In December 2020, White House Industries (White House), a manufacturer of aerosol aluminum cans for deodorants and other consumer products, including sanitizers and pain relief sprays, received customer order forecasts of 30 per cent more than its maximum production capacity. Unless White House invested in a third production line, which represented a significant capital investment and required almost a year’s lead time, it would be unable to fulfil several customer orders with its existing manufacturing lines. Some customers had long-term relationships with White House, some were newly acquired, and some had a global-level tie-up with White House’s parent company. In addition, the demand from some customers was already large, while others had immense future potential. White House’s board and management team had different views regarding which customers the company should retain and which it should decline. This customer selection issue was a pressing and challenging problem that needed to be solved immediately. How should White House resolve its customer selection conundrum?

Conventional ways of making strategy are inadequate to survive amid uncertainty and complexity. Rather, strategy must be grounded in company purpose based on deeply held values what the authors call "soul" and informed by "brain": cognition augmented by advanced analytics and other technologies. Implementing strategy becomes a way of life when leaders follow six key practices drawn from the examples of soulful business leaders in Japan and elsewhere.

It was April 17, 2020, the night before the vote, and Kelsey Wirth, co-founder and board chair of Mothers Out Front, a non-profit climate justice organization, wondered if its Massachusetts chapter had garnered sufficient support from its members to ratify their proposed new charter. It is essential to have our members bought into this, thought Wirth. The members have to feel like they own this next step in our evolution of Massachusetts. The charter development team, dubbed Path to Power (P2P), had tried to address all the outstanding issues and concerns that had led to the initiative, but questions about decision-making authority, accountability, and representation remained unresolved. When each chapter's delegates gathered for the State Assembly, two-thirds must vote yes if the charter were to be adopted. It wasn't perfect, but if the charter did not pass, Wirth worried about how they would overcome the challenges facing the Mothers Out Front in Massachusetts. The case goes on to detail the challenges which led the organization to undergo a months-long effort to develop a charter-namely, the need for a clear decision-making and leadership structure. Mothers Out Front had grown organically from a Massachusetts-based grassroots effort into a national organization, but its structure had not evolved to keep pace and as a result, tension began to build within the organization. Members began to question decisions made by the leadership team; the leadership team felt disempowered and lacking the authority to make strategic decisions. Without a clear structure and process, the organization lacked coordinated, strategic thinking driving decisions. The lack of clarity around decision-making and structure made it difficult for its volunteers to carry out the work of the organization. Mothers Out Front leaders hired a team of consultants to guide them through the process of re-designing its structure in a way that engaged staff and volunteers throughout the organization.

Digital twins are well established in industrial and manufacturing applications, but many more use cases are now opening up thanks to developments in enabling technologies like internet-connected sensors, 5G communications networks, augmented and virtual reality, and AI and machine learning. The authors identify three key areas where there is strong potential for harnessing digital twins and offer four recommendations for increasing the likelihood of their success.

This case is based on the situation that Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) had been facing in 2021 as the world economy attempted to return to normal in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. To get a better sense of crisis that the company was facing, a year earlier SMIC had received tremendous scrutiny from the US government due to concerns that the company's increasing dominance in this industry threatened US interests. Through the discussions of the SMIC case, students will learn how to analyze the competitive situation of a company given the prevailing geopolitical factors as well as how to determine a company's strategic positioning in its respective industry and then use this analysis to evaluate future strategic moves.

In May 2019, project managers with the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society (Jeevika) in Patna, India, met to consider their role in creating farmer producer companies (FPCs) that helped poor agricultural producers access markets and receive fair prices for their produce, mainly litchi fruit. The creation of such producer companies was not a spontaneous process but often required a catalyst to harness community-based networks. While Jeevika, a project supported by the Government of Bihar and the World Bank, had been successful in alleviating poverty among those at the base of the economic pyramid, the project managers were now reflecting on the way forward for the producer company. Their overarching aim was a comprehensive understanding of the effects of their efforts on the community and the key variables affecting the sustainability of their efforts. They were aware that they could not support the community indefinitely, and they needed to consider how best to empower the producers to do this work on their own once Jeevika was no longer available. What new capabilities would farmers need to develop over time? How would the relationships between farmers and other stakeholders change when support from Jeevika was reduced or removed?

Lexoo, a UK-based online marketplace for legal services, was facing the strategic choice of how to grow from early start-up to mature platform. Daniel van Binsbergen, Lexoo's CEO, and web developer Chris O'Sullivan, CTO, had set up Lexoo to help Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to find legal advice at low prices. At the time of the case in 2018, Lexoo had just started attracting larger companies in need of specialized legal advice as new customers. Larger companies had higher value and more frequent needs. Lexoo could become their "go-to" place across a broad range of legal services. Nevertheless, larger companies also required a more personalized approach and were more difficult to acquire than SMEs. Van Binsbergen and O'Sullivan were debating whether Lexoo should diversify to serve both SMEs and larger companies, or whether to pivot their focus toward larger companies altogether.

