Intenseye was a Turkey-based technology startup that deployed machine learning algorithms to workplace camera feeds in order to identify unsafe worker actions and unsafe working conditions, in order to help improve worker safety. The case describes how Intenseye's technology solution was developed, how it works, and their target clients. The case highlights the tradeoffs associated with facial recognition and privacy, and the challenges measuring the value created by Intenseye and how the firm can capture more of the value it was creating.
In only his third year at a Leading Strategy Consulting firm (LSC), Gregory Davis has been assigned to a select group tasked with advising General Motors (GM), one of the largest companies in the world by revenue, on how to reorganize their entire North American operation. As part of the Sales & Marketing team, Davis has been paired with Claude "Bud" Moore, Buick's assistant zone manager for Chicago. A humble, unassuming man with little corporate experience, as well as the least senior of the GM team liaisons, Moore was generally considered the weakest link within the reorganization engagement. As a result, the Partner leading Davis' team has instructed him to "work around" Moore and dedicate his time to other issues. One day, however, Moore approaches Davis about a presentation he must give to GM's president and senior corporate management team in just ten days' time, a presentation for which he is woefully unprepared. Davis must decide between helping Moore-explicitly ignoring instructions from senior members of his firm-and perhaps knowingly letting Moore, his client, fail.
In 2021, the demand for lithium-ion batteries increased rapidly, particularly for electric vehicles. Anxious not to be reliant on Asian players, Europe was keen on developing its own home-grown capacity to control the value chain, maintain employment in Europe, and get a share of the profits. The unpredictability of the coronavirus pandemic, which had exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains, had also put pressure on European countries to move quickly to keep Europe's automakers competitive. Europe had a new champion in Sweden's Northvolt, which was headed by a former Tesla executive. Since its inception in 2016, Northvolt had raised $6.5 billion in debt and equity and built a team of 2,000 people in three countries. It had begun construction of a first "Gigafactory" in Northern Sweden that would manufacture lithium-ion batteries on an unprecedented scale. The company also stood out by its ambition to build the world's greenest car battery-a concept that encompassed minimal carbon footprint, ethical sourcing of raw materials, and a robust ecosystem for recycling. Even though Northvolt had secured offtake agreements amounting to $27 billion through 2030, the construction of its first "Gigafactory" had yet to be completed. Would the bet on making the most sustainable battery pay off? And would the company be able to execute the multi-billion-dollar construction projects to build the factories and then operate them as planned to meet the quickly rising demand for the batteries it had committed to delivering?
Having the wrong culture undermines the best-laid strategy and organizational development plans, but many leaders haven't necessarily accepted the need to be proactive in building the types of culture required for their transformation strategies to succeed. The authors describe seven elements of adaptive culture that they consistently see in businesses that have transformed successfully and share a set of eight culture transformation principles that maximize the likelihood of success.
This case examines the accounting of sale and leaseback transaction for an undergraduate or graduate accounting class. This case also examines the effects of such a transaction on financial statements. Vibrant Group is listed on the Singapore Exchange. In 2019, it entered into a sale and leaseback transaction. This was reported in its 2020 Annual Report using the revised Singapore Financial Reporting Standards (International) 16 ("SFRS(I) 16") Leases. This case exposes students to practical situations that highlight important principles and illustrate best practices in accounting. The business scenario of this case creates opportunities to delve into a variety of capital management options, namely: (i) obtaining a loan using property as a collateral; (ii) issuance of share capital; or (iii) entering into a sale and leaseback transaction; their pros and cons and financial statement effects. This case may be used in countries where IFRSs are applicable as SFRS (I) 16 Leases is identical to IFRS 16 Leases.
In early December 2020, the sales controller for Star Medical Equipment, Brazil, was working on the sales forecast for 2021. Sales in 2020 had been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but ultimately recovered, and the company had ended the year with about 7 per cent growth over 2019. Predicting the market demand for 2021 was uncertain, as the pandemic was not over and newer strains of the virus were afflicting different parts of the world, again and again. What was certain was that freight costs and transfer prices would increase significantly in 2021. If the sales controller attempted significant sales growth, the organization’s gains could be high; its success was uncertain, while a reduction in profitability was certain. He had to decide whether he should play it safe and follow global business guidelines to increase profitability or gamble with ambitious sales and market share growth plans for 2021.
