Founded in 2017, Simply Good Jars (SGJ) was launched with the introduction of a unique salad-in-a-jar line of products. The founder, owner, and chief executive officer of SGJ was looking to build a ready-to-eat salad business with a mission of “making better-quality delicious food more attainable.” The SGJ brand promoted healthy, quality ingredients and sustainability. Initially, the product was tested in various locations, including vending machines in airports and businesses, and coolers in grocery stores. After achieving early success, SGJ’s founder quickly found pressure to balance growth opportunities with limited financial resources. In 2022, five years after starting the business, he had to decide whether to scale up and mass market SGJ’s products or continue to serve a niche segment through the company’s salad-in-a-jar business.
In March 2020, Canadian-based venture Braze Mobility was experiencing growth challenges. The company had commercialized an anti-collision system to enable safe wheelchair navigation, which had been well received by the US market following a fruitful collaboration with the US Department of Veterans Affairs. The chief executive officer of Braze Mobility was now facing some big decisions. Should the company continue to expand its current export model, diversify into the Canadian market, or tap into growing online demand directly from consumers? Compounding the complexity of the problem was the departure of a key member of the team and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Braze Mobility was well positioned for growth, but its next steps would be crucial to its success or failure.<br><br>Related case: Academic Entrepreneurship: Navigating Commercialization Challenges, product number W28370.
Founded in 2017, Simply Good Jars (SGJ) was launched with the introduction of a unique salad-in-a-jar line of products. The founder, owner, and chief executive officer of SGJ was looking to build a ready-to-eat salad business with a mission of "making better-quality delicious food more attainable." The SGJ brand promoted healthy, quality ingredients and sustainability. Initially, the product was tested in various locations, including vending machines in airports and businesses, and coolers in grocery stores. After achieving early success, SGJ's founder quickly found pressure to balance growth opportunities with limited financial resources. In 2022, five years after starting the business, he had to decide whether to scale up and mass market SGJ's products or continue to serve a niche segment through the company's salad-in-a-jar business.
This case presents the evolution of Nintendo's gaming technology and discusses the history of the video gaming sector over eight generations of releases. It illustrates how industry dynamics shift over time and how different phases of the competitive life cycle place different demands upon those firms that are all vying for the top position. The case provides history and context for students to discuss an age-old question: How do firms sustain a competitive advantage over time? Based on public sources and written from the perspective of Aya Kyogoku, the manager of Entertainment Planning and Development (EPD) Production Group No. 5, the case offers a launching point into a discussion of how different product strategies can become dominant at different times, an insight that has implications for future strategies. The case also includes sales, stock prices, consumer spending, and product release data that allow for calculations and discussions of the performance of the broader market. The case opens with Kyogoku pondering the future of the entire gaming industry-one facing explosive growth-and Nintendo's place within it. She reflects on the company's need to continue to experiment and innovate and wonders where Nintendo should focus its creative spirit going forward. The case is targeted to MBA students and executives who are building a foundation for analyzing and developing competitive strategies. It is used in the required core Strategy course at the Darden School of Business, where it is employed to highlight industry evolution and the changing nature of competitive dynamics within an evolving context. It would also be suitable for any course on disruptive strategy or digital transformation.
In March 2020, Canadian-based venture Braze Mobility was experiencing growth challenges. The company had commercialized an anti-collision system to enable safe wheelchair navigation, which had been well received by the US market following a fruitful collaboration with the US Department of Veterans Affairs. The chief executive officer of Braze Mobility was now facing some big decisions. Should the company continue to expand its current export model, diversify into the Canadian market, or tap into growing online demand directly from consumers? Compounding the complexity of the problem was the departure of a key member of the team and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Braze Mobility was well positioned for growth, but its next steps would be crucial to its success or failure. Related case: Academic Entrepreneurship: Navigating Commercialization Challenges, product number W28370.
Proactive for her began amid the Covid-19 pandemic, in August 2020 as a digital platform to provide accessible, evidence-based, primary, preventive non-judgmental healthcare services for Indian women, who were often dissuaded from seeking help as premarital sex and menstrual health was considered taboo. From her research and experience, Jacob identified that it was difficult for women to find unbiased and empathetic medical professionals who respected patient autonomy. By May 2022, Proactive was a platform that provided one-on-one teleconsultations, support programs, and webinars to customized treatment. It had reached over 5,000 women and opened its first flagship clinic in Bengaluru. It raised $1.2 million in its seed round in October 2020 and $5.5 million in Series A in January 2022. Proactive experimented with new solutions and products, with patient centricity at its core but as it prepared for Series B, had to figure out what business model would allow it to build a sustainable and profitable business that addressed the core issues?