The impact investing industry seeks to create a positive impact beyond financial returns. Nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity (Habitat), an organization involved in return-seeking investments alongside its charitable donation-based operations, face unique considerations to discover how to make social impact dollars go the furthest over time. In early 2020, Patrick Kelley, global vice president of the Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter, puzzled over these considerations with a team of program professionals at Habitat. In particular, he set out to learn how the team could scale its in-house, donation-based impact fund, the Shelter Venture Fund (SVF), and draw investors beyond philanthropists to help effectuate Habitat's social mission and prove the fund's financial viability. A core question emerged: Should Kelley scale SVF by going back to donative capital or by raising private money in a fund?

This exercise explores customer transaction data generated from a business owner's website and illustrates the added benefit of basic data analytics practices used to uncover business insights. Students discover the business's purchase trends when they answer the provided questions by writing SQL queries. The questions guide students to determine which product offerings the business should promote and which customer segments to target. Additionally, the case discusses the common relational database design that is often associated with transactional data and its metadata.

This case explores the dynamic allocation approach to investing, an approach that would time the market based on factors' relative valuations. Research Affiliates created a RAFI Dynamic Multifactor US index that dynamically allocated five factor strategies: value, quality, momentum, size, and low volatility. In this course, students will utilize various information presented in the case to discuss why Research Affiliates decided to launch the strategy, how Research Affiliates times it, and what has been its performance relative to the Russell 1000 Index and other competitors. Students will also assess the strategy's performance and some of the limitations of its dynamic strategy.

The case tracks the evolution of FreshWorld, a unique mobile fruit and vegetable vending (FnV) startup in India. It gives a snapshot of the dilemmas faced by the entrepreneur Rajiv Rao during the initial years. This is against the backdrop of the evolving FnV retail domain in India, which is moving from the informal to the formal sector, from roadside vendor and mom and pop stores to organized retail, from technology independence to technology dependence. The case sets the stage for discussing how a startup needs to understand the market, the customer, and the competition. It provides students with an opportunity to examine a startup using the lens of the lean startup methodology. Having surmounted various challenges that were directly related to the way in which FreshWorld was conceived of as a solution; Rao must decide what to do next. He could share his plan and request more funding from his investors. Alternately, he could accept a buyout offer from a leading online retailer. The task before the students is to examine FreshWorld journey and identify where the entrepreneur is in his endeavor? What can he do? How would he decide? This case can be used in a course on entrepreneurship or social entrepreneurship.

The case discusses the opportunity for Thulasi Pharmacy to develop an online sales model, thereby transitioning from a sole store format to omnichannel retailing. Thulasi Pharmacy was most prominently present in the state of Tamil Nadu in South India, with 69 stores and an annual turnover of $16.5 million. With the advent of e-pharmacy in India, riding on growing internet penetration and a positive change in consumers' preferences toward online shopping, Thulasi was contemplating on whether extending their services into e-pharma was the next step in expansion. The case also introduces change management in the context of organizational changes required to build a hybrid business model. It describes the situation at Thulasi Pharmacy, challenges students to understand an industry in-depth, and explains the importance of core competencies to a retail organization. While discussing how a company can leverage digitalization to move into omnichannel retailing, the case encourages the students to think about the various new stakeholders and organizational changes required to bring synergy between the offline and online business models.

This case follows the journey of Amagi, founded by three entrepreneurs, as an Indian company founded in 2008 with a technological solution for the media and entertainment (M&E) industry. Amagi was set up as a technology company that leveraged its geo-targeting technology to work with broadcasters and advertisers to reach audiences regionally and globally. The company started facing challenges due to the inherent market structure along with various other external forces, posing questions about the existing business model and the need for diversification. The M&E industry, at this point, was also rapidly transforming on account of technological evolutions as the linear broadcasting businesses were being overtaken by the incoming OTT players providing video-on-demand services both in terms of customers and advertisement dollars, further pushing Amagi to rethink its strategy. The case outlines the geo-targeting business model and its evolution during the journey of Amagi over the past decade. It also highlights the various challenges the company was facing in the existing set-up along with laying down the management's expectations from a successful business. The case also outlines the evolving industry structure, business landscape and the value chain where Amagi was playing within the industry and how different players were responding to the changes in the market scenario. The case shows what firms need to consider while evaluating future business strategies; and how their activities, ideologies, and core capabilities influence the firm's choice of path.

Founded in 2016, udaan operated India's largest B2B e-commerce platform, which catered to millions of vendors registered on its app and trading a wide range of products. Its Capital arm focused on enabling the country's multitude of micro-enterprises with financial services and products, so that sellers and buyers could grow their business with easily accessible trade credit. Having crossed the "small start-up" stage, the HR team at udaan Capital was weighing its options to grow the organization with structured yet empowering processes and policies. The case goes over how the Head of HR architected a performance management framework along contemporary lines. Its philosophy laid emphasis on combining organizational targets with employee aspirations via constructive dialog around goals. Skill ladders were drawn up to help employees at different career stages to navigate their path within the organization. The case reader is invited to contrast this approach with rank-and-yank approaches, which rely on assessments that craft a score to guide actions on rewards and layoffs. Managers were integral to this framework rollout and had to be carefully equipped to conduct productive conversations with employees. A technology tool captured the reviews and tracked the milestones of the exercise. Insights derived from these conversations informed the HR organization about the next steps.

