Set in mid-2021, the case follows the events happening at the Taiwanese company, Wistron, which commenced operations as an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) - a company that designs and produces products for other companies. Its founder, tech billionaire Simon Lin, started Wistron in 2001 as a spin-off from ACER Inc., one of the largest multinational computing companies' hardware producers. After former US president Donald Trump and his administration began taking a hard line on Chinese state-backed enterprises, both superpowers began retaliatory measures that hurt several vital industries. One of the key measures taken by the Trump administration was to impose tariffs on all products entering the US that had manufacturing origins from China, regardless of the firm's nationality. Foundry manufacturing firms, including Wistron, could no longer sustain the margins required to stay afloat and had to contemplate decoupling their operations out of China to alternative sites. In 2018, Lin saw the opportunity to relocate his iPhone manufacturing operations to India to avoid caught being in the middle of the trade spat. Amidst the move, Wistron was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, which made the initial costs of relocation untenable. As a result, Wistron had to raise capital very quickly. Luxshare, a relatively new upstart in the manufacturing world was ready to acquire Wistron's operations in China. Initially blocked by Taiwanese regulators, as Wistron was viewed as a strategic player in a vital industry, Luxshare managed to circumnavigate the restrictions and the sale went ahead. Wistron's decoupling strategies are now faced with massive challenges in their Indian operations. The firm had struggled to maintain the same level of competency in India as it had in China. As a result, it ran into many issues in the knowledge transfer process and faced one of the largest labour strikes that the country has seen for a while.
This technical note will help provide insight on what a brand purpose is, why it matters, and how companies can vary in their design and application of brand purpose. Since the concept of brand purpose is an emerging idea, growing in importance within the academic and practicing communities, we hope this technical note will inspire a deeper reflection and discussion that will lead to greater understanding of brand purpose best practices.
Maplebear Inc. - operating as Instacart - was a leader in the online grocery delivery service market. It was founded in 2012 by a former Amazon.com Inc. employee-turned entrepreneur Apoorva Mehta, who had realized that in order to succeed, he needed to create a simple, fast, and convenient approach to a growing problem at hand: online grocery delivery. Although the company was realizing year-over-year growth in a market that was experiencing rapid growth, it was unprepared for the pandemic of 2020, which generated astronomically high demand and led to dramatic changes in consumers' shopping behaviour. Understanding that this market growth would likely continue, and in a world still reeling from the effects of COVID-19, Instacart needed to react quickly to maintain its leading position among the competition and solidify its competitive advantage in the grocery delivery market.
Cisco Systems Inc. (Cisco) was a modern technology company with a culturally diverse workforce. In 2008, it embarked on a plan to establish "a culture built on fairness, dignity and respect, free from bias, discrimination and negative behavior." However, despite those efforts, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing brought a legal claim against Cisco in June 2020 alleging workplace discrimination, harassment, and retaliation based on caste hierarchy among Indian employees at the workplace. According to the claim, the employee had brought his grievance to Cisco's notice, but Cisco failed to satisfactorily recognize and remedy the situation. What, if anything, had gone wrong at Cisco, and what could other firms learn from Cisco's attempts to alleviate workplace harassment, hostility, and unequal outcomes stemming from casteism?
emmtrix Technologies GmbH (emmtrix) was a spinoff company from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, a leading German university, and a result of an excellent-rated research project. At the end of January 2019, the emmtrix founders were preparing for a meeting with investment managers of a venture capital firm in Karlsruhe, Germany. After previous meetings with the investors in which the business concept and technology had been the focus, the main point of the upcoming meeting was to present the start-up's fundraising goals. The founders were expected to express how much money they wanted to raise and at which valuation of the company. To that end, the start-up team wanted to prepare information on the company's financial forecasts for the next five years, the fundraising amount to be raised in the initial financing round, and first ideas on the value of the company.
In November 2020, A&W Food Services of Canada Inc. (A&W Canada) had a difficult decision to make. As a fast-food chain with a track record on advancing sustainability issues, the company could not ignore the mounting public concern about plastic and packaging waste or the continuously evolving regulatory environment regarding waste in Canada. The company had already taken steps in this direction by introducing paper straws and compostable burger bags, for example. However, it was the large number of beverage cups that stood out as generating the largest amount of disposable waste. Regulations on extended producer responsibility were being introduced across Canada, although the details in each province varied. New materials were constantly being developed, which provided various potential alternatives. A&W Canada had to make a decision but was unsure what criteria to apply. How would this decision affect key stakeholders? How could the company make a more informed decision?
In the field of branding, terms like parent brands and subbrands are often used in imprecise ways. The general lack of clarity around these terms can lead to poor marketing communication and confusion about marketing strategy. This note offers a synopsis of what parent brands and subbrands are, explains the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating them into a company's brand architecture, and provides numerous examples of each.
Cisco Systems Inc. (Cisco) was a modern technology company with a culturally diverse workforce. In 2008, it embarked on a plan to establish “a culture built on fairness, dignity and respect, free from bias, discrimination and negative behavior.” However, despite those efforts, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing brought a legal claim against Cisco in June 2020 alleging workplace discrimination, harassment, and retaliation based on caste hierarchy among Indian employees at the workplace. According to the claim, the employee had brought his grievance to Cisco’s notice, but Cisco failed to satisfactorily recognize and remedy the situation. What, if anything, had gone wrong at Cisco, and what could other firms learn from Cisco’s attempts to alleviate workplace harassment, hostility, and unequal outcomes stemming from casteism?
