Jaipur Rugs Company Private Limited, a family-owned business, was founded with the twin goals of leading a thriving export business and helping artisan weavers to live with dignity and keep their heritage alive. In 2015, this company was the largest exporter of hand-knotted carpets from India and faced two dilemmas: Should the company focus exclusively on hand-knotted carpets, as preferred by the founder and some family members, or should it focus on tufted carpets, which also provided a considerable share of the company’s total revenue and had increased the company’s sales? Also, because of the number of recent departures by non-family members from the management team, a balance was needed in terms of the family's values and those of the hired professionals that were brought into the company. Many initiatives had been introduced at the company, but would they be sufficiently helpful to achieve the company’s goals?
By July 2012, the founder of Clover Food Lab (Clover) had created a profitable business that served locally sourced, organic, vegetarian fast food. Over the course of four years, Clover had grown from one food truck parked on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus in Cambridge to five food trucks and two brick-and-mortar restaurants in the metropolitan Boston area. With loyal customers advocating for the brand, the CEO knew that his company was well positioned for continued growth. He dreamed of turning Clover into a global fast-food provider, capturing enough market share to compete directly with international fast-food chains like McDonald’s. In 2014, he considered expanding his company into a new market and wondered whether Clover’s vision and operations could be duplicated.
Jaipur Rugs Company Private Limited, a family-owned business, was founded with the twin goals of leading a thriving export business and helping artisan weavers to live with dignity and keep their heritage alive. In 2015, this company was the largest exporter of hand-knotted carpets from India and faced two dilemmas: Should the company focus exclusively on hand-knotted carpets, as preferred by the founder and some family members, or should it focus on tufted carpets, which also provided a considerable share of the company's total revenue and had increased the company's sales? Also, because of the number of recent departures by non-family members from the management team, a balance was needed in terms of the family's values and those of the hired professionals that were brought into the company. Many initiatives had been introduced at the company, but would they be sufficiently helpful to achieve the company's goals?
In 2012, the executive producer of the hit radio show Q and the director of Network Radio at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) faced employees' complaints against the show's star host, Jian Ghomeshi. The employees alleged that Ghomeshi's treatment of employees was problematic and contrary to the corporation's values and policies. A few years earlier, a female employee had also alleged mistreatment by Ghomeshi but no disciplinary action had been taken. The two managers faced a difficult decision. Ghomeshi had strong support among CBC executives, including from their boss, and his popular radio program had achieved high ratings among the younger audience that the organization needed to appeal to.
On October 6, 2011, President Barack Obama publicly scolded Bank of America for developing a new revenue stream: a $5 monthly fee for all Bank of America debit card holders, which the bank had announced a month earlier. It was a strategy for replacing lost "swipe fee" revenue following the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act and accompanying Durbin Amendment, which capped swipe fees at 21 cents per transaction. This was the culmination of three tumultuous years for the world's largest financial services firm, but would not be the end of its public affairs challenges. The president's public critique of Bank of America came in response to-and helped exacerbate-consumer anger about the bank's monthly fee, changes across the banking sector, and general discontent with Wall Street. Bank of America's situation was complicated further by ongoing legal action following acquisitions of Merrill Lynch and Countrywide, which hurt the firm's shareholders and led to large-scale employee layoffs. In this case study, students will be challenged to analyze how Bank of America could have better managed the competing interests of different stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, regulators, customers, and the public.
A multi-issue 1-on-1 negotiation between an aging Italian entrepreneur in North Africa (Luca Lombardi) and a young M&A specialist from a large Asian corporation (Anna Chuan). All the due diligence has been completed and the parties are now ready to discuss the price for the Lombardi company. Role-players can either fall into bargaining (an exchange of numbers) since their ideas of what the company is worth are completely at odds, or discuss the assumptions behind their numbers and valuations to reach a legitimate agreement for both parties.
A multi-issue 1-on-1 negotiation between an aging Italian entrepreneur in North Africa (Luca Lombardi) and a young M&A specialist from a large Asian corporation (Anna Chuan). All the due diligence has been completed and the parties are now ready to discuss the price for the Lombardi company. Role-players can either fall into bargaining (an exchange of numbers) since their ideas of what the company is worth are completely at odds, or discuss the assumptions behind their numbers and valuations to reach a legitimate agreement for both parties.
The case highlights the infighting within a Thai family who own and operate a fresh-food market stall business in Bangkok. The case explores the depths to which the Thammawattana dynasty sank in order to keep control of a profitable cash-in-hand business that had made the matriarch, Suwapee Thammawattana, a billionaire by the time of her death at age 65.
