Having decided to go where her customers wanted to take her, CEO Brynne Kennedy had led MOVE Guides into the managed-moves market segment, in addition to the lump-sum moves segment that had given her company its start. By any measure, the company had grown: in top-line revenue, in head count, and (to her dismay) in the amount of cash it was now burning!
The case analyses the scenario facing Paddy McGiness, the sole founder of Breathe coffee shop in Hays, Kansas, as he seeks to launch his new business without seeking any external financing. The case explores the various mindsets that characterise many entrepreneurs and uses Mullins' texts 'The Counter-Conventional Mindsets of Entrepreneurs' and 'Use Customer Cash to Fund Your Startup' to examine customer-funded business models.
It was a cold, blustery February morning in 2019. Pass the Keys co-founders Alex Lyakhotskiy and Zoe Vu were reflecting with their team on the three and a half years that their fast-growing company had been in business. "We're now managing 480 properties in nine cities across the UK. Most of our owner-hosts love what we do," said Lyakhotskiy. "But I'm worried, Zoe. We still have too many service quality issues - a maid that doesn't show up, a key that's missing from its key-box, and many more. And, for all our growth, only two of our cities are running profitably. Are we on the right path? Or should we be considering a pivot to another strategy that would serve us better
The past year, 2019, had been an exhilarating one for Alex Lyakhotskiy and his team. Buoyed by a new franchise model that was working well for opening new cities, alongside better execution in some of the company's existing cities, Pass the Keys' growth had accelerated. Happily, it was looking like 2020 would be an even better year. Unfortunately, in early 2020, the Coronavirus pandemic that had originated in China came to Europe, first in Italy, followed quickly thereafter across the continent and in the UK. Travel bans and quarantines were under discussion and appeared imminent. What that meant for Pass the Keys was abundantly clear: no one was going to be booking any Airbnb properties any time soon. Lyakhotskiy, a first-time entrepreneur, had been through no shortage of challenges in his company's nearly five years in business. But he'd never yet faced the prospect of demand falling to zero. "What steps should I take now?" he asked himself. "And how quickly must I act?"
This case is the third installment in a series about the 10-year cultural and digital transformation of Pfizer's Global Clinical Supply organization. In 2011, Michael Ku became Pfizer's Vice President of Global Clinical Supply (GCS) after the company had undergone three large-scale mergers and acquisitions. Ku and his new leadership team set out to build a proactive, end-to-end, digital and physical clinical supply chain. It took three years to get the cultural foundation in place, another three to overhaul GCS's legacy systems and develop its digital capabilities, and another three to instill a culture of innovation. By 2020, GCS had made significant progress toward becoming the agile, innovative organization necessary to support Pfizer's new strategy to focus exclusively on developing innovative medicines and vaccines. GCS was just beginning to pilot a new 24-hour, 5 day a week workforce model with a new team in Manila when COVID-19 struck. The organization found itself on the front lines having to supply Pfizer's vaccine candidate and investigational antiviral studies, while also ensuring continuity of clinical supply to hundreds of other trials across the globe. Because of the 10 years GCS had spent on their cultural and digital transformation, they were ready to rise to the challenge and help Pfizer deliver a COVID-19 vaccine in record time. In August 2021, Ku and his leadership team are preparing to make a number of major changes to GCS in preparation for a new era of scale, agility, and innovation.
Ping An OneConnect Bank (Hong Kong) Limited is a virtual bank that has pioneered the use of Fintech to provide efficient banking services to both SMEs and retail customers. The bank uses innovative credit risk and loan pricing models that rely on big data analytics, including detailed customs data for its small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) customers in the import/export business.
The case is about a sustainable investor firm, Nia Impact Capital (Nia) (Oakland, California), and its founder and CEO, Kristin Hull. Hull aims to invest in gender and racial justice and to make money with meaning and purpose. She brings the logic of impact investing to public markets, exercising active ownership, and engaging with portfolio companies, including Tesla, IBM, and Apple. Hull has a crusade for social justice and against mandatory arbitration. For that purpose, she filled shareholders resolutions and has had proxy votes in the 2020 and 2021 proxy seasons. The case focuses on Nia's engagement with Tesla and the 2021 proxy season. Tesla is a leader across the renewable energy sector but is in the news for sexual harassment and racial discrimination. In 2020, Nia submitted a shareholder resolution on Tesla's mandatory employee arbitration to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In her speech during the Tesla's shareholders in September 2020, Hull made her case against the company's forced arbitration for employee sexual harassment and racial discrimination claims. Tesla disputed the proposal, and Nia didn't get a shareholder's winning vote. Hull's crusade in 2020 towards Tesla received extensive media coverage and showed her strategy as an activist investor. In her words, "it was a win because it was an important move in a much larger and longer campaign." As part of her battle, Hull decided to raise her voice and fill again in October 2021. She thought that Nia's advocacy at Tesla was advocacy for the entire US. Nia's resolution on Tesla's proxy ballot was crucial to her strategy for "connecting the dots about forced arbitration." At the end of the case, Hull must prepare a proposal to the SEC and a speech to Tesla's Board. She thought about the impact on Nia's future strategy if they didn't get 50% of the shareholders' vote in Tesla's board meeting on 7 October 2021.
