Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim were the co-founders of InstaDeep, a deep tech startup focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. Instadeep was one of the few companies globally that were partnering with DeepMind, an AI subsidiary of Google [Alphabet Inc.]. InstaDeep employed DeepMind's reinforcement learning approach in its business solutions. When Beguir and Slim founded the company in 2014, it was a web design company that aimed to build a globally competitive enterprise and create impact by hiring talent in Africa. Beguir, a mathematician by training, figured out that AI could be employed to solve century-long industrial problems such as container packing or route optimization, so the duo shifted the company's focus to AI in 2017. They then had the option to either apply for proprietary IP and monetize their intellectual property rights or to publish the idea as a research article on an open access platform, which would allow all scientists to benefit from it. By 2021, InstaDeep had created two major branded products: DeepPCB, an AI-powered printed circuit board routing system, and DeepChain, an AI-based protein design system to speed time to market for new drugs being developed by scientists. They had two other products in development, and the possibility of developing many more verticals was in the cards. But Beguir and Slim had to decide whether to position InstaDeep as an extremely horizontal AI company that could push innovation in a multitude of verticals, or to focus on just a few. The former would create big impact by fully leveraging the capabilities of the AI team in a wide range of fields. But focusing on a few verticals and managing fewer customers had its advantages, too. What should they do?
Aleph Farms, an Israeli food-tech start-up, was hoping to play a major role in disrupting the conventional meat sector. Compared to intensive agricultural practices, Aleph's cultured (or lab-grown) meat solution held the promise of considerably reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the use of land and water, while providing a new source of food for a rapidly growing world population. With much of the science already worked out, the company was now facing a host of challenges as it planned to launch its first product-a cultured steak. In particular, Aleph's CEO, Didier Toubia, and his management team had to figure out the best way to position and bring to market its innovative steaks, with a debut expected in late 2022 in Singapore. Management fully recognized potential barriers to consumer adoption and strived to build a relevant brand image. On the production side, the company knew it had to scale quickly and continue to bring down costs so that its steaks approached price parity with conventional meat. Yet given the intensive capital expenditures involved, this was no simple feat. Planning for the longer term, the company was beginning to consider its next product line.
Many individuals and organisations have started working alongside AI. AI, and its influence on work and employment, has been studied with much interest by researchers and managers. The implementation of AI has brought commercial gains as well as challenges. This case outlines these challenges in an operations context and offers a hands-on analytical exercise for selecting the right strategy as well as addressing challenges. It also offers hands-on lessons about how to weather the wind in the organisation when introducing AI bots. Students will navigate the decision-making process regarding AI implementation, under the circumstance of AI bots working alongside humans.
California-based Intel Corporation (Intel) was one of the world's leading semiconductor circuit firms. In July 2020, manufacturing delays with Intel's 10 nanometre (nm) and 7 nm chips were adversely affecting the company's customers at a time when demand for personal computers and laptops was at its peak. Unlike its competitors, Intel was vertically integrated. Competitors such as Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. had outsourced their chip manufacturing to leading contract manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (TSMC) and were experiencing better market capitalization growth by focusing on designing chips for PCs and other product categories. TSMC had become the leading contract manufacturer for chips globally. Intel's former chief executive officer (CEO) believed that Intel's chip quality was the best because its manufacturing facilities were in house. At the same time, geopolitical issues between Taiwan, the United States, and China meant that regulatory authorities in the United States were not in favour of outsourcing critical chip manufacturing. In January 2021, Intel's newly appointed CEO would have to decide whether Intel should outsource chip manufacturing to a contract manufacturer like TSMC and whether, in the long run, Intel should remain a vertically integrated unit or spin off its manufacturing division.
Many people thought of knitting as a hobby for grandmothers, but the time-honored craft had evolved into a booming business with loyal, passionate, and interactive customers worldwide. The Spanish e-commerce business We Are Knitters (WAK) spent the last decade growing into what investors called the "world leader in online knitted kit sales," a segment of the global $100 billion knitting industry. WAK's sales soared by 240 per cent between April 2019 and April 2020 due to the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. By February 2021, while WAK's co-founders were still grappling with pandemic-related challenges, ahead of WAK's 10-year anniversary, they also started to look ahead to consider plans for further growth and internationalization while maintaining their business model and competitive advantages.
