Finbook Pte. Ltd. (FinBook), a financial technology (fintech) start-up, started in July 2017 in Singapore as a decentralized marketplace for structured products on the blockchain. The founders obtained seed funding of approximately US$200,000 that allowed it to introduce and incorporate structured funds, short sales, and financial options in the crypto space using smart contracts under the distributed ledger system.<br><br>In May 2018, FinBook launched a private cornerstone round of token financing and obtained $3.5 million worth of Ethereum. However, the cryptocurrency market plunged in 2018. As a result, the founders needed to discuss their options: Should they postpone the public initial coin offering (ICO) planned for September 2018, or should they consider another round of venture capital (VC) equity financing while waiting for a better time for the ICO?

The president of Siyuan Energy (Siyuan) faced the long-standing problem of a very high rate of top management turnover. By 2019, Siyuan had grown to five hundred employees and ¥170 million in revenue; however, over the past decade, the turnover rate of executives had grown dramatically. Few of the externally hired executives lasted even a year, and now a number of long-time internal executives were also leaving. Morale was declining at the same time that the company was facing growing competition. Action was required to address the problem, but analysis was first needed to understand whether such high turnover was due to systems or leadership, or both.

In March of 2021, the management consulting division of Global Consulting Company Canada was preparing to hold its biannual performance review call for consulting analysts hired in September 2019. The analysts had been unable to complete their traditional two-year rotational development program, which meant that no promotion would normally be recommended on this call. However, extraordinary circumstances caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 made two analysts from this class stand out above the rest. The senior manager of the two high performers was planning to challenge the firm’s strict requirements for promoting analysts. She wanted to keep her two high-performing analysts motivated and to fast-track their careers. Her presentation at the upcoming performance review call would be a key factor in the firm’s decision.

A business school student was preparing for a stock pitch competition. He had developed an interest in stock held by investor Warren Buffet in Liberty Media Corp.’s Series C Liberty Formula One common shares. His research revealed that a substantial part of Formula One’s valuation was accounted for as intangible assets and comprised, in particular, what was known as the 100-year agreement with the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, the sport’s governing body. The student was interested in how such an agreement on paper could be worth billions of dollars and how that translated into value for investors. What factors would—and should—Liberty Media Corp. have considered when attributing a value to an asset such as the 100-year agreement that was ten times higher than its original cost? How should investors view these inflated values for intangible assets such as the 100-year agreement and Formula One’s customer relationships and what would be their impact on Liberty Media Corp.’s earnings and future stock value?

Lego collaborated with Shell to launch a series of toy products, and both parties benefited from the partnership. However, this collaboration faced strong opposition from the environmental organization Greenpeace, who believed that it was just a way for the oil company to "greenwash" and reshape its image. As a result, Greenpeace launched a series of actions to stop the collaboration between Lego and Shell, which sparked polarized debates in society and triggered discussions on corporate social responsibility issues.

This case concerns the efforts of a multigenerational family company to articulate and document shareholder roles and goals aligned with the enterprise's overarching vision and values. In the summer of 2022, the family owners of well-known window-manufacturer Pella, based in the namesake Iowa city, were well into their fifth generation. No family member worked in the business--per longstanding policy--but fourth-generation members held key governance roles, including as the board chair and directors. With the trustees, other family members, and the CEO, these leaders had worked diligently to define shareholder roles and goals for all governance roles to gain family approval and use the final versions to help management. The board set Pella's vision, priorities, and strategies. The process was tricky because the family was now dispersed across the United States, and none of its members lived near the corporate headquarters. Readers will place themselves in family leaders' shoes as they face challenges, including an unpredictable business environment (such as a volatile housing market) and the question of how best to integrate and unify wide-ranging family interests and preferences for engagement with the enterprise.

To understand how companies might successfully assess, pilot, and implement cutting-edge technologies, the authors studied how IKEA introduced drone technology into its warehouse operations. The company's experience demonstrates that a use case for a technology that has not yet been widely adopted can be developed into a meaningful business case when an organization takes a coordinated approach to conducting pilots and finds the right vendor partners.

The president of Siyuan Energy (Siyuan) faced the long-standing problem of a very high rate of top management turnover. By 2019, Siyuan had grown to five hundred employees and ¥170 million in revenue; however, over the past decade, the turnover rate of executives had grown dramatically. Few of the externally hired executives lasted even a year, and now a number of long-time internal executives were also leaving. Morale was declining at the same time that the company was facing growing competition. Action was required to address the problem, but analysis was first needed to understand whether such high turnover was due to systems or leadership, or both.