The case opens in May 2018 with Nurtac Ziyal Afridi, chief strategy and growth officer of Yildiz Holding, a Turkish conglomerate, reflecting on the group's diversification journey. In ten years, the group had achieved a remarkable growth through diversification: seven mergers, 33 acquisitions, and 23 divestments. By 2018, it had 164 companies and consolidated revenues of $12 billion. After two notable acquisitions (Godiva, a $850-million deal in 2007, and United Biscuits, a $3.2-billion deal in 2014), Yildiz Holding became one of the world's largest confectionary companies. However, Yildiz Holding's owner, Murat Ulker, wanted it to be the number one or two player globally. To achieve this goal, Afridi started a major restructuring program to focus on the group's core assets. That was not an easy feat. The group companies addressed mass market to luxury customers, and their portfolio of products ranged from confectionary to dairy, beverages, baby food, and olive oil. They had wholesaling operations as well as retailing businesses across a wide reach of geographies. Afridi's decisions in restructuring needed to balance all the various trade-offs. She had to decide how to define core, and accordingly decide which non-core assets to divest. Should she consider protecting only wholesaling businesses and divesting retailing? And what about managing their businesses in different geographies? Would it be a good idea if the group were to manage some geographies directly and leave the management of others to select partners?
In 2015, the lean transformation of the University of Chicago Medicine medical centre encompassed substantial renovation of its internal supply chain. This included moving from a centralized warehouse-based system managed largely by clinical teams to a lean, decentralized, just-in-time system managed by supply chain professionals. In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought new challenges to the University of Chicago Medicine’s supply chain. Accommodating for the COVID-19 pandemic required making numerous changes to the physical supply chain, which could potentially affect actions and decisions at the level of operations on the hospital floors. Amid so many changes, how would the supply chain team members on the hospital floor address daily issues while maintaining efforts to improve the system? How would they remain aligned to the hospital’s mission and goals?
Chia Network developed a novel blockchain platform that was more eco-friendly, decentralized, and scalable than Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other blockchains. Now, company leadership must decide how to scale the startup and prioritize various partnerships, use cases, and markets.
Mobile streaming app Quibi was ready to take the entertainment world by storm at its April 2020 launch. Backed by $1.75 billion, influential investors from Hollywood to Wall Street eagerly anticipated early success for this brainchild of Meg Whitman, former CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, former chairperson of Walt Disney Studios and co-founder of DreamWorks Pictures. Quibi's value proposition was to fill a 'white space' through seven to ten minute dramas, on a platform that was technologically sophisticated for users and extremely copyright friendly for content creators. Six months later, a disappointing lack of demand cornered Quibi into closing shop. Was it poor timing, or inherent business model viability? This case prompts discussion on the complete strategy landscape, from defining the opportunity set and value potential to understanding the ultimate outcome.
In 2015, the lean transformation of the University of Chicago Medicine medical centre encompassed substantial renovation of its internal supply chain. This included moving from a centralized warehouse-based system managed largely by clinical teams to a lean, decentralized, just-in-time system managed by supply chain professionals. In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought new challenges to the University of Chicago Medicine's supply chain. Accommodating for the COVID-19 pandemic required making numerous changes to the physical supply chain, which could potentially affect actions and decisions at the level of operations on the hospital floors. Amid so many changes, how would the supply chain team members on the hospital floor address daily issues while maintaining efforts to improve the system? How would they remain aligned to the hospital's mission and goals?
Ya Kun was an Asian coffee chain best known for its coffee, soft-boiled eggs and kaya toast with over 128 outlets in Singapore and the Asia Pacific region. What started as a coffee stall at Telok Ayer Basin before World War II to support the Loi family grew into a successful regional coffee chain that was a household name synonymous with Singapore kopi culture at home and overseas. Simultaneously, consumers were increasingly aware of the impacts of business practices on the environment and society. The emergence of green consumerism meant that consumers expected businesses to address the impact of their operations on the environment. Using the Triple Bottom Line framework, together with UN SDG8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth) and UN SDG12 (Responsible Consumption & Production), the case presents some of the challenges and opportunities impacting Ya Kun in light of the increasing attention on sustainability. How should Ya Kun face the challenges and leverage on the opportunities afforded by sustainable business practices to grow its regional F&B business?
