As one of the world’s largest fried chicken chains, Popeyes had failed twice to enter the Chinese market over a twenty-year span. In March 2023, Restaurant Brands International (RBI), the owner of Popeyes, attempted a third strike by bringing the fried chicken brand under its local joint venture, Tim Hortons International Limited China (Tims China). The responsibility of making this third attempt successful rested with Yongchen Lu, the chief executive officer of Tims China. To cultivate another world-class, fast-service brand in China, Lu faced the imperative of delineating synergy between the two distinctive brands (one in coffee and the other in fried chicken). Could he make Popeyes a success in China?
Anchal Abrol and Priya Puri faced a dilemma of enticing their children to eat nutritious food. In 2019, they decided to pool all their savings to launch Snaqary. The company’s clever recipes, inspired by traditional Indian wisdom, focused on nutritious ingredients such as multigrain without compromising taste. Though organic growth met initial expectations, the time to launch the brand into the next orbit was upon them when they realized the need to generate a strong preference and pull for the brand to be able to command a position in the grocery retail system. It was March 2023, and they were planning the following year's strategy. Snaqary wanted to scale up and make the brand attractive to investors.
As a pioneer in the plant-based alternative meat industry, Beyond Meat had experienced rapid growth for many years, primarily driven by increasing environmental concerns and health-conscious consumers. By 2022, the company experienced several challenges, some of which were industry-wide, while others pointed to internal issues relating to operations, human resources, and its product as well as geographic diversification strategies. Its stock value had dropped dramatically during the year and one-fifth of its global workforce had been axed in an effort to save costs. Ethan Brown, the chief executive officer and co-founder, had to decide whether he should maintain the company as it is or to make a change, either subtle or drastic, to regain sales and move forward.
In March 2021, the newly appointed senior vice-president of the Alfa Romeo brand in North America, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, was facing the main task of rebuilding the brand to increase sales. Since its inception, the company had seen inconsistent sales in its efforts to capture the high-end exotic auto market. The brand’s origins in the high-performance and competitive world of auto racing emphasized its true essence of excitement, spirit, performance, seductive design, technical advancements, and seamless interface between driver and machine. Contributing to the company’s sales volatility were numerous factors, including macroeconomic forces, consequential effects of past brand managerial decisions rooted in infidelity to the brand’s origins, and a notable lack of consistent brand management or leadership that had witnessed the appointment of four brand managers over the previous decade. Alfa Romeo’s brand building success was inextricably tied to effective marketing communication. The senior vice-president had to find a way to communicate and instill the brand’s desired exotic and exciting mystique in the minds of consumers.
Alexandria Confectionery & Chocolate Company (trading as Corona), led by chief executive officer Shady Farid, grappled with a post-pandemic downturn in sales, weakened brand image, and heightened competition in the chocolate, biscuit, and chocolate spread markets. Faced with an urgent need for revitalization, Farid contemplated strategic adjustments, with an emphasis on enhanced brand perception and consumer insights. To succeed, he had to leverage the company’s existing brand and market position and focus on targeted advertising and quality representation to reclaim market share and grow revenues. Farid focused on three product lines: moulded chocolates, the Bimbo brand, and chocolate spread. How could he leverage the company’s existing positioning and brand name to increase market share and revenues?
On New Year’s Eve of 2018, Amjad Dar, head of Brics Online, is considering alternatives going forward for operating Brics Online, a business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce arm of Brics Pakistan (Brics). The main decision to be taken is whether Brics Online should be operated centrally (through a dedicated warehouse) or merged with stores to allow for decentralized operations. Centralized operations in the first year of Brics Online produced considerable losses due to various factors, including the lack of planning, follow-up, and resource capabilities. The managing director of Brics Pakistan, Yoso Manovo, has asked Dar to give his decision on a proposal put forward by two other experienced company personnel to decentralize Brics Online’s operations. Dar knows that his decision will impact the future of not only Brics as a retail organization but also Brics Online and its sustainability. Whatever decision Dar takes should ideally result in optimized operational costs while supporting future growth and expansion for the Brics Online venture.
Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm founded in 1972, quickly grew to become one of the most storied venture capital firms in the world. Fueled by a strong culture, Sequoia's investment track record included the names of some of the largest global successes. However, times were changing. The venture capital industry at large was facing several challenges. Additionally, Sequoia had made some major decisions to restructure the firm. In a market environment in which investors in venture capital were increasingly cautious, Sequoia seemed to be making several changes to their core identity as a firm. What would all of this mean for the future of Sequoia, and would the firm still be able to maintain their historical dominance in spite of several headwinds?
OSUM, headquartered in Canada, is a privately held company in the oil and gas sector and enjoys being a significant producer in Western Canada. It is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. In 2023, Canada was the single largest supplier of imported oil to the United States, responsible for over 35% of US imports, much more than Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and all the OPEC countries combined. OSUM uses steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) technology to extract heavy crude oil using an advanced form of steam stimulation. Water plays an important role in this extraction process. In an oil extraction plant, there are several interconnected systems that communicate with each other with established controls and interlocks. The plant operator's role is to ensure the plant runs smoothly without malfunctions, breakdowns, and other disruptions. To facilitate this, alarms and sensors are attached to different systems to signal any potential disruption and mandate a call for timely intervention. However, there are times when multiple alarms are set off, creating a conundrum for the operator, who is challenged with prioritizing which alarm to tackle first. Nuisance alarms, such as chattering, can be a source of distraction for the operator. Such distractions can negatively impact plant operations and result in plant downtime, costing the company significant dollar loss. Being concerned about the increasing cases of spikes in alarms, the company tied up with Drishya AI Labs to help solve this problem by leveraging machine learning algorithms so that such distractions could be reduced.
