In early 2020, Singapore Airlines Limited (Singapore Airlines) faced severe liquidity issues as the global pandemic halted its flights and uncertainty loomed. Erstwhile massive cash reserves were quickly running out, and the airline's executives pondered how to save the company from insolvency. Singapore Airlines' majority shareholder, Temasek Holdings Limited, agreed to subscribe to a massive capital-raising exercise of up to S$15 billion via a proposed rights offer and mandatory convertible bonds (MCBs). Although minority shareholders were not convinced that the rights issue would be a good investment in such uncertain times, they had to decide whether to vote for it and whether to subscribe to the rights issue and MCBs.
Karl Naim, Co-Founder and CEO of Purpl, embarked on a venture to lower remittance costs for his native Lebanon. Since October 2019, the Lebanese economy had entered a free fall as its banking sector collapsed and large swathes of its population were plunged into poverty. As a repeat technology entrepreneur, Naim alongside his two co-founders decided to launch a new remittance aggregator to improve access to low-cost remittances, which acted as a lifeline for most local families. By becoming a fiat-to-fiat aggregator and eventually leveraging stablecoin technology, he expected that in the first phase he could cut remittance fees in half from 9-12% to 5-6% -- and eventually up to 1%. With the Lebanese population's trust in financial and banking institutions shattered, could Purpl succeed in its mission? How could it convince its potential users, the broader Lebanese public and the 20 million-strong Lebanese diaspora around the world, to adopt a different way of sending and transacting with digital cash? For primary remittance users, who only needed to reliably receive a monthly $100-$200 for basic goods and other necessities, could Purpl convince them both to change their habits and to trust the financial system that had put them in this situation in the first place? Moreover, given Purpl's ultimate goal to upend the current establishment, would its "playing nice" with current established institutions haunt the firm's "anti-establishment" credibility from ever materializing?
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers a popular cloud computing resource for writing Structured Query Language (SQL) queries. The resource is called BigQuery. This note provides step-by-step information about accessing BigQuery and using it to upload and explore data. It also includes a quick-start guide.
Tableau is a powerful visualization software that supports the data analysis process. The program allows users to create custom visualizations from datasets of all sizes and types using a simple drag-and-drop interface. This note introduces new users to Tableau by providing guidance on connecting to data, exploring the interface, and creating a number of common visualizations.
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers Cloud Storage, a popular cloud computing resource for data storage. This note provides information about uploading data to Cloud Storage, creating BigQuery tables from data found in Cloud Storage, previewing files in Cloud Storage, and sharing Cloud Storage buckets.
Set in 2008, the A case portrays the first 134 years of Aikon, a US multinational based in Minnesota. It is presented to participants as the baseline case, and they are told that the B and C cases (which will cover the next 14 years) will be handed out in class. The case depicts the rich history of the company, which succeeded in reinventing itself several times. Aikon progressively emerged as a key player in the ice-making industry before becoming a producer of household appliances, such as refrigerators, and then transforming itself into a major player in the medical device market (e.g., pacemakers). In 2007 the company had a record year in terms of both sales and profit, and the CEO is now considering what steps should be taken to ensure continued growth. In reality, there is no B or C case. The A case is a disguised version of the growth history of Company X, up to its final record year in 2007. When participants study the growth of Company X, they already know what has happened. It is then easy to blame Company's X's top team for a lack of foresight and strategic vision - "How could they not have ...?" Clearly, it is a great example of hindsight bias. However, the situation looked very different from the perspective of Company X's CEO in 2008. The key questions are: Were there already warning signs of the company's demise, any weak - or not-so-weak - signals? And, perhaps most importantly: What does it say about participants' own situations? Could their company be the next Company X? (The identity of Company X is revealed in the teaching note.
As industry boundaries dissolve and digitalization grows apace, ecosystems are becoming increasingly important. Yet for all the excitement and Big-Tech envy, there is little guidance for how to create ecosystems. How should a firm best engage? Should it become a partner to someone else's ecosystem, or build its own? Should it focus on a broad range of digitally connected services, or narrow down? How should we think about ecosystem value proposition, governance, and complementor choice? And, what is the case for investment in ecosystems? Drawing on recent research and projects with leading firms, this article offers a framework for understanding, engaging in, and building business ecosystems.
