The A case examines how CARE, a non-profit international development organization, begins to pursue a market-based approach to meeting its poverty-reduction mission. Specifically, a CARE project manager explores how previous work with low-income livestock herders in drought-prone eastern Kenya might offer an opportunity to work with value chain actors to improve access to markets and increase farmer incomes. With the Kenyan livestock project as the pilot for this new approach, Case A's main decision point concerns a strategic choice on what role CARE should play in the value chain to support low-income pastoralists. Options include 1) becoming directly involved in value chain transactions, buying and selling livestock and providing inputs to farmers or 2) acting as a value chain facilitator to provide the information and incentives to existing actors to make the value chain more efficient and inclusive for low-income producers. This strategic decision is part of a larger proposal that students are tasked to create for CARE's market-based livestock project. Case B describes the decisions CARE actually made in structuring the project and their choice to become directly involved in the value chain, buying cattle from farmers, negotiating a deal with a large farm to fatten the cattle and transporting the cattle to market. Case B is set three years into the project and begins to describe some of the serious challenges that their strategy is facing. Case B's decision point concerns developing options for how the project can be turned around, including that of CARE playing an indirect role as value chain facilitator and catalyst.
The case focuses on HTT, a small Canadian automotive manufacturer working in the highly specialized niche of supercars. HTT was only three months away from finishing the design stage of its vehicle, the Pléthore, and had to make decisions regarding the production stage. Among them, the company needed to decide how it would support its value chain processes with information technology (IT). However, a detailed set of requirements for an IT system could not be elicited until the company had successfully produced and distributed at least a few vehicles. In the meantime, the CEO, who was also a shareholder, wanted to develop a shortlist of potential IT products that would give him a better grasp of the available options.
This case examines how CARE, a non-profit international development organization, begins to pursue a market-based approach to meeting its poverty-reduction mission. Specifically, a CARE project manager explores how previous work with low-income livestock herders in drought-prone eastern Kenya might offer an opportunity to work with value chain actors to improve access to markets and increase farmers’ incomes.<br><br>With the Kenyan livestock project as the pilot for this new approach, Case (A)’s main decision point concerns a strategic choice on what role CARE should play in the value chain to support low-income pastoralists. Options include 1) becoming directly involved in value chain transactions, buying and selling livestock, and providing inputs to farmers or 2) acting as a value chain facilitator to provide the information and incentives to existing actors to make the value chain more efficient and inclusive for low-income producers. This strategic decision is part of a larger proposal that students are tasked to create for CARE’s market-based livestock project.
The president and chief executive officer of Prelko, a firm that, among other services, provides personalized printing for large companies, must decide if a new printing software application from Europe is appropriate for use by the company. The company’s printing business has been in decline and the president must determine whether the company should cease offering printing services entirely to its customers, or if there is a profitable way to reinvigorate the printing line of the business.
The case traces the milestones of a 26-year history of a social entrepreneur creating a social enterprise, Madras Craft Foundation (MCF). The story leads up to a three-decade retrospective on the role social ventures play in our lives. Based on the entrepreneur’s critical reflection, the case shows how the paths of the social entrepreneur and the social enterprise became closely interwoven. After MCF had been self-sufficient for three years, the success of the social venture precipitated a crisis as to who could succeed the founding social entrepreneur, whose love for South India’s arts, crafts, and culture had become inseparable from MCF and its best-known offering, Dakshina Chitra. The case details MCF’s revenue-generation model and shows the interdependence between the social entrepreneur and the social enterprise — their “co-becoming” over almost three decades. The analysis makes apparent links between the founder and her venture, and challenges the divide between social entrepreneur and social enterprise. It also provides an opportunity to discuss what is alike or different in social entrepreneurship and traditional entrepreneurship.
The Google.org: For-Profit Philanthropy case introduces a distinct social enterprise structure, a combination of a philanthropic division of a for-profit corporation and a nonprofit foundation. The case provides an up-to-date, in-depth description of Google.org, one such hybrid, and a brief overview of salesforce.org, a comparable hybrid. This case provides an opportunity to explore the tensions between the for-profit and nonprofit entities that inevitably arise in such structures, as well as factors that contribute to these tensions and solutions that have been attempted to address them. The case revolves around the tension caused when a non-entrepreneurial entity, Google.org, is created within the entrepreneurial culture of Google. Unlike most entrepreneurial ventures, Google.org is flush with cash; like many, it lacks cohesion around mission and vision. HKS Case Number 1960.0
In 2009, when the Indian cement market was buoyant, major Indian players were preparing to move from regional playing fields to pan-India penetration. To become a national player, Jaiprakash Associates Limited grew through acquisitions and setting up new plants. To strengthen its position, the company decided to move from a multiple brand cement portfolio to a single brand entity. It merged its two existing brands of cement, Buniyad Jaypee Cement and Jaypee Buland Cement, into a new brand, Jaypee Cement. Expanding into new geographic markets and creating a pan-India presence for the brand was the motive for this merger. When global brands such as Swiss giant Holcim and France's Lafarge continued with a multi-brand strategy in India, it was understandable that industry experts doubted whether Jaypee's decision to move from multi-branding to mono-branding was correct.
