employees  Keywords: employee relations, organization development, situational leadership
•  (PDF file)  One for All:  (opens in new window)  How to Prevent Co-Workers from Letting You Down Keywords: teamwork, group projects
•  (PDF file)  Impossible Targets:  (opens in new window)  Managing an Unreasonable Manager Keywords:  sales, target setting, supervisory relations, job fit
•  (PDF file)  Gamers Address the Arab Spring:  (opens in new window)  Coding for Cultural Sensitivity  Keywords: global development, entrepreneurship, diversity

Teaching notes

The mini case studies require no preparation on the part of students. The teaching method has been effectively used for classes up to 75 students. The attached teaching method provides a marking rubric and an in-class form that can be used with students to aid in-class analysis and discussion.   (PDF file)  Download the Teaching Notes  (opens in new window) 

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Entrepreneurship Librarian

Case studies are usually short articles describing real-world business examples that illustrate a particular problem or principle in detail. There are many cases available online for free or for a fee, and you can also search the library catalogue and selected databases below.

Looking for something specific?

To use UTL Library Search to find books of entrepreneurship case studies, enter "Entrepreneurship case studies" in the search field and select "Subject" from the "Any field" dropdown menu.

Or search these databases to find individual cases in digital format (articles):

• Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window Search for a company or topic and select "Case study" under "Document type."
• CBCA Reference & Current Events This link opens in a new window Enter "entrepreneurship" or another topic of choice in the text field and check "Business case" under "Document type."

Entrepreneurship Cases

• Arthur Andersen Case Studies in Business Ethics Ninety case studies from1987-94 produced by the Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business in cooperation with 525 institutions including University of Toronto. Free.
• The Asian Business Case Centre - Nanyang Technical University A collection of cases in Chinese and English focusing on Asian management and business experience. Searchable by topic or company. Free.
• BCIC Business Case Library (archived link) Cases focused on IT, energy, and tech companies in British Columbia. Produced by BC Innovation Council. Free.
• Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute Cases on 13 Canadian companies including Ferrero, Lassonde, Maple Leaf Foods and PepsiCo Canada, produced by the CAPI and sponsored by Export Development Canada. Free.
• Case Centre - Free Cases A distributor of over 50,000 cases on a variety of business topics including entrepreneurship produced by various institutions. Some electronic and paper cases are free and others are sold for a fee, with free teaching materials.
• CasePlace - Aspen Institute (archived link) Over 800 entrepreneurship cases focusing on "social, environmental and ethical issues in business." Archived link.
• Harvard Business School Cases - Entrepreneurship Cases on e.g. Google Glass and Andreessen Horowitz from Harvard Business Publishing. Educators can register for free access to cases and teaching materials; others are charged a fee. Note: Some older Harvard cases are available via Business Source Premier.
• Ivey Publishing - Entrepreneurship Cases Over 2,800 entrepreneurship cases out of the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario. Teaching notes also available. Paywall.
• MIT Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship Via the Case Center. Legatum Center case studies illuminate the thought processes of entrepreneurs, the challenges they face, and the solutions they devise as they develop their businesses. These cases are available without charge to help teachers, students, and aspiring entrepreneurs.
• MIT Sloan School of Management Entrepreneurship cases available for free, includes teaching notes. Educators are asked to register.
• National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science Science cases written by science faculty primarily from the U.S. and Canada, produced by the University at Buffalo. Free.
• Rotman Gender and the Economy Case studies The Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE) at the Rotman School of Management promotes an understanding of gender inequalities and how they can be remedied – by people of all genders – in the world of business and, more broadly, in the economy. Case studies can be filtered using tags including for entrepreneurship, and include high-profile Canadian founder cases.
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Entrepreneurship: case studies.

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What are Case Studies?

Entrepreneurship cases, journals of case studies.

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Case studies are usually short articles describing real-world business examples that illustrate a particular problem or principle in detail. There are many cases available online for free or for a fee, and you can also search the library catalogue and selected databases below.

