CASE STUDY. Radebe wondered how to ensure the success of a new venture that would have to compete against the major global oil brands.

CASE STUDY. Her management style had been way too authoritarian. She wondered how she could become a more open, authentic leader – and, indeed, if it was possible to make this change.

CASE STUDY. When Marisa Torrani took a brief moment to relax in one of the elegant armchairs in her book emporium, Skoobs Theatre of Books, she drank in the scene with satisfaction.

CASE STUDY. Raizcorp chief executive Allon Raiz was faced each day with many applications to join his business incubation Prosperator programme.

CASE STUDY. Since the opening of Mowana Spa at the Indaba Hotel in Fourways, north of Johannesburg, three years ago, marketing manager Sharon Hunink had sought to create an experience that would entice her customers to return again and again.

CASE STUDY. In September 2012, IT firm Dimension Data paid out R1.26 billion to the various participants in a broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) deal that the company had signed eight years earlier.

CASE STUDY. Matome Modipa, executive chairman and founder of the Sebata Group of technical engineering and management consultants, enjoyed coming to work.

CASE STUDY. It was mid-September 2010. All 50 finalists in the annual First National Bank (FNB) Innovators Campaign were about to present their ideas to the judges.

CASE STUDY. Johannesburg-based Zest, well respected in the electric motor industry, was the only distributor of WEG motors throughout southern Africa.

CASE STUDY. Doctor Nicolaas Duneas was in a quandary: as he sat in his dishevelled office at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), he pondered the future of his company Altis Biologics.

CASE STUDY. In December 2008, Charlene Lewison, marketing director of the Johannesburg-based family business, Birdi Golf Apparel, surveyed the company’s well-stocked shelves with pride – but also with a growing sense of unease.