Bunge, one of the world's leading agribusiness traders and processors, strives to comply with its commitment to having a deforestation-free value chain by 2025 while it considers potential new business growth areas. After a complex turnaround, which involved one of the biggest corporate reorganizations in Bunge's 203-year history, the company finally has surplus cash to invest. CEO Greg Heckman and Chief Sustainability Officer Robert Coviello must figure out if they can turn sustainability into a profit maker for the company or if it will remain as another cost of doing business.
The case traces the digital journey of the Vikatan Group, a Tamil media conglomerate in India. The case can be used to build a process-based framework for ensuring organizational longevity, especially when the environment is dynamic. Vikatan faced a continuous onslaught of technological changes which at first sight are peripheral to the magazine publishing industry. However, these digital disruptions later became the defining media for news and entertainment. Vikatan made some decisions early on to follow where its customers went. It encouraged low stakes experiments with new technology. It ensured that the top management was open to inputs from the successes/failures of the experiments. Finally, it built flexibility into its organizational core to ensure that it successfully overcame the digital disruptions. The case provides the facts of this digital journey and helps the student identify how organizational longevity can be built into the firm through conscious strategic decision making.
Meesho is a three-part case that highlights the ups and downs, and the twists and turns, of a typical entrepreneurial journey. It follows the experiences and decisions of Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, two IIT Delhi graduates, as they build their venture - Meesho. The idea that they begin with, morphs substantially as they go through the process of finding a product-market fit. Each time they face a hurdle, they dig deeper into the needs and challenges of their customers, until they arrive at what could potentially be product-market fit. Even then, they struggle to monetize and decide to pivot yet again, in order to unlock the value created by their venture. The case provides rich material to discuss the iterative, non-linear nature of venture building. It reinforces the importance of continuously measuring and responding to metrics.
Meesho is a three-part case that highlights the ups and downs, and the twists and turns, of a typical entrepreneurial journey. It follows the experiences and decisions of Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, two IIT Delhi graduates, as they build their venture - Meesho. The idea that they begin with, morphs substantially as they go through the process of finding a product-market fit. Each time they face a hurdle, they dig deeper into the needs and challenges of their customers, until they arrive at what could potentially be product-market fit. Even then, they struggle to monetize and decide to pivot yet again, in order to unlock the value created by their venture. The case provides rich material to discuss the iterative, non-linear nature of venture building. It reinforces the importance of continuously measuring and responding to metrics.
Meesho is a three-part case that highlights the ups and downs, and the twists and turns, of a typical entrepreneurial journey. It follows the experiences and decisions of Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, two IIT Delhi graduates, as they build their venture - Meesho. The idea that they begin with, morphs substantially as they go through the process of finding a product-market fit. Each time they face a hurdle, they dig deeper into the needs and challenges of their customers, until they arrive at what could potentially be product-market fit. Even then, they struggle to monetize and decide to pivot yet again, in order to unlock the value created by their venture. The case provides rich material to discuss the iterative, non-linear nature of venture building. It reinforces the importance of continuously measuring and responding to metrics.
Godrej Appliances Division (GAD) of Godrej & Boyce manufacturing company limited - which had been around for more than 60 years and was the first company to manufacture refrigerators in India - began to face intense competition in the early to late 2000s due to the entry of multinational companies (MNCs), such as LG and Samsung, after liberalization of the Indian economy. GAD had been among the top-3 players in the industry until the entry of the MNCs, and subsequently, their market share fell by half to 13% in the late 1990s and further decreased to 6% by 2010. To improve their competitiveness, to benchmark with industry best practices, and to get feedback from the assessment process, GAD chose to participate in the Confederation of Indian Industry's (CII) Business Excellence (BE) award, modeled after EFQM, from 2011 onward. The objective was to use this feedback to identify their internal gaps vis-Ã -vis the competition and improve the respective processes in order to regain their market share. The case describes how GAD made use of the EFQM philosophy and the award criteria to completely revamp their processes and bridge gaps with the competition. They focused on the five enablers: (1) Leadership (2) Strategy (3) People (4) Partnerships & Resources and (5) Processes, Products & Services, to improve their business and organizational processes. These efforts paid off, and GAD progressively improved their products and processes during the next several years, finally achieving the CII-BE award in 2019. The case A ends with a list of operational capabilities that GAD acquired in the process and how they can exploit them, just when COVID-19 pandemic hit India. Case B then goes on to describe how GAD made use of these capabilities to quickly develop and introduce new products that were urgently needed in the country, to address the challenges posed by the pandemic.