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Berkeley Haas Case Series

The Berkeley Haas Case Series is a collection of business case studies created by UC Berkeley faculty

Entrepreneurship

Connect-in-Place: Startup Disrupts Socializing and Learning During COVID-19

Two UC Berkeley students forced into online classes during COVID-19 realized - due to their volunteer experiences championing educational equality - that younger students (K-12) could suffer social isolation and reduced learning opportunities. So, the undergrads brainstormed how to tackle new educational and emotional challenges pre-college students faced due to pandemic restrictions.

Medinas Health: Building a Medical Equipment Marketplace

This case centers on the startup Medinas Health, a technology company based in Berkeley, California that aimed to increase the efficiency of the medical equipment market in the U.S. Chloe Alpert, Medinas Health’s CEO, envisioned a more sustainable healthcare industry and aimed to reduce waste and improve the financial bottom-line of hospitals.

Niantic Labs and the Professional Entrepreneur in the Silicon Valley: Google, Pokémon Go, and Beyond

This case series focuses on the entrepreneurial career of John Hanke, a 1996 MBA graduate of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and a professional entrepreneur.

International Data Spaces: A Collaborative Organizational Moonshot

Led by ThyssenKrupp CTO Reinhold Achatz, IDSA is an organization that seeks to set, diffuse, and implement a dominant global B2B data standard.

Maire Tecnimont: The Creation of NextChem

Maire Tecnimont is an international leader in the engineering and construction of industrial plants.

Goodbaby: How a Chinese Underdog Became a World Leader Through Open Innovation

Goodbaby is an industry-leading manufacturer of juvenile products. Under a variety of brand names, nearly a third of the strollers in the world are designed and manufactured by Goodbaby.

Barça Innovation Hub: Getting the Ball Rolling on Innovation

This case study follows the Spanish football club, FC Barcelona, as it starts to innovate and create an organizational structure for open innovation.

Enel X: Driving Digital Transformation in the Energy Sector

Enel is one of the world’s largest electric utilities, based in Italy but operating in dozens of countries around the world. This case discusses the process of establishing a new subsidiary company inside Enel to lead the company towards digital transformation in eMobility.

Bosch: Scaling Large Company Innovation for Strategic Advantage

This case focuses on the Innovation Performance Management (IPM) methodology as a new approach whereby established and global companies, like Bosch, can use innovation to support strategic goals.

Amyris, Inc: Make good. No compromise.

Amyris has grown from a Silicon Valley startup to a global publicly-traded company who genetically programs yeast into chemicals used by more than 250 million consumers in over 2,000 brands. The company's path has included entering markets with new production solutions, learning how to lower risk through business partnerships, and expanding from B2B to B2C.

Innovation, Co-Creation, and Design Thinking: How Salesforce's Ignite Team Accelerates Enterprise Digital Transformation

From its inception, Salesforce, the cloud computing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) company, took a radically different approach to selling enterprise software than competitors such as Oracle and SAP.

Sproutel: How Design Roadmapping Helped Improve Children's Health & Guide a Growing Company

This case aims to introduce students to the 'design roadmapping' process that connects customer and user experience design with product and technology roadmapping to create an integrated plan for future growth and development.

Innovating Innovation @tk

This case shows how ThyssenKrupp (tk) has altered its innovation process in recent years. CEO Heinrich Hiesinger has brought in a former colleague from Siemens, Reinhold Achatz, to lead a transformation of the R&D function at the company.

Disruption in Detroit: Ford, Silicon Valley, and Beyond

This case focuses on the Ford Motor Company in Spring 2016 and how its then-CEO, Mark Fields, and his senior management team should best respond to several emerging disruptive technologies that will ultimately force the automaker to modify its current business model.

The Berkeley-Haas Case Series is a collection of business case studies written by Haas faculty. Our culture and vision at the Haas School of Business naturally offer distinctive qualities to the Series, filling a gap in existing case offerings by drawing upon lessons from UC Berkeley's rich history and prime location in the San Francisco Bay Area. We seek to publish cases that challenge conventional assumptions about business, science, culture, and politics.