In March of 2021, the management consulting division of Global Consulting Company Canada was preparing to hold its biannual performance review call for consulting analysts hired in September 2019. The analysts had been unable to complete their traditional two-year rotational development program, which meant that no promotion would normally be recommended on this call. However, extraordinary circumstances caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 made two analysts from this class stand out above the rest. The senior manager of the two high performers was planning to challenge the firm's strict requirements for promoting analysts. She wanted to keep her two high-performing analysts motivated and to fast-track their careers. Her presentation at the upcoming performance review call would be a key factor in the firm's decision.

Most IT systems are integrated-but not necessarily meaningfully enough to prevent a costly state of dysfunction.

Finbook Pte. Ltd. (FinBook), a financial technology (fintech) start-up, started in July 2017 in Singapore as a decentralized marketplace for structured products on the blockchain. The founders obtained seed funding of approximately US$200,000 that allowed it to introduce and incorporate structured funds, short sales, and financial options in the crypto space using smart contracts under the distributed ledger system. In May 2018, FinBook launched a private cornerstone round of token financing and obtained $3.5 million worth of Ethereum. However, the cryptocurrency market plunged in 2018. As a result, the founders needed to discuss their options: Should they postpone the public initial coin offering (ICO) planned for September 2018, or should they consider another round of venture capital (VC) equity financing while waiting for a better time for the ICO?

A business school student was preparing for a stock pitch competition. He had developed an interest in stock held by investor Warren Buffet in Liberty Media Corp.'s Series C Liberty Formula One common shares. His research revealed that a substantial part of Formula One's valuation was accounted for as intangible assets and comprised, in particular, what was known as the 100-year agreement with the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, the sport's governing body. The student was interested in how such an agreement on paper could be worth billions of dollars and how that translated into value for investors. What factors would-and should-Liberty Media Corp. have considered when attributing a value to an asset such as the 100-year agreement that was ten times higher than its original cost? How should investors view these inflated values for intangible assets such as the 100-year agreement and Formula One's customer relationships and what would be their impact on Liberty Media Corp.'s earnings and future stock value?

Dena Almansoori, the first female and one of the youngest members of the United Arab Emirates-based e&'s leadership team, joined in 2020 just before e& began a strategic transition from being a regional telecommunications company to becoming a global technology company. As the group's chief HR officer, Almansoori had a key role to play in this transition. Her mandate was to build a culture that was a "magnet" for top global talent, such that e& would compete with the likes of Amazon and Google not only for customers, but employees too. Many deemed this to be a radically ambitious goal. When Almansoori entered, the company had never had a town hall meeting; e& did not have standardized benefits for employees; employees called their managers by titles not names and needed their approval to apply for internal jobs. However, in two short years, Almansoori and other leaders had made "seismic" changes to the 70,000-person organization's strategy, structure, talent profile, and people processes. Changing the "extremely hierarchical culture" that Almansoori saw as antithetical to being a tech company was a slower process. To speed it up, in a radical move for the organization and region, Almansoori rolled out a new internal mobility policy that encouraged employees to apply for internal jobs without asking their manager's permission. It was a symbolic gesture of "taking control away from leaders and putting it in the hands of employees" and a mechanism for altering manager-employee interactions-an area Almansoori could not directly control. In contrast, her other HR initiatives did not directly impact power dynamics inside e&.

Dena Almansoori, the first female and one of the youngest members of the United Arab Emirates-based e&'s leadership team, joined in 2020 just before e& began a strategic transition from being a regional telecommunications company to becoming a global technology company. As the group chief HR officer, Almansoori had a key role to play in this transition. Her mandate was to build a culture that was a "magnet" for top global talent, such that e& would compete with the likes of Amazon and Google not only for customers, but employees too. Many deemed this to be a radically ambitious goal. When Almansoori entered, the company had never had a town hall meeting; e& did not have standardized benefits for employees; employees called their managers by titles not names and needed their approval to apply for internal jobs. However, in two short years, Almansoori and other leaders had made "seismic" changes to the 70,000-person organization's strategy, structure, talent profile, and people processes. Changing the "extremely hierarchical culture" that Almansoori saw as antithetical to being a tech company was a slower process. To speed it up, in a radical move for the organization and region, Almansoori rolled out a new internal mobility policy that encouraged employees to apply for internal jobs without asking their manager's permission. It was a symbolic gesture of "taking control away from leaders and putting it in the hands of employees" and a mechanism for altering manager-employee interactions-an area Almansoori could not directly control. In contrast, her other HR initiatives did not directly impact power dynamics inside e&.

