The case explores Google's accelerator programs and its efforts to support underrepresented start-ups that are ready to scale. Students will understand Google's approach to (1) building accelerator programs, (2) selecting which startups to participate, and (3) leveraging the resources of Google and its parent, Alphabet. The case also provides an overview of the specific accelerator programs, curriculum, and benefits, which are helpful for students and future entrepreneurs who may be considering accelerators as a path to scale.
This case supplements the "PittaRosso: Artificial Intelligence-Driven Pricing and Promotion" case, and provides major highlights on what happened at the company since the first case.
The appeal of coworking spaces declined sharply once the COVID-19 pandemic hit. But new research suggests that such workspaces will become even more important and more popular in the post-pandemic world than they were before, not just for entrepreneurs and freelancers, but for large companies. The author points to five benefits that both companies and their employees can gain when remote workers are given the option to choose where they do their work.
Shrujan, a 50-year-old social enterprise, was started to provide work for villagers following a severe drought in the Kutch region of India. The organization focused on using the villagers’ appreciable skills in embroidery to create and market high-end handicrafts. The products both generated a source of added income for their households and helped to preserve the traditional crafts of the artisans. Shrujan had grown over the years, increasing sales and thus increasing the number of artisans supported by the project. However, in January 2020, a young fashion designer—the niece of the trustee manager and an employee at Shrujan—had ideas for growing and expanding the organization even further. The trustee manager needed to evaluate her niece’s proposal and decide whether or not it was possible to scale Shrujan and grow the business without compromising its social commitment.
Urban Axes introduced the Canadian indoor sport of axe throwing to the US market, beginning with one location in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2016. Although Urban Axes was started as a “side hustle” by four friends with corporate jobs, it soon became apparent that the concept could be both popular and profitable. The partners quickly decided to become fully involved in the business to maximize its potential. This case features a woman protagonist as chief financial officer and the originator of the business plan. It is a novel, contemporary example of the first-mover principle, highlighting the risks and rewards of creating a new line of business in a competitive and volatile industry—in this case, the indoor or experiential entertainment industry.
In 2020, the corporate purchasing and sustainability manager at the Plastilene Group (a plastics producer based in Colombia) needed to address a sustainability challenge. In response to media and legislative attacks and consumer behaviour changes regarding the use of plastic products globally, the corporate purchasing and sustainability manager, supported by the company’s chief executive officer, was tasked with leading a strategic renewal in the 62-year-old business group known for its integration of various lines of innovation both inside and outside its organization. The organization’s process of strategic renewal had arisen from the theories of sustainability and the circular economy. How could the company management enhance not only the sustainable innovation strategy within the organization’s structure, but also its spirit of corporate entrepreneurship and innovation?
In October 2015, the co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Tender Greens faced his most difficult decision yet: should the company continue to pay a premium price for sustainably sourced beef, or should it switch to conventionally raised beef to boost profit margins and improve the company’s prospects for national growth? Tender Greens, a thriving fast-casual restaurant chain in California, was ready to expand its operation to the East Coast with backing by equity investors. As the expansion plans grew closer, the CEO began to address the foreseeable supply chain issues that his company would face with the next level of expansion. The company had faced sustainably raised beef supply shortages before, but this time the CEO had more stakeholders to satisfy. He faced a dilemma, one that required him to weigh competing stakeholder interests, the company’s stated values, and significant financial implications to arrive at the best long-term outcome for the company. What would be the best way for the company to achieve scale while maintaining a commitment to food that was local, sustainable, and affordable?
On May 29, 2020, the World Health Organization launched the COVID-19 Technologies Access Pool (C-TAP) with the aim of making pandemic-related technologies—specifically, vaccines and treatments—available to its participants. Although the initiative was positively received in many developing countries, it was not well received by pharmaceutical companies, who viewed C-TAP as a threat to the patent system and, therefore, as a threat to the companies’ future research and development. Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) supported the initiative because it was expected to help poorer countries and income groups access a vaccine. Companies, NGOs, and national governments had to decide how to engage in the process.