One of the most significant challenges in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States was the shortage of test capability. At the beginning of April 2020, fewer than 200,000 tests per day were being performed, much less than public health experts had recommended. Also, in many cases, it often took several days or even weeks for a person to receive the test result. Many experts believed the testing turnaround time was one of the most significant failure points to contain COVID-19. Heading into fall 2020 and winter of 2021, U.S. healthcare experts continued to cite testing capability (and fast results) as the first necessary condition of getting back to everyday life. One solution to increase the testing capacity was called a pooled test. In this case, the government of Ann Arbor is considering whether the city should use pooled COVID-19 testing and, if so, how the test should be designed since there are several different versions. Students are asked to apply probability theory and develop Excel models that can help decision makers.
La Madrilena, footwear and sport goods' retailer, operated 18 stores -under La Madrilena brand for shoes and Quonam for sports- in Argentina's Patagonia region. This case describes the company's situation in May 2014, when Argentina experienced significant macroeconomic uncertainty as a result of strong local currency devaluations and greater foreign exchange availability restraints enforced in December 2013. Domestic prices rose at a rapid pace, and an economic downturn loomed ahead. Against that backdrop, La Madrilena's management team pondered a decision to start or delay remodeling work on a real estate property in Esquel, a city in Patagonia, that required an investment of ARS 5 million (equivalent to USD 625,000 at the time). After describing La Madrilena's background and operations, the case focuses on the design of financial performance management reports and provides extensive information on the company's economic and financial performance over the past five years.
Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm, specializes in Corporate Law, fiduciary services, investment advice, and international business. In April 2016, several media around the world revealed that they had a set of 11.5 million confidential documents from this firm, which had been obtained by an anonymous source with access to the firm's information systems and databases. According to the media, the documents showed how wealthy individuals used offshore companies to hide their assets from public scrutiny. The scandal had severely undermined the reputation of Mossack Fonseca's clients -including many high public officials and renowned celebrities. Carlos Sousa, the law firm's Public Relations head, had to write a news release to address the terrible scandal involving the so-called Panama Papers. Mossack Fonseca's clients interacted heavily with the firm via its web portal, which ran on open-code software and, as reported when the scandal made international headlines, featured multiple vulnerabilities that threatened information security. Carlos found it hard to fathom the impact the public knowledge of this vulnerabilities would have on the firm's clients, and he knew he had to announce remedial actions. What should Mossack Fonseca communicate to the press and its clients? Could the firm have prevented this cyberattack? What steps should the law firm take?
PagAmigo specializes in transactions for the public from cashiers' windows located near the exit counters of supermarkets located mostly in the greater metropolitan area of a country in Latin America. These transactions included the payment of electricity, water, phone, and Internet bills, loan repayments, credit card payments and other banking transactions, the sending of remittances to relatives in foreign countries, the purchase of lottery tickets, or tickets to sporting or cultural events and many other types of transactions. Five year earlier the supermarket chains, which had been owned by the same business group that owned Pagamigo, were sold to a European retailer that was not interested in purchasing Pagamigo. This had a serious impact on Pagamigo employee morale, and led to a period of declining investment in both infrastructure and training. Shortly before the opening of the case, a major banking group known for its aggressiveness acquired Pagamigo as a going concern and placed one of its rising executives as the new general manager. An MBA from a well-known business school in the region, with several years´ experience in the banking industry, the new general manager must now decide upon the organizational changes that must be made within Pagamigo, and on a long-term strategy for achieving his vision of bringing Pagamigo into the digital era.
HCL Technologies was successfully leveraging Application Tracking System till 2017 to fast track its recruitment process, which contributed effectively till then. However, by 2017, as the strategic business objectives changed, HCL decided to implement advanced technology to create more intelligent recruitment system called Techruit. The new system had to meet the broader objectives of experience, efficiency and impact. The decision dilemmas in front of the core HR team were to choose the right technology for enhancing the effectiveness of talent acquisition process, and the right combination of metrics to measure and improve recruiter performance.
