Following a weekend strategy retreat in October 2018, the vice-chair and group CEO of Kuwait-headquartered mobile telecommunications company Zain, was proud of the company's performance over the previous year. Zain Group had much to celebrate, having blazed a trail in advancing women's empowerment and inclusion in the workplace-a double challenge in a technology industry that was also based in a region heavily influenced by traditional gender values. Its strategy included the launch of the Women Empowerment Network initiative (WE Initiative) in November 2017, a strategic master plan aimed at achieving gender equality, empowering women, and advancing women's careers at Zain. However, a great deal of progress remained, and new challenges were emerging. The company had put significant emphasis and resources toward women's empowerment and development, leaving some of the male colleagues feeling overlooked and left out. As well, other groups, such as people with disabilities and younger generations, also had barriers to overcome. How could the company continue its efforts to support women while also being inclusive and considering the needs of all its employees?
The elections for India's 294-seat West Bengal (Bengal) Legislative Assembly were due to be held sometime in April-May 2021. The All India Trinamool Congress (TMC), which had been in power in the state since 2011, faced a tough challenge from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had been in power in the Central Government of India since 2014. The TMC and its political rivals in Bengal faced unprecedented social and political divisions among voters in 2021. To add to the TMC's problems, at least half a dozen TMC stalwarts and many more local leaders had shifted to the BJP in the previous three months. In the run-up to the election, politicians across party lines used emotive issues such as religion, gender, and language to woo undecided voters. The TMC needed to devise a marketing strategy to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Winning the maximum possible number of votes was the only item on the agenda.
In the past 20 years, Liu Pengkai greatly stimulated employees' initiative and creativity through practical application of a set of unique and flexible management by heart (hereinafter referred to as "MBH") models by different means in specific tasks, which facilitated the enterprise's sound development. MBH model enabled employees to turn ideas into concrete actions and make achievements. It also guided employees to always remind themselves to do things with the right mindset in their work and life, and jointly build a harmonious development environment. When Heisonglin was first taken over by Liu, "11 workers, with an output value of over a hundred thousand yuan, two reaction kettles and more than a million yuan in debt" Heisonglin developed from the beginning of Liu's term from small to a large professional domestic manufacturer of adhesives, with total annual assets value growth rate of 20%, cooperation with many Fortune Global 500 enterprises and renowned enterprises at home and abroad as well as "Jiangsu Famous Brand" products. Liu's MBH model enabled Heisonglin to develop gradually, but such management model mainly relied on the wisdom and emotional intelligence of Liu from the perspective of the current management status of Heisonglin. Accompanied with the continuous development of the company, the number of the company's employees gradually increased, and an increasing number of new employees of the post-90s generation joined the company, which made it impossible for him to engage in all those specific tasks in the future. Meanwhile, Heisonglin's business scale constantly expanded to gradually cover customers throughout the country, which made it hard for him to serve each customer in person.
Given this industrial configuration, how can Sunriver Tea Co. Ltd. ("Sunriver Tea") make business breakthroughs and gain competitive advantage? In order to create differentiation, Sunriver Tea established the value proposition of "Small Place of Origin, Sunriver Tea". It attempted to create high-quality and differentiated tea products through the concept of "small place of origin". It also chose multi-category management to buildscale, rather than focusing on only one category, black tea. Challenges encountered by Sunriver Tea in implementing its strategy: First, in the tea planting process, Sunriver Tea restructured the supplier's value chain and tried to obtain high-quality tea garden resources through large investment. However, due to the difficulty in establishing agricultural products as high quality, it is difficult to reflect the value of high-quality tea from a high-quality place of origin by focusing on differentiated products based on place of origin. In the tea production process, Sunriver Tea restructured its internal value chain through automated and intelligent manufacturing, improving production efficiency and guaranteeing stability. However, Sunriver Tea's cost-reduction advantage is not obvious, due to low public awareness of the value of tea culture and its traditional handicraft, and the existence of many farmers and workshops in the market competing with one another. Second, the value was mainly delivered through CCTV advertising targeted at a broad range of customers, but it did not seem to have a strong impact on consumer awareness. In terms of sales, Sunriver Tea still chose traditional direct retail as the main channel as it was a start-up brand, and it was expensive to promote via e-commerce. Consumers were slow to recognize the cultural value delivered behind the "small place of origin".