Elon R. Musk, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), was on a mission to provide people in rural and remote areas with affordable, reliable Internet access. Starlink—a constellation of 12,000 satellites to be launched into low Earth orbit (LEO)—was to provide a seamless web of high-speed, low-latency Internet access to anyone with a coordinating ground station. If revenue from the project materialized as forecast, the income stream could help fund Musk's bigger mission: getting people to Mars. The project was not without its challenges, however. LEO satellites had failed in the past, and the market emphasis was the launch of the fifth-generation mobile network (5G) and extending that service to rural areas. Further, competition was increasing, as other companies were entering the segment. Another problem was the clutter and light pollution that the satellites created in orbit. How could Musk increase demand for Starlink's services, and how should he prioritize and tackle the challenges his project faced?
Set in 2019, this case describes the challenges faced in the adoption of DfMA (Design for manufacturing and assembly) concept by Singapore's construction industry. Use of DfMA increased productivity manifold, requiring less time for completion and less manpower, in addition to providing a safer and healthier work environment. The transition entailed a significant shift in the way different stakeholders such as developers, consultants, architects, contractors, vendors and the government operated in the domain, as the design and construction processes using DfMA were more akin to factory production and manufacturing industry than to the prevalent construction industry. Consequently, the existing ecosystem in the industry was not suited to the new technology and lacked supportive services and economies of scale. In addition, Singapore's easy access to low-cost migrant labour from regional countries had made the labour-intensive methods far more lucrative for the developers and contractors. In particular, the case presents the journey of two avant-garde companies - Teambuild, and LHL in their quest to adopt Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction (PPVC) and Mass Engineered Timber (MET), two lead DfMA technologies in their projects, supported by Building and Construction Authority (BCA) of Singapore. BCA, as the key enabler for proliferation of DfMA technology, provided support to organisations keen to adopt it by subsidising training programs and co-funding technology adoption. However, despite a few landmark successes, the majority of the industry was risk averse and preferred to continue with the cheaper and conventional construction method that they were well-versed in. Going forward, it was important to create additional value and better interfaces for the stakeholders in order to bring down their associated tangible and intangible transaction costs.
Advent International, one of the world's leading private equity firms, must decide whether to acquire Walmart's subsidiary in Brazil or not. Although Walmart Brazil is losing cash at a rapid pace, Advent thinks it has a solid plan to recover the company's finances. However, there are several execution risks associated with the deal and local analysts are skeptical about the possibility of a quick turnaround.
In 2016, Nicole M. Jones was hired to lead The Hangar, Delta Air Lines' new innovation center in Atlanta, Georgia. Delta's leadership had intended for The Hangar to catalyze a new approach to innovation at the company. After conducting three months of research on existing corporate innovation lab and accelerator models, Jones learned that most fail to scale impact across the core business. Drawing on her learnings, she established the values, strategy, and methodology for The Hangar to ensure just the opposite. Over the next three years, Jones and The Hangar's diverse team of design thinkers, technologists, and strategists brought together partners from Delta's core business and Atlanta's start-up and academic communities to execute a number of breakthrough innovations. After Delta's debut at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show, Jones was invited to share her experience of setting up a corporate innovation lab with a consortium of innovation leaders. In preparation, she and her team are conducting a post-mortem of their three-year journey and reflecting on the lessons learned from one of their earliest projects-a Biometric Boarding Pass prototype they executed with CLEAR, a biometrics identity start-up.
Founded by Mosunmola "Mo" Abudu in 2012 with a mission to bring high-quality African stories to the world, EbonyLife was the company behind many of Nigeria's biggest films and TV shows. The company began as a television channel on the Africa-wide direct broadcast satellite service DStv. By 2020, EbonyLife had produced over 5,000 hours of television content and Nigeria's top-three highest-grossing movies. With a need for greater control over its production schedules and following the end of its relationship with DStv EbonyLife launched EbonyLife ON (EL ON), an on-demand streaming service. However, EbonyLife struggled to grow its subscribers of EL ON. Abudu started to rethink whether to continue fighting to grow EL ON. Should EbonyLife focus instead on co-production deals with international media distributors such as Netflix, Sony and AMC?
