In 2020, just after closing a $34 million Series B financing round, Dave Salvant and Songe LaRon consider how to adjust their business, Squire Technologies, to the new realities posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their barbershop technology, including tools to run a shop and a mobile app for customers was growing swiftly, but with nearly all barbershops shut down to prevent the spread of the disease and no revenue coming in, should they cut back, or take the opportunity to build up?
Fynd is a fast-growing venture that in 7 years since its founding has become India's largest omnichannel retail company with real-time access to over 9,000 stores' offline inventory. It started as a B2B business supporting retailers who didn't have an online business, but pivoted to a B2C platform that allowed customers to shop directly from nearby retail stores through its website and app. Over time, Fynd continued with its B2C platform, scaled up its organization, and added new B2B platforms. But funding this was difficult, with investors raising questions about the business model and growth. In its next phase of growth it sought and failed to receive funding from venture capitalists. In 2018, the founders took a strategic investment from Google. But the subsequent departure of their sponsor from Google meant they needed to look at other avenues for funding. As they were poised for their next phase of growth, the founders were faced with a series of decisions about the pace of scaling, the business model, and how to fund the expansion. In 2019, Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of one of India's largest private conglomerates, and one of their key customers offered to invest $42 million for an 87% stake in the company, and is willing to negotiate terms of the deal. Should the founders accept the offer? What should the terms of the agreement be? How will this impact their business model, their growth trajectory, and also the future of the founders at the firm?
In 2020, the chief executive officer of Zhida Environmental Technology, a waste management company based in Nanjing, China, was considering adopting blockchain technology into the company’s work process. With the concept of Internet plus recycling, the company was committed to waste sorting and had introduced innovative household waste solutions. However, new challenges were emerging, including stagnant resident participation rates, low profit returns, competitor expansion, and limited support from the local government. Inherent blockchain technology functions such as digital token services, a transparent recycling chain, and collaborative governance mechanisms could potentially improve the company’s current operations and provide a first mover position in the market. However, the chief executive officer had to thoroughly consider the decision of adopting blockchain technology: What true value could it offer and what potential challenges could arise?
Niya Jones, a Partner at a major management consulting firm, must review the work of two of her mentees--Joseph Park and Elena RamÃrez--for their first end-of-year performance review as new Project Leaders. Both have produced strong results in their new roles, but neither Park nor RamÃrez could be more different in how they went about leading their respective teams. How should Jones evaluate these Project Leaders according to the criteria developed by her firm?
As the COVID pandemic spread in early 2020, global travel ground to a halt. For Airbnb, the San Francisco-based platform for renting accommodations, the impact was both swift and severe as revenues plummeted more than 70% over the prior year. Responding to the sudden downturn was a challenge for CEO Brian Chesky and his leadership team because the firm had adopted a stakeholder model with five key constituents: guests (renters), hosts (landlords), employees, communities and shareholders. While all five groups could benefit in the long-term if the firm succeeded, it was less clear how they should balance the potentially conflicting demands in the short-term particularly given the mounting losses. For example, in the face of travel restrictions, Airbnb could support guests by requiring hosts to refund deposits or could support hosts by allowing them to keep deposits. Similarly, should Airbnb use existing cash to maintain employment levels or downsize to protect capital providers? In the highly uncertain environment that existed in April 2020, Chesky and his team had to make many critical decisions with little precedent and limited information to guide them. As one of the first Silicon Valley "unicorns" to adopt a stakeholder business model, the world would be watching to see what they did, how they did it, and why.
Set in September 2020, the case talks about marketing an accessible (affordable) luxury watch brand, 'August Berg', by a luxury-product distribution company, Norbreeze, based in Singapore. The company's founder, Anders Peter Juel Sauerberg, was sceptical about the launch of a new collection of the watch brand, as it had seen limited sales in one year since its inception. Sauerberg had set up a kiosk store of the brand in an iconic luxury mall in the city and adopted social media platforms and influencer marketing to promote the brand with little success. The brand represented the ethos of Danish design - minimalism and high quality and targeted a niche category of millennials, i.e. young parents and professionals. The brand was also attached to a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative that supported the education of children from low-income families. While Norbreeze had seen success in the Singapore market with the distribution of other accessible luxury watches and jewellery from Danish brands like Skagen and Pandora, it had failed to see similar results for its own in-house brand, August Berg. The 'lipstick effect' of the market due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the lack of brand awareness for the new watch brand were identified as the key reasons for low sales. Given the financial constraints of operating as a start-up, how could Sauerberg enhance the brand awareness of August Berg? What digital and social media marketing strategies could he implement to promote his brand?
Short videos are the new trend in entertainment and social networking. TikTok/Douyin is the undisputed leader of short video-sharing apps. Less than four years after it launched in China, TikTok shot to global prominence thanks to an addictive user experience. In 2020-21, despite a challenging geopolitical context, it maintained strong growth momentum to become the world's most-downloaded, best-rated, highest-earning app. Kuaishou, TikTok's strongest domestic competitor, dominated the Chinese market until 2018. Like TikTok, it began to expand overseas in mid-2017, but stumbled. With backing from Tencent (one of China's pioneering internet giants), Kuaishou gained fresh momentum in China and global markets and took steps to going public in February 2021. As the two companies go head-to-head in China and globally, their products and strategies are converging. The case compares their respective strategic positions, operations and development. It reveals the success story behind TikTok's exponential growth and expansion, the emergence of the short-video industry, the parent company ByteDance, and its current and future challenges.