This case study explores how the VINCI Group, a French multinational operating in concessions, energy, and construction, bolstered awareness and adoption rates of new technologies within the organization. Through its separate innovation hub, Leonard, VINCI aimed to foster learning, creation, and experimentation to improve the group's day-to-day activities. However, while the company's highly decentralized structure encouraged entrepreneurial innovation, some argued it hindered collaboration by fostering internal competition instead. Were there opportunities being overlooked because of this structure? And how could Leonard continue to promote innovation in such a large group?
Early on the morning of April 27, 2020, Justin Oppenheimer stood outside the entrance to the lobby of the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) Pavilion Building with mixed emotions. On one hand, Oppenheimer, HSS' Enterprise Chief Operating Officer and Chief Strategy Officer, was excited that HSS was only two weeks away from resuming in-person outpatient office visits (i.e. physician visits not requiring admission to the hospital). Since the middle of March 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic had forced HSS and other hospitals in New York to suspend nearly all outpatient office visits in an effort to slow the spread of respiratory illness. The Outpatient Care Task Force (OCTF) chaired by Oppenheimer had anticipated the difficulty of reopening while the future of the pandemic was still uncertain and made various accommodations, including dramatically limiting physicians' schedules. Simulations run by the OCTF, however, suggested that even with these accommodations, several patients would be forced to wait outside of the Pavilion building. Given HSS' reputation for patient experience and that many patients seen at HSS suffered from ailments that made it painful to stand, Oppenheimer knew that asking people to wait outside of the building would not (and should not) be tolerated for long, particularly during inclement weather. Oppenheimer opened his phone and sent an urgent meeting request to OCTF to see what further adjustments could be made to alleviate this problem.
Firms and investors alike are beginning to recognize the importance of tracking how revenues from existing customers are evolving over time and to appreciate the value in understanding what might explain changes in these revenues. Consequently, in addition to looking at measures such as the retention rate to assess customer base health, they have begun examining a quantity called Net Revenue Retention, or NRR, which measures the fraction (or percent) of revenues expected from a cohort of customers that were actually generated during the period. In this note, we formally define the NRR metric, show how it can be broken down to pinpoint the type of revenue changes taking place, i.e., in what way(s) existing customers are spending differently, and explain NRR's potential role in guiding customer management decisions. The framework presented further highlights how knowledge of NRR can help avoid issues that arise when revenues from newly acquired customers are blended with those of from existing customers, as well as how NRR relates to other customer management metrics, such as retention rate, CAC (customer acquisition cost) and CLV (customer lifetime value). The note provides several concrete examples to illustrate the main ideas presented and the relevance of NRR in practice.
The present case examines new challenges, associated risks, and the bold decisions that start-up leaders may need to make to navigate through an environment filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). Sanjib Jha, a seasoned entrepreneur with experience in several start-up firms, is confronted with this predicament in May 2020. Varun Dua and Devendra Rane started Coverfox Insurance Broking Private Limited (Coverfox) in 2013 as an insurtech start-up with the aim to radically change the Indian insurance market. The company’s founders quit in November 2016, leaving a leadership void. The new management continued focusing on the top line by running the business model, but they lost sight of the runway and cash burn, which put the organization’s future at risk. Coverfox wanted to be the Razorpay in the insurance ecosystem aggregator. Coverfox had already been dealing with issues such as investor exit, cash burn, and operating costs far exceeding the budgeted levels, and the COVID-19 pandemic further compounded these issues. When the existing management’s ability to turn the business around was called into question, the investors appointed Jha, an investor of Coverfox, as its chief executive officer (CEO). In May 2020, a few months after becoming CEO, Jha was faced with a decision dilemma. He had to make a firm choice- to suspend the business operations, sell it off or lower the monthly cash burn of US$1.1 million significantly thus increasing runway and continue toward break even and profitability. How can Jha, the new CEO, manage the confidence of investors, optimize cash burn, increase the runway, and envision Coverfox’s future?
The present case examines new challenges, associated risks, and the bold decisions that start-up leaders may need to make to navigate through an environment filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). Sanjib Jha, a seasoned entrepreneur with experience in several start-up firms, is confronted with this predicament in May 2020. Varun Dua and Devendra Rane started Coverfox Insurance Broking Private Limited (Coverfox) in 2013 as an insurtech start-up with the aim to radically change the Indian insurance market. The company's founders quit in November 2016, leaving a leadership void. The new management continued focusing on the top line by running the business model, but they lost sight of the runway and cash burn, which put the organization's future at risk. Coverfox wanted to be the Razorpay in the insurance ecosystem aggregator. Coverfox had already been dealing with issues such as investor exit, cash burn, and operating costs far exceeding the budgeted levels, and the COVID-19 pandemic further compounded these issues. When the existing management's ability to turn the business around was called into question, the investors appointed Jha, an investor of Coverfox, as its chief executive officer (CEO). In May 2020, a few months after becoming CEO, Jha was faced with a decision dilemma. He had to make a firm choice- to suspend the business operations, sell it off or lower the monthly cash burn of US$1.1 million significantly thus increasing runway and continue toward break even and profitability. How can Jha, the new CEO, manage the confidence of investors, optimize cash burn, increase the runway, and envision Coverfox's future?