In August 2021, the co-owner of the property management and rental business Nassau Property Partnership, located in London, Ontario, asked his brother, a senior partner in a tax firm, for help with the tax structure of various operational and strategic decisions, both for his business and personal affairs. The business managed well over the COVID-19 pandemic, but several recent major events required advice from an experienced tax professional. Regarding his personal life, the co-owner was considering retiring from his company, which was a partnership, and had already put down a deposit on a second home in Florida. He wanted to fund the remaining part of the purchase through either a sale of his business interests to his daughter or through the sale of his family cottage. However, both of these decisions may have repercussions.
Data cleaning, data preparation, and model development are the crucial steps in data analytics. The first two steps aim to improve data quality for higher accuracy, improved productivity, and better efficiency in modelling and obtaining results. The last step, model development, seeks to improve accuracy of prediction, especially in predictive modelling. In this technical note, we use a sample to illustrate how to work with a multivariate dataset in Python. This dataset's massive number of variables requires different approaches to data cleaning, preparation, and model development, such as data normalization and dimension reduction.
This note provides an overview of asset management and capital markets, the different types of firms in this industry, types of investments, the different investment styles and strategies employed by asset managers to help them achieve their goals, and asset manager roles and responsibilities.
Transformational efforts require employees to work in new and unfamiliar ways. Generic knowledge and skills aren't enough to ensure that they can do this new digital-focused work. Leaders should follow the example of P&G's successful digital transformation and bolster employee ability by connecting knowledge and skills to targeted actions and performance outcomes.
From nearly bankrupt to a franchised chain of 150+ clinics and growing, PetWellClinic: Shifting from a Red to a Blue Ocean shows the use of blue ocean strategy to redraw industry boundaries and create a remarkably successful business. Dr. Sam Meisler, DVM, MBA, found himself struggling in a red ocean of the veterinary care industry. Stressed out and nearly bankrupt, Dr. Meisler applied blue ocean strategy concepts and tools to create a new market space in veterinary care. This is an ex-ante case where blue ocean strategy was used from the beginning to build a large new blue ocean business while transitioning away from his struggling traditional clinics. The first PetWellClinic was launched in 2010 and there are now over 150 franchises sold. Embedded in the case are seven short videos featuring key people which may be used in the classroom. This case enables a rich discussion related to entrepreneurism, blue ocean strategy, leadership, behavioral economics, turnarounds, and professional practices.
This article, adapted from the new book Tomorrowmind, looks at how having siloed HR functions hinders the development and implementation of programs that could better support employee mental health and thriving. The authors discuss four hurdles that make it difficult to proactively prevent the onset of physical or psychological health issues and suggest ways that Benefits and L&D teams can work together to execute effective interventions to mitigate workplace stressors.
Guangzhou Leyaoyao Information Technology Co. Ltd. provided online-payment services in Guangzhou, China. In 2017, the company entered the claw-machine market and became the leader in the industry’s online-payment services within two years. To further develop its business and improve its market power, the company was considering diversification through vertical integration within the claw-machine industry or horizontal expansion to other types of offline physical devices. Both options held potential benefits and risks. Vertical integration would enable the company to enhance its market position, lift entry barriers, and develop a new revenue model within the claw-machine business, but consolidation costs could be substantive and the relatively small scale of the claw-machine industry could be a constraint for the company’s future development. Horizontal expansion would allow the company to apply its core competences from the claw-machine industry to other offline and networked facilities, but it could be challenging due to established market leaders in other sectors. Which option would broaden the company’s business boundaries: vertical integration or horizontal expansion?
DingTalk was a digital platform launched by multinational technology conglomerate Alibaba Group Holding Limited. The predecessor of DingTalk, Laiwang, was initially intended to compete with social networking apps such as Tencent Holdings Limited’s popular WeChat. Laiwang failed to take off, so Alibaba quickly and agilely pivoted, steering DingTalk’s strategy to focus on business users instead of consumers. The vision for DingTalk became a digital platform for facilitating the transformation of both small- and-medium sized enterprises and a digital operating system for large corporations. However, in a climate of constantly-evolving business and social environments and needs, DingTalk’s design and strategies needed to evolve as well. What strategy should DingTalk pursue for its future growth and evolution?
