When Jeremy Howard took over a small retail wine business in 2008, he thought he could do a better job of running it than the original owners. Five years later, he had helped transform it into an online wine retailer – Cru World Wine.

In October 2021, Facebook changed the parent corporation name to Meta and announced plans to build a metaverse, a 3D virtual world for work and fun. This case explores whether Meta’s metaverse is likely to be a blue ocean utopia for people and society at large or some form of dystopia.

The case describes the Brazilian company, VTEX’s journey from its founding in 2000 as a textile software company to its unicorn status in 2021 and listing on NYSE. It traces the company’s transformation to a global player in digital commerce as a provider of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) digital commerce platform for enterprise brands and retailers selling direct-to-consumer (D2C).

The case describes the lead-up to the offer to acquire Baxalta Inc by Shire PLC in the summer of 2015, weeks after Baxalta was spun out of Baxter’s BioScience business. The setting is the biopharmaceutical sector – the fastest-growing in the global pharmaceutical industry in 2014, when M&As reached a record $219.4 billion.

Started in 2017, Binance rapidly became the world’s number one exchange for cryptocurrencies. This case sheds light on the genesis of Binance and its growing pains, describing its attempts to “blitzscale”, cope with institutional uncertainty, and set standards in an entirely new domain.

The case describes how FC Barcelona’s Innovation Hub (BIH) helped the club generate revenues through digital means when Covid 19 struck, causing football stadiums and their merchandise outlets to close for months, with damaging financial consequences. Launched in 2017, the BIH allowed pitch performance to be combined with long-term strategic initiatives.