The case is set in 2023. The protagonist of the case is Tim Cook, Apple's CEO since 2011. CEO Cook worries about how long Apple can sustain its superior performance. Many of Apple's challenges are tied to the iPhone, one of the most iconic product innovations of the 21st century. CEO Cook must address supply chain challenges, exposure to the Chinese market, lack of innovation, pivot towards services, and increased regulatory scrutiny. With sales in 2022 of $400 billion and $100 billion in profits, Apple was the first tech company to reach a market valuation of $3 trillion (01/2022). By designing category-defining products and embedding them in a service ecosystem, the Cupertino-based company has enjoyed sustained success while many other tech companies have floundered.
The case is set in 2023. The protagonists are Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, co-CEOs of Netflix, a subscription streaming service and content production company. In Q4 2022, Netflix gained 7.7 million new subscribers (223 million worldwide) after losing 1.2 million in the year's first half. The scale of subscriber defection (in Q1 and Q2) across all geographic regions other than Asia concerned investors. By mid-2022, Netflix's share price plummeted by over 72%. The streaming company's market capitalization fell from $306 billion in November 2021 to a low of $74 billion, a loss of $232 billion. Dubbed the streaming wars, Netflix must contend with a host of competitors, some of them with deep pockets: Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, and YouTube TV, among others.
Singapore-based tech social enterprise Savour! seeks to make procurement smoother and more productive by linking up suppliers like merchants with less commercially-oriented procurers such as non-profit organisations and school clubs via its B2B e-commerce platform and app. It originally focused on food products that were blemished or had a limited shelf life, but has since expanded its range of products and services to include corporate gifts, office supplies, and event rental services. Both merchants and procurers deal with each other via the digital platform or app, which offers discounts of varying percentage depending on how soon the products would expire. Savour! was set up by Katrina Lee and a group of like-minded youths when they were all still undergraduates. They had met when participating in a green business pitch competition aimed at achieving environmental sustainability. Lee had been spurred to found the company as a result of her temporary job stints during which she had witnessed large amounts of food being wasted. Lee has plans to take the company beyond Singapore but has not yet decided to which country in the region it wishes to next expand. In the meantime, Savour! is seeking more funding to raise its merchant and customer acquisition rate, and intensify its product development.
In February 2022, Spotify Technology SA (Spotify), a global music and podcast enterprise headquartered in Sweden, reached an inflection point. Six weeks prior, the company had uploaded a routine podcast by Joe Rogan, one of its celebrity content creators. During that podcast, a virologist Rogan had invited to the show made controversial remarks on the way policy-makers worldwide had been handling the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The virologist also made medically false statements about COVID-19 vaccines. Outrage from the scientific community followed in the form of an open letter, with multiple battlefronts quickly unfolding thereafter. How would Spotify deal with the situation in the immediate term and plan a strategy for the long term? Could Spotify convert the crisis into an opportunity?
Supplements "Peloton Interactive (A)" (HBS No. 323-005), describing company restructuring and changes to management and the board of directors between February 8 and early October 2022.
In February 2022, Spotify Technology SA (Spotify), a global music and podcast enterprise headquartered in Sweden, reached an inflection point. Six weeks prior, the company had uploaded a routine podcast by Joe Rogan, one of its celebrity content creators. During that podcast, a virologist Rogan had invited to the show made controversial remarks on the way policy-makers worldwide had been handling the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The virologist also made medically false statements about COVID-19 vaccines. Outrage from the scientific community followed in the form of an open letter, with multiple battlefronts quickly unfolding thereafter. How would Spotify deal with the situation in the immediate term and plan a strategy for the long term? Could Spotify convert the crisis into an opportunity?
Because of the way raw materials such as iron ore, copper, and aluminum are produced and sold, most consumer-facing manufacturers don't know much about the provenance of what goes into their products. What's needed is a market for responsibly produced commodities akin to the already robust systems in place for coffee and chocolate. The tools exist to build such a market, which would reward transparency and encourage environmental justice.
The SpeedServe exercise presents a brief scenario which puts the student in the role of a human resources team member who needs to respond to their boss, Maria Martinez, the number two executive in a rapidly growing firm of 500 employees. The boss is looking for the employee's thoughts on how to prioritize spending for the human resources budget, particularly given emerging talent trends since the global pandemic and the desire to create high employee engagement. Martinez has a list of possible areas for focus and wants the employee to rank order them prior to a taskforce meeting later in the day. This exercise is designed to have individual students put themselves in the role of the human resources team member, to rank order the potential areas of focus. Following that individual prioritization, students are put into groups which serve as the taskforce. Each student group needs to discuss and compare individual thinking and develop a final consensus ranking for their taskforce group. Taskforce results can then be discussed across the student teams. The instructor can use the exercise to discuss team dynamics as well as the employee engagement topics of the exercise. This exercise can be conducted in a physical or virtual classroom environment. While similarly structured to popular "survival" experiential learning activities, this exercise is different because the content of the ranking process is relevant to organizational issues and worthy of discussion in addition to the topic of team process.
The case on KNOLSKAPE traces the firm's evolution from a service provider of simulation games for academia to becoming a full-stack provider of customized products and learning journeys for corporations around the world. Through its growth journey, KNOLSKAPE had transformed from a typical pipeline business to a platform business model that integrates the value propositions provided by providers of technology, content, and service. The case is set in 2019-2020 when the business and learning worlds were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resultant shift to online learning. This case allows students to analyze KNOLSKAPE's platform architecture, including open-closed and proprietary-shared architectures, and globalization opportunities.
