This case takes place in February 2019 as Rotoplas, a Mexico-based commercial and residential cistern and pipe manufacturer serving markets in Central and South America, explores new market solutions that could revolutionize access to potable water through a subscription model. The idea and implementation plans were developed by Charly Rojas, son of the company founder and CEO, Carlos Velasco. The case highlights the company's historical growth and culture, as well as Rojas's relationship with his father and his desire to transform Rotoplas into an innovative company. Rojas faces common challenges associated with leadership transition to the next generation in a family business, as well as those of implementing change in an organizational culture steeped in tradition. Rojas prepares to meet with his father to discuss how to manage the leadership transition and introduce innovative market solutions.
After launching a successful hot cloud storage company, Founder and CEO David Friend is ready to scale the venture rapidly. Wasabi Technologies had focused primarily on direct sales, but an opportunity to pivot to channel sales was on the horizon. The company's major competitors-Amazon, Google, and Microsoft-all sold their cloud storage products through multiple channels, and Friend feared that direct sales could never provide the momentum Wasabi Technologies needed to compete. However, channel sales would include changing its sales, marketing, and staffing strategies dramatically-effectively veering the company away from its already successful course. Was channel sales the right play for the burgeoning cloud storage provider? If so, how should Friend go about it?
Changing socio-economic trends led to the emergence of the men's grooming segment in India. With the rise of e-commerce, the progression of social media, and growing awareness among men towards their personal grooming, a number of start-ups emerged in a category once dominated only by established players like Gillette. One such start-up was LetsShave, which was founded by Sidharth Oberoi in 2015 and catered to men's shaving and grooming needs by offering products online only. Since its inception, LetsShave had maintained a product-centric approach to growth with a focus on high-quality products at affordable prices. This helped LetsShave gain a strong foothold in the market, growing at a sustained rate of 40 per cent per year with a loyal clientele and healthy rate of repeat sales. Other start-ups had adopted aggressive advertising and promotion strategies and were growing at a much faster pace than LetsShave. By continuing with its existing product-centric strategy, LetsShave might not be able to achieve its stated revenue target of US$10 million by the end of 2023. Oberoi had to quickly decide whether to continue with the company's current approach or change course towards pursuing an aggressive marketing strategy to boost its top line.
Digital twins virtual replicas of physical entities and their interactions are often poorly understood, which has led to their underutilization in supply chain management. The authors offer several examples of companies that have successfully used digital twins to enhance their supply chains, and they describe the main functional areas where leading companies have harnessed the technology: supply chain planning, warehouse management, and transportation management and last-mile delivery.
The recycling system was in desperate need of innovation in North America in 2020. The average person was generating 12 times their body weight in landfilled trash annually, and the equivalent to a dump truck full of plastic waste was entering the world's oceans every minute. This crisis prompted Ainslie Simmonds and Mark Manley to develop MeCycle, an innovative, technology-enabled platform to help change consumer behaviour and increase recycling rates. This case examines consumer behaviour with regards to recycling, explores barriers to recycling, describes MeCycle’s business model, and estimates the potential environmental and economic gains from hypothetically implementing the MeCycle platform in London, Ontario, Canada.
ARK Investment Management LLC (ARK)’s Next Generation Internet ETF (exchange traded fund) accumulated over 5 per cent of the outstanding shares of DraftKings Inc. (DraftKings), which held 24 per cent of the emerging US online sports betting market. Following the legalization of sports betting in May 2018, DraftKings faced escalating competition as competitors spent heavily on advertising and promotions to attract customers. This spending led to increasing quarterly operating losses, and DraftKings’ stock fell about 75 per cent below its fifty-two-week high. ARK needed to re-evaluate its investment to understand whether the stock market’s recent revaluation was a warning sign regarding DraftKings’ ability to weather the competition or just a new opportunity to buy more of an undervalued stock.
Business leaders are routinely confronted with bad information, and despite the common conviction that only others are vulnerable to biased judgment, they too fall prey to what researchers call the illusory truth effect. That is, merely repeating false claims increases their believability, leaving people vulnerable to basing their decisions on misinformation. This article describes the phenomenon in detail and provides guidance on how to combat this cognitive bias.
The recycling system was in desperate need of innovation in North America in 2020. The average person was generating 12 times their body weight in landfilled trash annually, and the equivalent to a dump truck full of plastic waste was entering the world's oceans every minute. This crisis prompted Ainslie Simmonds and Mark Manley to develop MeCycle, an innovative, technology-enabled platform to help change consumer behaviour and increase recycling rates. This case examines consumer behaviour with regards to recycling, explores barriers to recycling, describes MeCycle's business model, and estimates the potential environmental and economic gains from hypothetically implementing the MeCycle platform in London, Ontario, Canada.
Silicon Valley-veteran Shaun Stewart is the CEO of NewLab, a dynamic technology hub headquartered in the storied Brooklyn Navy Yard. Founded in 2016, NewLab fostered a community of entrepreneurs, corporate and government partners, and investors, all seeking to apply cutting-edge technology to solving global problems at scale. Stewart has expanded the business beyond the early membership subscription model to now include corporate partnerships, a venture studio, and an investor network. Partnerships include the likes of Ford, Verizon, and IBM, as well as civic organizations like NY State, and various nonprofits and academic institutions. Stewart contemplates the opportunities and the bottlenecks he now faces as he seeks to further expand NewLab.
