The World Economic Forum and the consulting firm McKinsey & Company collaborated with academics to create the concept of lighthouse factories in 2018. The concept represents a vision for manufacturing in the digital age, in which cutting-edge digital technologies are designed and deployed to enable innovative manufacturing practices to be implemented at large scale. The concept has since become a global standard for digital manufacturing. For McKinsey & Company, and other consulting firms, this vision brings significant opportunities but also requires these organizations and their consultants to obtain an in-depth and nuanced understanding of lighthouse factories and the underlying business models, practices, technologies, and cases.
The World Economic Forum and the consulting firm McKinsey & Company collaborated with academics to create the concept of lighthouse factories in 2018. The concept represents a vision for manufacturing in the digital age, in which cutting-edge digital technologies are designed and deployed to enable innovative manufacturing practices to be implemented at large scale. The concept has since become a global standard for digital manufacturing. For McKinsey & Company, and other consulting firms, this vision brings significant opportunities but also requires these organizations and their consultants to obtain an in-depth and nuanced understanding of lighthouse factories and the underlying business models, practices, technologies, and cases.
This exercise provides students with an engaging two-person negotiation between an employer and a job candidate over the details of a sales role with The Peak, a small but rapidly growing news-media start-up in Canada. The Peak’s co-founder and chief executive officer wants a new salesperson who is willing to take on responsibilities outside the scope of a typical salesperson and to work with little supervision. The candidate is a seasoned professional with an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to join a small start-up, where she can take more ownership over her work and liaise with the co-founders to grow the company. By role-playing as the employer or the candidate, students will determine how best to achieve satisfactory job-offer terms.
In 2023, Israel-based AI health care company Aidoc evaluated its future. The company, founded in 2016, had grown from commercializing a single AI product for radiologists to a software platform that could detect 20 conditions and immediately notify care teams of critical results for priority patients. Aidoc's products detected over 75% of common acute pathologies visible on CT scans. The company had 20 algorithms used by over 900 global hospitals and had 17 FDA clearances-the highest number of any clinical AI company at the time. The company, which had initially produced point solutions, had evolved to manage a multisided network platform that hosted its own as well as its partners' algorithms. Aidoc had a rich history of producing highly accurate AI products, but partnership allowed it to bring more innovative products to market. The company needed to determine how to continue to grow. Should it focus more on developing highly technical AI health care solutions or on developing and managing a platform to bring other company's products to its growing customer base?
Hwa Gung Tea (HGT), a premium tea brand founded in Taiwan, has a rich history dating back to 1918. For many decades, the family business has been producing and distributing alpine Oolong tea cultivated at above 2,000 metres on the famous tea-producing Lishan mountains. Having transitioned through four generations, HGT's unique value proposition was an end-to-end value chain integrator from tea cultivation, harvesting, production, and wholesale distribution to retail, including branding and marketing. Few tea companies in Taiwan managed the entire process chain as HGT did. Johnny Tu, the fifth-generation CEO, led HGT to become ISO 20000 and HACCP-certified, winning several domestic and international awards. Collaborations with prestigious names like China Airlines, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, and Michelin-starred restaurants also enhanced the brand's visibility. Besides his efforts to grow HGT as a premium brand, Johnny also believed that HGT can lead in creating social impact. He worked assiduously with the indigenous people living in the Lishan mountains and offered them job opportunities, fostered their skill development, and encouraged them to take pride in their vocations. By doing so, he wished to keep the indigenous community together with economic activities and preserve the artisanship of tea cultivation in Taiwan. In 2024, after nearly 20 years of managing the family business, Johnny faced the challenge of expanding globally while preserving HGT's legacy. Balancing tradition and innovation, he experimented and created new flavours while engaging the younger generation through his lectures about tea. Confronted by regulatory hurdles, food safety scandals, counterfeit teas, and skills crunch in tea-making, he contemplated the future of the family business. How can Johnny navigate these complexities while leveraging his inherited intangible assets as a family business successor, tea-making master, and educator?
This exercise provides students with an engaging two-person negotiation between an employer and a job candidate over the details of a sales role with The Peak, a small but rapidly growing news-media start-up in Canada. The Peak's co-founder and chief executive officer wants a new salesperson who is willing to take on responsibilities outside the scope of a typical salesperson and to work with little supervision. The candidate is a seasoned professional with an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to join a small start-up, where she can take more ownership over her work and liaise with the co-founders to grow the company. By role-playing as the employer or the candidate, students will determine how best to achieve satisfactory job-offer terms.
This exercise provides students with an engaging two-person negotiation between an employer and a job candidate over the details of a sales role with The Peak, a small but rapidly growing news-media start-up in Canada. The Peak's co-founder and chief executive officer wants a new salesperson who is willing to take on responsibilities outside the scope of a typical salesperson and to work with little supervision. The candidate is a seasoned professional with an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to join a small start-up, where she can take more ownership over her work and liaise with the co-founders to grow the company. By role-playing as the employer or the candidate, students will determine how best to achieve satisfactory job-offer terms.
This exercise provides students with an engaging two-person negotiation between an employer and a job candidate over the details of a sales role with The Peak, a small but rapidly growing news-media start-up in Canada. The Peak's co-founder and chief executive officer wants a new salesperson who is willing to take on responsibilities outside the scope of a typical salesperson and to work with little supervision. The candidate is a seasoned professional with an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to join a small start-up, where she can take more ownership over her work and liaise with the co-founders to grow the company. By role-playing as the employer or the candidate, students will determine how best to achieve satisfactory job-offer terms.
