Despite the supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota) managed to increase its sales and retain its title as the world's top-selling carmaker for three consecutive years from 2020. However, the gradual shift in global market trends toward battery electric vehicles (BEVs) threatened to leave Toyota lagging behind, particularly in China, the United States, and Europe. In response to the threats from BYD Auto and Tesla in Toyota's main markets, Koji Sato was appointed president of Toyota in April 2023. Under Sato's leadership, Toyota announced plans to establish a BEV Factory, with the goal of producing 1.5 million BEVs by 2026. Despite Toyota's commitment to hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles, exemplified by the Mirai, the company struggled to increase sales in this category due to infrastructure challenges. With Toyota's Hydrogen Factory scheduled to open in July 2023, Sato emphasized Toyota's intention of preserving hydrogen as a viable option for achieving a carbon-neutral society. The company faced the challenge of determining whether it was a solid strategy to develop and maintain both battery and hydrogen options in pursuit of a zero-emissions environment. Both endeavours demanded tremendous financial investments and time-consuming efforts, thus potentially slowing Toyota's battery development. While other carmakers focused solely on BEVs, Toyota's ability to compete in this category once the BEV Factory commenced mass production in 2026 while also investing in hydrogen remained uncertain.
In September 2022, Balmer Lawrie & Co Ltd., a highly diversified Indian public-sector enterprise, was reviewing the outcomes of its mentorship program, which had been launched as a pilot initiative about a year earlier. The company had hired an external consultant to help design and speedily launch the first offering of the mentorship program, enrolling 25 mentor-mentee pairs. Now, it needed to refine the program, strengthen the measurement of its benefits, and plan a scaled-up rollout across the organization. The company aimed to make the mentorship initiative a long-term, self-sustaining program.
On the morning of November 25, 2021, the general manager of the Renaissance Suzhou Hotel received a call from the administrative committee of a nearby business district informing him that some guests who had stayed at the hotel a few days earlier had been diagnosed with coronavirus disease 2019. The administrator requested that the hotel cooperate with the government in carrying out an urgent epidemiological investigation and implementing a closed-loop operation for emergency treatment. It was Thanksgiving day and the hotel was almost fully occupied. How would the general manger and his team address this challenge?
Cofounders of the Berlin-based startup Bone Brox developed a traditional bone broth made from organic, pasture-fed cattle and free-range chickens. Although they had a polarizing product, the founders tapped into the health and awareness trend and managed to gain market attention and secure government funding. The startup defined itself with a flat hierarchy, open communication, and shared decision-making. However, the company faced challenges, such as the impact of a flat hierarchy on business success and efficient decision-making, a highly competitive market, and the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
In September 2022, Balmer Lawrie & Co Ltd., a highly diversified Indian public-sector enterprise, was reviewing the outcomes of its mentorship program, which had been launched as a pilot initiative about a year earlier. The company had hired an external consultant to help design and speedily launch the first offering of the mentorship program, enrolling 25 mentor-mentee pairs. Now, it needed to refine the program, strengthen the measurement of its benefits, and plan a scaled-up rollout across the organization. The company aimed to make the mentorship initiative a long-term, self-sustaining program.
Set in 2015, this case study is about how Singapore Airlines (SIA) and the Middle Eastern behemoths - Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Etihad Airways - adopt differentiation strategies to compete in the full-service passenger air travel industry. It highlights the multifaceted nature of an airline's differentiation strategies, noting that various levels of differentiation correspond to different pricing tiers. Each airline offers a range of products such as cabins or 'classes', enabling them to vary their degree of differentiation across their offerings. The case identifies factors that the airlines can leverage to enhance their competitiveness and those that are immutable. In addition, this case includes detailed pricing and product information that students can use to distil important insights for strategic analysis. Since the 2000s, Emirates and other Middle Eastern airlines have undergone substantial growth over the years, creating challenges for their competitors, especially along the Kangaroo Route (a popular air travel route that connects the continents of Europe and Australasia). Consequently, Australia-based Qantas opted for a strategic shift and "threw in the towel", replacing its traditional Sydney-Melbourne-Singapore-London flights with a new route through Sydney-Melbourne-Dubai-London. This change allowed Qantas to integrate with Emirates' network, streamlining connectivity. On the other hand, SIA competed head-to-head with Emirates. Due to its highly differentiated products and services, SIA commanded a price premium over Emirates. However, Emirates offered more flight connection choices than SIA, translating to a higher demand for air travel. To remain competitive, what strategy should SIA adopt? Should SIA match its airfare pricing with Emirates to attract more passengers?
Revlon India was founded as a joint venture in 1995, pairing the industrial conglomerate UMG with the global beauty brand Revlon, Inc. to bring international color cosmetics to India. After growing rapidly and pioneering the Beauty Advisor (BA) model in India, the company began to struggle in the 2010s as it faced challenges in its sales and supply chain operations and started to lose touch with the market, all while competition rose, with new companies leveraging e-commerce platforms and international brands entering the market. In November 2023, Meghna Modi was tapped to turnaround the struggling venture. In the 5 months since her appointment, Modi had made enormous strides. She reorganized the head office, broke down silos in the sales organization, and reengaged with Revlon India's BAs. She completely revamped the company's e-commerce team, and began to collect data to understand its supply chain deficiencies. Modi also aimed to foster more accountability and learning in the company. Towards this end, she developed a Strategy Map and Balanced Scorecard (BSC) to articulate and evaluate Revlon India's business model. However, this unearthed a significant tradeoff between the company's online and offline operations. With pressure to breakeven by the end of 2024, Modi had to decide how to manage this tradeoff. Should the company emphasize either online or offline? Should it integrate them, or differentiate them? And how could the BSC be used to test potential solutions?