GSH Conserves was an artisanal jam producer in Singapore that specialised in using tropical fruits, such as dragon fruit, lychee, mango, etc., to handcraft high-quality jam in small batches. Founded in 2013 in a home kitchen, the demand for GSH Conserves jam and bottled fruits had grown organically through word-of-mouth over the years. In 2016, GSH Conserves moved to a new factory that could cater to a larger production capacity in order to meet growing demand. However, Edwin Lim, a partner at GSH Conserves, observed that his workers and equipment were often idle. He had to examine the company's current operations, identify inefficiencies and suggest improvements. How would the increase in demand and production batch sizes affect production capacity? Would adding resources help to eliminate bottlenecks? How can he redesign the production process to enhance efficiency without affecting product quality?
Front-line employees can offer essential insights to be used in strategic decision-making, yet top management teams rarely ask these employees about strategic issues. In so doing, leaders are depriving themselves of new information that could improve their analyses, and they risk making decisions in isolation within the C-suite echo chamber. But the right tools and training can equip employees to better understand forecasting and teach executives to recognize their insights.
In 2019, Michael Whan, commissioner of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), a non-profit organization that ran the world's most prestigious women's golf circuit, was preparing for the tour's 70th anniversary. Throughout its history, the LPGA had broken many social barriers, from the inclusion of African American players in the 1960s to the acceptance of transgender players in 2010. It had also reached important economic and athletic milestones. For example, the LPGA had the largest purses of any women's sports association, a wide range of international sponsors, tournaments broadcast in over 170 countries, and the highest concentration of international professional women golf stars. These achievements were due largely to the internationalization process launched in the late 1990s that had helped transform the LPGA from a U.S.-based to an international tour. But the internationalization of the LPGA had come with challenges.
In 2018, the owner of a Sasol Limited (Sasol) fuel retail franchise in Pretoria, South Africa, was facing the challenge of how to continue growing her business by retaining her existing customers and offering the products and services they expected. A woman entrepreneur in a male-dominated industry, the franchisee had worked her way up the corporate ladder in the financial services industry and, after being retrenched from her position at a bank, had purchased a fuelling station. She now wanted to gather information on her customers' needs in order to make an informed decision about how to scale the service offerings at her site to increase revenue, but she was unsure as to how to go about gathering this information. Various brands in the service station industry had seen decreased customer visits, and in this competitive environment, it was important to increase her efforts in building loyalty among her service station's customers.
This exercise provides the financial data of eight major companies operating in Pakistan in 2019 and listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange. It also provides a list of eight of the country's main industries. Identify which company operated within which industry to test your understanding of how a company's financial data can be specific to a particular industry. Using only financial figures, can you identify within which industry each company operated?
VCayr was a not-for-profit social service organization that connected individuals through its social media platforms and community events. In January 2019, an organizational member and an active project manager at VCayr reported to a friend and board director that she was sexually harassed by another board director at VCayr. The friend and director had to decide how to manage the situation. He was aware of the severity of sexual harassment and the significant harm that it could have on all VCayr members and on the overall organization. Another sexual harassment incident was reported to him one year later by another member of VCayr. The board director had a second chance to rethink his strategies and to weigh in other options in light of the emerging information.
In 2018, the owner of a Sasol Limited (Sasol) fuel retail franchise in Pretoria, South Africa, was facing the challenge of how to continue growing her business by retaining her existing customers and offering the products and services they expected. A woman entrepreneur in a male-dominated industry, the franchisee had worked her way up the corporate ladder in the financial services industry and, after being retrenched from her position at a bank, had purchased a fuelling station. She now wanted to gather information on her customers’ needs in order to make an informed decision about how to scale the service offerings at her site to increase revenue, but she was unsure as to how to go about gathering this information. Various brands in the service station industry had seen decreased customer visits, and in this competitive environment, it was important to increase her efforts in building loyalty among her service station’s customers.
This exercise provides the financial data of eight major companies operating in Pakistan in 2019 and listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange. It also provides a list of eight of the country’s main industries. Identify which company operated within which industry to test your understanding of how a company’s financial data can be specific to a particular industry. Using only financial figures, can you identify within which industry each company operated?
<p style="color: white; background-color: rgb(3, 70, 56); font-size: 16px; display: inline-block; border: 0px rgb(197, 183, 131); padding: 4px 4px;"><a href="https://www.iveypublishing.ca/s/product/vcayr-managing-sexual-harassment-digital-learning-experience/01t5c00000Cd0NUAAZ" style="color: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;">AVAILABLE AS A DIGITAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE</a></p><br> VCayr was a not-for-profit social service organization that connected individuals through its social media platforms and community events. In January 2019, an organizational member and an active project manager at VCayr reported to a friend and board director that she was sexually harassed by another board director at VCayr. The friend and director had to decide how to manage the situation. He was aware of the severity of sexual harassment and the significant harm that it could have on all VCayr members and on the overall organization. Another sexual harassment incident was reported to him one year later by another member of VCayr. The board director had a second chance to rethink his strategies and to weigh in other options in light of the emerging information.