In August 2022, EnergyNow co-founder and CEO Stuart MacWilliam (MBA 2015) considers the company strategy for building solar panels to provide power in South Africa's recently deregulated energy market.
In this installment of MIT Sloan Management Review's Leading With Impact series, CEO Rich Kesrchner and chief operating officer Yvonne Wang discuss DirectBooks' approach to innovation with coach and consultant Chris Clearfield. They also talk about the impetus for establishing a communications platform for underwriters and institutional investors, prioritizing ongoing workflow refinements, and their approach to managing multiple stakeholders.
Materiality assessments play an important role in helping firms to select the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics to include in their sustainability report. This article presents the six main steps of materiality assessments, the methods used, and how the complexity, uncertainty, and evaluative nature of sustainability issues complicate them. This article draws two conclusions: the selected materiality perspective influences how the other steps are conducted, and assessment results should not only focus on selecting win-win scenarios, but also on "tensioned topics," which indicate material societal impact but lack a business case.
In April 2021, the chair and managing director of India’s JSW Steel Limited (JSW Steel) was facing questions about how to encourage sustainability in an expanding company. JSW Steel was the flagship company of the JSW Group, which started with a small steel plant in 1982 and grew into a conglomerate with interests in steel, cement, infrastructure, energy, paints, and sports. Steelmaking had numerous impacts on the environment. To offset the impact on the environment, JSW Steel had decided to use its by-product, slag, to manufacture cement. The managing director was acutely aware of sustainability concerns and was focused on making his sustainability vision a reality. JSW Steel was at the cusp of a large capacity expansion that would come from existing projects as well as inorganic growth through acquisitions, and both modes of expansion posed challenges for sustainability at JSW Steel.
<p align="justify">VaccineOnWheels (VOW), a social enterprise providing doorstep vaccination to India’s low-income and marginalized communities, was founded in December 2019. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and arrival of COVID-19 vaccines, VOW was perfectly positioned to contribute to the government’s immunization drive. In 2021, the company entered into a public-private partnership with some of India’s largest municipal corporations as their on-the-ground COVID-19 vaccination partner, then made forays into the business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets. VOW set out to vaccinate one million people by the end of the fiscal year 2021, but faced with shortages of funds and resources; its founder needed to decide on the target market and business model to allow him to achieve his goal and make the enterprise scalable.<br><br>This case was the second winner of the 2021 Fox International Business Case Writing Competition.</p>
On September 24, 2021, the Singapore Multi-Ministry Task Force (MTF) that spearheaded the national COVID-19 pandemic response decided to act more decisively to ensure that its endemic strategy would not be derailed by the infections which had been escalating since late August. In the weeks that followed, the MTF tightened measures on social interaction, encouraged work-from-home as the default mode of working and simplified its testing and isolation protocols. The third vaccination (booster shot) programme was also quickly rolled out. The public had become discontented due to the rising infections and deaths of the elderly, as well as the ever-changing restrictions, protocols, and proclaimed phases that had been introduced since April 2021. There also existed an issue of perceived discrimination that arose from the segmented access according to vaccination status. As a public health analyst, David Chong had been assessing Singapore's COVID-19 endemic strategy - to ascertain the areas that Singapore had done well, as well as those they could do better. How should Chong advise other countries to plan an endemic strategy?
In April 2021, the chair and managing director of India's JSW Steel Limited (JSW Steel) was facing questions about how to encourage sustainability in an expanding company. JSW Steel was the flagship company of the JSW Group, which started with a small steel plant in 1982 and grew into a conglomerate with interests in steel, cement, infrastructure, energy, paints, and sports. Steelmaking had numerous impacts on the environment. To offset the impact on the environment, JSW Steel had decided to use its by-product, slag, to manufacture cement. The managing director was acutely aware of sustainability concerns and was focused on making his sustainability vision a reality. JSW Steel was at the cusp of a large capacity expansion that would come from existing projects as well as inorganic growth through acquisitions, and both modes of expansion posed challenges for sustainability at JSW Steel.