On the morning of November 25, 2021, the general manager of the Renaissance Suzhou Hotel received a call from the administrative committee of a nearby business district informing him that some guests who had stayed at the hotel a few days earlier had been diagnosed with coronavirus disease 2019. The administrator requested that the hotel cooperate with the government in carrying out an urgent epidemiological investigation and implementing a closed-loop operation for emergency treatment. It was Thanksgiving day and the hotel was almost fully occupied. How would the general manger and his team address this challenge?
Cofounders of the Berlin-based startup Bone Brox developed a traditional bone broth made from organic, pasture-fed cattle and free-range chickens. Although they had a polarizing product, the founders tapped into the health and awareness trend and managed to gain market attention and secure government funding. The startup defined itself with a flat hierarchy, open communication, and shared decision-making. However, the company faced challenges, such as the impact of a flat hierarchy on business success and efficient decision-making, a highly competitive market, and the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
Rhonda Klosler, chief operating officer at RSM Canada (RSM) is chairing a meeting to discuss post-COVID-19 pandemic work design. RSM has recognized that remote work offers employees greater flexibility and work satisfaction, while giving RSM the opportunity to recruit from remote locations. RSM would like to continue remote work. Focusing specifically on Generation Z, Klosler is seeking recommendations on the ideal work design. Specifically, how should remote and in-person work be balanced? How can RSM continue to build and maintain its company culture with employees who work remotely? What will a new approach to work mean for the other employee generational cohorts?
Instacart is an online grocery delivery platform that is seeking to go public through an initial public offering (IPO). Instacart has hired an investment bank to be its lead bookrunner, and the bank is responsible for coming up with an IPO price range. Maya Martinez, an investment banking analyst at the firm, has been tasked with building financial models to come up with an appropriate share range for the firm's managing directors to present at the IPO roadshow.
In March 2023, Havells India Ltd., founded by Haveli Ram Gandhi and later acquired by Qimat Rai Gupta, reported a significant increase in turnover to $2.06 billion from a low of $1.14 billion during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. Despite its success and growth investments, questions arose about Havells' strategic direction. While traditionally known for its electrical products as a B2B enterprise, Havells made inroads into the brown goods market, notably with the struggling Lloyd business post-acquisition in 2017. CEO Anil Rai Gupta faced challenges in adapting Havells' strategies to the competitive B2C market and evaluating the retention of the Lloyd brand's identity. Looking ahead, how will Havells navigate these strategic dilemmas to sustain its growth momentum and market relevance effectively?
Algorithmic auditing aims to identify and monitor potential harms caused by algorithmic systems. In these scenarios, diverse stakeholders consider specific use cases and collaborate to address critical questions about who could be harmed by such technologies, and how. The authors present two tools " the Ethical Matrix and the Explainable Fairness framework " that can help organizations identify these potential harms.
It is well known that a significant reason machine learning projects fail to deliver business value is data scientist's failure to adequately understand the business context. Development teams can avoid mistakes when they put aside any reticence to ask basic questions and engage with colleagues on the business side. The authors advise gaining input from all involved stakeholders and suggest some specific types of queries that might help ML developers get to the heart of the problem at hand.
Advanced analytics, such as predictive and prescriptive models to support business decisions, remain the primary drivers of data science value in the enterprise. How might the flashy, fluent, but not entirely reliable generative AI large language models contribute to traditional analytics practice? The author describes some experimental prompts that show potential for labeling data and explaining model predictions, and shares guidance on monitoring and verifying that output.
Many companies have large stores of customer data that can be tapped for valuable insights via analytics. At the same time, cybersecurity tactics used to protect personal information within that data can render it less useful for analysis. Data science practices will increasingly require that teams collaborate with IT on each use case to identify which techniques will maximize data privacy while still exposing useful information in the data set for analysis.
Ramp My City Pvt. Ltd. (RampMyCity)’s mission as a social enterprise was to foster in India the inclusion of people with disabilities. Established in 2019, RampMyCity was a social start-up dedicated to enhancing physical accessibility and delivering comprehensive training solutions across the public and private sectors. It collaborated with various corporations, private entities, and public institutions to offer seamless professional and practical end-to-end accessibility solutions and services. Its commitment extended beyond mere infrastructure improvements; RampMyCity aimed to transform the lives of people with disabilities by facilitating their full participation in society, creating accessible places for them, and promoting inclusivity. The founder now had to make some challenging decisions about the future of RampMyCity to ensure its scalability and sustainability. To scale effectively, what business model should the company adopt? Could the enterprise continue to depend on a flexible workforce and partnerships with larger organizations to drive its expansion, or would it be better for it to focus on building internal capabilities, including transitioning toward full-time operations and a larger, more permanent team to scale effectively and achieve sustained long-term growth?