This experiential case simulates an investment committee (IC) meeting at the private equity (PE) firm Bridgepoint, a leading European mid-market private equity firm. In the first quarter of 2011, with Europe in a recession following the global financial crisis, forecasters are predicting the start of an economic recovery. The firm is midway through investing its €4.85 billion fund, Bridgepoint Europe IV ("BEIV"), looking specifically for market-leading European companies with potential to grow through geographic expansion or operational improvement, strategy refocusing and add-on acquisitions. Three senior partners (Charlotte, Andrew and Bengt) from its offices in Germany, London and Sweden are preparing to present potential investment opportunities to the committee - respectively, Charlie, a German chemicals company with global plants; Alpha, an industrial firm listed on the London Stock Exchange; and Bravo, an elderly-care company based in Sweden. All three have submitted written papers to the members of the IC, including Harriet, a senior partner at Bridgepoint, who regularly spends her weekends analyzing information in preparation for the Monday morning meeting. Students are asked to either pitch one of three companies to Bridgepoint's investment committee or to play the role of the IC and ask their classmates questions to clarify the rationale for putting them forward.
This case study is set in May 2021. It describes how Sarah Lee, Director of Engagement at Federated Hermes (FH) has been engaging with Ruby Goods (Ruby), a consumer goods company that operates in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States, to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in its dairy operations. The case illustrates how an external stakeholder, an investment management company with minimal formal organisational authority, can influence and drive ESG (environmental, social and governance) performance improvements. While Lee was successful in getting Ruby to streamline its ESG approach and establish the Ruby Corporate Responsibility Council to drive company-wide ESG initiatives, she encountered resistance from Ruby's senior management and the board to commit to the more ambitious science-based targets critical for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. What should she do to pressure Ruby's senior management into commitment and action while preserving FH's carefully cultivated relationships with Ruby's senior management?
The case provides a background on the Saudi financial sector, as well as NCBC, and continues to chronicle Al Suhaimi's journey in NCBC and the transformation process she and her team put in action. When she joined NCBC as the first female CEO of a Saudi investment bank at the young age of 31, Al Suhaimi inherited an underperforming business with broken relations with all key stakeholders including the parent bank, customers, and the regulator. The case follows the turnaround process Al Suhaimi executed. After putting together a senior management team both from inside the business and external hires, Al Suhaimi worked with her team to diagnose and address pain points. Most notably, they drastically shifted NCBC's strategy from a brokerage driven, transactional revenue model to a recurring revenue, full-fledged investment banking and asset management model. They also made cultural and operational changes across NCBC, and mended fractured relations with their parent bank and the regulator. By 2019, NCBC became the market leader in revenues and profit securing landmark advisory mandates and creating innovative, successful products. At the fifth year mark of her appointment, in 2019, Al Suhaimi was now looking at a much different picture: NCBC was the market leader and internally, members of Al Suhaimi's senior management team were being poached by the competition, with no immediate candidates to replace them. Meanwhile, Al Suhaimi knew that she needed to make adjustments to the strategy to get the company on its next wave of growth. Externally, the Saudi stock exchange was opening up to foreign investors and had just joined three of the top emerging markets indices and competition in investment banking had heated up. With her trusted team at risk of departure, she needed to decide on her focus for the next five years: succession planning, setting the strategy for the next growth phase, and inspiring and motivating the team were top of her list.
The case explores the development and early growth of a data science team at the Golden State Warriors, an NBA team based in San Francisco. The case begins by explaining the initial rationale for investing in data science, then covers a debate on the appropriate team structure, navigating the initial hires, and which projects the team should prioritize. The rest of the case describes the first major project the team worked on: a model to predict when customers would purchase tickets. Along the way, the team had a number of important decisions that they needed to make around what outcome to model and what model to use. Unfortunately, just as the model was completed, the team faced a setback when the NBA season was suspended due to COVID-19, pausing the project for a year. The case then takes place before the start of the 2021-22 seasons, with the team needing to determine if they should use the seasons to run an experiment and evaluate their model on real customers or if they should fully launch the model in the hope that it increases ticket sales. The case comes with supplementary data and code (HBS Supplement no 624-712) that allows students to perform the analysis described in the case.
Proxima Servicios is a company with a social orientation, recognized in 2017 among the 10% most sustainable B companies. It had the objective of improving the working conditions of workers with low qualifications and low salaries, through the provision of subcontracting services in the field of industrial cleaning and maintenance, by transforming the subcontracting work into supercontracting. Proxima sought to deliver a service of excellence and the development of its employees. The development of its workers focused on improving their work skills, increasing their employability, and supporting their welfare. The specific activities that were subcontracted in Chile were varied, and there were no tasks that could not be subcontracted: outsourcing of security and surveillance, cleaning and maintenance, construction and assembly, transport and/or distribution, legal services, and food was widespread. In contrast, the areas of IT, marketing, sales, and finance were outsourced by a small group of companies. From this, Eduardo considered that specifically security guards, cleaning personnel, transportation of workers, or maintenance tasks, were activities that in the last decade had ceased to be an integral part of a companies' operations. The growing trend in human resources pointed to these services being outsourced or subcontracted. In particular, Eduardo was informed that the Chilean private security market had risen to over 130,000 workers, reflecting a 211% increase in the last five years. This made him think that it could be very attractive to transfer Proxima's experience in the cleaning service to the private security market. If he remained in the cleaning service, Eduardo thought it was necessary to redefine his strategy but to maintain shared value or offer a new related service.