Trans Neuron Technologies (TNT) is a learn-to-launch (L2L) company, which aims to transform job-seekers into industry-ready professionals by providing them with adequate backing to undertake that journey. TNT is an innovative company with immense faith in the power of the youth. The company offers eKaushal, a unified platform for various stakeholders in the skilling ecosystem, including candidates, training providers, employers, and assessment agencies. Hundreds of youth visit the eKaushal platform every day to undergo various forms of professional training. These candidates belong to various demographics, education level, income brackets, etc. It was found that some of the candidates could not leverage the training for employment opportunities. The business goal is clearly defined for TNT - they want to enable efficiencies in the entire skilling ecosystem, thus helping youth with employment opportunities. For Shivaam Sharma, the Chief Executive Officer of TNT, the objective is to recommend relevant training to the candidates to increase their employability chances. Sharma wants to use the collected data to achieve the following: 1. Recommend suitable trainings to candidates, so that dropouts are reduced and placement chances for candidates are increased. 2. Compare efficiencies of the training providers (TP) and understand if some of the TPs are underperforming and therefore leading to fewer training completions.

The case GoSports: Developing Sports Talent to Create Role Models describes the evolution of an Indian not-for-profit organization GoSports, whose mission is to identify high quality sporting talent and provide them necessary support so that they can excel in international sporting competitions and win laurels for the country. Despite being a nation of 1.3 billion people with no dearth of talent, India's performance in international sporting events have been modest. This is because of multiple structural factors such as lack of hard and soft infrastructure for promoting sports, inadequate financial support from the government and private sector as well as absence of career options for sportspeople after an active career. GoSports has positioned itself as a bridging organization that would provide the necessary encouragement to talented sportspersons until they become famous enough to receive adequate support from the government or the private sector. Being a pioneer in this field, GoSports' journey exemplifies how an organization sets about creating an ecosystem for sports in a country where multiple economic, social and cultural barriers have traditionally prevented sports from getting its due importance in nation building. Learning from its initial failures to build a for-profit talent management organization, GoSports concentrated on raising funds from the corporate sector through their athlete-focused development programs, many of which were mentored by highly acclaimed role models from the world of sports. In parallel, GoSports created a network of support services comprising coaches, nutritionists, and sports scientists - all of whom played important roles in ensuring optimum performance from sportspersons. Dedicated athlete managers from GoSports maintained a trust-based relationship with the sportspersons such that every young sportsperson felt assured there was someone to help them deal with the myriad challenges in their intensely competitive domain.

This case covers a common issue concerning traditional manufacturers in the digital era. As we know, Chinese manufacturers mainly focus on products and make profits by ramping up capacity and expanding dealer channels. As the Chinese economy shifts to a lower gear, this type of business model leads to overproduction and market saturation while also failing to meet consumer demand for more personalized products. In the digital era, therefore, traditional manufacturers need to change their business model to transform their business structure. While such a goal may be clear, how to reach it is a different matter. Founded in 2011, SAIC Maxus, a Chinese auto manufacturer, began exploring the C2B (Customer to Business) model in 2016, shifting from a product-centric approach to a user-centric one and from standardized mass production to personalization and smart customization. To this end, it had to adopt a new business model and digitize the entire manufacturing process and supply chain. With no precedent in the market to fall back on, how did SAIC Maxus figure out the C2B model from scratch? How did its C2B model help digitize the traditional value chain of the auto industry? What challenges would the C2B model face in the next step? What lessons does SAIC Maxus' exploration of the C2B model hold for other traditional manufacturing companies?

This case is an opportunity to apply the methods of the Toyota Production System (TPS) to the analysis of an everyday service application: administering Covid-19 vaccines. It describes the start-up of a drive-up Covid-19 mass vaccination site at the Texas State Fair Grounds on the east side of Dallas, Texas. The challenge facing Jamie Bonini and Bita Behgooy, the protagonists, is to help the Dallas County staff raise the vaccination output rate to 1000 cars per hour, but they also are not in charge so they have to influence the site leadership.

This case is an opportunity to apply the methods of the Toyota Production System (TPS) to the analysis of an everyday service application: administering Covid-19 vaccines. It describes the start-up of a drive-up Covid-19 mass vaccination site at the Texas State Fair Grounds on the east side of Dallas, Texas. The challenge facing Jamie Bonini and Bita Behgooy, the protagonists, is to help the Dallas County staff raise the vaccination output rate to 1000 cars per hour, but they also are not in charge so they have to influence the site leadership. This is the (B) case, which accompanies the (A) case.