Siemens Healthineers: A Digital Journey

Maersk: Driving Culture Change at a Century-Old Company to Achieve Measurable Results

Flourish Fi: Empowering Positive Money Habits

Just Climate: A New Investment Model?

Roche Pakistan

A new collection of business case studies from Berkeley Haas

The aim of the Berkeley Haas Case Series is to incite business innovation by clarifying disruptive trends and questioning the status quo.

Smart. Open. Grounded. Inventive. Read our Ideas Made to Matter.

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Entrepreneurship Case Studies

6 Brilliant Small Business Case Study Examples For Marketers

Explore case study examples for small businesses. Additionally, find strategies for handling common challenges and solutions for growing your business.

Every business starts small.

The success of a business lies in its strategy to overcome any challenge during its journey.

If you are trying to take your business to new heights, start identifying challenges and create solutions.

The best way is to learn from sundry success stories.

There are several case studies of different businesses that can teach you which strategy to take for selling your product and attracting the target audience.

In this article, we will discuss some of the top case study examples that can assist in upscaling small businesses.

Let’s begin.

Challenges Faced by Small Businesses

As far as businesses go, there are always hurdles that need to be defeated. Starting a business is itself a big achievement for entrepreneurs, but the main challenge is maintaining one.

There are three common challenges businesses need to overcome. These include managing the expenses, hiring people, and following new trends to develop a customer base.

1. Increased Expenses

Every business revolves around money. There are different areas where businesses have to spend their money. But the issue is handling the financial hurdles. With an unplanned budget and financial advice, businesses will be spending more than they need to.

Keeping an eye on expenses is important because the expenses determine the profit the business will make.

However, it is not easy to reduce the expense. It’s affected by demand and supply. If businesses need to keep up with the market’s demands, then the chance of increasing expenses is 100%.

2. More and Skilled Manpower Required

Businesses don’t run themselves. They need manpower with skills to handle different departments. Generally, the number of employees in a small business ranges from 1 to 500 people. Getting this manpower is easy but getting a skilled one is difficult and time-consuming.

Whenever looking for manpower, businesses need to decide what skills they want in their candidate. The problem is candidates can’t always fulfill all the requirements. Besides, hiring manpower also increases the expenses.

3. Keeping Up With the Latest Trends

The market is fluid. It changes and introduces new trends. Small businesses need to keep up with changing trends to keep their business growing. But this is where many businesses start to fall apart.

The thing about new trends is that businesses need to sell their products at the right time. It means they have to keep on studying the market to speculate their next products. If a small business fails to deliver during the peak of the trend, then it will suffer a heavy loss.

Solutions to Grow a Small Business

The best thing about businesses is that there is an attempt to find a solution for every challenge. It brings out the competition in the market, which is huge for surfacing different kinds of solutions a business can adopt.

1. Reduce the Expenses

When it comes to expenses, businesses are focused on spending huge sums on communication because communication is the key element of increasing customers and revenue. It’s not a big problem for big companies, but it is expensive for small businesses.

Fortunately, the cloud telephony system has removed the dilemma while making business budgets because cloud phone services are cheaper than plain old telephone services.

It reduces the initial cost of new businesses up to 90%. Recent surveys suggest that over 74% of businesses prioritize cloud phone systems as their urgent investment.

The same goes for marketing which is necessary to attract potential customers. Small businesses don’t have enough budget to advertise their products.

The best solution for this is using social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. to promote and sell their products .

Case Study: Coffman Engineers

Coffman Engineers clearly states that although the cost of using a virtual phone number adhered to cloud phone is 50% more per employee, it still provides overall 25% more savings than plain old telephone service (POTS).

Coffman Engineers have been relying on cloud phones ever since their one office location faced a disaster. Now they have a disaster recovery feature built into their cloud phone system. It helped them to be ready for any disasters without losing communication with employees.

Not just that, they found all the necessary features bundled into one subscription package in a VoIP phone system. Such a facility enabled them to handle all their business communication using only one platform.

Key Takeaways

• Small businesses must invest in cloud telephony for business communication.
• Extensive use of social media to promote and sell your products/service.