Officially launched on January 29, 2010, Bank of Singapore had grown rapidly in reputation and assets under management (AUM) over a short span of 11 years to become one of the fastest growing private banks in Asia. As of June 30, 2021, its AUM stood at US$125 billion. With the growth of family offices in Singapore, the demand for external intermediaries, such as the external asset managers (EAMs), to manage the growing wealth on the island had risen. Singapore's AUM by asset managers reached US$2.9 trillion in 2019 and it was estimated that EAMs accounted for 5% of the total AUM. Many private banks in Singapore had announced strategic plans to strengthen their presence in the EAM business. Bank of Singapore had to quickly compete with the foreign banks who had decades of experience managing the EAM businesses in Europe and United States. What strategies could the Bank implement to propel the bank's EAM business amidst competition? This case examines the EAM business from the perspective of Bank of Singapore as a custodian bank, the value propositions of Bank of Singapore in differentiating herself to the EAMs, the challenges faced, and the road ahead.
Niccol was the CEO of Taco Bell before he became the chief executive of Chipotle, in 2018. He had watched Chipotle's launch and rise with fascination and had enjoyed its burritos and bowls. But now he saw that it needed to get its business back on track fast. Customer lines were moving slowly. Some workers didn't seem properly trained. The marketing was unmemorable. Niccol and his team focused on strengthening the company's culinary culture and harnessing the power of digital to enhance its fledgling mobile app. They reconfigured the restaurants to allow for skip-the-line pickup of online orders and created a second "kitchen" to prepare those orders, freeing the regular staff to attend to in-person customers. And they shifted marketing spend from a defensive, expensive, promotion-focused approach to social media and television, where the message has become much more resonant. Chipotle's to-go and delivery operations have been a vital source of revenue during the pandemic, with digital sales representing 46.2% of all sales in 2020.
A role transition, whether it's a promotion, a move to a new organization, or a fresh challenge in an existing job, can be a huge boost to one's career. But in today's hyper-collaborative and dynamic workplaces, successful moves aren't as easy as they once were, even for the most qualified, hardworking people. After analyzing employee relationships and communication patterns across more than 100 diverse companies, and interviewing 160 executives in 20 of them, the authors discovered an overlooked prerequisite for transition success: the effective use of internal networks. That involves five practices: surging rapidly into a broad network by asking a lot of questions and discovering boundary-spanning, innovative people across the organization; generating pull by understanding, energizing, and adjusting to new connections; identifying how to add value, where one falls short, and which people in the broad network can help fill any gaps; creating scale by using the network to engage other key opinion leaders, expand the scope and impact of one's projects, and more efficiently deliver outsize results; and shaping the network for maximum thriving by making connections that enhance one's workplace experience.
Despite their embrace of agile methods, many firms striving to innovate are struggling to produce breakthrough ideas. A key culprit, according to the authors, is an outdated, inefficient approach to decision-making. Today's discovery-driven innovation processes involve an unprecedented number of choices, from which ideas to pursue to countless decisions about how to conduct experiments, what data to collect, and so on. But these choices are often made too slowly and informed by obsolete information and narrow perspectives. To align their decision-making processes with agile approaches, businesses need to include diverse (customer, local, data-informed, and outside) points of view; clarify decision rights; match the cadence of decisions to the pace of learning; and encourage candid conflict in service of a better experience for the end customer. Only then will all that rapid experimentation pay off. The article suggests best practices for these interventions, drawing on the story of the transformation at Pfizer's Global Clinical Supply, which would go on to play a critical role supporting the rapid development of the pharma giant's Covid vaccine.