Wahl Clipper Ningbo Ltd. is a wholly owned company of Wahl Group, a century-old American enterprise, in China. Owing to a crisis in 2008, Wahl (Ningbo) was on the verge of bankruptcy. Qian Moxing was appointed as a general manager at the time of the crisis. In line with the proverbial saying 'new broom sweeps clean', 'A new person makes many changes'. Qian was enlightened with traditional Chinese culture. Therefore, he motivated employees to learn traditional Chinese culture. In addition, the introduction of management reforms to encourage 'working and living happily for common development' resulted in tremendous changes within a few years. This reform led the US-based headquarters to adjust the strategic positioning of Wahl (Ningbo): from a manufacturer to an enterprise integrating independent R&D, production, and sales and from a producer of middle and low-end products for overseas households to a manufacturer of high-end products for Chinese hair salons. Strategic transformation meant opportunities as well as challenges. Though the company's current corporate culture and human resource management aligned with the goals of a happy enterprise, it failed to meet the goals of sales and R&D. Accordingly, this article highlights ways through which Wahl (Ningbo) can enhance the current corporate culture and human resource management to adapt to the new strategic positioning.
Heilongjiang Feihe Dairy Co., Ltd. (Feihe) was located in Qiqihar City, a medium-sized city in Heilongjiang Province, northeastern China. Situated in the golden milk source zone at 47 degrees north latitude, the city had been producing powdered milk products and sold them to domestic consumers for 58 years. However, the 2008 melamine incident (MLM) almost wiped out local brands in the domestic infant formula market and left a vacancy for foreign brands to fill. In a further blow to domestic brands, a fierce price war started as Chinese companies all attempted to regain market share. MLM nearly destroyed consumer confidence in domestic brands across-the-board. In 2015, Feihe realized it needed to create a new brand image that resonated with Chinese mothers if it was going to emerge from the mire. In 2015, Feihe redirected its strategy towards building a domestic infant formula brand that most suited the nutritional needs of Chinese babies. By upgrading its technology and production capability and adjusting its promotional tactics, Feihe was able to grow into an industry leader. In 2020, Feihe's chairperson Leng Youbin was thinking of Feihe's future. Feihe's past win reassured him that Feihe should continue its mission of creating more value for customers. However, there were several paths to that goal. He asked himself whether he should customize the production of infant formula to cater to the needs of each individual baby and reach for higher premium, or, should he choose the low-hanging fruit of adding more product lines so that Feihe could leverage its current reputation to realize higher market growth?
In 2019, Bestore Co. Ltd. went public on the mainboard of China's Shanghai Stock Exchange. With the mission of bringing Chinese delicacies to the world, the RMB 6 billion-revenue company proposed an ambitious revenue goal of RMB 100 billion with the new financial resources acquired from the public offering. Bestore expanded from its base market, Wuhan city, in central China to southern and eastern parts of the country. It opened flagship stores on China's key e-commerce platforms with online revenue equal to offline. It continuously upgraded its brick-and-mortar stores and outlets to project a high-end brand image. These physical stores were also fulfillment centers for orders taken from online food ordering platforms. Maintaining an online-offline balanced revenue structure expanded the customer base and increased the brand awareness for Bestore, but also posed many unique challenges for its Board and executives.
Rick Klau left Google to become California's chief technology innovation officer in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. In this installment of MIT Sloan Management Review's Leading With Impact series, Klau discusses transitioning from the private sector to the public sector, using OKRs to set and meet organizational goals, and embracing an experimental mindset to rapidly launch a digital vaccine record system for the most populous state in the country.
Innovating under time pressure can be extremely difficult. Traditional brainstorming to generate ideas often leads teams to curtail open ideation and narrow their focus to a single design approach too quickly. The authors report on a study in which teams that used rapid prototyping tools to explore diverse possibilities during the ideation phase completed a design challenge more successfully than teams using the conventional approach.
In 2017, Total Credit Recovery Limited (TCR), an accounts receivables management and debt collection firm, hired a data scientist to analyze the firm's current data analytics practices and create a plan to extend the use of its data. TCR collected more than 1 million points of data per day, and the company's new data scientist knew that with a proper team in place, he could use this data to offer his firm a competitive advantage that was currently non-existent in the industry. TCR's leadership supported the data scientist with substantial resources and the team made notable contributions to the firm's operations. However, one year later, as the firm was preparing to launch a new venture that relied on the contributions of the new data analytics team, the young leader was struggling to build a positive dynamic within his cross-functional team. How could he improve his team's dynamics and thus its ability to add value to TCR?
HSBC Commercial Banking was a key business for HSBC Holdings plc, contributing one-third of the bank's profit in 2019. In 2016, the regional head of Commercial Banking, Asia Pacific, began initiating a series of open innovation programs in Hong Kong. The programs aimed to embrace collaboration in the innovation and technology ecosystem to co-create value for Commercial Banking's small and medium-sized customers.<br><br>Now, in 2020, the regional head of Commercial Banking and his innovation team leader were discussing their innovation initiatives. They reviewed what they had achieved in the last four years. What value had they created for not just the small- and medium-sized customers but also the ecosystem stakeholders? What challenges had they met, and how well had they resolved these? Had the proper culture and talents been in place to meet these challenges? Had they measured the performance of the team properly to keep their colleagues motivated about sustainable innovation? They also explored a few critical areas for future growth. The regional head of Commercial Banking wondered what more they could do in Hong Kong, and how they could replicate the success they had achieved in Hong Kong in other emerging markets in Asia.