In this exercise, students read a brief medical history of fictional patient Mr. Jones, who has chronic low back pain (LBP). They are also given an overview of LBP and its treatment options in the United States. Their task is to develop a value-based payment system that defines outcome measures (patient success) over time and indicates how to compensate clinicians based on those outcome measures, then to create a short presentation to pitch their idea to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services management team. This exercise is taught at Darden in the ""Solutions and Innovations in Health Care"" course and would also suitable in a module covering reimbursement in the health system.
This short fictional case considers an investment decision in a new business concept, Carly's Car Clinic. The investment choice entails two similar stores with correlated outcomes and an option to sequence the opening of one after the other. Student analysis highlights the value of the optionality to delay the opening of one of the stores and then not make the subsequent investment if the outcome on the first one is poor. An instructor should anticipate about 30 to 40 minutes of a class session to discuss this case. At the Darden School, the case is taught in the second-year elective ""Managerial Finance,"" but it is suitable for any module covering more advanced topics in capital budgeting, such as optionality. The teaching note provides suggestions for how to pair the case.
While there will always be a place in this world for "art for art's sake," the artistic value of creative works need not be diminished by the application of commercial considerations. In fact, the argument can be made that both artist and consumer benefit when these two worlds are harmoniously fused. This note explores this notion, with the authors developing a reference document for business and art students to draw upon when entering the business of Broadway and navigating the myriad decisions when bringing a creative work to commercializable life.
There's a limit to how much mental energy is available to us on any given day, so it's essential that we spend it deliberately and thoughtfully. The author details the process of creating a cognitive budget, using techniques from positive psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy, and behavioral economics. This tool can help employees at all levels direct their mental energy where their want it to go in order to be more deliberative and effective, in both their work and personal lives.
On July 8, 2019, Barry Robinson, president and managing director of International Operations for Wyndham Destinations Asia Pacific (Wyndham Destinations AP), and Liam Crawley, chief financial officer, were in receipt of a report provided by law firm Baker McKenzie’s Corporate Mergers and Acquisitions team. Wyndham Destinations AP was in the process of acquiring the privately held Resort Frontier Co. Ltd., the management company for Sundance Resort Club. Through an affiliated corporate entity, Wyndham Destinations AP would also acquire all the forfeited and unsold points of Sundance Resort Club. This acquisition would represent the vacation ownership and exchange company’s first foray into the Japanese market. Crawley and his team would need to undertake comprehensive external and internal financial analyses and discounted cash flow analysis of Sundance and multiples valuations of comparable firms to help Robinson determine a fair offer price.
In 2015, Sundar Pichai was appointed chief executive officer (CEO) of California-based Google LLC (Google), and by December 2019 had also become the CEO of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company. By June 2021, thirty-six vice-presidents out of 400 executives had quit Alphabet Inc., and Pichai faced criticism from the senior leadership team for his risk-averse decision-making style. Senior executives believed Pichai had made Google more bureaucratic in its operations, even though the company’s size and market-based performance had improved under his leadership. In the face of this criticism, what should Pichai do? Should he respond to the criticism? Should he begin to make more risk-aggressive decisions?
Buddy Valastro, celebrity baker and business owner, inherited his father's bakery-Carlo's Bake Shop of Hoboken, New Jersey-at the age of seventeen. He had willed the shop to survive and gone on to fame through his television show, "Cake Boss"-the name most people now called him. Its popularity allowed Valastro to launch many additional ventures in the worlds of TV and food, including additional locations of Carlo's Bake Shop. Valastro's businesses had remained profitable throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and he and has team had learned a great deal while managing through the crisis. Valastro felt like he was at a turning point and could build upon the lessons of the pandemic to scale his business. Moving into the future, how could Buddy leverage data and digital offerings? Did he even need brick-and-mortar bakeries? Did he have the infrastructure and team necessary to operate his company now and realize his vision for the future? Was Valastro overextended? How important was Valastro to the brand and to the company? Could they outlast him in the long-run?