Camera IQ, a camera marketing software company that empowered brands to create and launch augmented reality experiences (AREs) across social platforms, had just raised an additional $5 million to fund further product development and expand its marketing and sales efforts. In the four years since the company's founding, Camera IQ had worked to "democratize the camera," breaking down the significant technological barriers that prevented companies from easily harnessing the power of AR at scale in their digital marketing campaigns. Now, the business stood at a critical juncture. It was time to accelerate the company's growth. Several issues were on the table for discussion, including how to segment and target their customer base to drive exponential growth. Second, the founders had to decide how to direct their engineering resources to refine their platform to meet the needs of an expanding and diversifying customer base. Some in the company were advocating for the development of a much cheaper product tier with capped features to capture the mass market, while others were arguing that the company should focus on refining a more intricate enterprise solution. Still others were excited about the possibility of launching a two-sided marketplace for AR content and templates. Third, as Camera IQ refined its customer value proposition, they would have to further differentiate AREs from other types of digital content and move beyond traditional notions of advertising toward the achievement of a richer, more immersive and engaging branded experience.
Moderna, Inc. (Moderna), a US biotech start-up, was a contender in the race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. On November 23, 2020, Moderna announced success in the third-stage clinical trial of its COVID-19 vaccine, soon after larger rival Pfizer Inc. (Pfizer), partnering with BioNTech SE, had reported the successful clinical trial results of its own vaccine. However, large-scale vaccine production was a challenge for Moderna, and its chief executive officer acknowledged that scaling production would not be easy. The two other leading vaccine developers, Pfizer and AstraZeneca plc (AstraZeneca), had fewer challenges with manufacturing capacity; however, Pfizer’s vaccine required extreme cold storage, and AstraZeneca’s vaccine faced issues with its third-stage clinical trial results. On the consumer front, many Americans were unwilling to be vaccinated for COVID-19, leading to anti-vaccination protests on social media and in public. In November 2020, Moderna was planning to apply to the US Food and Drug Administration for Emergency Use Authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine. Vaccine manufacturers were racing to see whose vaccine was best. Could Moderna produce the most effective COVID-19 vaccine? Given the uncertainty in consumer demand for the vaccine, should Moderna plan its manufacturing capability based on end-consumer demand or focus instead on seeking government contracts?
A change in the corporate US federal income tax rate necessitates an adjustment to a company's balance sheet deferred tax account. Stephanie Allen has been tasked with determining the projected effects of several "what if" changes in the corporate income tax rate on her employer's (Software for Seniors, Corp.) and a peer's DuPont ratios and earnings per share performance measures. This general experience-based case uses data created by the authors that generally model the proportionalities of various line items within the financial statements of some real-world companies. As such, the financial statement effects due to an income tax rate change explored in this case are reasonable. It is suitable for an undergraduate or graduate level financial reporting course or a financial statement analysis course.
This public-sourced case set in May 2020 examines various corporate governance issues that have arisen for the nonprofit USA Track & Field (USATF). The case's protagonist is board member Tricia Myers who considers how the board can better serve its constituents as they are inundated with a torrent of issues around CEO compensation, fundraising, and governance regulations. The board faces a fire drill as CEO Max Siegel's high compensation has just been made public, surprising the board and requiring a response. Students can use the data provided in the case to evaluate whether Siegel's compensation package is "fair and reasonable" for a nonprofit executive and recommend next steps. The board also grapples with whether Nike's influence over USATF has grown too large after Siegel signed a long-term sponsorship contract with the company that provided the bulk of USATF's total revenues but also created potential conflicts of interest and polarized USATF's elite athletes. Lastly, the board contemplates regulatory changes imposed by the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the implications for its membership base. This case allows for a rich discussion about a nonprofit's mission statement and business model, aligning stakeholder interests, and the role of nonprofit board members.
In 2019, the head of leadership development for Anglo American plc (Anglo American), a global mining conglomerate, was reviewing the two years she had been working with the human resources (HR) leadership team to establish the company’s international Leadership Academy. Her task was to determine leadership development solutions that supported Anglo American’s strategy and to recommend how to resource, identify, develop, and retain the diverse talent pool required to achieve the company’s business objectives. She had gone to great lengths to ensure the Leadership Academy’s offerings underpinned the organization’s strategic imperatives. She now pondered how to assess the impact of the Learning Academy. Was the human resources leadership team looking at and measuring the right things?
A team of analysts at Nedbank Group (Nedbank) had generated a solution to an important client-centered issue, but the solution was not welcomed by the operations team. A business executive at Nedbank created an opportunity for the creative design team and operations team to collaborate. A solution was successfully implemented in 2019 and the executive and analysts’ team leader were summoned to present their ideas at a business banking executive committee meeting to demonstrate how their initiatives supported the bank’s strategic direction. Would the executive committee agree to invest capital in new ways of work to move the bank forward on its digital strategy?