Shein, an ultra-fast-fashion brand, is one of the most downloaded shopping apps in the United States. With an estimated value of USD100bn in 2022, Shein has caught the attention of the fashion industry as its huge range of low-priced and ever-changing fashion appeal to young consumers in their teens and twenties. Headquartered in China, Shein's success is built on its proprietary supply chain management system and China's garment production ecosystem to target overseas markets outside China. Shein mainly relies on digital marketing, collaborating with celebrities and influencers to market its products on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Despite keeping a low profile, Shein has found itself at the center of a series of controversies. Among others, Shein has been accused of low quality, copyright infringement, lack of supply chain transparency, encouraging a culture of excessive consumption, and indifference to environmental costs. This case gives an opportunity for students to discuss and explore what factors have contributed to the success of Shein, what challenges Shein is facing and what strategies Shein can adopt to develop a sustainable business. After studying this case, students will know how to identify and develop a company's core competences and develop a sustainable business.
During the rapid growth of China's commercial health insurance industry in the 2010s, many third-party administrators (TPAs) emerged to provide administrative services to primary insurers. However, most of these TPAs were small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) that offered poor-quality services and were often short-lived. This made them incompatible with the long time horizons and high risk management requirements of the insurance sector. There were also additional structural, institutional, and technical obstacles that primary insurers had to overcome to collaborate with TPAs. To address these pain points, in 2010, Steve Zhang, then Managing Director of Munich Re Life China, and Eric Zhao, general manager of the operations department responsible for insurance innovation, established HAP (Healthcare Assistance Platform) with a view to creating a one-stop solution for the customers of primary insurers by integrating top TPAs under one roof. After a decade of growth, by 2020, the company offered more than 30 services through this platform. It had also developed a set of criteria used to screen and evaluate TPAs, ensuring the quality of its services, which earned the platform recognition from primary insurers. As direct competition in the health insurance market intensified, and insurers became increasingly aware of the importance of customer service and data collection, many primary insurers started to develop their own service platforms, while reinsurers and TPAs also began to experiment in this direction. HAP was originally launched as a supporting service for Munich Re, so it wasn't placed under pressure to grow by the company. However, as HAP's operations matured and market competition intensified, Zhang began to entertain the possibility that the platform might grow its user base from three million to ten million in three to five years or perhaps even become a future profit center for Munich Re. However, he needed to carefully consider how this objective
ARK Investment Management LLC (ARK)'s Next Generation Internet ETF (exchange traded fund) accumulated over 5 per cent of the outstanding shares of DraftKings Inc. (DraftKings), which held 24 per cent of the emerging US online sports betting market. Following the legalization of sports betting in May 2018, DraftKings faced escalating competition as competitors spent heavily on advertising and promotions to attract customers. This spending led to increasing quarterly operating losses, and DraftKings' stock fell about 75 per cent below its fifty-two-week high. ARK needed to re-evaluate its investment to understand whether the stock market's recent revaluation was a warning sign regarding DraftKings' ability to weather the competition or just a new opportunity to buy more of an undervalued stock.
Investors and regulators are increasingly pushing for greater diversity on boards, but many companies' efforts to do so, known as board refreshment, are falling flat. Vague terms, loose requirements, and CEO influence work against change and favor the status quo. Meaningful refreshment requires organizations to articulate specific intentions and guard against too much CEO input.
As the world became increasingly urbanized, the contribution of buildings to climate change had increased dramatically. As of early 2022, the built environment accounted for 39% of all carbon emissions globally. American building technology giant, Johnson Controls International (JCI), recognized the huge business opportunity of providing sustainable and smart building management systems. At the same time, traditional and emerging competitors (e.g., incumbent industrial companies, utility or energy companies, technology companies, innovative start-ups, consulting companies) were also eyeing the same space. JCI took on the challenge to reinvent itself, in transforming from a traditional industrial organization to become a digital industrial organization, and eventually a digital industrial platform for smart building management. This process resulted in OpenBlue, moving the company from manufacturing HVAC, fire detection, and building controls products to providing predictive analytics and smart facilities. The company was now able to provide outcome-based solutions, and "net zero buildings as a service". How would JCI transform itself to seize new market opportunities towards a net-zero future? How promising was the company's new business direction? What could it do to stay ahead of the competition, especially with the new thinking around the future of workspace?
In the traditional offline context, the mental health industry suffers from poor local demand and a lack of trustworthy supply. Emerging digital platforms can solve this problem to a large extent by building network effects. How to build network effects is a primary issue for mental health platforms. This article explores this problem by investigating two cases from China. Platform firms can design mechanisms to increase user scale, multiply user roles, facilitate user engagement, and enhance user trust on platforms. The pioneer platform and the later entrant can implement different strategies for building network effects.
Luigi Lavazza SpA (Lavazza) was the largest coffee maker in Italy and the seventh-largest coffee roaster in the world. Despite its success in global markets, Lavazza was finding it difficult to make its mark in the United States. After establishing its North American subsidiary in 1989, Lavazza entered the US market in the 1990s with strategic partnerships with restaurants and hotels to cater to US consumers. But even as a strong global brand with thirty years of experience in the US market, Lavazza continued to struggle. As competition in the global coffee industry intensified, Lavazza could no longer afford to be complacent with its performance in the US markets, and it sought to increase its market share. However, Lavazza faced a key strategic decision: should it try to introduce US consumers to the "Italian way" of drinking espresso coffee, or should it create a new brand identity and a new portfolio of products that were more aligned with the tastes of US consumers?