This note focuses on the antecedents of, reactions to, and clarifications about The Business Roundtable's August 19, 2019, "Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation." The note includes background information on corporate governance as practiced in the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It discusses "managerialism," "stakeholderism," and shareholder primacy. The latter view is represented by Milton Friedman's essay, "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits," which is summarized in the note. The note also includes a history of The Business Roundtable and its periodic statements on topics related to corporate governance, including its original 1997 "Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation." The note then relays the issuance of the 2019 update to that statement, along with reactions from the popular media, shareholder advocates, academics, and stakeholder governance advocates.
In July 2019, James Currier, a general partner at San Francisco-based NFX Ventures, was considering a seed stage investment of $1.5 million in Moov Technologies, a B2B marketplace for used industrial equipment. NFX was a venture capital firm focused on seed-stage investments in technology businesses that utilized one or more of 15 network effects that NFX identified, viewing such businesses as having asymmetric upside potential. Currier saw growing potential in B2B marketplaces, which had taken a backseat to B2C marketplaces in the early 2000s. But market dynamics were changing as Millennials took the reins in legacy industries and looked for ways to bring the ease and speed of B2C marketplaces they were accustomed to in their personal lives to the workplace. NFX had already invested in one B2B marketplace and was now considering Moov, which operated in the pre-owned semiconductor manufacturing equipment market - estimated to have a market size of $8 to $10 billion. The business model was predicated on the fact that large manufacturers like Intel typically bought manufacturing equipment that had a 15-30 year useful life, but only used it for 3-5 years before swapping it out for newer models. The used equipment then either sat idle while it depreciated or was sold to other manufacturers through brokers. Steven Zhou, Moov's founder and CEO, had worked as a broker in the semiconductor equipment industry for 6 years; he used that experience to launch Moov in 2017 to digitize the equipment resale process through an online marketplace. As a seed stage investor, Currier knew he had to rely heavily on his assessment of the team, the product, and the sector. Currier acknowledged that Zhou was relatively inexperienced and would need mentorship. Yet Currier was impressed by Zhou's work ethic and "hustle." He was also encouraged by the fintech growth potential for Moov, including adding services such as insurance, shipping, and vendor financing.
Angaza's story is not a typical solar light story, but the story of a female social entrepreneur with a for-profit Silicon Valley mindset transforming a social enterprise from a hardware to a software business model. It is about pivots, changing value propositions, and new products and business models as Angaza evolves to escalate social impact while still making money. Angaza began as a solar-light company founded in 2010 by Stanford graduate Lesley Silverthorn Marincola to address energy poverty in rural off-grid communities. In her quest to address affordability, Lesley realized that the main problem confronting rural off-grid communities was not the price of solar lights per se, but finding a way to spread payments over time. In 2012, Angaza pivoted from being a solar-light producer to a software provider offering pay-as-you-go (PAYG) metering and monitoring technology to players in the solar-light ecosystem - manufacturers, distributors and mobile network operators. The PAYG technology allowed end consumers to buy solar-light products by paying small amounts over time, until they eventually owned them outright. At the end of the case, students are confronted with a very real dilemma facing the founder and leadership team of many start-ups, including Angaza - what are the next opportunities for the company? Is it further scaling (if so, scaling up or deep), a pivot (into data), or an exit (sell the business)?
Thoughtworks , a mid-sized IT consulting firm that integrated strategy, design and software engineering for their clients, with over 10,000 technologists spread over 48 offices in 17 countries, started in 1993. Thoughtworks developed a strong inclusivity culture and was anchored on three principal values: creating a sustainable for-profit organization, championing software excellence, and advocating social and economic justice for all. The organization had always embraced gender and cultural diversity and initiated multiple organizational practices to support and build inclusivity. In India, ThoughtWorks had been pioneering "Women in Tech" to promote gender diversity as the most visible inclusivity agenda. After the 2018 historic judgment repealing Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, the opportunity to broaden the inclusivity domain to embrace LGBTQ+ workforce emerged. The founders and senior management had also taken public stands on the discriminatory attitude toward the LGBTQ+ community and the criminalization legislation in force in India. The organization had taken multiple initiatives and introduced progressive policies to demonstrate its support toward the LGBTQ+ community. However, LGBTQ+ inclusion was creating some dilemmas for the organization.