2. Improve Employee Productivity

As we have already discussed earlier, manpower is a big challenge for small businesses. Hiring more employees doesn’t mean higher productivity. Businesses need to hire the right candidates to keep their expenses in check and improve productivity.

There are different tools available that can monitor what the employees are doing. Time tracking tools and workforce management tools are key components every business needs.

Especially in remote working scenarios, these tools are crucial to getting the full effort for the employees. Companies have seen a 35%-40% rise in productivity in employees working remotely with the use of tracking tools.

Case study: On The Map Marketing

On The Map Marketing , a digital marketing agency, used time tracking tools that showed that remote working employees tend to work more hours since they can work at flexible hours.

On The Map Marketing first started using the time tracking tool when they were opening their office in Riga, Latvia. The CTO of the company wanted the time spent on different tasks on his computer as well as managing the remote working employees.

Using a time tracking tool, they were able to track their productivity with a detailed report of their daily activities during office hours. It helped them calculate salary bonuses. They also found the productivity level of each employee to determine their value for the company.

• Small businesses should use a time tracking tool to make sure employees focus on their office work.
• Small businesses can track the performance of each employee at office locations or remote working locations.

3. Reward Your Customers

A business becomes successful when it can keep its customers happy. In efforts to upscale a small business quickly, the marketplace has seen a decline in the quality of products and services. It is a primary reason for customer dissatisfaction.

About 45% of business professionals rate customer experience as their top priority for growing a business.

Survey says more than 85% of buyers are willing to spend more for a better customer experience . Therefore, small businesses need to focus on improving their quality of products and services, which is a powerful indicator of customer experience.

Case study: Starbucks

Starbucks introduced a Reward Loyalty Program in which customers collect stars to get exciting rewards. This program drives 40% of Starbucks’s total sales .

By adapting the gamification method, Starbucks added a reward loyalty program to their already established app. This move drastically increased sales and digital traffic. They brought mobile payment, customer loyalty, and content partnership in one powerful app.

Customers started registering for My Reward via their app. They are given stars(points) in exchange for their interaction in the app or purchase made. The higher the number of stars a customer gets, the better rewards they get.

• Small businesses can give different forms of rewards for more customer engagement.
• Improvement in customer service can drive more sales and attract more customers.

4. Build Your Brand

Small businesses should learn to build their brand image . While marketing any product or service, the brand image is a key factor for understanding how people view your business.

A brand image must first include mission, vision, and values. It also requires a brand positioning statement that can set your business apart from the competitors.

It’s important to create a unique brand personality. For this, businesses need to design a good logo because customers are most likely to recognize a business looking at a logo. They will have to identify their target audience to craft a good brand image.

According to a study, around 89% of users stay loyal to a business with a good brand image .

Case study: Apple

Apple logo is a well-recognized design that reflects the brand value. Over the years, the Apple logo has gone through several design changes.

The most important rebranding of the company came when Steve Jobs changed the logo which impacted the overall personality of the company. Now, this logo is the most recognized logo in the world.

Looking at the Apple logo, customers can feel a sense of trust, reliability, and innovation . It is the main reason for the huge sales of all Apple products across the globe.

• Branding helps a business build strong relationships with prospects and attract them to be loyal customers.
• Small businesses need to create a strong brand image to sell their products efficiently.

5. Prioritize on Partnerships

Partnerships and collaboration can lift the businesses to maximize their cost savings. It allows businesses to strengthen their programs using available resources and tools.

This has a direct effect on improving the efficiency of their operations. It improves the credibility of the business in the marketplace.

Case study: RENAULT & NISSAN

Renault and Nissan have a strong partnership in automobiles. Their partnership made a remarkable achievement of making up 10% of new car sales worldwide .

Renault and Nissan chose to make an alliance rather than a merger because an alliance has many stronger benefits than a merger would give.

With an alliance, they can access more geographical areas where foreign investments are restricted. These companies got better chances to enter each other’s territory where they were already established companies because of the alliance.

Although they faced numerous challenges including fluctuation in price share, they managed to resolve issues and succeed.

• Small businesses can collaborate with other businesses to increase their chances of higher product sales and profit for everyone.
• Partnership with other businesses allows all parties to benefit from each other’s strong areas.