In April 2012, Qingke Facilities Leasing Ltd. (Qingke), a technology-based real estate management company, was founded to provide a long-term apartment rental service to young professionals in Shanghai and some other cities. The goal was to rent constructed but vacant apartments on the Shanghai market by leveraging information technology resources for all operations and by employing a model of standard apartment renovation. A decentralized long-term apartment rental model was introduced to China's market in 2014 by leading Internet-based companies and was booming by 2017. At the end of 2018, Qingke was one of the top ten brands in the long-term apartment rental market, running 100,000 renting units in coastal cities in China with revenue of ¥1.2 billion that year. However, to sustain rapid market growth and create a large-scale Internet economic model, Qingke would have to overcome many uncertainties and challenges, including capital acquisition; strong competition; constraints to its financial resources, team building efforts, work force development, and sustainability; and extension of the business model. By the beginning of 2019, Qingke had come a long way; the US$100 million in funding he received in 2018 signified a major accomplishment in Qingke's progress since its establishment in 2012. However, competitors were targeting Qingke with the aim of overtaking its market share. How could the recent funding strengthen Qingke's position in the housing rental market and gain sufficient market share? Should Qingke increase investment in information technology to upgrade its data processing abilities and capacity, or should it build its brand to promote market exposure and awareness?
The Berline-based start-up, Lytt, was founded in late 2019 with the aim of offering employees a means to speak up about misconduct at work through a digital assistant, which enabled them to communicate difficult topics safely and anonymously. Lytt wanted to help companies understand their working climate and sustainably promote their employees' satisfaction and health. In August 2020, the owners of Lytt had to develop the right go-to-market strategy, keeping in mind the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their decisions.
This case set focuses on a health system undergoing transformation and change. In 2015, Mary Washington Healthcare is the latest health care organization to plan to upgrade its electronic health record (EHR) system. The new CEO, Mike McDermott, MD, is considering which vendor to choose: Cerner Corporation or Epic Systems Corporation. This A case includes a brief history of EHR systems, including new regulations, their impact on demand, the state of the market, and the myriad benefits and challenges associated with implementing EHR systems. Students have the opportunity to evaluate the business case for two different EHR systems, as well as to consider the decision's effect on different stakeholders, such as the board, practitioners, and patients.
This case set focuses on a health system undergoing transformation and change. In 2015, Mary Washington Healthcare (Mary Washington) is the latest health care organization to plan to upgrade its electronic health record system. The new CEO, Mike McDermott, MD, is considering which vendor to choose: Cerner Corporation or Epic Systems Corporation. In this B case, students discover which vendor Mary Washington chose. Now, the challenge is to decide how to implement the transition, aiming to make it a positive and seamless experience for all.
Farfetch, a global luxury technology platform and digital marketplace had been surfing the wave of digital transformation in the luxury fashion industry since 2008. While the company's stock price and market valuation had fluctuated since its IPO in 2018, it had achieved positive EBITDA only once in the fourth quarter of 2020. Now, CEO Jose Neves had to decide how to allocate company resources across the various business lines that had sprung up alongside the marketplace, including Farfetch Platform Solutions, a modular set of e-commerce technology solutions and services for luxury retailers and brands, the Store of the Future initiative, a partnership with Alibaba and two of the largest luxury houses (Richemont and Kering), and investment in Farfetch's own fashion brands. As the company expanded into new business lines, it stewarded an increasingly complex and interdependent luxury ecosystem in which it could be perceived as both a collaborator and a potential competitor to its various constituents. How could Neves chart the best path to profitable growth while keeping everyone satisfied as competition heats up in the online and offline luxury retailscape?
The case tells the story of the rise and fall of Scott Tucker, an entrepreneur, businessman, passionate race car driver, competitor, and owner of a professional racing team. From 1997 to 2012, Tucker built a nationwide network of payday lending businesses, becoming a pioneer in online lending along the way. Many of his borrowers depended on payday loans as a lifeline in dire times-a pricy-yet-reliable source of cash to pay bills and cope with emergency expenses. However, Tucker's reign came to an end in 2012 when federal prosecutors indicted Tucker on several criminal charges, including the violation of disclosure laws. This case allows students to discuss the role of individual executives in the corporate governance process, and how the regulatory-level, firm-level, and personal levers of governance may interact to create trust in markets. The case also allows discussions of the importance of effective communication of information by management to help facilitate the decision-making of various stakeholders (such as investors, employees, and customers).