The Marvel Way: Restoring a Blue Ocean explains one of the greatest turnarounds in modern business history. This case comes with a two-part video interview with then Marvel CEO Peter Cuneo who turned around the business and launched a blue ocean. Founded in 1939, Marvel Comics initially struggled in a red ocean producing primarily me-to knock-off comic books. In the early 1960's Marvel took a blue ocean turn by focusing on noncustomer college students. Marvel invented characters that were people first and superheroes second: Spider-Man, The Hulk, Iron Man, the X-Men. The business thrived. By the 1980's value extractors took over Marvel, badly misaligning value, profit, and people. In late 1996 Marvel filed for bankruptcy, a victim of red ocean management practices. New management purchased the business out of bankruptcy in 1998 but faced a daunting task: Marvel owed $30 million in annual interest payments on a $250 million loan, cash was so tight that they almost missed payroll, and movie rights for many of their best characters were licensed to others. First managers stabilized the business then Marvel created a new type of blue ocean that went on to produce the most profitable movie franchise in history. Just over a decade after exiting bankruptcy a debt-free Marvel sold itself to Disney for $4.2 billion. Exclusive two-part video interview with CEO Peter Cuneo and Lecture Slides can be obtained from https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/teaching-materials/marvel/ Available in English, Chinese, Spanish and Korean.
This case illustrates the key issues and challenges in creating and sustaining a successful brand in emerging markets. Peter England, India's largest apparel brand by sales volume, is struggling to formulate a strategy to sustain the brand's market dominance. Indian consumer tastes are changing rapidly, making it difficult for any brand to stay relevant and fashionable over time. Meanwhile, other domestic brands and foreign players are expanding rapidly, aiming to dethrone Peter England as the market leader. To sustain the brand's dominance, the executive team has to dissect the forces shaping the market and develop a new positioning for the brand, a robust platform that can accommodate its broad portfolio of products and sub-brands. The executive team also has to develop an implementation plan for the brand positioning, entailing product development, advertising, promotions, pricing and distribution. Please visit the dedicated case website "http://cases.insead.edu/branding-in-india" to access supplementary material.
This case is about a small American auto parts producer trying to diversify its way out of dependence on the major automakers. A promising new product is developed and the company gets a chance to license it to a Scottish manufacturer. The issue of whether to license or go it alone in international markets is central to the case. A sequel to this case is available, titled Cameron Auto Parts (B).
By July 2012, the founder of Clover Food Lab (Clover) had created a profitable business that served locally sourced, organic, vegetarian fast food. Over the course of four years, Clover had grown from one food truck parked on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus in Cambridge to five food trucks and two brick-and-mortar restaurants in the metropolitan Boston area. With loyal customers advocating for the brand, the CEO knew that his company was well positioned for continued growth. He dreamed of turning Clover into a global fast-food provider, capturing enough market share to compete directly with international fast-food chains like McDonald's. In 2014, he considered expanding his company into a new market and wondered whether Clover's vision and operations could be duplicated.
In this exercise students work for an organization that offers various events to its members and have spent the months of October and November organizing a conference to be held the following February and marketed it to members. They are asked to assess the impact on their organization's financial statements of several decisions they have made regarding the conference.
SIAM was born in 1910, in Buenos Aires (Argentina), as a manufacturing company of bread making machines or bread mixers. In only a few decades, the company had diversified its production, becoming the largest metallurgical company in South America. During the first fifty years of existence, SIAM learned how to successfully adjust to the changes in the Argentine scenario, shifting from an open and deregulated economy to an increasingly closed and highly-regulated system. However, from the 1960s onwards, SIAM started to experience a series of productive, organizational and financial adversities, until its final crisis in the 1970s. In that sense, the case study (divided into two parts, A and B), offers relevant information to discuss the various decisions the companies made, in light of the opportunities and obstacles encountered, within a series of contexts marked by an overall growing level of regulation, uncertainty and institutional and macro-economic imbalance. Is SIAM's meteoric rise a synthesis of the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) period in Latin America, phase in which the State promoted industrialization oriented to the domestic market as a development strategy? Or is this an example of a firm with an extremely ambitious diversification policy and with management problems?
SIAM was born in 1910, in Buenos Aires (Argentina), as a manufacturing company of bread making machines or bread mixers. In only a few decades, the company had diversified its production, becoming the largest metallurgical company in South America. During the first fifty years of existence, SIAM learned how to successfully adjust to the changes in the Argentine scenario, shifting from an open and deregulated economy to an increasingly closed and highly-regulated system. However, from the 1960s onwards, SIAM started to experience a series of productive, organizational and financial adversities, until its final crisis in the 1970s. In that sense, the case study (divided into two parts, A and B), offers relevant information to discuss the various decisions the companies made, in light of the opportunities and obstacles encountered, within a series of contexts marked by an overall growing level of regulation, uncertainty and institutional and macro-economic imbalance. Is SIAM's meteoric rise a synthesis of the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) period in Latin America, phase in which the State promoted industrialization oriented to the domestic market as a development strategy? Or is this an example of a firm with an extremely ambitious diversification policy and with management problems?