Godrej Appliances Division (GAD) of Godrej & Boyce manufacturing company limited - which had been around for more than 60 years and was the first company to manufacture refrigerators in India - began to face intense competition in the early to late 2000s due to the entry of multinational companies (MNCs), such as LG and Samsung, after liberalization of the Indian economy. GAD had been among the top-3 players in the industry until the entry of the MNCs, and subsequently, their market share fell by half to 13% in the late 1990s and further decreased to 6% by 2010. To improve their competitiveness, to benchmark with industry best practices, and to get feedback from the assessment process, GAD chose to participate in the Confederation of Indian Industry's (CII) Business Excellence (BE) award, modeled after EFQM, from 2011 onward. The objective was to use this feedback to identify their internal gaps vis-Ã -vis the competition and improve the respective processes in order to regain their market share. The case describes how GAD made use of the EFQM philosophy and the award criteria to completely revamp their processes and bridge gaps with the competition. They focused on the five enablers: (1) Leadership (2) Strategy (3) People (4) Partnerships & Resources and (5) Processes, Products & Services, to improve their business and organizational processes. These efforts paid off, and GAD progressively improved their products and processes during the next several years, finally achieving the CII-BE award in 2019. The case A ends with a list of operational capabilities that GAD acquired in the process and how they can exploit them, just when COVID-19 pandemic hit India. Case B then goes on to describe how GAD made use of these capabilities to quickly develop and introduce new products that were urgently needed in the country, to address the challenges posed by the pandemic.
Rahul, a first year Master of Business Administration Student in a premier business school in India, encountered a misunderstanding while interacting with his study group, which met online due to COVID-19 restrictions in August 2020. He tried to resolve the misunderstanding, but instead, his attempt resulted in an escalation of the situation. Distressed over the misunderstanding and what he perceived as a breach of trust, he had lost his motivation to work with the group. Now, he is trying to reassess the situation and understand what went wrong, in an attempt to form a plan of action to mitigate the situation.
In June 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the vice-president of sales and marketing at Priority Management, a hotel and resort management company, was overseeing the operations of two hotels. New England Hotel was a large corporate hotel that had successfully cultivated much of its business from corporations in the nearby corporate business park. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, hotel occupancy plummeted, and the hotel's general manager was resisting changing strategy to address heightened fears amid uncertainty from the hotel's staff. A "business as usual" strategy would inevitably result in the hotel closing and all staff members being laid off. Midwest Hotel was a major branded full-service hotel located outside the downtown area. The hotel had undergone several changes in leadership and rebranding, which the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated. The hotel manager was forced to drastically reduce the hotel's staff and implement a new strategy before the hotel became unsavable.
CUBO Modular Inc. (CUBO) was a start-up social enterprise in the Philippines that emerged shortly after its chief executive officer, Earl Forlales, received a substantial cash award for besting 1,200 entries in a competition. The concept behind Forlales's competition entry was the use of engineered bamboo to produce modular houses. The materials, design, and fabrication resulted in cheaper houses that could be used for mass housing projects. The public gained awareness of CUBO from the various articles posted online about the competition, which were also posted on CUBO's Facebook page. By 2021, interest in the well-designed CUBO houses had swelled, and the quantity of queries overwhelmed the CUBO team, resulting in its failure to respond to hundreds of queries posed by potential customers. What should Forlales do to keep interest in CUBO products at a high level while managing its production capacity to meet consumer demand?
Cognizant Technology Solutions (Cognizant) was a multinational corporation that operated in the information technology (IT) services sector and provided consulting and business process outsourcing services to its clients. As the world fell into the clutches of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company faced a series of challenges, through 2020 and into the start of 2021, that rocketed its employee attrition rates to an all-time high while also affecting revenue. During early 2021, the company was faced with the herculean task of retaining employees in the face of uncertainty and an extremely competitive market, even if this meant putting a dent in the company's cash reserves. Cognizant had to determine how to build a better employee value proposition and develop initiatives to both retain and regain employees. Were the measures it had taken sufficient? Amid the scare of the pandemic and the war raging in India for talent, would Cognizant need a more robust human resources (HR) plan? Would it need to improve its measures for promoting the well-being of employees? Was the company too focused on performance and the bottom line?
In 2016, a Black woman entrepreneur in Ajax, Ontario, Canada, in the greater Toronto area founded a small but successful venture named Kids Swag in response to a gap she identified in the children's products market, which was failing to represent the Black community. The founder started her business while working as a full-time marketing professional. Kids Swag sold globally sourced products that featured positive Black personas and imagery in pop-up stores, local community events, and online through her social media account. Within four years, she exceeded her initial goals and found herself struggling to keep pace with the growing demand for her products. Her clientele grew from the local community and Facebook groups to international customers, large companies, and institutional clients such as retail outlets and school boards. By the end of 2020, the founder was wondering if she should open a physical store to complement her online presence and if she should leave her full-time career to devote herself fully to running her business. With warehouse space becoming increasingly limited and demand for her products continuing to grow, could she invest the necessary time and resources to take Kids Swag to the next level?