The director of new business development and strategy at Redmas Digital, an enterprising start-up, needs to write two sales e-mail templates for Redmas's newest pet project, YouPostIt! One of the e-mails is for leads that the company has not done business with before (cold leads) and the other is for leads that the company has done business with before (warm leads). The director has to write concise e-mails with high "skim value." He must distill a large amount of information regarding the company value proposition and company history in an engaging way. YouPostIt! is an experimental marketing company owned by Redmas Digital. The concept is simple: consumers get a chance to send physical postcards for free. Consumers log in at YouPostIt.com, upload a photo and write a short note, and then choose a border to go around the picture on the postcard (the border is a corporate logo). The business that occupies the border of the postcard assumes the cost of the postcard. Businesses have the opportunity to include coupons on the physical postcard and via an e-mail notification message after sending. How can the director write these sales e-mails to businesses he believes will want to pay for consumers' postcards?
The director of new business development and strategy at Redmas Digital, an enterprising start-up, needs to write two sales e-mail templates for Redmas’s newest pet project, YouPostIt! One of the e-mails is for leads that the company has not done business with before (cold leads) and the other is for leads that the company has done business with before (warm leads). The director has to write concise e-mails with high “skim value.” He must distill a large amount of information regarding the company value proposition and company history in an engaging way. <br><br>YouPostIt! is an experimental marketing company owned by Redmas Digital. The concept is simple: consumers get a chance to send physical postcards for free. Consumers log in at YouPostIt.com, upload a photo and write a short note, and then choose a border to go around the picture on the postcard (the border is a corporate logo). The business that occupies the border of the postcard assumes the cost of the postcard. Businesses have the opportunity to include coupons on the physical postcard and via an e-mail notification message after sending. How can the director write these sales e-mails to businesses he believes will want to pay for consumers’ postcards?
The president of Image Pipeline Services, a pipeline flushing and inspection firm, is taking a step back from the past few weeks, where he has spent virtually all his waking time working on his new business in Edmonton’s oil sands industry. A few months after starting his business, he controls virtually the entire market, but competitors will be encroaching soon. One competitor has offered to purchase his business and the president wants to weigh his options before agreeing to sell or continuing to compete.
The note examines state capitalism in the twenty-first century. It introduces a series of topics and cases related to state capitalism, such as the debate about the causes of inefficiency in state owned enterprises, possible ways of turning them around, as well as a short discussion of sovereign wealth funds (SWFS), national champions, development banks, etc. The note explicitly links some of these topics to HBS cases designed to dive deeper into each subject.
Wojciech Woziwodzki, co-founder, president, and CEO of Tequila Mobile SA, a mobile games developer, publisher, and service provider, had to make some important strategic decisions. Tequila Mobile SA had already decided to shift to a new "free2play" revenue model but needed to decide whether to focus on building its business in markets where penetration of smartphone devices was high and the economy was developed or in markets where the use of mobile devices was taking off but the economy was still developing. The other critical decision was whether to continue to invest in in-house game development or focus on being a platform providing tools for third-party developers. The mobile game industry had exploded in recent years with the introduction of smartphones, application (app) stores, and cell phone penetration into developing economies. It brought with it a significant increase in the number of mobile games being developed and published, and Woziwodzki wanted to differentiate Tequila Mobile SA from the growing number of players in the quickly evolving industry.
A printer and paper converter produces customized packaging used by industrial customers to deliver promotional materials, software, luxury beverages, and gift food and candy. The company specializes in creating innovative packaging solutions for its customers and providing full service from design through final delivery. Even though revenue has tripled, performance has been declining and the firm posted its first loss in over 10 years. The new VP of Operations has been hired to address operational problems resulting in cost overruns, quality problems, and late deliveries. He tours key departments including quality control and sales and visits the various work centers in the plant as he investigates the challenges in the current production process. This case can be used in a first-year MBA-level course in Operations Management. Students are asked to create a process flow diagram and perform break-even, capacity, utilization, and yield analyses before making their final recommendations for improving the firm's performance.
In the first decade of 2000, major global innovator drug companies were acquiring or collaborating with generic drug companies. Daiichi Sankyo was the first major Japanese Pharmaceutical firm to test this 'hybrid' business model in early 2008 when it acquired a majority share in Ranbaxy, then the largest India-based generic drug company and a global generic drug manufacturer and exporter. At Ranbaxy, the acquisition was followed quickly by several leadership changes. Chairman/ CEO Malvinder Singh, the grandson of Ranbaxy's founder, resigned in May 2009; Atul Sobti who took over as CEO, resigned the following year citing differences with the Japanese company on the running of Ranbaxy. In early 2011, Ranbaxy President and Chief Financial Officer, Omesh Sethi also left the company. On the financial front, the Japanese firm booked a valuation loss of US$3.9 billion from the acquisition in the third quarter of its 2008 financial year and recorded a net loss of US$2.21 billion for that financial year. With the acquisition, Daiichi Sankyo was able to expand the scope of its global business and to lessen the concentration of its assets in Japan from 78.96% to 53.7% in 2011. However, in 2011, the Japanese firm had yet to reap the full benefits of its vision of a value chain based on an integrated hybrid business model. Was a transformational organizational change needed to realize this? The case study examines the cross-cultural challenges of integrating the two businesses as the leadership worked to implement the hybrid business model.
Daiichi Sankyo was the first major Japanese pharmaceutical firm to acquire a generic drug company. In early 2008, it acquired a majority share in Ranbaxy, then the largest India-based generic drug manufacturer and exporter. This case examines the cross cultural challenges in the post-acquisition task of integration.