6. The Right Marketing Strategy

Every business requires to sell its product and services to the market. Without the right social media marketing strategy , a business cannot compete in the marketplace. The first thing about marketing is knowing your target audience and competitors.

When small businesses know who they are competing against, it will help them to see how the competitors are executing their business and attracting their customers.

One such way is to grow your website traffic which can bring you more leads and eventually customers. And how do you increase your website traffic? SEO. If done right, Search Engine Optimization can drive huge traffic to your website to reach your marketing goals.

Case study: Zapier

Zapier used an SEO strategy revolving around long-tail keywords for generating organic traffic to their website. They created 25,000 unique landing pages for unique keywords.

Zapier had a structure and layout for each page including well-optimized human written content. They outsourced SEO content and focused on a playbook for the onboarding process and launched new apps so that they can get partners to write content for them.

On top of that, they also outsourced link building to their partners. These partners wrote valuable guest post content of Zapier on their site and gave a backlink to Zapier. It helped Zapier to get new users as well as drive their website traffic.

• Small Businesses should improve their website traffic by adding more landing pages with relevant content.
• Backlinks through guest posts on other websites can drive more website traffic and attract more prospects.

Now that we have discussed these examples, let’s see how you can create these studies.

Now that you have a fair idea of the business challenges and solutions, there is a good chance of delivering a good strategy for growing your small business.

On top of that, the case study examples above will help you view how other businesses overcome their situation to take their business to new heights.

The most important aspect of upscaling a small business is understanding the customer’s needs. Therefore, you should design a persuasive marketing strategy to attract customers and compete with other businesses in the market.

And a good marketing strategy for any business must include social media. And to make the most of your social media marketing efforts try SocialPilot for free today.

Frequently Asked Questions

🌟 How do you upscale a small business?

Upscaling a small business is a very challenging process. Whether it's making a budget or hiring employees, you have to focus on things that are best for your business. Planning, targeting prospects, marketing strategy, etc. are crucial steps for upscaling businesses and competing with big companies.

🌟 What is a small scale business?

Small scale businesses or Small scale industries (SSI) provide products and services on a small level. Normally in the US, a small business consists of less than 250 employees. Also, it has small capital investments and less office space.

🌟 Why do entrepreneurs find it difficult to scale up?

New entrepreneurs find difficulty in scaling up their businesses because they don’t know what to do. Even if they know, they have to face many challenges like market research, finding loans, allocating space, etc. Also, legal matters are always a major concern for making changes.

🌟 Why is scalability important in business?

Scalability is important because it directly impacts business competition, profitability, brand image, and product quality. Since small businesses have huge growth potential and high return on investment (ROI), they have to properly focus on scalability.

🌟 When should you scale a business?

A small business should look for upscaling its business if it has achieved a minimum annual growth of 20% over 2-3 years with only 10 or more active employees.

About the Author

Anwesha Ghatak

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Engineering Subject Centre Case Studies: four mini case studies in entrepreneurship

The four case studies in this publication illustrate the birth of an idea and show how that idea can be realised into a marketable product. Each case study deals with engineering design and development issues and highlights the importance of developing sound marketing strategies including market research. The importance of appropriate support mechanisms for young entrepreneurs is also covered. The case studies illustrate how successful entrepreneurs deploy a range of entrepreneurial skills.

The materials published on this page were originally created by the Higher Education Academy.

©Advance HE 2020. Company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales no. 04931031 | Company limited by guarantee registered in Ireland no. 703150 | Registered charity, England and Wales 1101607 | Registered charity, Scotland SC043946 | VAT Registered number GB 152 1219 50. Registered UK Address: Advance HE, Innovation Way, York Science Park, Heslington, York, YO10 5BR, United Kingdom | Registered Ireland Address: Advance HE, First Floor, Penrose 1, Penrose Dock, Cork, T23 Kw81, Ireland.

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A Case Study in Entrepreneurship (Small Business Set Up)

A case study in entrepreneurship, which allows an exercise in developing business plan for a small business set up.

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