When political discussions enter the workplace, partisan disagreements can lead to a range of issues, including stereotyping, bias, discrimination, and animosity among coworkers. But providing guidelines for civil political discourse is often not enough to prevent uncivil behavior. The author offers five recommendations to help managers avoid the damage to workplace relationships and culture that can result from ideological disagreements.
Category 5 Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017 ravaging the Island. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority reported that all customers were without power unless they had their own generators. However, the mountain town of Adjuntas, the community center did have electricity powered by rooftop solar panels. Years earlier the community realized the risks of the national electricity grid and created a local electricity generation capacity. Maria proved the wisdom of their actions as residents were able to charge medical equipment, keep medications refrigerated and charge their cellphones. This case explores the strengths and limitations of two electricity supply chain approaches, a national electricity grid versus local power generation. A focus on the importance of infrastructure resilience frames the discussion. The case also explore the community capacity building needed for local power generation resilience.
In 2019, the Brazos Valley Food Bank (BVFB) in Texas increased its distribution and food-storage capacity and was delivering food to food-insecure people in six nearby counties through its partner agencies. While the number of food-insecure people in each of these counties was relatively stable, the food distribution capacities of BVFB’s partner agencies and the food supply fluctuated. As a non-profit organization, BVFB needed to equitably distribute food across all the counties it served, but it first needed to decide how to define “equitable food distribution.” Which parameters, food needs, or costs should it use to calculate this? How could it ensure that its food distribution did not favour one county over another? Was equitable food distribution achievable for BVFB at all?
In 2016, UltraTech Cement Limited acquired a number of Jaypee Cement Corporation Ltd.’s cement capacity assets in India’s largest cement sector deal. As a result of this acquisition, all permanent employees at the acquired plants became employees of UltraTech Cement Limited. This included people working in plants, logistics, sales and marketing offices, and head office. On analyzing the employee data and organizational structure, considerable differences became apparent. The differences were related to organizational culture, organizational structure at the plant level, reporting relationships, and employee compensation. The challenge was to combine the two organizations and streamline human resources policies and practices fairly and equitably and help Jaypee Cement Corporation Ltd. employees integrate well into the newly merged entity.
Simple Energy was an electric scooter start-up in India founded with the intent of filling a market gap for a well-designed e-scooter, fully made in India, with sufficient range to be practical. In April 2021, with a couple of months left to launch Mark 2, the company’s first e-scooter, the founders needed to settle on their marketing strategy and decide how to position Simple Energy as a relatively new entrant in what was becoming a fiercely competitive market. Simple Energy had one model ready, but competitors had entered the market with multiple variants. Should Simple Energy introduce both a basic and premium variant of Mark 2? The founders also wondered whether they should focus on introducing Mark 2 in one city first or start operations in multiple cities simultaneously.
<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER - Responsible Leadership Category at European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Case Writing Competition</strong></p><br>In early 2021, McKinsey & Company (McKinsey) agreed to pay US$573 million to end US state-level investigations into claims that it had helped exacerbate the global opioid crisis. Tom Peters, an influential and highly respected management guru, was upset by how far his former employer had been willing to go in helping US drug maker Purdue Pharma LP increase sales of OxyContin, a narcotic-based painkiller that helped drive an opioid epidemic responsible for hundreds of thousands of tragic deaths. As far as Peters was concerned, there was no question as to whether what McKinsey did was wrong: it had ignored the “moral responsibility of business” by helping an unethical client maximize profit by aggressively promoting the wide-scale use of a highly addictive drug. In addition to asking why McKinsey was still open for business, Peters posed a previously unimaginable question: “At this moment in time, why would anyone want to go to work for McKinsey?”
If successful with its metaverse plans, Meta will dramatically expand its revenue streams by taking a cut of an explosion in sales of new digital goods, services, and software while significantly increasing its ability to study and influence consumers and sell their changed behaviours to advertisers. The latter is the focus of this article because Mark Zuckerberg’s idea of a brave new world is being built by the same people who helped create some of today’s major social problems. Whatever consumers choose to do in the real world and on social media, they can reimagine and do in the world of the metaverse—work, play, shop, date, exercise, bet, trade, learn, influence, travel, create, communicate, follow. While there is potential to improve remote work, the social costs of a virtual wild west could outweigh the benefits. Society stands the risk of being fed a steady, addictive, and customized mix of manipulated content by forces seeking to monetize the three elements that it takes to brainwash people–perceptions of identity, belonging, and injustice. The initial marketing focus will be on attracting users and getting them to spend a lot of time in Horizon Worlds. But the focus will shift to value extraction. This will likely be done by systematically and simultaneously working on users’ perceptions and behaviours while changing context continually. This evolution of marketing would break new and dangerous ground in oppositional marketing. While regulatory oversight of metaverse development is warranted, it isn’t guaranteed to happen or, if attempted, succeed at mitigating the risks.