An actuarial intern at World Reinsurance Company was casually checking his e-mail and noticed that he had received a request from his manager to develop a quote for an upcoming request for proposal from one of World Reinsurance Company’s larger clients, Ontario Life. The request for proposal would have to contain a quote for an excess-of-loss policy to reinsure Ontario Life’s 10-year-term life insurance policy, consisting of 100 high-risk policyholders, for retention limits over CA$250,000 on a per-loss basis. The quote was to be submitted for review by the end of the day, so the intern had to get started on it immediately.
In April 2018, Amit Darekar, director of operations at Hydropack India Pvt. Ltd. (Hydropack), was focused on revamping the company’s information technology (IT) infrastructure. This had become crucial in the face of a product design leak resulting from an employee who had left Hydropack to join a rival company and taken valuable data with him in the process. The design that Hydropack had made was for a tender floated by a public sector company. The rival company had submitted the stolen design with a lower bid, putting Hydropack’s own bid in jeopardy. Darekar now had to rise to the challenge and ensure that Hydropack implemented secure IT infrastructure and policy to avoid further data leaks in the future. His objective was to ensure that all of Hydropack’s data in the form of designs and other confidential documents was suitably protected and accessible only to those who had authorized access.
In November 2020, A&W Food Services of Canada Inc. (A&W Canada) had a difficult decision to make. As a fast-food chain with a track record on advancing sustainability issues, the company could not ignore the mounting public concern about plastic and packaging waste or the continuously evolving regulatory environment regarding waste in Canada. The company had already taken steps in this direction by introducing paper straws and compostable burger bags, for example. However, it was the large number of beverage cups that stood out as generating the largest amount of disposable waste. Regulations on extended producer responsibility were being introduced across Canada, although the details in each province varied. New materials were constantly being developed, which provided various potential alternatives. A&W Canada had to make a decision but was unsure what criteria to apply. How would this decision affect key stakeholders? How could the company make a more informed decision?
In 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, EPIC (a not-for-profit organization) decided to replace its usual in-person conference with a virtual conference. After outlining the challenge, the case recounts the history of EPIC and its conferences (including earlier pricing changes and their impact), the progression of the pandemic in early 2020, the process resulting in the March 30 decision to go virtual, and the efforts launched in late April to decide how to price a virtual versus an in-person conference. Various factors and considerations are presented, including the conference's pricing changes over the years, other conferences planned for 2020 that had been changed to a virtual format or cancelled, and a survey of EPIC members to determine their price sensitivity. Excel spreadsheets of the survey data are provided for students and professors.
Joint ventures in which one partner holds a minority stake can be tricky: Minority partners often aren't able to force resolution of their concerns and end up taking a back seat to the dominant stakeholder. The authors describe 10 ways minority partners can more effectively negotiate and structure their rights to amplify their voices and increase their governance and influence.
In this installment of the MIT Sloan Management Review's Leading With Impact series, Mike Fisher discusses his role as chief technology officer at online marketplace Etsy with coach and consultant Chris Clearfield. Fisher shares his perspective on leadership as a craft, the need to speak the language of business, and the value of fostering a learning culture and "having the courage to reimagine old ways of doing things."
After US materials science company Dow decided to renew its focus on inclusion and diversity (I&D), it opted to use its Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to enable its staff to embrace this cause and effect a cultural change across its locations worldwide. As this case focuses on Dow's efforts in Asia Pacific, it delves specifically into how Dow's ERGs in Greater China, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand have helped raised staff awareness about I&D issues in these locations. In particular, Dow staff were educated on areas such as disability, gender equality, mental health, inter-generational workforce, and the marginalised in society through the various activities organised by the ERGs.
In late November 2017, Roark Capital Group (Roark) must decide on a last, best offer to purchase Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW) in a leveraged buyout (LBO) for $157 per share. That bid had followed a series of offers that began in August 2017, at $150 per share, after a protracted proxy fight by activist investor Marcato Capital (Marcato) ended with the resignation of BWW's longtime CEO, Sally Smith. Marcato had accumulated a sizeable stake in BWW and several board seats as part of the proxy contest and had been pushing BWW's board to seek a higher price. Roark must now decide if the returns to its investors merit the $157 per share offer. This case is meant to follow cases in which the topic of residual cash flows and LBOs have been introduced. We typically assign it after teaching an earlier case that introduces that material and how private equity (PE) sponsors typically evaluate LBOs, such as "DuPont Corporation: Sale of Performance Coatings" (UVA-F-1709) (DPC). DPC provides an opportunity to evaluate an LBO from a company's and sponsor's perspective, but the cash flows and debt structure are simplified to focus on the conceptual differences in how the parties might view the deal. BWW focuses on the sponsor's (Roark's) perspective and includes a richer set of operating synergies and a more complex debt structure. The debt structure features existing debt that must be refinanced and multiple tranches of debt. As such, the case introduces students to several types of debt that are commonly used to finance LBOs and their related terms. It also introduces students to the pros and cons of LBOs of franchise-model businesses, an area of strong PE investor interest. We also typically assign a technical note, "Valuing Late-Stage Companies and Leveraged Buyouts" (UVA-F-1846), to be read in conjunction with cases that cover LBOs. The note provides a basic overview of the primary sources of financing and the metrics used to gauge LBO capital structures and a step-by-step example
This short note introduces all of the important and commonly used financial ratios, organized into five categories: (1) liquidity ratios, which measure a company's ability to meet short-term debt obligations; (2) leverage ratios, which evaluate a company's capital structure by measuring how a firm uses debt and equity to finance its operations; (3) efficiency ratios, which measure how efficiently a company is utilizing its assets and resources; (4) profitability ratios, which measure a company's ability to generate profit from its resources; and (5) market ratios (also called valuation ratios), which evaluate the share price of a company's stock.