This case describes how SAP Labs India, a research and development center of SAP SE introduced and pursued a wide range of diversity and inclusion (D&I) programs across the organization. Set in September 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it narrates the story of Sap Labs' D&I journey of over a decade. Told from the perspective of Shraddhanjali Rao, VP, Human Resources, and other company executives, the case outlines and examines different diversity programs that were instituted around four pillars of D&I, namely, (i) gender, (ii) culture and identity (LGBTQ employees), (iii) cross-generational employees and (iv) differently abled people. The case discusses the company's efforts to promote awareness and adoption of its diversity goals across these four pillars and the challenges it faced along the way through the perspectives of a cross-section of program leaders. The case raises the following questions: Did the programmatic efforts to implement diversity initiatives lead to inclusion at SAP Labs? What were the challenges in promoting these initiatives? Did they degenerate to tokenism? What could SAP Labs have done better to institutionalize its commitment to diversity in the workplace? Beyond diversity, what more could SAP Labs do in the future to embrace an inclusive culture?
Danish Crown, one of the world's largest exporters of pork meat and one of Europe's top five producers of beef, faced increasing headwinds in 2021, making CEO Jais Valeur feel like the core of the meat business was under attack. As a cooperative and prominent player in Denmark's high-standard agriculture sector, the company had particular responsibilities and constraints including a high labor and production cost and strict regulatory environment. More recently growing concerns over climate change had led to increasing criticism of the environmental impacts of livestock production. Consumers in Denmark and worldwide were turning away from meat, for its climate impact but also for concerns about animal welfare and their own health. The case discusses these industry trends and describes Danish Crown's efforts to respond by transitioning to a more sustainable company, with several initiatives and investments underway to meet its ambitious carbon reduction targets. Valeur was convinced that sustainability leadership was the only way to keep its customers, add value to commodity parts of the business, and earn the "license" to keep operating in the future. However, the more the company publicized its efforts, the more it got under attack from environmental activists for alleged "greenwashing." Just like many of its peers, Danish Crown's management team needed to devise a strategy that would allow for its survival despite the growing adverse trends.
Ben Van Weelden, Manager of Scenic Floral, was considering providing direct-to-door delivery to Northern Ontario stores for its main customer, Metro Inc. Scenic was looking for ways to increase sales and profit, but also had its eye on providing coast-to-coast delivery of cut flowers in Canada, with the help of its partner-shareholder, Petals West. However, it would need to be advantageous for both Scenic and Metro to make this a viable option.
Pai's Bakery was a 30-year-old family business based in Belagavi, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. The owner was working on a sales territory realignment plan in response to complaints from the company's sales team. Sales representatives claimed that their wages were not proportionate to their efforts and that productivity was hampered by poor territory planning and restrictive business policies. The Pai's Bakery owner wanted to address the sales representatives' concerns and improve the company's relationship with all retail outlets to achieve key business objectives. Based on these priorities, she prepared a realignment plan for the sales territories. However, she was surprised by the negative reaction by the sales representatives, who opposed the new plan. Pai's Bakery had to find a mutually beneficial path forward immediately to avoid serious damage to the company's business operations.
Sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 caught small- and medium-sized Chinese enterprises off guard, such as Ciyang Garment Factory (CY) in Zaozhuang City, Shandong Province. Many migrant workers could not come for work on time because of the outbreak, and Li Qiang-the founder and general manager of CY-felt uneasy about defaulting on orders and worried about future lawsuits. The experienced garment maker Liu Ning, who had been working in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, was also stranded at home in Zaozhuang because of the epidemic. After meeting with Li, the two reached a cooperation agreement. Liu Ning's arrival temporarily solved the urgent labour shortage of CY; however, the pay difference between the veteran senior workers in the factory and those who had worked in the south, such as Liu Ning, became the catalyst of the 'absenteeism incident'. Because of the human resource management problems caused by this incident, Li was once again caught in a dilemma. Will the absent workers be back in 3 days? How should Li solve the human resource crisis caused by absenteeism? To help the development of CY, does Li need to reform the human resource management system? How can he change it? This case examines Li, the director of the factory, and Liu Ning, a skilled technician, to demonstrate the difficulties faced by small- and medium-sized private manufacturing enterprises in China under the impact of COVID-19. With the conflict between the two salary systems as the background, this case discusses how Li deals with the crisis and the future development plan of CY.
In December 2020, White House Industries (White House), a manufacturer of aerosol aluminum cans for deodorants and other consumer products, including sanitizers and pain relief sprays, received customer order forecasts of 30 per cent more than its maximum production capacity. Unless White House invested in a third production line, which represented a significant capital investment and required almost a year's lead time, it would be unable to fulfil several customer orders with its existing manufacturing lines. Some customers had long-term relationships with White House, some were newly acquired, and some had a global-level tie-up with White House's parent company. In addition, the demand from some customers was already large, while others had immense future potential. White House's board and management team had different views regarding which customers the company should retain and which it should decline. This customer selection issue was a pressing and challenging problem that needed to be solved immediately. How should White House resolve its customer selection conundrum?