This case traces the evolution of analytics as an organisation-wide capability at Titan Company. It delves into the initiation of the process, development of various projects to seek buy-in from key internal stakeholders, hurdles in organisation-wide adoption and ways to overcome these hurdles. The case covers topics such as factors that drive acceptance and measurement of impact, hand-holding with regard to capability development and ways to build champions in the organisation who support the venture. This case is one of the few recorded instances of organisation-wide adoption of analytics for decision-making in business in the Indian context.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are engaged in a harsh battle for market dominance. This article examines the emergence of a dominant design in terms of technology, service, and business model innovation. We conduct a theoretical synthesis of the literature on industrial organization, technology management, network economics, operations management, and strategic management - with the implications of each theory related to the dominant-design battle in AI. The findings indicate a dominant design for AI will be based on innovation concerning business models as much as on technology, and that the dominant business model will include AI as a service.

Emerging generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT are putting new tools in the hands of hackers. Companies will need to shift from traditional defensive tools and rule-based strategies to respond to next-level AI-generated threats in real time. This will require both smarter technologies and smarter employees. The authors discuss businesses' options for establishing a modern approach to cyberdefense in the face of artificial intelligence-based security threats.

Both enterprise blockchain and tokenization projects use distributed ledger technologies (DLT) as the underlying infrastructure; but developing and managing them are in fact very different. This case focuses on CryptoBLK, a Hong Kong-based solution provider that has developed a wide range of DLT software applications for its clients in trade finance, supply chain and logistics, and has later expanded to tokenization businesses. This case gives an opportunity for students to identify and discuss the differences between enterprise blockchain and tokenization projects in terms of client profiles, project goals, required services, time spans, revenue streams and specific programming languages used. Students can learn how to make strategic short-term and long-term decisions. In making short-term decisions, students can consider how to strike a balance between enterprise blockchain and tokenization businesses in terms of investing and staffing. In making long-term decisions, as tokenization is an emerging trend with high potential, students have the opportunity to discuss how CryptoBLK should position itself in the industry, e.g., as an end-to-end tokenization service provider or only as a technical service provider. Moreover, students can consider how CryptoBLK can leverage existing and potential clients in local and regional consortiums, international DLT trade finance consortia and token-specific companies to develop a sustainable business model. After studying this case, students can not only understand the concepts of private and public blockchains but also discuss their differences from a project management perspective. Students will also be able to make strategic decisions on developing business models involving emerging technologies.

Tony's Chocolonely is a Dutch chocolate company that prides itself on using slave-free labor within its supply chain. However, after it was revealed that the company's major supplier, Barry Callebaut, used child and slave labor to grow and harvest cocoa beans, Tony's Chocolonely was heavily scrutinized and the grassroots organization Slave Free Chocolate removed Tony's from its list of ethical chocolate brands. In early 2022, The Times of London reported child labor in Tony's supply chain. Responding, Tony's Chocolonely thoroughly explained how it paid extra to keep its cocoa beans ethically grown and turned into chocolate. However, some critics still believed the company's branding to be misleading. Later that year, Tony's Chocolonely achieved a higher B Corp rating and announced a partnership with Ben & Jerry's. The fictional protagonist is an advisor to the head of impact at Tony's, Paul Schoenmakers. She is tasked with presenting an end-of-year analysis of Tony's strategy and goals for the next year, causing her to reflect on the highs and lows the company has recently experienced and how these events and reactions should inform its social impact initiatives and branding strategy moving forward.

After COVID-19 lockdowns delayed its first public theatre performance in April 2020, the Bombay Theatre Company (BTC) turned to virtual performances on various online platforms, establishing an international presence and casting international artists. In May 2022, the company’s founder reflected on the human resources and business challenges he had faced in his short entrepreneurial journey. These included limited resources for talent acquisition, an overreliance on social media as a hiring source, and difficulties in retaining gig workers, as well as tepid corporate responses to BTC’s theatre-based interventions and a lack of financial resources and clear revenue model. BTC’s founder needed to determine the best business model to generate a steady flow of revenue and to envisage a clear growth path, and he knew he would have to choose between virtual and in-person shows as well as between theatre and film. Overall, BTC had built itself a strong foundation during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it now sought to leverage that base to build a compelling employee value proposition and attract the talent it needed to become profitable.</p>