In 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, Chou Cheng Ngok, CEO of Popular Holdings Limited, a local multiproduct bookstore in Singapore, wanted to develop an omni-channel retail strategy to make up for the loss of foot traffic at the store. The book industry was already changing rapidly due to digitisation. Books became available on electronic readers and the advent of e-commerce gave online retailers a cost advantage over brick-and-mortar stores when it came to rental expenditure and sourcing from the cheapest distributors located anywhere in the world. While many local bookstores went out of business, Popular had managed to succeed by understanding the needs of its target audience. For instance, students and their parents would buy tuition materials to supplement the official curriculum in an effort to excel in Singapore's competitive education system. Popular also sold other ancillary products such as stationery and electronic gadgets. As brick-and-mortar stores continue to lose market share to online retailers, Chou wanted to implement an integrated omni-channel approach to provide a better experience for consumers.
In 2018, the Lo family of Hong Kong held a combined 68% of Great Eagle Holdings (GEH), a publicly listed and one of the largest real estate conglomerates in Hong Kong, 33.5% through a family trust and the remainder through individual holdings. Only 32.5% of the company was in public hands. The case opened with Dr. LO Ka-shui (KS), chairman and managing director of GEH, musing about a deep and serious split in the family. Trained as a cardiologist, KS helped his father with the family business since 1980 and played a critical role in rescuing the company from near bankruptcy. Between 1984 and 2018, the Net Asset Value (NAV) of GEH expanded by 350 times as Hong Kong property values boomed. KS felt that he could take the credit for the company's success, as his father's right-hand man for most of that time, and chairman for the 12 years since his father's death in 2006, during which he expanded the company's assets, paid off debt, and raised HK$23 billion from capital markets. With the increase in his personal shareholdings to 27%, it raised questions among some of his eight siblings, despite the fact that his personal holdings were a matter of public knowledge. In 2016, KS' mother, Lo To Lee-kwan (Madam Lo), three of his brothers and two sisters challenged his control of the company, in a painful and very public family dispute focusing on the governing structure of the Lo family trust. The challenge not only put family control of GEH in jeopardy; it also raised questions about the ability of trust structures to maintain family unity in an Asian family business, where family unity and harmony, as well as wealth preservation and family values, are top priorities.
In May 2021, the South Korean boy band BTS beat out other international musicians for all four of the <i>Billboard</i> Music Awards for which they had been nominated. “Dynamite,” BTS’s top-selling song, was the band’s first song in English. BTS and other K-pop groups had been able to achieve a high level of global success, especially since 2013, despite singing in a language that was foreign to many listeners. K-pop and other elements of Korea’s creative economy represented Hallyu or “Korean Wave” of globally popular Korean entertainment and culture. Hallyu had contributed to the South Korean economy since 1999. Were Hallyu and its constituents serendipitous? How did BTS, K-pop, and Korea’s creative economy act as Korea’s secret weapon? Were there limits to the use of Hallyu?
The founder of Cheekbone Beauty, an Indigenous enterprise in the Niagara Region of Ontario, was driven by the goal of becoming “the first Indigenous woman to create a unicorn beauty brand from Canada.” In early 2021, she was seeking resolution to an ongoing entrepreneurial dilemma: How should she identify the fledgling company’s unique strengths and build them into sustainable competitive advantages?<br><br>The Ivey Business School gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Pierre Lapointe, MBA ’83, in the development of this case.
In February 2020, a social geographer at the University of Victoria was approached by one of the co-founders and managing partners of Raven Indigenous Capital Partners to develop an Indigenous impact measurement framework for the company. Raven Indigenous Capital Partners was founded in 2017 in Vancouver, British Columbia. The founders launched the Raven Indigenous Impact Fund to invest in early-stage growth businesses started by Indigenous entrepreneurs. The ultimate goal was to increase the well-being of Indigenous communities in Canada, but the fund had to demonstrate to non-Indigenous impact investors that they could target, measure, and report their social impact while earning an annual rate of return of 6–8 per cent on their investment. The social geographer faced two key tasks. She had to develop an impact measurement framework that combined Indigenous and non-Indigenous approaches to measuring social and environmental impacts. She also had to engage the Indigenous community in reporting on these outcomes.
In May 2021, the South Korean boy band BTS beat out other international musicians for all four of the Billboard Music Awards for which they had been nominated. "Dynamite," BTS's top-selling song, was the band's first song in English. BTS and other K-pop groups had been able to achieve a high level of global success, especially since 2013, despite singing in a language that was foreign to many listeners. K-pop and other elements of Korea's creative economy represented Hallyu or "Korean Wave" of globally popular Korean entertainment and culture. Hallyu had contributed to the South Korean economy since 1999. Were Hallyu and its constituents serendipitous? How did BTS, K-pop, and Korea's creative economy act as Korea's secret weapon? Were there limits to the use of Hallyu?