A people experience platform, entomo delivers a digital experience for all customers' employees to revamp talent development, performance, and engagement through hyper-personalized insights and nudges for each employee. The entomo talent experience suite provides a solution for all facets required for enhanced talent development and people performance. Recognizing that 'enterprises of tomorrow' require hyper-personalized experiences of relevant upskilling, the entomo platform enables an individualized skill gap analysis, learning journey, and nudges for self-development. At an aggregate level, the platform also indicated skill repository analysis, which enabled strategic investment in talent acquisition and/or development. entomo is increasingly receiving recognition and awards as a leader in digital performance management. However, a myopic view by some industry practitioners, who preferred to use the subjective assessment of organizational skills or focus on other HR initiatives rather than getting the organization future-ready, presented some challenges to entomo. Employees, those experiencing technology and digital fatigue, were further challenged by yet another platform, thus reducing the stickiness of the offering.
Part One: Ipsen, a global pharmaceutical firm headquartered in France, was facing significant challenges, including regulatory setbacks and fierce competition, when David Loew assumed the role of CEO in 2020. The loss of exclusivity for Somatuline, Ipsen's flagship cancer drug, added to the complexities. Tasked by the board, Loew aimed to lead Ipsen into a new era of profitable growth amid escalating competition. After thorough review during the Covid-19 pandemic, Loew and the executive team recognized the critical importance of the upcoming strategy. Ipsen Investors' Day became the platform to unveil ""Focus. Together. For Patients and Society,"" the strategy shaping Ipsen's trajectory toward ambitious 2025 targets. Despite pandemic disruptions, Loew was confident that Ipsen possessed the essential elements to embark on a new path of profitable growth. Part Two: Three years after launching the new strategy, David Loew concluded a meeting with the head of legal affairs, reflecting on the strategy's journey. Structured around four pillars, the strategy prioritized patient-centricity, a sustainable pipeline, improved efficiency and operational excellence through collaboration and a diverse workforce. Ipsen's ambition was to be an adaptable force, creating lasting value. While Ipsen made significant strides in executing the strategy, recognizing market acknowledgment, critical questions persisted. These revolved around geographic footprint, digital integration, ongoing cultural transformation and the accelerated development of key products alongside acquisitions to fortify the pipeline. Loew prepared for a two-day session with the executive team to capitalize on successes and chart the way forward to future-proof the company.
In 2021, the US grocery industry had been undergoing several changes. The competitive landscape had changed significantly since the first decade of the twenty-first century. Walmart Inc. (Walmart) had emerged as the dominant retailer in all markets leading to bankruptcies and mergers with erstwhile market leaders. However, mistakes made by Walmart in that same period allowed ALDI SÜD Dienstleistungs-SE & Co. (Aldi) to make its presence felt with Walmart’s customers. Aldi was gaining its advantage through rapid expansion, with an increasingly broader assortment of products meant to attract upscale customers. Walmart initially tried to respond by opening small-format stores. Walmart had to decide whether this was the right approach to use to fight Aldi, or whether it was even a worthwhile fight. On the other hand, Aldi needed to be careful with how fast and far it should deviate from the core business model that had been instrumental in its success. Finally, the grocery business model had a growing online component that became more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, Aldi and Walmart also had essential decisions to incorporate these online aspects into their respective business models.
In June 2021, the chief executive officer of Hallmark Cards Inc., a leading US greeting cards and gifts company, faced challenges as the digitalization of cards was gaining pace. This growing trend forced the company to overhaul its operations. Although it tried to cope with the changing business environment, the company suffered both in revenue and profit marking. The chief executive officer took efficiency-increasing measures and laid off employees from the greeting cards division, retail business, and corporate support functions. He also invested in greeting card digitalization and innovation efforts, but was wondering if he should focus more on efficiency or innovation measures to achieve turnaround for the company’s operations. What innovation strategies should he pursue to make Hallmark Cards Inc. relevant to changing consumer preferences?
Early in February 2022, the board of Peloton Interactive faced some knotty challenges. Immense pandemic demand for its stationary exercise bicycles and treadmills had prompted the firm to scale up production rapidly. But as gyms reopened and the virulence of the virus ebbed, demand had ebbed too, leaving Peloton with unsold inventory, an unsustainable cost structure, and Nasdaq's worst-performing stock for 2021. Activist shareholders were calling on the board to remove the founder CEO, who was board chair and a controlling shareholder through a dual-class share structure, and sell the company to a strategic investor. Complicating external pressure for change was a dual-class share structure that gave insiders a high degree of control over governance.
One of the biggest obstacles to effective problem-solving is not defining the problem well. Invoking the power of a? narrative and a simple story structure can help ensure that you're solving the right problem. The authors suggest that any problem can be articulated as a quest in which the key elements are hero (protagonist), dragon (obstacle), and treasure (the desired outcome). Expressing a challenge in these simple terms can make it easier to see whether a problem has been framed incorrectly.
<p align="justify">Bhagwati Steel Centre, a family-owned trading firm located in Ghaziabad, India, was facing a short-term decline in revenue from its core business, trading iron and steel components, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company’s four partners felt that this was the right time to diversify and expand their business to establish more sources of revenue and income; they were considering diversifying and expanding their business using a business integration strategy and had to choose between two options: backward or forward integration. However, the partners had several financial factors to consider before making the final choice. What factors would influence and determine the better option for the company’s cash flow? What effect would a potential boom or bust in the market have on the two proposed expansion strategies and on cash flow? What financial techniques were available to evaluate the two proposals and which should be the preferred technique? Finally, should the company opt for backward or forward integration?</p>