The Allbirds: Decarbonizing Fashion (A) case introduces Allbirds as a footwear startup not only focused on simple design, comfort, and sustainable natural materials but on decarbonizing the wider fashion industry. Background material highlights the growing environmental impact of the footwear industry, including its use of leather and fossil-fuel-based materials and its focus on shorter product lifespans. Allbirds' product development process, by contrast, collaborated with suppliers to develop natural materials including wool and sugarcane to substitute for conventional petroleum-based materials and leather. The case is set in 2021, when Allbirds was extending its product range into apparel and expanding beyond its online store to open more retail stores around the world. Allbirds was freely sharing its know-how and material innovations with its competitors to try to scale its efforts to decarbonize fashion, yet the company was also keen to remain ahead and differentiated based on its shoes' comfort, minimalist design, and sustainable natural materials. The Allbirds: Decarbonizing Fashion (B) case encourages students to assess Allbirds' product development and go-to-market strategies now that Allbirds is a publicly listed company. The (B) case provides a 2024 update on Allbirds including its initial public offering, mounting losses, decreasing share price, and the release of a strategic transformation plan. It also covers co-founders Tim Brown's and Joey Zwillinger's transition out of the co-CEO role.
This brief note provides a description of the A3 communication tool using classic problem-solving methodology associated with the Toyota Production System. A3 thinking may be used to assist communication of all aspects of problem solving, including proposal writing and status reporting. The six most common elements of an A3 report are described briefly.
At many leading business schools, cases are written only by professors or professional case writers. At the Darden School of Business, however, MBA students may also write cases. Case writing helps students to gain tangible business writing and communication skills, to sharpen their business acumen, to understand better the key concepts learned in the classroom, and to prepare for the practical rigors of the workplace. This technical note explores what students can learn from case writing, how and why case writing can be beneficial to their careers, and the individual-level benefits of case writing.
This public-sourced case uses the California housing crisis to analyze economic policy in an environment featuring a rising cost of living and shrinking affordable housing options. The case discusses policy options as well as the role and incentives of the private sector in helping develop more affordability. In the case, economist Renee Bowen examines the tradeoffs involved in government intervention in housing markets. This includes understanding the causes of the state's rising costs of living, evaluating whether California needed more affordable housing, and assessing policy options to address high housing costs. Three big-picture questions are considered: Should the state government intervene to address housing affordability? What interventions might be most effective? And what would caution against government invention?
In June 2020, the head of Customer Centre at DBS Bank Ltd. (DBS), the largest commercial bank in Singapore, was wondering how to leverage the bank’s current success in digitalization to create a competitive advantage. As a business leader, she was facing major decision points. How could she increase awareness of the bank’s digital assets among existing customers? How could she further digitalize the customer centre? In addition, the COVID-19 global pandemic, which had disrupted businesses worldwide, had been both a challenge and an opportunity for DBS. What should be the bank’s next steps? The head of the Customer Centre needed to find a way forward for DBS in the context of an industry that itself was not only in the middle of internal disruption but was also undergoing rapid transformation.
In July 2016, Community Sponsorship Organization opened a retail outlet in Kochi, Kerala, India, called Aditya—The Solar Shop, which sold energy-saving and solar-powered products. The shop was opened with the support of the Indian government’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy for a limited period of two years. After that time, the shop would have to find its own means for sustainability. The shop helped support the local community by operating as a commercial business. However, Aditya—The Solar Shop was facing several business operation challenges, including reaching an agreement with manufacturers of solar systems on quota allocation, increasing sales at the shop, and determining how to provide after-sales support to customers.
Jane Zhou, an equity analyst at a large asset management firm, was preparing a report on EOS Imaging (EOS), a French medical device company that her firm had invested in. EOS’s drastic fall in First Quarter (Q1) 2019 revenue caught Zhou’s attention, as the company had maintained a continuous growth record up until 2018. In Q1 2019, EOS only achieved 1 per cent of its Q1 2019 equipment sales revenue. Also, during Q1, EOS made a significant change to its general sales agreement, leading to a corresponding change in revenue recognition timing. Zhou wondered if the revenue slowdown could be mainly attributed to the accounting method change rather than to weakening demand. It was crucial for Zhou to understand the impact of this change and to decide whether she should recommend her portfolio manager to liquidate the firm’s position in EOS or not.
The case describes the experience of Lucchetti, a company owned by the Chilean holding group Quiñenco, in its first years of operation in Peru. It begins by describing the origin and positioning of the holding company (controlled by the Luksic family) and of its subsidiary Lucchetti, and it provides context about the country and pasta industry in the target market. On the one hand, en- tering the Peruvian pasta market generated a number of effects that were not hard to anticipate: despite price slashing by the competition, Lucchetti products gained market share. In short, the company anticipated market dynamics and the business plan seemed to evolve according to plan. However, the case also describes a series of initial setbacks in the acquisition of construction licenses, which appear to have been "off the radar" in Lucchetti's early analysis. Far from being resolved, these problems increased in intensity and complexity as weeks passed. The case concludes with Lucchetti's top management facing a difficult situation: the firm needed to put its production capacity into operation in Peru to make the venture economically viable, but regulatory entanglements prevented Lucchetti from starting production in its Lima manufacturing plant.
To augment the growth of a restaurant's business, its owner began selling coupons on a New York City deals website. However, the owner wondered whether selling these steeply discounted coupons was a sound business decision. In this case, students are presented with a spreadsheet with 34 months of sales data and are asked to develop a regression model of sales as a function of key variables. This case is accompanied by a Solutions note that details the steps in developing a model of sales as a function of seasonality, a time trend, and current and past promotional activity.