As of the end of 2019, the point-of-care testing (POCT) products of Getein Biotech Inc., an important in vitro diagnostics (IVD) enterprise, had been successfully applied to the detection of many diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, inflammation, kidney diseases, and blood coagulation disorders. Its market share and output value were both among the highest in the industry. In addition to improving its core POCT products, Getein Biotech firmly grasped industry opportunities to accelerate expansion in key IVD segments and build a complete product system. However, with the impact of COVID-19 in 2020, the enterprise, unlike its competitors in this industry, failed to seize the opportunity of developing COVID-19 test kits. As a result, its profits fell sharply, and its competitive position in the industry faced huge challenges. At the beginning of 2021, due to uncertainties about the COVID-19 pandemic, the enterprise was forced to integrate its original resources and capabilities and adjust its development strategy in order to establish sustainable competitive advantages.
In early May 2022, Collie Turner, founder of award-winning non-profit organization Heroic Gardens, was looking to obtain additional revenue streams in order to expand the organization’s programming. The mission of Heroic Gardens was clear: help veterans experience the healing power of nature. The pivot to a new campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic was successful, and the number of organizations and veterans reaching out for services was increasing.<br><br>Heroic Gardens was looking for funding and new ways to scale in order to grow its programs and hire employees to support that growth. As Turner was preparing for a financial and program review with her board—and knowing that the organization was 99 per cent volunteer run—the challenge was understanding and finding a way to increase funding in order to support Heroic Gardens and the veterans it serves.
Julia Miller was the lead project coordinator for Construct Water Company on a water line construction project in Bakersfield, California. Miller had been recently been promoted when her new boss came to her hotel room for a meeting, but kissed her without her consent. Over the next few months, Miller faced more conflict and had to make an increasingly complicated decision about what to do next, including whether to report the original misconduct. Miller repeatedly chose not to report the incident because she worried about a negative reaction from the company’s human resources office and potential retaliation from her mostly male superiors. She decided instead to follow the advice of a co-worker to avoid conflict. Miller was constantly trying to figure out what she should do, and wondered why the organizational environment had made these decisions so difficult for female employees like her.
In January 2023, Raja Al Mazrouei became the Managing Director and Acting CEO of Etihad Credit Insurance (ECI) in Dubai, UAE. In her previous role as the Executive Vice President of the DIFC Fintech Hive, she successfully built and led an accelerator program for start-ups in the financial technology (fintech) sector in Dubai. The Fintech Hive has had successful partnerships with established banks like Emirates NBD and accelerated over 200 start-ups in the MENA region. Al Mazrouei and her team embraced recent technologies and evolved their business models to keep up with the global digital space. With Dubai's ambition to be one of the top ten metaverse economies by 2030, Al Mazrouei's last mandate as EVP of Fintech Hive was to strategize on how to deepen their partnerships and remain at the forefront of technology. She decided to focus on the metaverse with her long-standing partner, Emirates NBD. Although some questioned whether the metaverse would create value for those in the financial sector, this project kept Fintech Hive and Emirates NBD on the cutting edge. Together, they created a global accelerator program for metaverse start-ups to enhance customer experience, contributing to the country's agenda. It was clear to Al Mazrouei that building partnerships, like the one established with Emirates NBD, would continue to be critical for success in her new position. She was eager to collaborate with her new team and fulfill the country's ambitions by building the culture and capabilities required to embrace innovation and digital technology across the Dubai government and economy.
norbloc was founded in 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden, by Astyanax Kanakakis and his co-founders, Vitalii Demianets and Sam Saatchi. Kanakakis and Demianets got to work to address a key gap in the industry: Know Your Customer (KYC) data sharing. As the first distributed KYC utility in the world, norbloc focused on platforms that connected financial institutions and governments, allowing the auditable sharing of sensitive information with the consent of the owner. norbloc connected with Emirates NBD in 2017 as one of 12 start-up finalists in the first cohort of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC)'s fintech accelerator, known as Fintech Hive (The Hive). After the formal program ended, Kanakakis and Emirates NBD's leadership joined forces to make a step-change in KYC. In February 2020, after over two years of negotiating legal agreements, conducting pilots, and reviewing the regulatory implications of the platform, Emirates NBD signed a production agreement with norbloc. After announcing a collaboration with UAE banking players to develop a UAE KYC Blockchain Consortium and scaling norbloc's internal operations, Kanakakis reflected on how these opportunities all started with the DIFC Fintech Hive accelerator program.