The Happy Turtle was a bootstrapped start-up in Delhi, India, that was focused on driving a circular economy for plastics. The company aimed to offer sustainable and biodegradable lifestyle alternatives to plastic, which could secure a greener future for the planet. The founder of The Happy Turtle had left a successful and flourishing corporate culture to follow her passion for sustainability. By mid-2019, The Happy Turtle had been growing at a slow but steady pace to reach a breakeven point. One year later, however, the company was finding itself at a crossroads. Business uncertainty had arisen due to the Indian government’s new policy on plastic waste management, various underlying issues related to the circular economy, and the challenge of raising money from angel investors. In addition, the founder was finding it difficult to recruit, hire, and retain the right talent to help her achieve The Happy Turtle’s vision. What strategic and routine decisions would she have to make to reach her company’s goals and vision?
This case describes multiple open banking initiatives made by China Construction Bank, ShenZhen (CCB-SZ) between 2016 and 2018 in an effort to remain competitive in the retail customer market against online financial services provided by big tech companies such as BATJ (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and JingDong), in China. In particular, CCB-SZ was facing severe competition from mobile payment technologies provided by Alipay and WeChat Pay in individuals' and SMEs' payment markets, which were traditionally underserved by incumbent banks. With new regulations enacted in 2016 to encourage incumbent banks to provide online financial services to individuals and SMEs, especially through mobile phones, CCB-SZ made a number of efforts to regain some of the lost territory, including utilizing its long-term relationship with large enterprises as a bridge to reach their customers, collaborating with existing and popular apps, and being creative in terms of offering innovative payment services and redesigning the corresponding business process. Its open banking strategy was to break down its financial services into smaller units and embed them into customers' daily financial needs, wherever and whenever they arose. Such efforts put CCB-SZ back on the playing field of mobile payment, as it was able to catch up with nonbank mobile payment solutions and maintain a similar growth rate after 2016. However, the nonbank payment providers had multiple advantages over incumbent banks, such as better technology, more data, a larger customer base, and less regulation. Hence, the future of incumbent banks' open banking strategy remained unclear.
After initial success, China Construction Bank, Shen Zhen (CCB-SZ) continued its open banking journey by building a more integrated open banking platform in 2019. The platform enabled integration of e-accounts, consolidated payments, contactless payments, a credit card manager, a fee calculator, and other management functions for its open banking projects. CCB-SZ also continued expanding into more service areas, including smart city, smart medical platform, consumer rights, supply chain loans, SMEs quick loan approval, etc. Despite these efforts and achievements, the overall development of open banking projects by CCB-SZ was not able to maintain an upward trajectory, partly due to the regulatory limits that PBOC (the People's Bank of China or central bank) placed on the e-accounts that incumbent banks are allowed to offer to their customers. Meanwhile, BATJ (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and JingDong) and fintech companies continued advancing into the financial sector. To secure its position in the mobile payment markets, CCB actively sought out other strategies such as creating separate entities that focused on fintech; digitalization of the entire backend operation; and cultivating technical manpower. These efforts allowed CCB-SZ to respond quickly to the COVID-19 pandemic by offering many new financial services online, such as "green pass quick loan", "smart community", and "grocery shopping."
In 2017, Sahrudaya Healthcare Pvt. Ltd. (SHPL), a successful chain of corporate hospitals based out of Hyderabad, India, approached private equity (PE) firm Samara Capital for a capital infusion. After conducting a thorough due diligence and evaluation of the company, Samara Capital brought its major limited partner (LP) Medicover, a European multinational healthcare and diagnostics company, into the decision-making process. In a surprise turn of events for SPHL, Medicover offered to become a strategic partner and invest in SPHL. With the new proposal on the table, top executives from Samara Capital, Medicover, and SHPL attended a high-level meeting in New Delhi to discuss the modalities of the term sheet.