This note provides an overview of the regulatory documents the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires of public companies in the United States. Specifically, an S-1 filing is required by any security that meets SEC criteria before shares can be listed on a national exchange, and thereafter, the SEC requires Form 10-Q or 10-K quarterly. The note provides details about these three primary communication disclosures, plus links to other resources where students can learn more. It is meant to be a quick reference guide for business or commerce students.
It was November 2022. Shruthi Reddy, Founder and Director of Anthyesti Funeral Services (hereinafter Anthyesti), sat in her Bengaluru office, reflecting on the past five years. Reddy had established Anthyesti in Kolkata, India, in 2017. The societal structure in India was deeply rooted in cultural traditions, which made it difficult for commercially run funeral services to be accepted. Reddy was among the few early entrants in this space. The flourishing start-up ecosystem in India was not open to the idea of investing in professionally run services for coordinating cremations and memorials or facilitating the logistics of funeral management. Thus, for a young woman entrepreneur with no business background, running a service in this space seemed unthinkable. Reddy began by bootstrapping her business with personal funds, and after demonstrating high growth within the first year, she expanded her services to six other cities in the next five years. However, she had to deal with several challenges over the years. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, other players entered the market and established themselves in the funeral management services domain. In light of the growing competition, Reddy considered her next move. How should she continue to grow and earn healthy margins that could attract investors? Should she differentiate her services or try to compete on efficiency and cost? What services or service bundles would offer the best opportunity for sustained growth?
Early-stage, developing, and mature companies have different marketing needs, which means that a chief marketing officer with a set of skills well suited to a startup environment might not excel once the business scales. To help ensure that their chief marketing officer can succeed as their company grows, leaders can prepare and upskill the CMO, change their expectations of the CMO, or hire a new CMO who already has the needed skills.
In 2020, Ford Motor Company (Ford), a global automaker, embarked on a transformative journey toward electrification with the introduction of the Ford Electric Vehicle Strategy. This case examines Ford's approach to meeting the electrification challenge, particularly in response to California's Executive Order N-79-20, which mandated the phase-out of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. The case provides insights into Ford's activities and highlights the challenges and opportunities inherent in the electrification space.
In November 2017, Students for Fair Admissions Inc. filed a complaint alleging that Harvard College violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited racial discrimination in institutions that received federal funding. The complaint alleged that Harvard College engaged in intentional discrimination against Asian American applicants in its admissions process. Harvard College acknowledged its use of race in the admissions process but maintained that it was only one of many factors the school considered. It also claimed that using race as a "plus factor" was supported by the law. Both sides used a large set of data to plead their cases and both hired econometrics experts to argue their positions, who reached opposite conclusions. The trial judge needed to assess the two experts' findings and reach a decision about the story the data was telling.
Sri Sabari Engimech Private Limited (SSEPL), a firm founded in 2001, provided contract-based staff for the operations and maintenance (O&M) of plant and machinery (P&M), mainly in the petrochemical sector. The founder reaped profits from the first month onward. In 2008, his son took over SSEPL as director of operations and expanded the company's services and clientele to increase profits. In 2019, the company encountered loss for the first time because of, among other reasons, malpractice by its former CEO, the ex-CEO starting his own O&M outfit and taking with him some of SSEPL's employees, the entry of new players into the market, and the 2019 novel coronavirus pandemic. However, SSEPL managed to bounce back with low profit margins the following year, leading the director of operations to contemplate the way forward for the company.
This case deals with the marketing and sales functions of an educational organisation. The case is set within the Executive Education department of the Nagopian School of Foreign Trade (NSFT), a hypothetical private university located in Southeast Asia. This group is tasked with running for-profit training programmes for would-be participants. The university president has instructed Rakesh Sharma, the newly appointed head of Executive Education to turn around the financial fortunes of the unit. However, he has also stated that he would not get any more promotional budget, nor headcount. NSFT offers three types of Executive Education Programmes: Public Short Programmes, Custom Programmes, and Diploma Programmes. The students are given some revenue and cost information from the past performance of the Executive Education unit and are expected to give recommendations for how to improve its financial performance. The case provides information on the sales force size, the number of hours it takes to sell a typical short course programme, the advertising expenditure for each type of programme (and the per programme expenditures for each individual short-programme, and the number of attendees of short programme offering). Sharma must make decisions about the product portfolio, sales force allocation, and promotional expenditures that will best impact his financial performance.
In November 2017, Students for Fair Admissions Inc. filed a complaint alleging that Harvard College violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited racial discrimination in institutions that received federal funding. The complaint alleged that Harvard College engaged in intentional discrimination against Asian American applicants in its admissions process. Harvard College acknowledged its use of race in the admissions process but maintained that it was only one of many factors the school considered. It also claimed that using race as a “plus factor” was supported by the law. Both sides used a large set of data to plead their cases and both hired econometrics experts to argue their positions, who reached opposite conclusions. The trial judge needed to assess the two experts’ findings and reach a decision about the story the data was telling.
In 2020, Ford Motor Company (Ford), a global automaker, embarked on a transformative journey toward electrification with the introduction of the Ford Electric Vehicle Strategy. This case examines Ford’s approach to meeting the electrification challenge, particularly in response to California’s Executive Order N-79-20, which mandated the phase-out of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. The case provides insights into Ford’s activities and highlights the challenges and opportunities inherent in the electrification space.